Inventing Rock Point

By special guest Clover Tate.


Being an author means making things up: what irritates a character or brings her joy; how a murder is carried out; and even something as basic as a pen name (my real name is Angela M. Sanders). For Blown Away, I invented a whole town.
And it was great! Blown Away features Strings Attached kite shop owner Emmy Adler in Rock Point, Oregon. I knew Rock Point would be on the coast. Thanks to ocean wind and the general lack of powerlines and trees, the beach is prime kite flying country. Since the Oregon coast is rugged, with steep cliffs and forest a stone’s throw away, I gave the town a small bay and a rocky outcropping that the town was named after.

Next, I had to populate it with buildings. Naturally, I needed a lighthouse. I put it on a cliff, right above the treacherous Devil’s Playpen (also invented, and a key locale in the second book in the series Live Free or Fly, out December 2017). I gave the town some fishermen’s shacks, a sprinkling of high-end beach houses, and a B&B in a Queen Anne house.   

Befitting an old town struggling to adapt to its new role as a tourist destination, I needed an antiques mall, the Brew House coffee shop (run by Emmy’s best friend, Avery), and a pizza parlor notable for the stinkiness of its pies. Add a closet-sized post office with a postmistress who knows everyone’s business; a sheriff’s storefront office; and a sprinkling of cabins in the woods, and Rock Point is nearly complete.

I had the most fun with two locales: Avery’s house (also Emmy’s home), and Strings Attached, Emmy’s kite shop.

I adore the romance of old houses, so right away I knew I wanted Avery to live in her family’s hundred-year-old bungalow in a copse of fir trees above the ocean. I gave it a huge stone fireplace and old-growth wooden joists that groan during storms. The leaky windows are charmingly fitted with wavy glass. The house has a deck with a killer sunset view and rickety stairs to the beach, where big rocks ring a firepit. The house’s constant need for repair gives Avery’s would-be boyfriend Dave a reason to hang around with his toolbox.

Finally, I put Strings Attached in the ground floor of a modest Victorian house a block from the ocean. No mini-mall location for Emmy. The sales area is in the house’s former living room and features stained glass windows, hardwood floors, beautiful moldings, and a fireplace. Emmy’s kite workshop—where she fulfills her real passion, designing and making kites—is in the roomy, sun-filled, eat-in kitchen. I imagine the smell of old wood and tang of ocean air mixing with the scent of Lapsang Souchong tea and a hint of fabric glue.

I can only hope you enjoy reading about Rock Point as much as I loved inventing it! If you were to invent your own town, where would it be? What would it look like?

Clover Tate is a pseudonym for Angela M.Sanders, who also writes The Booster Club Capers and The Vintage Clothing series.  

The Double-Booked Tour

Featuring special guests Shannon Baker and Jess Lourey.

Hi, Marlyn!
Thanks for setting out the tea cups and –is that a plate of butter cookies?!-- for this stop on our cyber travels. We’re really tickled to be here today. We are Jess Lourey and Shannon Baker. We’re buddied up for this road trip because A) it’s always more fun to travel with a friend and 2) we’re a two-fer for blog readers, a real bargain!

Jess’s new release is Salem’s Cipher (Midnight Ink), a political suspense novel featuring Salem Wiley, an agoraphobic cryptanalyst who must crack codes that Emily Dickinson hid 100 years earlier in order to save the first viable female presidential candidate from assassination. It releases on September 6th and is available for preorder.

Shannon’s new mystery is the first in the Kate Fox series. Stripped Bare (Forge) is also landing on September 6th and also available for preorder Set in the Nebraska Sandhills, it’s been called Longmire meets The Good Wife.


Let’s get right to the questions of the day. 

Shannon: 

Jess, just like real life, our characters don’t live in isolation. Sometimes secondary characters are as interesting and fun as the main event. Tell us about your favorite secondary character in Salem’s Cipher.

Jess: 

Such a good question, Shannon. I fell in love with most of the characters in that book, but my *favorite* secondary character is actually one of the bad guys. His name is Jason, and he’s an assassin with a twist: due to a genetic mutation (sentient Sharpey’s fibers, the microscopic fingers of collagen that connected bone to muscle to skin), he’s able to reshape his face and thereby change his appearance. In his own words, “If he’d been born a hundred years earlier, he’d have ended up in a traveling freakshow, next to the Bigfoot Lady, the Man with Three Eyes, Camel Girl, and two-faced Edward Drake.” Jason bears an eerie resemblance to actor Michael Fassbender in his given face, but with slight twitching, he becomes unrecognizable. 

Who’s your favorite secondary character in Stripped Bare, Shannon?


Shannon: 

Kate is one of nine kids and lives in the tiniest dot on the Nebraska map. There’s no lack of secondary characters running around. In Stripped Bare, one of Kate’s older sisters, Louise, poked her head into Kate’s door and then pushed her sizeable self right on in. Since Kate’s mother is not exactly the nurturing type, Louise has declared herself the matriarch of the clan and administers advice, orders, and food, most of which is ignored by the rest of the brothers and sisters. She means well, of course, organizing family potlucks and delivering brownies and runzas uninvited. Kate calls her offerings turds of love.

One of my favorite characters in Stripped Bare plays a bit role and comes around again in Dark Signal (next year’s book). May Keller is old enough to have shared a kindergarten desk with Methuselah, has been a widow since WW II (under suspicious circumstances), and is as tough as buffalo jerky. We’ll be seeing more of her, I’m sure.

Jess, one of your secondary characters, Mrs. Berns, nearly takes over your Murder-by-the-Month series (Midnight Ink). She’s so much fun and has a lot in common with May Keller. Tell us how you came up with Mrs. Berns.


Jess: 

Ahh, thank you for caring about Mrs. Berns! She’s one of my favorite inventions, pulled half from real life and half from my neuroses. In 1988, country mouse me moved to the big city of Minneapolis, where I ended up working at an import shop with an east coast transplant named Berns. She was everything I wasn’t—articulate, confident, gorgeous. She so intimidated me that the only thing I could work up the nerve to say during our first shift together was that something in the garbage smelled like a rotten orange. She tossed her curls and said, “You know what would take care of that rotten orange smell? A bag of shit.” And then she walked into the next room. Mrs. Berns was born of that moment, except I made her an 85-year-old woman because I’m scared of getting old and want to envision it as a better time when I can say exactly what’s on my mind and not care what anyone thinks. 

Shannon, you had a similar life-based character near and dear to your heart in your fantastic Nora Abbot series with Midnight Ink, right?



Shannon: 

I loved Abigail, Nora’s mother in my first series. She started out based on the mother of one of my dearest friends, always socially correct, terribly concerned with image, and a big spendthrift. And yet someone I really love for her good heart. I added Abigail for some humor, to keep the books from getting too dark. Over the course of the three books, though, Abigail developed a character arc of her own, as well as being instrumental in Nora’s arc. Like a real person, as I got to know her better, I grew to love her more. 

*********************

Shannon: 
Jess and I are each giving away a copy of our new books, Salem’s Cipher and Stripped Bare. For a chance to win, share your favorite secondary character or leave a comment below.

And just in case we haven’t been fun enough:

If you order Salem's Cipher before September 6, 2016, you are invited to forward your receipt to salemscipher@gmail.com to receive a Salem short story and to be automatically entered in a drawing to win a 50-book gift basket mailed to the winner's home!

If you order Stripped Bare before September 6, 2016, you are invited to forward your receipt to katefoxstrippedbare@gmail.com to receive a Kate Fox short story and be entered for a 50-book gift basket mailed to your home.

For a review of our books, join us Monday, August 22 as the Lourey/Baker Double Booked tour stops at Books and Needlepoint. We’ll be with Terry Ambrose on Tuesday, and Wednesday at Do Some Damage.

********************

A little about our books:

Salem Wiley is a genius cryptanalyst, courted by the world's top security agencies ever since her quantum computing breakthrough. She's also an agoraphobe shackled to a narrow routine since her father's suicide. When her intelligence work unexpectedly exposes a sinister plot to assassinate the country's first viable female presidential candidate, Salem finds herself both target and detective in a modern day witch hunt. Drawn into a labyrinth of messages encrypted by Emily Dickinson and codes tucked inside the Beale Cipher a hundred years earlier, Salem begins to uncover the truth: an ancient and ruthless group is hell-bent on ruling the world, and only a select group of women stands in its way.

Just when everything seems about perfect, someone leaves the barn door open and all hell breaks loose. At least, that’s what it feels like for Kate Fox. Born and raised in the Nebraska Sandhills, smack in the middle of eight interfering siblings, related to everyone in the county by one degree of separation or less, Kate’s managed to create a her perfect life.
A shattering phone calls hits Kate like a January blizzard. A local rancher is murdered and Kate’s husband, the sheriff, is shot. When her husband is suspected of the murder, Kate vows to find the killer.

Read 'Em and Eat!

by special guest Terrie Farley Moran.

Read to Death is the third cozy mystery novel in the "Read ’Em and Eat" series set in the sunny island community of Fort Myers Beach, Florida. Every winter season, the Cool Reads/Warm Climate Book Club gathers both local residents and snowbirds to mingle, drink sweet tea and talk about books. The season generally ends with a party of some sort and this year is no exception.

Read ’Em and Eat owners Sassy Cabot and Bridgy Mayfield have arranged for members of the book club to read The Florida Life of Thomas Edison by Michele Albion and then to take a trip off-island to visit the fabulous Edison and Ford Winter estates where Thomas Edison and Henry Ford spent their winters a hundred years ago.

To insure the success of the trip, Sassy and Bridgy have rented a van and requested driver Oscar Frieland, who they know will engage in entertaining chatter with the club members.
With such splendid planning, the day is a huge success until, after arriving back at the Read ’Em and Eat, Bridgy runs out to retrieve her sunglasses from the van only to discover Oscar’s dead body sprawled across the seat.

Although Lieutenant Frank Anthony of the Lee County Sheriff’s Department insists that Bridgy is a witness, not a suspect, Sassy is afraid that Bridgy’s status could change in an instant. She calls lawyer Owen Reston to come to Bridgy’s aid and then enlists reporter Cady Stanton to help her investigate Oscar’s life, past and present.

Bridgy’s mother, who is the flamboyant Ophelia’s sister Emelia, arrives to comfort Bridgy but the sparks that fly between the sisters are anything but comforting. And the surprise guest that Emelia brings is nothing short of spectacular.

So, open up a copy of Read to Death and get ready to spend a few hours at the beach, sipping sweet tea, nibbling on a Drunken Raisin Scone (recipe included) while solving a murder in the coziest town on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Bio from Terrie's website

Terrie Farley Moran is delighted to introduce mystery fans to the Read ‘Em and Eat café and bookstore, where murder and sweet tea are always on the menu. Agatha Award Best First Novel winner, Well Read, Then Dead, the first book in the Read ‘Em and Eat series has been followed by Caught Read-Handed. Read to Death is now available
Terrie’s short mystery fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and various anthologies. She has been short-listed twice for the annual Best American Mystery Stories. And her story, “A Killing at the Beausoleil” has been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story.
The only thing Terrie enjoys more than wrangling mystery plots into submission is playing games and reading stories with any or all of her seven grandchildren.

Who Controls Characters?

By special guest E.J. Copperman

For me, writing is about characters, pure and simple. You can have an amazing story idea with astonishing plot twists. You can come up with a surprise ending that will knock the socks off anyone reading your book with their socks on. But if your characters aren’t interesting people your story isn’t one-tenth what it should be.

The problem is, the little suckers have a way of taking on lives of their own.

Ask me what Alison Kerby (the Haunted Guesthouse series) would order at an Italian restaurant (fettucine Alfredo). How Samuel Hoenig (the Asperger’s Mystery series) would react to an attempted mugging (he would ask the mugger what his favorite Beatles song is). I can tell you because in my head these are people who have whole personalities.

So the idea of a character somehow coming to life and tormenting the writer had great resonance.

In Written Off, the first in the Mysterious Detective Mystery series, Rachel Goldman is a midlist author of novels in which Duffy Madison, a consultant to the Morris County (NJ) prosecutor’s office specializes in missing person cases. So when she finishes the fifth book in the Duffy series, the last person she expects to hear from for some time would be Duffy.

Except then he calls her on the phone and asks for help in the case he’s working.

A flesh-and-blood consultant to the Bergen County (NJ) prosecutor’s office is investigating the disappearance of a local woman who happens, as does Rachel, to write mystery novels. He wants Rachel’s help from the writer’s perspective to help analyze the facts of the case and help find the missing woman before it’s too late.

And he says his name is Duffy Madison.

In order to make the story work, I had to decide what kind of man Rachel would write, so I could write him. That meant I had to know what kind of person Rachel is and how good a writer. I decided for the sake of sanity she is roughly as talented as I am, which made things easier. If Rachel was better than me it would be rough to write Duffy.

You getting this?

The book and its proposed sequels (there will be another next year for sure) take on the idea of what responsibilities a writer has to the people for whom she—in this case—writes but also the people she writes. Duffy says he has no memories before the date Rachel started writing her Duffy Madison books and that it means she created him, standing before her.

That’s a bit much for a writer to take on. But then Rachel starts to worry about the other principle of writing: The author must constantly be looking for ways to make life difficult for her character. With Duffy standing right in front of her, can she do that?

It’s about what makes writers the way we are—crazy—and how far that can be taken. But it’s not terribly heavy and serious. Anyone who’s read any of my previous books knows I wouldn’t be very good at heavy and serious.

Written Off operates on two levels, hopefully: at the same time she’s trying to help the three-dimensional Duffy find the missing writer and keep herself out of range of the person who’s kidnapping crime fiction authors, Rachel is also grappling with the man who insists she created him. Is he crazy? Is she delusional? Who is this guy, really?

Read the book. Maybe you’ll find out.

Then again, maybe not. It’s a series, after all, and the characters have to stay interesting through subsequent books. The possibilities are endless. (I’d add “bwahahahahaha,” but that would be presumptuous.)




E.J. Copperman is the author of the Haunted Guesthouse mystery series and the co-author with Jeff Cohen of the Asperger’s Mystery series. On June 14, E.J. unveiled the Mysterious Detective Mystery series in which a crime fiction author is confronted by the flesh-and-blood incarnation of her fictional sleuth. Next year there will be yet another series, but we’ll tell you about it then.

Boston Marriages

By special guest Victoria Thompson.

Have you ever heard of a Boston Marriage? In Nineteenth Century America, unmarried professional women (teachers, social workers) often shared living quarters.  Part of this was an economic necessity because, just like today, women were paid less than men. The other part of it was social.  

Women developed close friendships with their peers and enjoyed each other’s company.  The author Henry James (you probably studied him in high school) wrote about one of these relationships in his classic novel The Bostonians.  Although the phrase “Boston Marriage” never appears in his novel, people started calling these relationships between professional women who lived together Boston Marriages, no matter what city they lived in. This is the part I love most about writing historical—learning all this trivia!

In Murder in Morningside Heights, my protagonists Frank and Sarah Malloy have just opened a private detective agency.  They are hired to find out who killed a young woman who taught at a women’s college and lived with two of the female professors who had a Boston Marriage. They learn all kinds of fascinating things about life in a women’s college. They also learn some dangerous secrets, one of which got an unfortunate young woman murdered.

My fans have been thrilled that Frank and Sarah are finally married (after 18 books!), although one fan expressed concern that starting a detective agency would mean Sarah couldn’t participate in solving the crimes anymore.  Don’t worry about that!  Sarah is thoroughly involved in this investigation, along with Gino and even Maeve. And, as always, you’ll learn things you didn’t know about Old New York.

Edgar®  and Agatha Nominated author Victoria Thompson writes the Gaslight Mystery Series, set in turn-of-the-century New York City and featuring midwife Sarah Brandt. Her latest, Murder in Morningside Heights, is a May 2016 release from Berkley Prime Crime. She also contributed to the award-winning writing textbook Many Genres/One Craft. 

Victoria teaches in the Seton Hill University Master's program in writing popular fiction. She lives in Indiana with her husband and a very spoiled little dog.

You can find Victoria at www.victoriathompson.com. Follow her on Facebook at Victoria Thompson.Author or on Twitter @gaslightvt.

The Animals of CRIME AND POETRY

By special guest Amanda Flower.

It would be absolutely impossible for me to write a novel without some quirky animal characters. I love all animals. Anyone who follows me on social media knows that, and I love animals with personality. My love of animals goes so far that my cats, Reepicheep (AKA Cheeps) and Mr. Tumnus (AKA Tummy), have their own Instagram account, and yes, they are both named after Chronicles of Narnia characters.

Because of my love of all animals when it came time to create the characters for Crime and Poetry, the first novel in the Magical Bookshop mystery series, I knew I had to have some memorable animal characters. Enter Emerson the tuxedo cat and Faulkner the crow.

The inspiration for both of these characters is unique. Emerson the cat is the most straightforward. He’s my cat. No, really, I’m not kidding. He’s my tuxedo cat Tummy to a T. I knew Tummy had to be the feline inspiration for Emerson because Cheeps was already represented in my Amish Quilt Shop mysteries, which I write as Isabella Alan. Cheeps appears in that series as Dodger the gray and white cat. In the Magical Bookshop mysteries, Emerson and Tummy are carbon copies.

Aside from their identical looks, they are both very mischievous. Cheeps is the quiet and calm older brother who would happily sit on my lap until the end of time. Tummy is into everything, and I do mean everything. He learned as a kitten how to open closed doors, and if I want to keep him out of a room, the only way is to lock the door. He also is always playing. While Cheeps will play with their cat toys from time to time, Tummy is always carrying a ball or mouse around in his mouth. Despite his rambunctious nature, he’s also very caring like Emerson. If I’m upset, he senses it and comes over to check on me. Just like Tummy cares for me, Emerson cares for my protagonist Violet Waverly. Emerson is a great comfort to Violet throughout the series.

In a way, Faulkner also had a real life inspiration. I knew that I wanted Grandma Daisy, Violet’s grandmother and owner of their bookshop Charming Books, to have a pet that would connect to Native American folklore because that folklore is related to the magic in the shop. While I was trying to decide of what that animal would be, a murder of crows landed in my neighborhood. Close to fifty birds descended on my street all at the same time. It’s not an uncommon sight. The crows visit my neighborhood often. The black birds marched up and down the street with their heads bobbing and flew from rooftop to rooftop cawing to each other. I knew a crow would make a perfect pet for Violet’s feisty grandmother, and I also knew crows are prominent in Native American folklore. Even better, crows can be trained to talk just like parrots, so Faulkner the crow was a perfect addition. Who wouldn’t want a smart-talking crow in a cozy mystery?

I’m looking forward to you meeting all the characters in Crime and Poetry, but I must admit that Emerson and Faulkner are among my favorites. Just wait and see the trouble those two get into!

Amanda Flower, a three time Agatha-nominated mystery author, started her writing career in elementary school when she read a story she wrote to her sixth grade class and had the class in stitches with her description of being stuck on the top of a Ferris wheel. She knew at that moment she’d found her calling of making people laugh with her words.  She also writes as USA Today Bestselling Author Isabella Alan. In addition to being an author, Amanda is librarian in Northeast Ohio.

Find her at www.amandaflower.com.

Creating Recipes

by special guest Kristi Abbott.

When my editor at Berkley first talked to me about writing the Popcorn Shop Mystery series, I was thrilled. I developed a thing for Garrett’s Caramel Cashew Popcorn when I lived in Chicago about a bazillion years ago. That stuff was like crack. One taste and I could not stop. Writing about a gourmet popcorn shop felt like a totally natural fit. Besides, who doesn’t like popcorn?

Some books are just easier to write than others. They flow easier. The words bring you more joy. The plot naturally evolves in a way that’s both inevitable and surprising. It’s kind of like having an easy baby. You’re never sure what special alchemy occurred to have a book that is a joy to sit down to every day any more than you really know what made that kid sleep through the night at six months. Kernel of Truth was one of those good-sleeping babies.

So far so great. Delicious popcorn. A book that’s flowing from my fingers into my laptop via my keyboard (an external one since I sort of accidentally poured ice water on my computer, but that’s another story). My editor sent the back cover copy. It was, in a word, adorable. Things were bursting. Problems were being resolved in a jiffy. Suspects were popping up. And recipes were included!

I wrote to my editor telling her how much I loved the copy and asking who worked up the recipes. She wrote back that she was pretty sure we’d talked about that way back when we were discussing the contract and I was supposed to be coming up with recipes. Once she said that, it did ring a bell. Thanks tons, middle-aged brain.

Cue panic mode. In the book, Rebecca had developed all kinds of special popcorn products like popcorn breakfast bars and popcorn fudge. Everyone loves them. Now I had to make them a reality. Really?

To say my first attempts were less than stellar is a bit of an understatement. My breakfast bars were more oozy breakfast lumps. The popcorn fudge wasn’t bad. I mean, how far wrong can you go with sweet and salty together? Not far in my book or in my life. Still, the chocolate was a little too stiff and the popcorn got a tiny bit soggy.

Enter my good friend and amazing author, the lovely Spring Warren who is not only a good cook, but understands the science of how food works. There was a bad moment when she asked me what I was using to hold the breakfast bars together and nearly choked when I told her marshmallow crème. Apparently, marshmallow crème is not considered to be a healthy part of a balanced breakfast. Who knew?

Spring, being the fabulous friend that she is, spent about four hours in my kitchen one afternoon and by the end of it, I had the recipes for Kernel of Truth.  They were edible and replicable. I even shipped some off to my kids in care packages. Of course, twenty-year-old boys will eat pretty much anything, but they were still well-received.

I have at least two more popcorn books to write. That means I need somewhere between six and ten new recipes. Anybody have any favorite popcorn recipes they want to share? You’ll totally get a shout out in the acknowledgments of the next book if I use them!

From http://www.kristiabbottauthor.com

Kristi Abbott has been obsessed with popcorn since first tasting the caramel cashew popcorn at Garrett's in Chicago. If you've never had it, you might want to hop on a plane and go now. Seriously, it's that good. 

Kristi lives in northern California, although she was born in Ohio like the heroine of Kernel of Truth. She loves snack food, crocheting, her kids, and her man, not necessarily in that order. 

Meet Ellie!

by special guest Bailey Cattrell.



Bailey Cates Cattrell grew up in the West and earned degrees in philosophy and English from Colorado State University before moving to the Pacific Northwest for twenty years. She's been a driver's license examiner, bookseller, and newspaper ad manager, and has traveled the world as a localization program manager for Microsoft.
She now lives in Colorado with her guy and two felines: Cheesecat the Orange and Minerva the asthmatic wonder kitty. She currently writes the Magical Bakery Mysteries and the Enchanted Garden Mysteries. Shotgun Moon is my only standalone, western mystery.

Daisies For Innocence is first in the Enchanted Garden Mystery series and features Elliana Allbright, aromatherapist extraordinaire and owner of Scents & Nonsense. A thirty-something recent divorcee, Ellie has lived in Poppyville, California her entire life.

In fact, her great-great-grandfather was one of the founders of the town – along with Pauline “Poppy” Thierry, the local madam in 1849. Originally settled in order to cater to the miners headed into the Sierra Nevada Mountains during the California Gold Rush, modern-day Poppyville is a tourist town chock full of Old West flavor and offering nearby hot springs, mountain biking, horseback riding, and fly fishing.

Ellie lives with Dash, her Pembroke Welsh corgi, in a super-efficient Tiny House at the back of the Scents & Nonsense property. The shop is guarded day and night by a Russian blue shorthair named Nabokov who regularly attracts clusters of blue butterflies when he ventures out to sun himself in the garden. By the end of the book, Ellie’s growing menagerie is joined by a beta fish named Leonard.

The space between Ellie’s home and work is packed with garden beds connected by winding stone paths. There are seating areas and cozy alcoves interspersed with fairy houses, gnome doors and miniature tableaus tucked in surprising nooks and crannies. An etched boulder in the center of the space declares it The Enchanted Garden, and over time it has gained a reputation as a place for children to come explore the tiny “fairy” worlds while their parents have a cup of tea and nibble on the cookies that Ellie’s best friend, Astrid Moneypenny, brings into the shop each morning.

However, the Enchanted Garden also provides the flowers and plants Ellie distills down into custom “perfumes” that do more than just smell good. She learned about plants and their essences from her gamma, who left behind a dog-eared but beautifully illustrated garden journal and an ancient, copper alembic. An alembic is a kind of still (think moonshine), but much smaller and used for distilling essential oils.

Her whole life, Ellie always had a fine-tuned sense of smell, which, combined with a natural ability to know how scents can help other people, uniquely qualifies her to create her special perfumes. When Astrid calls it a superpower, Ellie just laughs, but it turns out Astrid might be more right than Ellie realizes!

In Daisies For Innocence, Ellie’s part-time employee, Josie Overland, confesses that she has been dating Ellie’s ex-husband for a month or so. Ellie is surprised and worried at this news, as she doesn’t want Josie to get hurt the same way she did. But when she finds Josie dead on the boardwalk in front of Scents & Nonsense the next morning, she is unable to convince Detective Max Lang that she had no motive to kill Josie. After all, Max and Ellie’s ex, Harris, are best friends, and Harris has painted Ellie to be a jealous shrew.
n

Fortunately, Max’s partner, Detective Lupe Garcia is open to looking for other suspects. Unfortunately, Garcia’s new to town, and so it’s up to Ellie and Astrid to ferret out the real killer. Ellie also gets help from members of the Greenstockings, her women’s business group, and Ritter Nelson, an old high-school crush who is back in town visiting his sister.

And then there’s the mysterious plant that sprouted under the birdbath the same day Josie was killed – a plant that grows faster than anything Ellie has ever seen and that she can’t identify anywhere except in her gamma’s journal. As she looks into the life of a woman she thought she knew while hunting for her murderer, Ellie waits for the chance to distill the strange plant’s heady essence – and whatever memories it might bring – for herself.

The book includes a recipe for Astrid’s Chewy Double Chocolate Chunk Hazelnut Cookies, aromatherapy tips, and essential oil blends for things like relaxations and concentration. There’s also the first chapter of Brownies and Broomsticks, the first of the NYT bestselling Magical Bakery Mysteries that I write as Bailey Cates.

Next up? Spells and Scones, the sixth Magical Bakery mystery, will release in July, 2016, and I’m currently working on the second Enchanted Garden Mystery, Nightshade for Warning.

For more information about all my books, please visit www.baileycates.com.

Clocks, and Time

by special guest Julianne Holmes.


My protagonist in the Clock Shop Mystery series, Ruth Clagan, comes from a family of clockmakers and has had years of training. The field of horology is like many other crafts or trades, apprenticeships last for a long time. Ruth has just turned thirty when we first meet her, and is figuring out the next steps in her career path. We meet her just after her grandfather has died, and left her his

clock shop, the Cog & Sprocket.

I love doing research, so learning about clocks has been a wonderful opportunity. Like most things,

the more I learn the less I know. As it happens, a friend of mine is married to a clockmaker. In fact he and his brother own and run the Clockfolk of New England shop. Meeting the Roberts brothers, and seeing their shop in action, was a tremendous gift. No mystery writer could do her work without experts. We do take their expertise, and add story to it, but it needs to be grounded in truth.

Everyone I know has a clock they love. Some are worth money, and passed on from generation to generation. Most have emotional resonance. I have a Seth Thomas style mantel clock that is electric. I suspect it wasn’t always electric—that someone decided to modernize it at some point. Now, with all I am learning, I am sorry about that. But the memory of that mantel clock in my grandparent’s living room brings such joy, and makes it talisman for happiness.

Clocks do more than capture time. They capture memories. Horologists, clockmakers, like Ruth Clagan fix clocks. Their power is greater than that, though. They mend memory keepers, think about the precision of timekeeping while honoring the magic of time itself. That skill set helps Ruth solve a crime that has upended her family, and get the town of Orchard working again.

What is your clock story? Or is it a watch story? I’m convinced every family has one, so please share it!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I had to chose a name to write the Clock Shop Mystery series under, it was a simple choice. I was the first grandchild on my mother’s side of the family. When my parents told my grandmother that they were thinking about naming me Julianne Holmes Hennrikus, my grandmother (a wonderful but formidable woman) told them the name was too long. I became Julie Anne instead. So Julianne Holmes is close to my heart, pays homage to my wonderful parents, and can be shortened to Julie easily.

As Julie Hennrikus, I am the Executive Director of StageSource, a service organization for theater artists and companies in the greater Boston area. For me, theater is both my vocation and my avocation. I also teach arts management classes at Emerson College.

I blog with the wonderful Wicked Cozy Authors blog. These woman are my friends, my blog mates, and my cheering squad. Come by and visit us!*





*From Julianne's website.

The Story of Mick and Digby

by special guest Julia Buckley.

Or how the dog I made up for my cozy mystery ended up inspiring me to get a dog of my own.

The Big Chili, my cozy mystery which debuts in early October, was a book that I hadn’t planned to write. That happens a lot with books—they start out as one idea in your head, and then they morph into something entirely different. The same is true of characters: sometimes the ones you think you’ll

like end up fading away, and the ones you barely think about end up taking over your imagination.

For me, this was true especially of Mick, my main character’s dog. Mick is a chocolate Labrador; I’m not sure why I initially chose that breed for his sweet character, but as the books progressed (I’m now halfway through book three), I found myself growing more and more fond of Mick, and even getting a little jealous of Lilah because she has this sweet companion in her life.

I had my own canine friend, a beagle named Simon, but he was quite elderly and could no longer do the things that Mick could do—take long walks on crisp fall nights, run and romp in the yard, sit shotgun during long autumn rides in the car. Simon was, by his old age, a stay-at-home-and-sleep sort of doggie, and that was fine. Sadly, his health declined in the summer and in August we had to put him down.

This was more devastating than any of us could have anticipated, and initially we didn’t even want a new dog. But gradually we all realized that we are the type of family that likes to have canine companionship, so “The Dog Talks” began. Inspired by the sweet Mick in my books—my own dear creation, yet so real to me!—I wanted a chocolate Lab. My family voted this down because not only are these pups very expensive, but we would have to wait several months for a litter to be born and weaned. My younger son got to a point where he wanted a dog SOON. (And by “younger,” I mean seventeen!)

We started studying the website of an animal rescue site in Chicago. We found a litter of puppies who had recently been born on a Kentucky farm and had been surrendered to the rescue facility. They were “Lab mixes,” meaning Lab and who knows? We fell in love with a little puppy face on the site and made an appointment to see him at the facility. He was named Emory, and we adopted him on sight, but we soon changed his name to Digby, or Sir Digby, if we’re being formal.

Digby, like Mick, will soon be able to accompany us on long jaunts around town. He is very inquisitive and playful, and he LOVES to bite things with his little puppy teeth, especially—despite about forty dollars’ worth of puppy toys in his bed—our hands and toes. He has puppy breath and a puppy bark and true puppy affection, and we have fallen in love with him more each day.

Right now he’s sort of in quarantine, waiting for his puppy shots so that he can take walks and encounter other dogs. He’s investigating our house and finding interesting hiding places to take his naps in, and those naps are very long, since he is still essentially like a human baby.

If it hadn’t been for Mick, the dog of my imagination, we would never have found Digby, who will now spend the next ten to fifteen years with us. And someday, if we decide to get him a companion, it’s going to be a chocolate Lab!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Julia Buckley is a Chicago mystery author whose career started in 2006 with the publication of The Dark Backward. Since then her work has appeared on Kindle in the Madeline Mann series and the novel The Ghosts of Lovely Women.

She is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Romance Writers of America, along with the Chicago Writer's Association. In addition, she has worked with the same writer's group since 2000.

Julia has taught high school English for twenty-seven years; she lives near Chicago with her husband, two sons, and three cats.*

*From Julia's website.

Who is Jordan Bingham?

by special guest Victoria Abbott.

That shadowy figure known as Victoria Abbott is actually a dangerous collaboration between

artist and photographer Victoria Maffini and her mother Mary Jane, author of thirteen mysteries
in three other series. The Marsh Madness was released on September 1 which means they have
managed to stay alive during the writing of their four book collector mysteries: They expect that
to continue during the completion of the fifth, The Hammett Hex, September 2016. When not writing, they can be found lurking mysteriously on the outskirts of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada’s
capital. Most likely they will be surrounded by dogs, including Peachy the Pug.

You can find out more at www.victoria-abbott.com or www.maryjanemaffini.com

****

Hey! Where did that character come from?

We (that shadowy figure known as Victoria Abbott) were musing the other day about how our sleuth
Jordan Kelly Bingham came to be. The idea for Jordan was that she would be a mid-twenties grad
student who came to work for the wealthy and curmudgeonly book collector, Vera Van Alst (the most hated woman in Harrison Falls, N.Y.) That made sense for a mystery series about collecting books from The Golden Age of Detection. Vera is an irritable recluse and in a wheelchair. She isn’t the type to gallivant around the town investigating mysteries. Anyway, she has people to do that for her. Well, she has Jordan.

You may know the saying ‘Bad news for the character is good news for the author’. Sadly for characters everywhere, this is true. So naturally we had to give Jordan a ‘back story’. We needed something that would explain why Jordan came home to a small town in upstate New York instead of continuing on in grad school. What better than a conniving ex- who maxed out her credit card and cleared out her college funds? Instead of happily pursuing her English Literature goals, Jordan is reduced to moving in with her uncles and hunting for work in order to rebuild her life and bank account. Then there’s an ad for a research assistant …

Jordan is desperate to get away from her adoring uncles and her My Little Pony bedroom. We made
sure of that. We needed her to have to put up with Vera. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

When we thought about the kind of person who would work in this book, we knew we needed someone with spine. Otherwise Vera would roll right over her. We wanted someone who would appreciate the book collecting world that Vera lives in. Jordan’s education and interests did the trick. We’d been pretty mean to her at this point, so we decided to ease up. Why couldn’t Jordan enjoy life a bit? Her Uncle Mick’s signature dish is beans and franks (secret ingredient ketchup), so why not a wonderful Italian cook? We loved that idea, not only because it would make life more pleasant for Jordan and make her even more committed to her job, but because we had some great models for the character of Signora Panetone.

While we were feeling generous, we let her have cozy attic accommodations in Van Alst house, shabby chic and private. We made her an animal lover because we like that in a person and because we thought she should be stylish, yet down to earth (and we did say broke), we gave her a love of all things vintage, including her wardrobe. She’s very innovative about where she gets her clothes on a
shoestring.

Still we felt we needed more, something to make her a little bit different. What would make her life just difficult enough? Somehow the idea that Jordan was the first person in her large family (entirely
composed of crooked uncles) to go straight came out. We could see the dramatic possibility of this.

Young woman wants to make a living in a respectable, law-abiding way and yet, and yet …

You can see how conflict can arise in these circumstances and as we all know, conflict drives drama.
Would Vera hire someone she knew to be part of a criminal family? Not likely. Not only does Jordan
have many ‘unorthodox’ skills, she received a set of lockpicks for her Sweet Sixteen, a gift from loving uncles. She also developed a spine of steel and a cool head in an emergency. Why not drop those into the mix, sit back and see what happens?

It’s a bit of a trope to have a love interest between an amateur sleuth and a police officer. What fun if
that romance was doomed because of the criminal connections? The uncles would be horrified. The
officer would be compromised. Yessss! Let’s do it, we said.

In the course of the books, Jordan’s personality and character have grown under her own steam. She’s become a character that we’re proud of, someone we’d like to know, someone who can get herself and Vera out of a jam, and, yes, someone who just might use those lockpicks in the service of solving a mystery or saving a life. She makes us laugh and we know we can count on her.

We hope that you will enjoy getting to know her too and that you’ll also enjoy life at Van Alst House and the book collector mysteries.

Victoria Abbott has kindly offered to give a copy of The Marsh Madness to one of my readers in Canada.  Please comment below before 12:01 a.m. on Monday 21 September, and don't forget to include a valid email address so I can contact you if you win. 

"Superstition ain't the way..."*

by special guest Kay Finch.



Kay Finch grew up on a Pennsylvania farm but she got to Texas as fast as she could and discovered the Texas Hill Country, setting of her Bad Luck Cat mysteries. 

As a child Kay wrote mystery stories, but it wasn't until she went to work for a renowned criminal defense attorney in Houston that plot ideas began to flow. In addition to the Bad Luck Cat mysteries, Kay is the author of the Corie McKenna PI mysteries Final Decree and Final Cut, as well as Relative Chaos: A Klutter Killer Mystery. 

Kay is a long-time member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the State Bar of Texas Paralegal Division. She lives with her husband, a rescue cat, and two wild and crazy rescue dogs in a Houston suburb.

**** 

We all grew up hearing a variety of common superstitions. 

Walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, Friday the 13th, opening an umbrella inside – all of these things are supposedly unlucky. 

I’m not superstitious. For one thing, superstitions are illogical. And they’re inconsistent. One says "to dream of a black cat is lucky," while another states "dreaming of a cat is regarded as a sign of bad luck in the future." I certainly don't believe that a black cat crossing my path will cause me bad luck. Since I began writing the Bad Luck Cat series, though, I've learned that several acquaintances of mine would seriously turn around and go the opposite way if they saw a black cat in their path. Hearing this annoys me, but I don't argue the point because their minds are already made up and everyone is entitled to an opinion.

In Black Cat Crossing, aspiring mystery novelist Sabrina Tate faces a similar situation when residents of the fictional town of Lavender, Texas announce the legendary Bad Luck Cat is back. They're on a mission to trap the cat so they can remove him from the area and keep the town safe. One of those people is Thomas, who works for Sabrina's Aunt Rowe at her rental cottage business. Here's a snippet from the book:

Thomas lifted his arm to check his watch, and I spotted a bloody cut on his forearm. Looked to me like he might need stitches. 

"What happened to you?" I pulled a fresh napkin from the dispenser and handed it to him.
He accepted the napkin and dabbed at the wound. "El Gato Diablo is what. Gosh-darned cat crossed my path, next thing my toe caught on the curb, and I fell flat out. Arm caught the edge of one of them fancy metal planters in front of the wine shop. Better'n smacking my head, I guess."

"A devil cat?" My forehead creased. "What are you talking about?"
"The black cat," he said. "Big fella. Been around these parts since I was a kid."

The coffee shop's owner, Max Dieter, came up with a mug for Thomas in one hand and a steaming coffee pot in the other.

"Heard you talking about the bad luck cat," he said. "Legend around town. I thought we'd seen the last of him when Wes Krane loaded him up and carted him off to Nolan County."

From the start, Sabrina feels a kinship with the cat whom she sees as an ordinary, loveable stray black cat. Well, maybe not always ordinary, but still…Sabrina loves him. When he sits on the window sill of her cottage and watches as she works on her novel, her writing takes off and suspense flows effortlessly onto the page. Sabrina names him Hitchcock and declares that this cat is creating good luck for her.

Yes, Hitchcock leads Sabrina to discover a dead body in the river, but he also helps her solve the mystery. Believe what you will – Sabrina and I are sticking to our story – Hitchcock the cat brings us both good luck, and we intend to keep him around for a long time.



*From the song Superstition by Stevie Wonder

How I got my Oceanfront Cottage in Montauk without Spending a Dime

by special guest Kathleen Bridge.



The first time my husband, infant son, and I traipsed 120 miles due east from Manhattan to Montauk, it was love at first sight. As a transplanted Michigander, Montauk, on the easternmost tip of Long Island, became my touchstone. The town embodied all the things I loved about laidback summers on the Great Lakes and as an added perk it was only sixteen miles away from glitzy East Hampton—summer home of the rich and famous.

Walking the beach toward the lighthouse, I would fantasize about which rickety steps might lead upward to my new cottage.

Then I found it.

Through a set of newly purchased binoculars, I saw that the cottage was modest. It had three-sided ocean views and an upstairs balcony the size of a ship’s crow’s nest. There were twenty seven wooden steps leading up from the secluded beach. I pictured myself reading mysteries on the screened porch or sipping a glass of local Long Island wine on the swing that gently swayed under the eaves.

Sold.

There was only one problem. The cottage wasn’t for sale. And even if it was, we couldn’t afford it. We lived in Manhattan in a wonderful apartment and we both had careers—but the price of an oceanfront cottage, even the small cozy one I fell in love with, would’ve been way beyond our means.

But that didn’t stop me.

On our weekend jaunts to Montauk, I would wake at sunrise and walk a mile east from our hotel toward the lighthouse, a beach chair strapped across my back, a thermos of coffee, and a book in my beach bag. Then, I’d set up camp at the bottom of the steps leading up to my cottage. The wonderful thing about Montauk’s beaches was the fact that they had public access. You could own a multimillion dollar cottage on a cliff, but the beach belonged to everyone.

I never saw anyone coming down those twenty-seven steps. No one sat on the swing or stood on the deck gazing out at the Atlantic. I fantasized that the cottage was uninhabited, the family fighting over whether or not to sell. (Sell, darn it!) My husband thought I was bordering on the obsessive but I was determined to have my cozy four-room cottage. (I knew it had four rooms because I’d stalked a local real estate agent until she showed me photos of the no frills cottage from when it’d been sold years before.) I had all the realtors in town on speed dial, they had me on their blocked list.

One day, I opened my laptop, typed: Better Homes and Corpses —A Hamptons Home and Garden Mystery. A few pages later, I got the cottage of my dreams. It was everything I’d imagined, right down to the flagstone fireplace, wide-planked wood floors, and a vintage turquoise fridge…

I got my cottage in Montauk without spending a dime.

Kathleen Bridge started her writing career working at the Michigan State University News in East Lansing, Michigan. She is the author and photographer of an antiques reference guide,Lithographed Paper Toys, Books, and Games. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and has taught creative writing classes at Bryant Library in Roslyn, New York. Kathleen is also an antiques and vintage dealer in Long Island, New York, and has contributed to Country Living magazine.

Picking a Setting for a Cozy Mystery

by special guest Peg Cochran.


One of the first choices an author makes when contemplating a new cozy series, is the setting or location. Most cozies are set in small towns—either real or imagined by the author. There are a few notable exceptions—Cleo Coyle’s Coffeehouse series set in New York City, for one. But even in mysteries set in a big city, the author often manages to create a small town feel by narrowing the story focus to a shop or a particular neighborhood or apartment building.

The cozy setting can be a real town with which the author is familiar. Ideally, the town or region will have a strong atmosphere that lends itself to a cozy mystery. Think charming seaside town with the fog rolling in…or a small Midwest village complete with town gazebo and plenty of houses with wrap-around porches. Or, if the book is leaning toward cozy chick lit, a neighborhood in a bigger city with renovated brownstones, chic boutiques and trendy restaurants. The reader wants to feel like he or she is there enjoying the scenery, smelling the smells, hearing the sounds and tasting the food. They want to live vicariously through the characters. And they generally want to live someplace attractive and interesting—a place they might choose to visit in real life.

Assuming the town is real! 

Some authors prefer to use a real place for their story. Generally, as long as nothing “bad” happens in a place, it is considered acceptable to use real shops, restaurants, etc., in the story. I wouldn’t, however, set the murder in a real store or restaurant or other public place unless I’d been able to check with the owner of the Coffee Klatch, for instance, and get their permission for my character to find a dead body in one of their booths!

Making up a town can be a lot of fun. It’s quite possible to capture the essence of the south, or New England or Texas in a fictitious location. What some authors find helpful is to choose a town they know well, rename the streets and use that map as a template for their fictitious village.

Either way, setting becomes a secondary character in a well done cozy with readers anxious to revisit it in book after book.

Peg Cochran writes two other cozy mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime. The Gourmet De-Lite series is set in Connecticut and features Gigi Fitzgerald, who provides gourmet diet meals to a select group of clients. The Sweet Nothings Vintage Lingerie series, written as Meg London, is set in Paris, Tennessee with sleuth Emma Taylor who finds murder and mayhem in a quiet country town.


Peg loves connecting with readers and other writhers so feel free to drop her an email via her website ! And be sure to visit her other site at www.MegLondon.com.

Creating Heaven

A guest post by Laura DiSilverio.

No, this isn't a religious essay! It's about how I invented the fictional town of Heaven, Colorado, the setting for my new book club mystery series featuring the Readaholics.

I started with my protagonist, Amy-Faye Johnson, who is an event organizer. I thought about the different events she might be hired to organize (and how they might go hysterically wrong--but that's a different post). My mind drifted from corporate events, to parties, to reunions and weddings. Weddings! Wouldn't it be great if there were something special about where Amy-Faye lived that encouraged brides and grooms to get married there?

I know that Loveland, Colorado (not all that far from where I live) gets a lot of destination wedding business because of its name, so I thought about naming my new town Heaven, figuring that lots of brides would want to say they were married in Heaven. Once I had the name, the rest fell into place.

I made the naming of the town a practical matter, with the town council deliberately setting out to attract wedding business by renaming the town when Amy-Faye was in high school. Thus, Walter's Ford, Colorado became Heaven, Colorado. The town's new marketing slogan came from the Kenny Chesney song, "Everybody wants to go to Heaven." (FYI, there are a bazillion songs with "heaven" in the title, as I discovered when I Googled it.)

Not content with renaming the town, the council and city merchants re-christened streets, housing areas, stores, and more. John Elway Boulevard, for instance, became Paradise Parkway. (If we win a Super Bowl, not this year, alas, they may rename it yet again to Peyton Manning Parkway.) I've had fun coming up with funny names, and I'm grateful that there are lots of words that relate to "heaven": paradise, elysium, angels, cherubim, eternity, etc.

I hope you'll come visit Heaven and meet the Readaholics--Amy-Faye and her friends, Maud Bell (a conspiracy theorist blogger), Lola Paget (who owns a plant nursery),Kerry Sanderson (Heaven's part-time mayor) and Brooke Widefield (Amy-Faye's best friend who married into the town's richest family). You can listen in as they discuss The Maltese Falcon and solve a murder in The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco!

If you have any ideas for "heavenly" street or business names, please leave them in the comments!

I'm the author of the Swift Investigations and Mall Cop mystery series.

After twenty years as an Air Force intelligence officer – serving as a squadron commander, with the National Reconnaissance Office, and at a fighter wing – I retired to parenting and writing full-time.

Spying was easier.

-- from Laura's website

Welcome Guest Blogger Penny Pike!

Penny Pike is a pseudonym for Penny Warner, author of over 50 published books, both fiction and non-fiction.  
She is the author of the Party-Planning Mysteries and the Connor Westphal Mysteries, as well as the Code Busters Club Mysteries for middle-grade readers.  
Her best-sellers include Healthy Snacks for Kids, Kids’ Party Games and Activities, Best Party Book, Games People Play, Kids’ Holiday Fun, Learn to Sign the Fun Way, Baby Play and Learn, Kids Pick-A-Party, and Kids’ Party Cookbook.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

I have heartburn.

It’s from all the research I’ve been doing for the first book in my new series, Death of a Crabby Cook, featuring food trucks and food festivals. But if eating a lot of different foods is the price I must pay to make sure my story is authentic, then so be it. Could be worse. I could be writing a book about insects and have to do research on the larvae cycle of the tse-tse fly. Luckily I chose food.

I had my first food truck experience a couple of years ago before the “meals on wheels” phenomenon swept the country. I was in Napa, CA, doing research for another book (a.k.a., drinking a lot of wine), and spotted a circle of colorful trucks offering intriguing specialties. I decided to try some plein air dining.

Now, I’m not the adventurous type when it comes to trying new foods. When I go out to dinner, I order the same foods at the same restaurants—rigatoni Bolognese at the Italian place, cheese enchilada at the Mexican place, and teriyaki at the Japanese place. So I was a little hesitant to sample the wares from trucks named Kung Fu Tacos, Happy Dumplings, The Boneyard, Fins on the Hoof, Me So Hungry, and Naked Chorizo.

Turned out I liked just about everything!

Now that food trucks have finally come to my hometown, I can please my inner glutton every weekend—and combine it with research for my new series. I head over planning to have just “one bite” of everything, and end up stuffed to the gills.

Here’s my typical game plan: I start my research at Cluck it Up, ordered garlic parmesan wings, and called that the appetizer. Next stop: the Grilled Cheese Bandit, where the sandwiches are named after folk legends like Jesse James and Butch Cassidy. I had the Giuliani (a folk legend?), a grilled mozzarella, parmesan, tomato and pesto sandwich, and called it lunch.

After that it was a blur. A Peruvian pork sandwich from Sanguchon. A burrito cone from Twister. A Coca Cola braised pork sandwich from the Chairman. And I’d only made it half way through the trucks. Luckily I had just enough room for dessert. I managed to down two cream puffs from the Pacific Puffs truck—chocolate and salted caramel—before I spotted the Frozen Kuhsterd truck and had to have the ice-creamy sundae with caramel, chocolate and salted almonds. I knew, with a hospital located right across the street, I could seek medical attention after this food orgy if needed.

These visits to the local food trucks were my inspiration to write a series set among the food truck community. I created Darcy Burnett, a total foodie who loves to eat, but barely knows how to heat a frozen dinner in the microwave. To complicate things, I made her a restaurant reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle, suddenly downsized, and desperately in need of a job. While eating
a therapeutic Caramel Espresso Cream Puff whipped up by Jake Miller from the Dream Puff Truck—and recognizing a hot food trend when she sees one—she’s inspired to write a cookbook full of food truck recipes.

Her first source is the upcoming San Francisco Seafood Fest. Darcy plans to use her journalistic skills to gather recipes for everything from Crab Mac and Cheese from her aunt’s Big Yellow School Bus food truck, to Hangtown Oyster Omelets from the Bacon is the New Black truck. Combined with the local food festivals—The Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival, Gilroy Garlic Festival, Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival—she’s sure the book will be a best-seller, filled with recipes for such tasty treats as Red Velvet Whoopee Pies, Garlic Ice Cream, Key Lime Cream Puffs, Cronut Dossaints (croissants crossed with donuts) and so on. (Recipes included in the book!)

But her plans are interrupted by a loud commotion in the Ft. Mason food truck area. Chef Oliver Jameson is arguing with a petite woman wielding a large knife. The woman happens to be Darcy’s sixty-something Aunt Abby (Abigail Pike), a former school cafeteria cook who now owns her own tricked-out school bus and serves comfort food to hungry diners. Abby accuses Jameson of harassing the food truckers in the area—competition for his brick-and-mortar Bones ‘n’ Brew restaurant—which he denies. Did he really plant a rat in her bus to get her in trouble with the Health Department? When the chef is suddenly poisoned by his own crab bisque—and Aunt Abby becomes a suspect—Darcy smells a rat. Together with Aunt Abby’s hacker son Dillon and dream puff Jake Miller, she discovers something rotten in the food truck world.

Writing Death of a Crabby Cook was such an inspiration, I’m thinking of opening my own food truck. I plan to serve Vanilla Zantac, Chocolate Prilosec, Curry Maalox, Grilled Pepto, and Tums-on-a-Stick. I think it will be a hit.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Berkley Prime Crime has generously offered a copy of Death of a Crabby Cook to one of my readers. Please comment below before midnight on August 25, 2014. Entries from the US only, please.

Please don't forget to include an email address where I can contact you if you win.