For today's Sample Sunday offering, here's a section from my upcoming cozy mystery FM For Murder which will be out in a few months. In this section, my intrepid amateur sleuth and acoustics expert Pamela Barnes is hard at work analyzing an audio recording of the on-air shooting of a local disk jockey. Tell me what you think!
She was totally engaged in her investigation of the murder tape that she didn’t notice when Willard Swinton, one of her colleagues entered her office, puffing.
“Pamela!”
“Willard,” she said, looking up at the older African American gentleman, leaning somewhat uncomfortably on his silver-topped cane. Always nattily dressed, Willard today sported a dark green suit with a bright yellow vest. His curly hair with a few wisps of grey topped his perfectly round head. “Come, look at this, will you?”
“What have you got?” asked Willard with excitement. The two researchers had often collaborated on various linguistics projects. Willard was an expert on accents and regional dialects. If anyone could recognize a particular voice and where it was from by just a brief gasp it was Willard. He rounded her desk and peered over her shoulder at the array on the screen.
“See this segment,” she said, pointing out the brief wave she had just listened to.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Let me tell you that after you hear it,” she said, coyly. She pressed “play” and the enhanced gasp was audible and then immediately disappeared.
“That’s it?” asked Willard. She nodded. “Again,” he directed as Pamela repeated the sound.
“Not much to go on, is there?” he asked her.
“No, but, anything you can tell me, Willard…..”
“I’d say, from the quality of the vowel…definitely Southern….”
“And male, right?”
“Oh, yes, male.”
“Southern meaning local? From around here?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I don’t think I can pin it down that much from just ‘ah’”
“What kind of man is it?” she asked.
“You expect a lot from just a vowel, Pamela. What project is this for, anyway?”
Pamela looked at the door and then back at Willard standing beside her. She motioned him down and whispered in his ear. “It’s a recording of the murder of that disk jockey at KRDN on Saturday night. You heard about it, didn’t?”
“How could I not? That’s all the students are talking about. But, I don’t get it. Why just the one vowel? If this guy was a disk jockey don’t they have a longer recording?”
“Not him, Willard. I think—I’m not positive—but I think this gasp—or vowel—might have been from the killer—not the victim. The police can’t identify him and they asked me to listen to the recording and see if I could discover anything about the killer.”
“My goodness, Pamela, you do get yourself into the middle of things, don’t you?”
“I do, don’t I?” she responded smiling.
Many thanks to Nick Spalding at Spalding's Racket, a really super guide to indie books. Nick posts regularly about new independently published books available on Kindle. My cozy mystery Sounds of Murder is featured today on Spalding's Racket. Please check it out!
Don't consider myself very stylish--but evidently my blogging friend Chuck at Secondary Roads does! He's sent me the Stylish Blogger Award! Thanks, Chuck! Check it out. It is rather stylish, isn't it? If I intend to keep it (and, of course, I intend to keep it), I must (1) share seven things about myself, (2) award 15 (yikes!) recently discovered bloggers this same award, and (3) contact these bloggers and tell them all of this! Should keep me busy today. 
7. I'm basically a kind and gentle person, but I loved playing the evil Nurse Ratched in a production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Of course, he can't compare with the father emu--as I discovered when I visited one of my regular blogs--Parentimes recently. Poppa Emu, it seems, "incubates the eggs, turning them a few times a day. During incubation, he does not eat, drink or defecate. He looks after the chicks for five months." Wow! Now, my son is a good dad, but no human father could compare to that. 
She sat at the computer and reached into her purse for the CD. Removing the disk from its folder, she inserted the shiny circular disk into the CD drawer. Impatiently, she waited while the computer uploaded the data. She brought up her favorite acoustic analysis program and nervously loaded the data. Immediately, the screen filled with a spectrograph and wavy lines, indicating the presence of sound. Some of the waves were rounded rather than sharp, indicating to Pamela’s perceptive eye that she was looking at human vocal sound in addition to mechanical or non-human sound. Placing a set of earplug speakers in her ears, she turned the volume control to a low level. She was totally engrossed in the screen in front of her as she moved her cursor to the start of the wavy line on the spectrograph and pressed play. 
Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick has put together a three volume set of excerpts from recent books by indie authors called "Bestseller Bound" and it's available for free at: http://www.scribd.com/jbkirkpat
For the people here at Subjective Soup (that would be me), the year 2010 was quite momentous. On the professional side, it was the year that I formed my new business Cozy Cat Press and began publishing cozy mysteries. There were roadblocks, detours, and several unexpected curves along the way, but my business now seems to be moving along nicely. CCP has two books published and several more in the pipeline. Along the way, I met my writing buddy Diane Morlan and we formed a wonderful friend and business relationship.
On the family side, the year began rather sadly when we lost our beloved Pomeranian Coquette in February. She is always in my thoughts. Later in the year, however, our family grew. In the summer, our daughter arrived from Louisiana to stay with us, and in October, our first grandchild--Braeden Alexander--was born. And, of course, just a few weeks ago, my wonderful Mom celebrated her ninetieth birthday! So, all in all, a momentous year.
Milt and I are still together, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Medicare Man, who will make his arrival in 2011. MM (or one of his representatives) sends us letters almost daily; we feel very close. Milt and I keep our relationship fresh by spending our days on separate floors (he in the basement and me in the upstairs study). But, watch out; when we get together on the main floor for dinner--sparks fly! We have happily settled into retirement.
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