Family Mystery Detective

01/01/2026

Happy New Year!!

03/03/2025

Facebook wants to shut my page down, so I'll be moving my Family Mystery Detective social media to Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn over the next few months. So keep a lookout for them! I'll also be starting a website for Family Mystery Detective sometime this summer and posting about my family history and genealogy education. Keep a lookout for the new website announcement this summer!

Send a message to learn more

01/03/2024

The last time I posted a photo of this massive Georgia home, someone commented that it was probably left behind because no one wanted to paint it. It would definitely be a big job!

If it was yours, which color would you paint it?

01/03/2024

09/23/2023

We talk a lot about carved Civil War bullets. This is likely the best one that we have ever seen. This nameless soldier that carved this piece was a true artist. It was dug by Butch Holcombe publisher of American Digger Magazine. A true example of trench art.

08/23/2022

08/01/2022

Check out this great August workshop!
https://www.oirwa.com/forum/campus2022/

03/24/2022

Interested in writing a sports romance but unsure of where to start or how to go about it? OIRW has a workshop for you - How to Write Sports Romances!

How to Write Sports Romances (Craft)
Presented by: Cassandra Carr
Dates: APR 4 – 29th, 2022
Fee: OIRW Member $25| Non-Member $35

Course Description:
Sports romance – Sports romance is one of the fastest-growing subgenres, and this course will teach you how to write compelling and realistic stories. You’ll learn about the specific personality traits of elite athletes, what their day-to-day lives are like, how to describe the atmosphere in a locker room, and other details you’ll need to make your book the best it can be.

Instructor Bio:
Cassandra Carr is a romance writer whose works have been named top picks/recommended by more than a dozen major book review sites. When not writing, she designs and makes jewelry, binge watches documentaries on Roku, and tends her vegetable garden.

Outreach International Romance Writers Chapter of RWA® offers online workshops and classes through the Outreach Online Campus.

03/24/2022

Are your secondary characters dull and flat? OIRW has an April workshop for you - More than Just Window Dressing: Secondary Characters make your Novels Come Alive!

More than Just Window Dressing: Secondary Characters make Your Novels Come Alive (Craft)
Presented by: Linnea Sinclair
Dates: APR 4th – 29th, 2022
Fee: OIRW Member $25| Non-Member $35

Course Description:
Sidekicks, Also-rans, space-fillers. If that’s how you think of the secondary characters in your novel, you’re wasting a great opportunity to use them to not only make your story deeper and more interesting, but to enhance your main characters as well. Let RITA® award-winning author Linnea Sinclair show you how to create and utilize secondary characters as methods of characterization and conflict, as well as one of the easiest ways to avoid the dreaded info dump!

Instructor Bio:
Winner of the prestigious national book award, the RITA®, science fiction romance author Linnea Sinclair is a name synonymous with high-action, emotionally intense, character-driven novels. Her books have claimed spots in the Locus Top Ten and received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly. Romantic Times BOOKreviews magazine consistently gives Sinclair’s books 4-1/2 stars (their highest rating). Starlog magazine calls Sinclair “one of the reigning queens of science fiction romance.”

Her previous careers include news reporting and private investigation. Since 2000, she’s taught seminars in the craft of writing for all levels of writers via on-line writing sites and at writing conventions nationwide.

Sinclair resides in Naples, Florida with her husband, Robert Bernadino, and their
thoroughly spoiled cats.

Outreach International Romance Writers Chapter of RWA® offers online workshops and classes through the Outreach Online Campus.

03/24/2022

If you are writing a pirate story, OIRW has a class for you - The age of the Sale Part I

The Age of the Sale Part I (Craft/History)
Presented by: Cindy Vallar
Dates: APR 4th – 29th, 2022
Fee: OIRW Member $25| Non-Member $35

Course Description:
The sight of tall masts with billowing sails paints a romantic image that brings to mind times when wooden ships scudded across the waves, traveling to distant ports. While a ship spends much of her time at sea, she is also tied to the land. It is where she is born and where her crew resides. It is where her stores and cargos are housed. It is also her ultimate destination whenever she departs her home port.

The purpose of part one of this workshop is to provide a basic knowledge of ships from the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century when steam replaced wind as the principal power for moving a vessel from one port to the next, as well as nautical language, seaports, trade, and the necessary documents a ship requires to conduct that trade.

The lessons, handouts, and assignments illuminate what a writer needs to craft a believable maritime world for their characters. At the end of the workshop, Cindy offers to provide a free edit of a chapter from participants’ manuscripts.

(Please note: It’s not necessary to take both parts of this workshop, but doing so is recommended. Part 2 focuses on the sailors, ship life, and other aspects of the maritime world at sea.)

Instructor Bio:
A retired librarian, Cindy Vallar began researching pirates in college while working on The Rebel and the Spy, a historical novel involving Jean Laffite and the Battle of New Orleans. She is the Editor of Pirates and Privateers, a monthly history column on maritime piracy that is now in its twenty-first year of publication. She also reviews piratical and maritime fiction and non-fiction books, and maintains an annotated list of the best piracy and maritime sites on the web. For fourteen years, she wrote “The Red Pencil,” an editing column profiling authors and comparing pieces from their published novels with early drafts of those works, for Historical Novels Review. She is also a freelance editor and historical novelist. She belongs to the Historical Novel Society, Historical Writers of America, the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors, the Laffite Society, the Louisiana Historical Society, and the National Maritime Historical Society.

Outreach International Romance Writers Chapter of RWA® offers online workshops and classes through the Outreach Online Campus.