DR. MILLICENT EIDSON BRINGS THE SOUTHWEST ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE, ALONG WITH ENCHANTMENT AND MYSTERY, TO HER DEBUT NOVEL

Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico

Dr. Millicent Eidson is a public health instructor previously with state health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Learn more about Millie and her microbial mystery stories of zoonoses (diseases from animals) at her website.  

“Monuments” is an award-winning ten-minute play set in Santa Fe, New Mexico during the hot summer protests of 2020. The iconic city is also home base for new medical detective Dr. Maya Maguire in the MayaVerse, an alphabetical mystery series. A twenty-five-year-old veterinarian hired by the CDC for a prestigious two-year public health training program, Maya is over her head as she investigates disease outbreaks while attempting a personal life for the first time.

 

In the debut novel, Bacillus anthracis bacteria infect Texas livestock but are new to Arizona with the collapse of a teenage Hopi sheepherder. Maya’s fieldwork takes her to spectacular remote locations of Keams Canyon and wildlife refuges along the Mexican border. More anthrax infections and deaths emerge from a Christmas-themed petting zoo, a Native American Pow Wow, and the largest livestock show in Arizona. 

 

Maya’s chapters interchange with the mysterious diary of a young boy who fancies a veterinary career while he becomes indoctrinated into hatred of anyone different. As timelines collide, passions bloom in the ancient ruins of Bandelier National Monument and Chaco Canyon. Warm friendships are intensified in Santa Fe’s plaza and Canyon Road with the farolitos and Las Posadas of Christmas. Maya rejoices in her work placement immersed in the Southwestern landscapes and traditions of her Arizona childhood.

 

Physical challenges from horseback riding and rough jeep trails exacerbate panic and pain from metal pins inserted after a childhood accident. Maya is supported in her journey as a “fish out of water” Chinese American in the Southwest by her loving but intrusive adoptive family. She’s buoyed by furry cuddles with her grandma’s Persian cat and her veterinary colleague’s Labrador retriever. Her mental health challenges are counteracted by Broadway musicals, especially Hamilton. How fortunate that the intriguing physician working for the Indian Health Service resembles Lin-Manuel Miranda, the musical’s creator and star.

 

Anthracis: A Microbial Mystery launches Maya’s worldwide travels as a statistics nerd maturing into medical detective leadership with life-changing personal connections. Along with suspense and medical thriller aspects, each novel provides its readers a rewarding HFN—happy for now—conclusion with a hint of foreshadowing to the next disease threat.

 

As the veterinarian author of the MayaVerse, I share with readers the excitement and fascinating science of invisible microbes, a specialty during my epidemiology career. Expanding the medical detective world to veterinary public health provides enriching new fictional challenges, characters, and settings. One Health is the concept that humans, animals, and the environment are intricately tied together, and changes like weirding weather impact us all.

 

Like my character, I lived most of my life in the Southwest. My (and Maya’s) favorite Northern New Mexico cuisine includes blue corn green chile chicken enchiladas with sour cream. Regular corn wrappings will not do. They must be blue corn, grown that color and not dyed. The blue corn provides a rich nutty flavor. Ideally the chiles should be from Hatch, New Mexico, where fall roasting gives off fumes so strong your eyes will burn. Many consider green chiles to be the most flavorful, although you can also order “Christmas” at any time of the year, which is a mix of red and green chiles. To make your own blue corn enchiladas with red chile sauce, see https://www.sfshed.com/pages/video-recipes

 

The MayaVerse is an innovative mashup of Tess Gerritsen and Tony Hillerman with cozy mystery elements interrupted by bouts of terror. Please join Maya and me on her journey, including the free MayaVerse prequels and side stories available on my website. Those joining the Reader list will receive “Monuments” as a free ebook.

 

Anthracis: A Microbial Mystery

MayaVerse, Book 1

 

The spectacular southwestern desert is alive with Bacillus anthracis spores, and the summer is the hottest on record. As a new veterinary epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Maya Maguire confronts the largest, most complex anthrax outbreak in U.S. history.

 

Infections in persons of color and immigration activists resonate with Maya’s search, as a Chinese American adoptee, for a place in her American home. Younger than her fellow trainees and battling panic disorder from a horrific childhood accident, she struggles to solve an epidemic mystery in a physician-dominated public health world. From her home base in New Mexico, CDC sends her to join a federal team in Arizona, including provocative physician Dr. Manolo Miranda and tightlipped veterinarian Dr. Dave Schwartz.

 

The epidemic is linked to climate change—that’s the party line. But Homeland Security agents and the FBI are suspicious. Dave’s an anthrax expert and spores match his home Texas Triangle of Death.

 

An invisible enemy, team secrets, and romantic missteps may derail Maya’s confidence. If she can’t find the source, thousands could perish from anthrax-laced heroin and tainted milk. Anthracis takes us to the front lines with scientists betting their lives and relationships on the investigation outcome.

 

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--MYSTERY AUTHOR DEBBIE DE LOUISE FINDS CLUES IN UNUSUAL PLACES

Debbie De Louise is a reference librarian at a public library. She’s the author of ten novels including the five books and four stories of her Cobble Cove cozy mystery series. Learn more about her and her books at her website.

Finding Clues and Lost Items in Unusual Places

Have you ever had the experience of finding something you’d been missing when you were looking for something else? It happens to me often. I can search for something high and low without any luck, but it usually turns up by accident when I least expect it or am hunting for a different lost item. My anniversary ring was missing for nearly a year when I found it in a drawer under some clothes I was looking through for something to wear. It took me a shorter time to find my library badge lanyard that I’d placed in a bag in my closet, but I also found it by accident when I was looking in there. 

 

When Alicia’s young daughter Carol finds a ring during an Easter Egg Hunt at the Cobble Inn in KittyKai’s Easter Mystery, my new short story featuring the Cobble Cove characters from my cozy mystery series, Detective Ramsay recognizes it as belonging to a missing woman. It isn’t long before the lady’s body is found buried on the construction site where workers had dug for the inn’s new bathroom. While Gretchen’s husband is relieved to finally know what happened to his wife, he’s devastated that she’s dead. But is he putting on an act? Gilly has heard him fighting with his wife. The arguments involve Gretchen’s brother, a rich man who supposedly stole her inheritance from her. 

 

Sneaky and KittyKai once again get involved in solving this mystery by following their ladies, Alicia and Gilly, to a doctor’s office where Gretchen had worked briefly as a receptionist. Sneaky ends up finding a clue by accident in the doctor’s drawer. But KittyKai is the one who saves the day and rightly so, because she’s the inn cat and the inn is where Gretchen Miller’s body was found.

 

While most people don’t find clues in their backyards that lead to dead bodies, according to Cision PR Newswire, the average American spends 2.5 days a year looking for lost items and the most common ones that are missing are: TV remotes (45%), phones (33%), car & keys (28%), glasses (27%), shoes (24%) and wallets/purses (20%). 

 

Rachel Hartman on the SpareFoot blog offers suggestions for finding lost items such as keeping those things you use daily in a regular spot, searching for misplaced objects in the most cluttered areas of your home, and using Smartphone apps that help locate missing items. Her post, “Where Did I Put That? 7 Tips for Finding Lost Items in Your Home” can be read in full here: https://www.sparefoot.com/self-storage/blog/14773-where-did-i-put-that-6-tips-for-finding-lost-items-in-your-home/

 

If someone is lucky, their lost item may turn up or be found by somebody and returned. There are people who swear by St. Christopher medals or psychics. In most cases, if you don’t find a lost object within a few days, you probably won’t recover it. However, there are always exceptions. I never thought I’d find my ring after almost a year, but after twenty years, I’m still looking for a special letter an author wrote to me. It disappeared somewhere between my move from my parents’ house to the one I share with my husband and daughter. That author, now deceased, was a great inspiration to me, and I know that letter would be treasured by me even more today as I continue on my publishing journey. I hope to find it one day, and maybe I will when I least expect it. I doubt it will lead me to a body but maybe the plot for another mystery.

 

KittyKai’s Easter Mystery
A Cobble Cove Stories, Book 4

 

During an Easter egg hunt at the Cobble Inn, a ring is found on the grounds by Alicia’s daughter, Carol. When the sheriff has it examined, he discovers it belonged to him and Gilly’s neighbor, Gretchen Miller, who disappeared the month before. An investigation leads to the discovery of Mrs. Miller’s body buried on the site of the inn’s new construction.

As Alicia and Gilly set out to solve this new mystery despite their husbands’ discouragement, Sneaky and KittyKai, the library and inn cats, secretly lend them a paw.

 

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