Dr. Randy Overbeck is an award-winning educator, author and speaker. As an educator, he served children for four decades in a range of roles captured in his novels, from teacher and coach to principal and superintendent. His thriller, Leave No Child Behind (2012) and his recent mysteries, the Amazon No. 1 Best Seller, Blood on the Chesapeake, Crimson at Cape May and Scarlet at Crystal River have earned five star reviews and garnered national awards including “Thriller of the Year–ReadersFavorite.com, “Gold Award”—Literary Titan, “Mystery of the Year”—ReadersView.com and “Crowned Heart of Excellence”—InD’Tale Magazine. As a member of the Mystery Writers of America, Dr. Overbeck is an active member of the literary community, contributing to a writers’ critique group, serving as a mentor to emerging writers and participating in writing conferences such as Sleuthfest, Killer Nashville and the Midwest Writers Workshop. When he’s not writing or researching his next exciting novel or sharing his presentation, “Things Still Go Bump in the Night,” he’s spending time with his incredible family of wife, three children (and their spouses) and seven wonderful grandchildren.
Septermber 13, 2021
The Wild Rose Press
I have a difficult time answering this question as I’m not sure anything I do is inspirational. But I’d suggest perhaps my almost forty years serving children in various educational roles would come the closet. Whether I was a teacher, a college professor or a superintendent, I tried to always put student needs first—even when dealing with educational bureaucracy. In all these roles, my goal was to focus on how will this help students. That’s why, when I turned my hand to fiction, all my heroes are educators.
Like most everyone else, when I first started to write, I had dreams of being on the NYT best-seller list, of doing the interview circuit (“Good to meet you Oprah) and gaining fame like James Patterson or John Grisham. Now, I’m embarrassed thinking about writing in such shallow terms and recognize those things would never happen.
I’ve come to realize being a successful author means readers enjoy and appreciate my writing and let me know they stayed up all night finishing my novel. It’s readers sharing that they loved my characters or even got insight into the important social issues I highlight in my novels. It’s when readers say my work made a difference for them. That’s a much better definition of success, for me
But now that the first book in my series, the Haunted Shores Mysteries, BLOOD ON THE CHESAPEAKE, became a #1 Amazon and B & N bestseller last month and the second book, CRIMSON AT CAPE MAY, has captured three national awards, I may need to upgrade my definition.
Researching for my novels is of critical importance. I may have a leg up on this over most writers. In my prior work as an educational leader, I had to do a considerable amount of research, so I adapted to this part of the writing task quite well. For my Haunted Shores Mysteries, there is always much to research. First, I have to research each of the areas that become setting for my novels. I have to learn the geography, the culture, the language quirks and people. I do considerable research on the social issue my murder is tied to. For example, in SCARLET AT CRYSTAL RIVER, I had to learn a good deal about the lives of migrant workers in the south. But probably the most interesting aspect of my research is in the area of ghosts. Since my stories include realistic portrayals of ghosts—or at least try to—I work hard to portray spirits as accurately as possible. No deus ex machina for my ghosts.
As evidenced by the beautiful settings in my Haunted Shores Mysteries, I’ve had the chance to visit some truly remarkable locations, any of which would make an inspiring writing venue. But if I could choose any place to live and write—at least for several months—I’d choose a place I haven’t depicted in my work, at least not yet. One of my all-time favorite locations to visit is Monterey, California. The weather is incredible, the scenery of the Pacific Ocean is to die for and the fact that it was the writing home of literary greats like John Steinbeck doesn’t hurt. Give me a few months in that bright sun and refreshing ocean spray and I’m pretty sure I could come up with a masterpiece. Or at least have fun trying.
This is a difficult question, especially with how overcrowded the publishing landscape is. With more than 300,000 new titles released each year in this country alone and 6,000,000! titles on Kindle, trying to carve a literary niche is quite a challenge. With my series, the Haunted Shores Mysteries, I’m trying to blaze some different—of not exactly new—territory. My books are all cold case murder mysteries of the amateur sleuth variety. But they also contain an eerie layer of a ghost story, captured in a believable fashion, I hope. Of course, the stories all have “romantic elements” as readers follow Darrell and Erin through dating, engagement and marriage. Then I add in the element of a different breathtakingly beautiful resort location for each tale to give readers that chance for escape. Finally, each narrative addresses a current social issue, since the murder is tied to this. Combined, I hope my novels will give readers an experience they are not likely to find in other books.
All Darrell Henshaw wanted was to enjoy his honeymoon with his beautiful wife, Erin, in the charming town of Crystal River on the sunny Gulf Coast of Florida. Only a pair of ghosts decide to intrude on their celebration. And not just any ghosts, the spirits of two young Latino children. Unwilling at first to derail the honeymoon for yet another ghost hunt, Darrell finally concedes when a painting of the kids comes alive, weeping and pleading for his help.
When he and Erin track down the artist, they discover the children’s family were migrant workers the next county over. But when they travel there, their questions about the kids gets their car shot up and Erin hospitalized. Torn between fear and rage, Darrell must decide how far he will go to get justice for two young children he never even knew.
Darrell ran harder, finishing the loop and circling back to Erin. She was so engrossed in her paperback he managed to sneak up behind her. He leaned and in and grabbed another long kiss.
She kissed him back, smiling. “Now that’s better than a little fictional romance.” She got up and stretched her long legs.
“You ready for some waves?” he asked.
“If you’re up to it, let’s do a mile or so on the sand first.”
“You’re on.” Darrell gave a gentlemanly wave of his hand.
“I’ll race you.”
Erin took off like a shot, and Darrell hurried after her. Since the beach was small, they covered the same ground Darrell had a few minutes earlier, passing the family sandcastle builders, another jogger, and the same strolling couples. As usual, she was quick, and he had to hustle to keep up, using some fancy footwork to sidestep sunbathers as they ran. When they got to the north end of the beach where Darrell had turned to double back, Erin headed for a little spit of land that strutted out into the water. He looked beyond and saw what she was headed for. Accelerating, he passed her.
Ahead, at the far end of the beach, a pair of young kids, he’d guess about six, sat in the sand as the waves rolled over their legs. Their small hands busied with a primitive sandcastle. One had long, brown hair tied into pigtails, and the other had a full head of brown hair, unkempt and in need of a trim. He came up to them and stopped, Erin a few seconds behind.
The kids wore street clothes, not swimsuits, but he didn’t think much about it. Then he noticed something about the young boy. His right leg was stuck out at a grotesque angle, as if it had been broken and never set. Both kids giggled at the gurgling water that rolled up around their bare feet and pooled in the makeshift moat they’d dug around their sand creation. The castle was crude, a nearly round construction with seashells sticking up like turrets. The two kids glanced up, caramel eyes wide and pleading with half smiles of white teeth.
In unison, they said, “Ayudaños?”
“Huh?” Darrell said.
“Cute castle, huh?” Erin stared at the sand and looked up at Darrell. “I wonder who made it?” Her eyes roamed around the area. “Out here on this spit of land it isn’t going to last very long.”
“Those kids—” he started, pointing to the pair. When he looked down, the sandcastle sat alone, the gulf water flowing around the construction and into the crude moat.
His glance darted out to the waves, thinking they’d abandoned their work and ran into the water, even in their street clothes, though he wondered how the boy could have run.
No girl or boy.
Oh, God! The same two kids? “You vill have two visitors.”
“What’d you say?” Erin asked, her gaze meeting his.
The ghosts. Erin hadn’t seen them!
Shit, he couldn’t tell her. Not now. Not here.
“Nothing,” he managed around the lump in his throat and glanced back down at the sand.
There at his feet, the crude sand construction they’d been working on, complete with the three blue seashells sticking out of the top, sat alone on the sand. He reached down and grabbed one of the small seashells as the prickle on his neck returned and sizzled. Then he sensed something else, something ominous. No, not ominous, malevolent. More of Natalia’s warning came back to him.
“I see a malevolence, a great danger lurking nearby.”
A big wave rushed in, rolling over their ankles and leveling the mound of sand, leaving the beach empty. As if nothing had ever been there.
“¡Ayúdaños!”
As they neared their destination, the roads got worse, going from paved surfaces to potholed, ancient asphalt badly in need of repair to gravel roads. Several times Darrell had to slow the rental down to a crawl to prevent them from being tossed around like ragdolls inside the car. Crooked Creek turned out to be little more than a fork in the road, and they needed Luis’ help to even find the pitted driveway that led to the Settlement. There was no sign or marker for the “complex,” if it could be called that. When they pulled up, they all got out, and Darrell stared at the Settlement.
He hadn’t expected much but was appalled by what he saw.
The Settlement was little more than a series of small barracks, badly maintained with a broken-down fence running around what might have served as a yard. Some buildings had weathered wood siding, long since turned gray, and other shacks were covered with mere tarpaper. On the front of each dwelling, clothes hung on hooks attached to the boards, stained shirts and jeans drooping in the slight breeze. At the end of the first set of barracks, a clothesline was stung across the space, yellowed underwear and socks dangling over the muddy earth. Each dwelling had one door and a small window, the whole place no larger than five hundred square feet. Darrell tried to imagine a family of four or five living in one and shook his head.
He caught a small splash of color in the drab gray and brown scene, the window of the second apartment. Dark green with a little red. Studying it, he could barely make out a hand drawn and colored Christmas tree. His gaze went up the row of shacks and realized it was the only Christmas decoration, the only evidence of the holiday.
Little Feliz Navidad here.
The wind shifted and blew past them the acrid odor of rotting garbage from somewhere on the other side of the Settlement. Darrell used his arm to cover his nose and then, afraid of offending, he brought it back down. If these people had to deal with that smell all the time, he’d have to tough it out.
Behind the buildings, a group of three kids kicked a soccer ball in and out of the rut that ran along the row of structures. In front of the first shack, an older Hispanic woman sat in a broken-down, upholstered living room chair, one that looked like it had been rescued from a dump.
July 20, 2020
The Wild Rose Press
When I heard the bestselling mystery author, S. J. Rozan share these words at a writing conference a few years ago, I was struck by this insight and it has resonated with me ever since. As an author myself, I’ve come to believe that one important purpose of good fiction is, to tell the truth about life, love, and sometimes even death.
I’m not naïve. I realize readers don’t choose a mystery or a thriller or even a romance because they are searching for insight or revelation. James Patterson is not a bestselling author because of his philosophical outlook on life.
Fiction lovers are not browsing bookshelves in bookstores—okay, checking out Amazon or BookBub listings during the pandemic—because they are searching for the meaning of life. They want to be entertained, to be scared to death, to be drawn in and forget their world, or maybe to fall in love inside the pages of their newest discovery. I realize that, above all else, readers are searching for a good story, much the same way our ancestors must have been drawn to the best storyteller around a prehistoric fire.
My writing is also inspirational for both me, and hopefully for my readers. I put my characters in dangerous circumstances. In order for them to survive, they need to call forth the best in themselves and others, often discarding old prejudices & negative attributes. In this process, readers can follow the course of change and develop empathy for those involved. Supernatural horror is a great vehicle for this! Also, I set the book in 1885, a time that reflects many of today’s ills and allows me to explore them through a distant mirror.
The most successful authors are most often the best spinners of tales.
But I also believe authors have an important responsibility. First, we need to assemble the essential ingredients to capture readers’ attention—a plausible storyline (mostly), credible characters, a setting readers can enjoy, and most importantly, a compelling narrative. But I believe if we, as authors, are fortunate enough to command our readers’ attention for hours of their precious time, they should come away with more than just solving the mystery, seeing the bad guy captured, or even making their heart race. Fiction should pose a truth, sometimes even a truth that can’t be conveyed via nonfiction, at least not as well.
That’s why, when I wrote each of the ghost stories/mysteries in my Haunted Shores Mysteries series, I attended to the “truth” part of my novel as diligently as the ghost or mystery part.
The first entry, BLOOD ON THE CHESAPEAKE, explores the thorny issue of racial injustice and white privilege through the lens of a historical mystery. My goal was not to persuade or convince anyone, but I hoped that readers might gain a deeper understanding of this complex issue through characters they’d come to love, and through a storyline they enjoyed.
For my new release, CRIMSON AT CAPE MAY, the second in the series, I placed the murder at the center of an even greater, very real-world problem. As readers navigate through the mystery and try to solve the whodunit, they also come face to face with the disturbing reality of human trafficking, as the murder and the trafficking become intertwined.
On this issue, a few details may illustrate why I felt compelled to center my tale in the ugly world of sex slavery, prostitution, and human trafficking.
Her is a link to a brief article with some amazing—and depressing statistics:
My hope is that when readers finish CRIMSON or BLOOD, besides encountering a new, engaging mystery, exploring an interesting and unusual resort location, indulging their romantic impulses, and perhaps even straying a bit into the spirit world, they have a better grasp of the “truth” I’m trying to capture…and maybe a better understanding of the world around them and themselves.
No matter how far you run, you can never really escape a haunted past.
Darrell Henshaw—teacher, coach, and paranormal sensitive—learned this lesson the hard way. With his job gone and few options, he heads for Cape May to coach a summer football camp. The resort town, with gorgeous beaches, rich history, and famous Victorian mansions, might just be the getaway he needs. Only, no one told him Cape May is the most haunted seaport on the East Coast. One resident ghost, the Haunted Bride, stalks Darrell, begging for his help.
He can’t refuse.
Joining forces with Cassie, a street-wise teen and another sensitive, he investigates the bride’s death and discovers her murder is connected to a far greater horror. But can Darrell and Cassie expose those behind the crimes before they end up being the killer’s next victims?
Why would this woman pursue him?
Now a safe distance away, he studied her. She was thin, with a small, drawn face of pasty skin, and he would’ve guessed her to be about his age, mid-twenties. But there was something about her, something that made him shiver. Did she have a black eye? Were those cuts on her cheek? Why hadn’t he noticed those before, when he passed her on the Promenade?
He sped up, the street crowded, congested with tourists. Normally, the jostling bodies would’ve given him the creeps, but today he was grateful for the numbers so he could blend in.
Not sure where he was headed—except away from his boardinghouse—he kept up a brisk pace. He hurried past the legendary Inn of Cape May, with its ornate, white period architecture and four stories of ancient rooms facing the beach. Any other time, he’d be thinking about taking Erin there. The place had an interesting old-time vibe. That is, if she still wanted anything to do with him. But he didn’t have time for that now. He kept moving.
As he turned back onto Beach Avenue again, the sight of the beautiful blue ocean across the road struck him and he stopped for a moment, then chanced a peek back around the corner. No sign of his stalker.
He reduced his pace, easing past a beach shop, and saw his reflection in the storefront. That gave him an idea. Ahead, he spied a coffee shop with two long windows facing the street, the panes so sparkling clean he could see the image of the sun hanging over the ocean in the glass. As he walked along, he turned his head to catch his image and, when he was far enough along, he glanced sideways at the window. Trailing behind him, he could make out, reflected in the glass, only two people, a gray-haired couple. No one else. He took a few more steps, watching and slowing a little, and exhaled. He’d lost her.
He turned and studied the man and woman, who’d paused to examine the restaurant menu posted next to the door. A few feet beyond the couple stood the woman. Darrell’s gaze darted. The couple. The woman. The coffee shop window. Back to her. The petite young woman in the tattered white dress stood hunched not more than ten feet away. Darrell searched for her reflection in the glass. There was not even a shimmer.
Oh no. Not again.
The side of the young woman’s face was beaten and bloodied. Her exposed neck bore a long, ugly purple bruise. The torn dress now had blood seeping across her torso and down her right leg. He looked back. Still nothing in the window.
The hairs on his neck stood up.
“What do you want?”
In unison, the pair turned, peered behind, and then back at Darrell. The man said, “Son, there’s no one there.”
Darrell kept staring and as he watched, the young woman walked through the older couple and stopped in front of him. This close up, her one deep blue eye—the one not blackened—seemed vacant and carried an emptiness that frightened Darrell. She again extended both pale hands, blood now covering them and dripping off her fingertips. Mesmerized, Darrell watched as fat crimson drops splattered red onto the gray sidewalk.
In her soft voice, she said again, “Please, help me. Help us.”
Darrell shook his head violently. “No. Hell, no. Not again.” Last time almost killed him
Just five yards from the trees, a gigantic black beast bounded from the woods and landed before him. The doctor skittered to a stop, and his feet went out from beneath him. The creature stepped closer, looming. Its eyes glowed red, and the skin around its muzzle drew back, revealing a mouthful of sharp canine teeth.
The Klan had come at him in two directions, the doctor realized. He raised his pistol and fired into the snarling face above him.
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