Cozy Monday

Twisted Threads (Mainely Needlepoint mystery #1) by Lea Wait (Kensington mass market paperback and e-book, 6 January 2015).

Angie left her hometown of Harbor Haven, Maine, as soon as she was old enough.  And she thinks she's successfully left it behind until she receives a voicemail from her grandmother Charlotte, saying that Angie's mother had been found.

Jenny Curtis had disappeared just before Angie's tenth birthday.  She'd left for a few days before, but she'd always come back.  When she didn't return for Angie's birthday party, Charlotte reported it.  She was never found.

That is, until ten years after Angie left, she thought, for good.  

Jenny's body had been found by one of Angie's contemporaries, in a storage unit Lauren had been going through a storage unit after her father's death.  

Though not a licensed private investigator, Angie had been working with one in Mesa, Arizona.  She decided that she wouldn't leave until she'd put her skills to use to learn just how her mother had ended up in Joe Greene's storage unit.  

The series title comes from the cottage industry that Charlotte had begun after she found she couldn't keep up with the number of custom needlepoint orders she was getting.  She'd hired some of the locals and called her company "Mainely Needlepoint".   She turned the front room of her house into a business office, which was the first of many changes that Angie discover about her old home.

Having lived in Maine for many years, Lea Wait knows of what she writes.  In Angie Curtis, she has created a strong resourceful protagonist, characteristics that we realize she inherited from her mother and grandmother. Being strong women means, of course that they are not perfect, and Wait has no compunction about writing them that way.  

Fans of craft-related mysteries will certainly devour this, as I did, and impatiently await the second book in the series.

FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed the e-book from my local library.

A Cat’s Tale

A guest post by Betty Hechtman.


People often wonder where I get the idea for characters. Well, when it comes to the animals in my books, they are all based on real life ones.

The black cat on the cover of Silence of the Lamb's Wool is based on a cat who lives

down the street, but considers the whole street his domain. Including my yard. Almost my house. The first time I met him, he was on our front porch preparing to come on inside. If he’d been a stray I would have invited him in and let him join the family, but he was wearing a name tag which proclaimed that his name was Julius.

When I decided I was going to put a cat in Yarn to Go, I knew I was going to base it on Julius. I even kept his name since it seemed to have so much personality. He’s a sleek black cat with arresting yellow eyes. He has so much presence it doesn’t seem to matter that he is on the small side. Whenever I encounter him on the street, he saunters past with frequent stops to give me the once over with those eyes.

The fictional version of Julius is a little different. In the books, he’s a stray who chooses Casey Feldstein as his human. He also seems to take pleasure in annoying the manager of Vista Del Mar, the hotel and conference center where Casey puts on the Yarn Retreats by wandering around the grounds.

Casey has never had a cat and it’s all a new experience for her. In Silence of the Lamb's Wool, Julius is doing his best to train Casey in how to live with a cat. Actually she’s a little worried about having a pet since she has a reputation of not sticking with people or jobs. But Julius makes his way into her heart and she realizes that no matter where she goes, he’s going to come with her.

I’m pretty sure the real Julius runs the show at his house, too. He lives with a corgi named Pepper. They are Queen Elizabeth’s favorite kind of dog and have bulky bodies and little short legs. Every now and then I see the man down the street walking the corgi on a leash. And there scampering along behind them is Julius, free to make side trips in everybody’s yard. It’s my favorite image of him and I hope to be able to work that scene into a future book.

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Silence of the Lamb's Wool is the second book in the national bestselling Yarn Retreat series that features dessert chef Casey Feldstein who puts on yarn retreats at a slightly sinister hotel and conference center on California’s Monterey peninsula. Betty Hechtman also writes the national bestselling Crochet Mystery series. All books in both series include patterns and recipes. She says it is like a dream come true to be able mix her love of mystery with her love of making things. She grew up in Chicago and has a degree in Fine Art. In addition she has studied everything from improv comedy to magic. She has written newspaper and magazine pieces, short stories and scripts. She lives in Southern California and Chicago and has yarn stashes in both cities.

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Berkley Prime Crime has generously offered a copy of Silence of the Lamb's Wool  to one of my readers. Please comment below before midnight on July 28, 2014. Entries from the US only, please.

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

BFFs

A guest post by Sally Goldenbaum.

Sally was born in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and now lives in Prairie Village, Kansas, with her husband, Don and a terrific Aussie, Sophie. 
In addition to writing mysteries, Sally has taught philosophy, Latin, and creative writing, edited bioethics and veterinary healthcare journals, and worked in public television. 





Thanks so much for inviting me to stop by today. I’m bringing some friends along—Nell, Birdie, Cass, and Izzy—women whom I didn’t know diddlysquat about a few years ago. And yet today, as Murder in Merino makes its debut alongside the other Seaside Knitters Mysteries, these women have become soul sisters and an integral part of my life.

And with each book, we become better friends.

Nell, Birdie, Izzy, and Cass—my friends, my characters, my alter egos. I know how these Sea Harbor women walk, what they eat, how much they weigh, where they went to school, and the first time they had sex. I even know what number they are on the Enneagram chart. They are my ‘stars’ and my muses, my friends.

But often, way too often, I haven’t a clue what they are going to do next—probably just like your own best friend.

And that’s good….and difficult.

Before I sit down to write a new seaside knitters mystery, I spend time talking to each of them, sharing a ‘seed’ of an idea with them—that tiny nuggest that hopefully will grow into a book. And then I beg them to take me by the hand and lead me along to what comes next, toughen me up as we face the blank computer screen.

Sometimes they jump right in, like Izzy did in Angora Alibi, (the 7th seaside mystery—the one that just came out in paperback). It took little time for her to share her feelings about pregnancy with me, feelings that moved her to take the actions she did—and that propelled all of her friends (and me, too) into a mystery, a murder, and gradually the steps needed to solve it.

Or Cass Halloran in A Fatal Fleece, who showed me she was vulnerable, and not just a crusty lobster fisherman. And Birdie—the 80-year-old matriarch who pulled a skeleton out of her closet in that book, one that changed her life forever. And one that none of us (especially me!) was expecting.

When I began writing the newest Seaside Mystery, MURDER IN MERINO, I was struck by the fact that I’ve known these fine women for over eight years now. They truly are BFFs. To each other. To me. And I hope to you, too.

But sometimes, just like happens in real life, they don’t seem to be around when I need them.

It happened when I began writing Murder in Merino. They disappeared. It was as if they had taken a vacation without me and didn’t tell me where they were going.

But then one day, suddenly, they were back. Just in the nick of time to lead me around Sea Harbor, into the homes of their friends nad neighbors. They introduced me to a new woman in town—a mysterious woman named Jules Ainsley. A woman they took under their wing, even though they weren’t too sure it was a wise thing to do.

And when they decided to explore her past—they took me by the hand and led me along with them. And they didn’t let go, even when it got all of us tangled up in the murder of a bartender—a dear man we were all fond of. But was the mysterious woman who had become involved in the knitters’ lives fond of him?

No one knew, not for sure. But my friends just kept leading me along, and at the end of the journey, they surprised me with what they found. The seed had grown into a plant. A book. Into Murder in Merino.

Yes, after all these years, these women still surprise me. And that’s a good thing. Surprising means they stay fresh, but not completely comfortable. New, but still old friends.

I hope that these friendships deepen with each book, and that their friendship with you deepens, too, so that you’ll keep coming back to sit with them on the deck on in the yarn shop, sharing a glass of wine, a bit of gossip, and secrets of Sea Harbor. I hope they stay fresh for you and for me, unique, but cherished and familiar.

Kind of like a good marriage or partnership.

Like BFFs.

Berkley Prime Crime has generously offered a copy of Murder in Merino to one of my readers. Please comment below before midnight on May 16, 2014. Entries from the US only, please.

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

Welcome guest blogger Molly MacRae!

What’s it like to write a mystery series set in a small town? It’s like having the coolest set of blocks to play with that you can imagine—complete with action figures and accessories!

For my Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries, I took my blocks and built Blue Plum, Tennessee, borrowing the best parts of my favorite small towns for inspiration. The streets crisscross a creek (with fish) that meanders through town. The courthouse is there, and the library (with real books,) and if my action figures get hungry they can stop by Mel’s on Main, the best café in town (with real pastries in the bakery case—that you can smell!) And then, of course, there’s the fiber and fabric shop called the Weaver’s Cat. It’s in a three-story, antebellum brick row house and it comes with gorgeous yarns, flosses, quilting fabric, needles, notions, spinning, dying, and weaving supplies, and a window seat in the study up in the attic. And I get to play with all of it!

 Kath Rutledge is the main action figure for the series. She’s new in Blue Plum, but getting settled, and she’s playing nicely with her friends. There’s Ardis, her shop manager; Mel, who owns the café; Thea, the librarian; Joe, the fisherman; Joe’s brother Clod, the sheriff’s deputy; Argyle the cat; and Geneva the ghost. Each of their mystery stories comes with an Action Figure & Accessories bonus pack, too. For Spinning in Her Grave, their latest adventure, the bonus pack includes a baker, a piano salesman, working spinning wheels, a bass boat, and a piglet that really squeals.

In this story, everyone is getting ready for the annual heritage festival called Blue Plum Preserves. Oh—and the bonus pack also includes pavilion tents, a music stage to set up on the courthouse steps, banjos, a high wheel bicycle, and antique rifles. Fun! (Although the rifles are a little disturbing.)

This business of writing a small town mystery takes a love for micro-scale world building and playing with dolls. It takes a love for something else, too—something related to the love for driving little cars around the streets and creating window displays at the Weaver’s Cat. But this goes beyond a love for picking paint for other people’s kitchens or dressing some of the action figures with questionable taste. A key part of writing mysteries is a love for meddling in other peoples’ lives.

 I set Blue Plum up so that it’s just right—add trees, porch swings, a festival on a pretty summer weekend where people are having a good time—and then I start tinkering, tweaking, and tossing problems at them. What if the piano salesman is directing a piece of street theater involving guns? What if he approaches Kath and asks if one of his actors can hide in the Weaver’s Cat and shoot blank rounds from a second-story window? What if she says no, but someone does it anyway, the rounds aren’t blank, and the baker dies? What if Clod, the sheriff’s deputy, still thinks Kath might be interested in him? What if Geneva, the ghost, discovers she’s afraid of ghosts? Do you see what I mean? Why can’t I leave these poor people alone?

People might assume, after reading Spinning in Her Grave, or the first two books in the series, that I spin, dye, weave, or knit regularly and well. Especially knit, because the action figures belonging to TGIF (Thank Goodness It’s Fiber) challenged themselves to knit 1,000 baby hats by the end of the year and they’re always talking about self-striping yarn and other knitter stuff.

I do knit, in a rudimentary way, and I’ve done a bit of weaving, spinning, and dyeing. But what I really like to do with knitting needles (or spindles or shuttles or crochet hooks) is poke around in the lives of my action figures, gum up the works, and see what happens. I’m not mean, though, except for killing one or two people in each book. These are cozy mysteries, after all, and I care about my action figures. Even the poor things who do end up dead—bless their hearts.

 So, what’s it like to write a mystery series set in a small town? For me, it’s a great way to knit (or spin, weave, or dye) vicariously. It’s a way to indulge my meddling gene safely. And it’s just plain fun.

Molly MacRae spent twenty years in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Upper East Tennessee, where she managed The Book Place, an independent bookstore; may it rest in peace. Before the lure of books hooked her, she was curator of the history museum in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.
MacRae lives with her family in Champaign, Illinois, where she connects children with books at the public library.






Berkley Prime Crime has kindly provided a copy of Spinning in Her Grave for me to give one of my lucky readers. Please share your favorite hobby in the comments below, and don't forget to include a valid email address.  Entries from the US only, please.