Jack Cleveland Author Blog

In Delaware? "Sinister Specter" in Book Stores.

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 16:46:59 GMT

Support your local bookstores!

If you live here on the Delaware shore you can find "The Secret of the Sinister Specter" in two local independent bookstores. Bethany Beach Books, located on Garfield Parkway near the boardwalk in Bethany Beach is carrying the book, along with Browseabout Books located on Rehoboth Avenue in Rehoboth Beach. Both bookstores are nicely stocked with hundreds of best selling titles as well as supportive of local authors.

If you're in the area, you should definitely check them out.

Look what just got released on Blu-Ray!

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 16:13:20 GMT

Imagine my surprise when I found out that our little movie featured in "The Secret of the Sinister Specter" is among the latest releases from the Warner Archive, a great arm of Warner Bros Home Video committed to releasing classic films from Hollywood's Golden Age.

I thought I would post this announcement along with the video below that details the release and a few more fun images as well as history of the film.

Here is a link to purchase the video on Amazon if anyone is interested. I will be adding this one to my collection of classic physical media.

https://rb.gy/yju4mg

The MGM Backlot 2

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:45:02 GMT

A good portion of The Secret of the Sinister Specter takes place on the magical backlot of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. In 1938, there were only two developed lots at the studio. The main lot, or Lot 1 included the studio's administration buildings and soundstages, and Lot 2 was where the various exterior sets were built to be used in the films. It was considered more cost-effective to film on the backlot rather than trying to film on real locations. Because there was less control outside of the studios Lot 2 was used to represent many different locales and places. An astute viewer of MGM movies of the 1930s and 40s will see the same sets used over and over again. The sets on Lot 2 were well taken care of, and at the disposal of the many producers.

I want to give credit to a book that I used often during my writing of The Secret of the Sinister Specter . MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot by Steven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester, and Michael Troyan is an incredible reference book which is full of maps, anecdotes as well as what films were filmed where. For those interested you can purchase it here: Amazon Link The detailed map below shows you where all the novel's action takes place. The map is from Bingen, Sylvester, and Troyan's book.

On the map you can find the New York Dock and Oceanliner set, Andy Hardy's New England Street, and even Camille Cottage. Below find a more detailed look at New England Street. The red line is the building where the fictitious Hardy family lived. Also below find a picture looking up New England Street.

A third backlot was added in the early 1940s which included a western town and Victorian homes built for 1944's Meet Me in St. Louis . A fire destroyed portions of Lot Two in 1967, and by the 1970s the lots were rundown and rarely used. The lots were sold for real estate and today the land is the site of the residential Studio Estates. The MGM baacklots are all gone, and Lot 1 is now the Sony Studios lot where Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy is filmed. The memories are still there. Check out the YouTube video below to see some great film shots of the lot, the infamous MGM auction from 1970, which all happened shortly before the lot disappeared in 1978. For those of you who have read my book, this helps visualize the various locations of the story.

Love Finds Andy Hardy

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 19:13:35 GMT

Love Finds Andy Hardy (MGM 1938) is the film that Mickey Rooney is working on when The Secret of the Sinister Specter begins. The film was one of the most popular entries in the Andy Hardy series, and actually set the tone for the remainder of the Andy Hardy films released.

The Andy Hardy film series was MGM's most profitable of their B movie entries. Studio head Louis B. Mayer loved the Hardy family, and believed they represented the typical middle class family of the 1930s and 40s. He invested in the series by placing top starlets like Kathryn Grayson, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Esther Williams and Donna Reed into the pictures. It was part of a starlet's stepping stone to fame and fortune.

The series was produced from 1937-1946 with an additional entry in 1958. Though the series began with star Mickey Rooney being one of an ensemble of actors, which included one of MGMs top stars Lewis Stone, it quickly evolved into spotlighting the comic foils and foibles of teenager Andy Hardy, and America embraced the series warmly. It made Mickey Rooney one of the top actors in Hollywood, earning an amazing 150,000 dollars yearly by the mid 1940s. The average American family in the same years was making 1230 dollars a year.

Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) showcases Rooney as he finds himself the interest of three separate girls. Hilarious hijinks ensue. Take a look at the trailer below:

Love Finds Andy Hardy cost MGM $212,000 dollars to make, and grossed $2,247,000 dollars. It was released in July of 1938, while Mickey Rooney began work on MGM's production of Boy's Town . It is interesting to see Lana Turner, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney so young and at the very beginning of their careers. Betsy Allen certainly would have fit right in with them.

Reflections on Publishing and Amazon KDP

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:23:31 GMT

It's been a whirlwind these last few days as I continue to navigate the uncharted territory of self-publishing on Amazon KDP. I have learned a lot, and can share some of my successes and failures that I have encountered thus far.

First, let me thank each of you who have expressed excitement over the publication and release of my first novel. Many of you have ordered either a print copy or an eBook, and I am so grateful for your support. It is humbling, to say the least. Never in my wildest dreams would I believe so many would support my little story as you have. So thank you, thank you.

Publishing on the Amazon KDP platform has been fairly easy, but at times extremely frustrating. Luckily, I had hired a book designer who prepared the necessary PDF files to upload into the KDP platform, and along the way created a nicely formatted copy for both the paperback and hardback copies. In addition, she took some extra time to find the best way to also create a fairly good looking eBook. I have found a couple of small errors from my original manuscript: a misplaced comma and quotation mark, a paragraph not indented, and one continuity error that probably the most astute reader would only pick up on, and I am hoping to reload the corrected manuscript at some point in the near future with my designer's help. Those of you who get the initial run with the mistakes will have a true first printing. Congratulations! I so appreciate my book designer and cover artist Lauren Schooley for all of her help. She has been amazing.

When you publish on Amazon KDP, you wind up doing a lot of waiting to receive updates on royalties and units sold. As originally set up, I was able to allow for pre-orders for the eBook copies, but I did not see a way to do the same for print copies. As a result , the several who pre-ordered the eBook received their copy either late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. This was great from my end, because I could see how many units I had sold so far, and also started to see some placement on Amazon's category rankings. Unfortunately, as of this writing, I still have not seen how many print copies have sold so far. This is because Amazon does not mark an order as sold until it has been packaged and sent for delivery. Because my book is Print-on-Demand, the process is longer. As of today, I have no sales reported yet for print copies because of the process. This has been frustrating to me: I don't know how many copies have actually sold nor do I have accurate ranking information.

Nonetheless, it's exciting to know so many of you have ordered and some have even read the whole book on their Kindles or in their Kindle app. I feel so supported and loved. I am filled with gratitude. If you haven't ordered yet, here's a link to my author's page on Amazon. You can order your copy there or right here on this website.

https://www.amazon.com/author/jackcleveland

2 Days Until Release!

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 17:00:31 GMT

We are two days away from publication! "The Secret of the Sinister Specter" will be available for ordering this Sunday, September 6th on Amazon. Here is a link to my Author's Page on Amazon which should have all three formats available: https://www.amazon.com/author/jackcleveland

The book will be available for immediate download for your Kindle library, and available for ordering in paperback and hardback. Please consider giving a review after you have finished the book. Reviews help authors on Amazon quite a bit.

Pre-order the eBook! Now available.

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 13:46:02 GMT

Print Books Available September 6th.

Hello all!

You can now pre-order the eBook copy of "The Secret of the Sinister Specter" from Amazon now! Ordering now ensures that the book will drop into your Kindle library next Sunday September 6th, 2026. Here is a link: https://tinyurl.com/56ax7skd

Hardcover and paperback copies will be available to order on September 6th as well. If you order and read the book, please take the time to leave a review.

I hope you all will enjoy Betsy Allen and her exciting adventure.

It's Upload Day!

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 14:57:20 GMT

Today is an important day for the book, because today, August 26 is the day when the book get's uploaded to Amazon!

Now this doesn't mean it's ready to order yet, mainly because we still need to do some visual inspections, including seeing an authors proof copy to ensure that the image sits correctly, that the spine is centered, and that the print doesnt bleed and is easy on the eyes.

I could not have done this without the help of my illustrator and book designer Lauren Schooley. She has been invaluable throughout this journey, and I am grateful for her partnership.

I am hopeful that we will be launched by September 4th at the latest, and that you will be able to purchase your copy of Betsy Allen's adventures.

I am also hopeful that I can seek wider distribution and that the book will be available in bookstores and libraries soon. More on that to come!

My Writing Journey... Literary Agents

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:06:58 GMT

Welcome back and thanks for following my website and blog. You will be one of the first to learn more about me, my writings, as well as important release dates as they happen.

I have had several people ask if I am self-publishing or if I have had a publisher pick up my book. Initially, I tried to see if I could find a literary agent to shop my book and the series to publishers. I was able to find lists of literary agents who might be looking for new authors/book series, and sent about 50-60 query letters out. Over the course of about a month in a half I received rejection after rejection. It's a bit hard these days to capture an agents attention. I spent the last 8 years as a high school librarian, and historical mystery fiction like I have written is not seen as much. I think agents are looking for fantasies like the Wings of Fire series or realistic fiction like Jason Reynolds Long Way Down . Something sells, and agents want to follow the trend. I would love to have a literary agent. If you read this and you are one, contact me!

So after receiving those rejections, I decided to follow the self-publishing route. I am learning along the way, and grateful that I hired an illustrator who also knows how to format the book for eBooks, paperback and hardback. The Secret of the Sinister Specter will be available in all three formats. I am exploring the Amazon options as well as wanting to use Ingram Sparks so that bookstores and libraries can have access to carry the book.

I believe I will have an announcement soon for my publication date. I promise the book will be coming very soon.

My Writing Journey

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 17:48:51 GMT

The Betsy Allen Hollywood Mysteries and its first volume, The Secret of the Sinister Specter began as a little exercise I had developed for my Creative Writing class at Snow Hill High School over 10 years ago. As part of the curriculum, I thought it would be fun for the class to participate in NaNoWriMo, a writing contest with a simple goal: write 50,000 words during the course of the month of November. No editing, no correcting... the focus was on 50,000 words.

So we wrote! And we wrote! And we wrote! I had done a little planning ahead. I had an outline and I knew what I was trying to write. I knew it would be a 25 chaper novel. I knew I wanted my heroine to be a teen girl sleuth a la Nancy Drew, and I wanted it to take place during Hollywood's golden era of the late 1930s. I wrote about what I knew, and I had a solution to the mystery. Many other elements of the story wrote themselves. Some days I could write 4000 words with ease. Many other days it was painful. 500 words could be grueling. But I wrote. And so did the students. It proved to be a great exercise, at least for me. Because by the end of November I had 51,000 words. I had done it... I had written a novel. A personal goal realized. Little did I know my journey was far from over.

The manuscript sat in my Scrivener files for several years after. It was transferred as a word doc from one MacBook to the next. I knew there was a need to edit. I also knew there were rewrites to be done. Quite honestly, I was clueless how to do these things, and life as a teacher and later a high school librarian left me little time to pursue the process further. I allowed a couple of Beta readers to take a look at it, and figured out quickly I had a lot of work before I could call the novel finished!

I hired an editor three years ago. Cam started giving me feedback. Constructive feedback. He praised me. He challenged me. And he helped Betsy's adventure become something better than I had imagined. He gave me a big rewrite goal... and I froze. I wasn't sure I could do it. And then my dad passed away after a long illness. Betsy and the Phantom went back to sleep.

Last fall I made two important decisions. I was going to retire from the school system and job that I loved, and I was going to complete the novel. Editor Cam challenged me again, and final rewrites took place. The Secret of the Sinister Specter was completed earlier this year. I found the website for authors, Reedsy( www.reedsy.com ) and found an illustrator and a web designer. If you are an author, I recommend the site highly. I'm ready to publish thanks to them.

Writing a novel was a lot more than I ever realized. And I'm looking forward to publication, and future volumes in the Betsy Allen Hollywood Mysteries series. But remember, it all started with a classroom of students typing away on laptops during the month of November.

Stay tuned for publication date. I'm hoping to announce soon. And thanks for reading!

Welcome back and thanks for following my website and blog. You will be one of the first to learn more about me, my writings, as well as important release dates as they happen

Welcome to the launch of my new site!

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 11:44:29 GMT

Welcome, and thank you for stopping by!

I'm thrilled to officially launch this site, your new home for everything to do with The Betsy Allen Hollywood Mysteries .

Whether you're a longtime reader following Betsy Allen's adventures through the glamour and grit of old Hollywood, or you've just discovered the series for the first time, this is the place to catch up on new releases, behind-the-scenes stories, and news straight from the author.

Here's what you'll find as you explore:

The full Book Series page, with details on every title in the collection starting with The Secret of the Sinister Specter

Regular blog updates with writing insights, research notes, and announcements
A front-row seat to what's coming next for Betsy Allen
A mailing list to keep you up to date

This launch is just the beginning. There's a lot more on the way, so bookmark this page, subscribe for updates, and make yourself at home.

I couldn't be more excited to share this with you.