MYSTERY AUTHOR ANNE LOUISE BANNON'S NEWEST RELEASE HAS A HOLIDAY TWIST

Mystery author Anne Louise Bannon has worked as a freelance journalist for magazines and newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. Her mystery series include the Old Los Angeles Series, the Freddie and Kathy Series, and the Operation Quickline Series. With her husband Michael Holland she created the OddBallGrape.com wine education blog and is also the co-author (with Serita Stevens) of a book on poisons for writers. Learn more about Anne Louise and her books at her website.

Re-Visiting Christmas

Happy Boxing Day, everyone!

 

Yes, I am one of those who enjoys keeping Christmas going all the way through January 6 (aka Twelfth Night or the Feast of the Epiphany). So, it’s no surprise that Christmas figures into a few of my novels, particularly the Operation Quickline Series. That’s the one featuring Lisa Wycherly and Sid Hackbirn as a pair of spies who fall for each other. In short, the books are essentially cozy spy novels. Or romances with espionage intrusions.

 

I’ve been publishing them first as serials on my blogs, which is a lot of fun, and the most recent, Just Because You’re Paranoid, finished up the week before Christmas. I hadn’t planned it that way, but it worked out especially well since the novel ends with the holiday. Even more fun, there’s a scene sort of near the end that echoes a scene in the first Quickline novel, That Old Cloak and Dagger Routine.

 

The series is set in the 1980s. In the first novel, Lisa comes to live at Sid’s house and gets recruited into the spy business as Sid’s partner. By the time December rolls around, Sid and Lisa are just beginning their friendship and the focus is on how different they are in terms of their values. Sid is a playboy, spending four to six nights a week trying to get laid, and he is more successful than not. Lisa is a nice, church-going woman and a virgin. Sid was also raised as an atheist by an aunt who was a Communist, and they lived among a bunch of bohemians, beatniks, and later hippies, which accounts for Sid’s belief in free love.

 

In fact, we find out that Sid has never celebrated holidays, including Thanksgiving (“A part of Capitalistic propaganda to convince the people they are not oppressed and dedicated to a god that doesn’t exist.”) or Christmas.

 

Lisa, on the other hand, loves Christmas, loves decorating the house, loves eggnog, and the annual Christmas pajamas from her mom. And, yes, Sid gets swept into it. In particular, there’s the scene where Lisa has borrowed Sid’s car to get the Christmas tree. Lisa comes back from the errand bubbling over. She has, once again, found the perfect tree. Sid is a little perturbed to find a tree tied to the top of his beloved Mercedes 450SL, but helps Lisa get it off the car, and hefts the tree into the house, as Lisa shouts out directions to bring it in foot-first. She’s already shifted some of the furniture in the living room to make room in the front window. The tree is gorgeous, but exactly five inches too tall.

 

Fast forward three years to the holiday season in Just Because You’re Paranoid.

Sid and Lisa are engaged to be married. The two jointly own what had been Sid’s house and it has been completely remodeled. Lisa’s parents, who have in the past stayed with her sister Mae and her family, are spending the holiday at Sid and Lisa’s place. Sid has taken custody of his 12-year-old son, and it’s Nick’s first Christmas with Sid and Lisa and her family.

 

The bringing home of the tree remains the same. Lisa arrives home with Nick, shouting and bubbling over. Sid gets called on, along with Bill, Lisa’s father, to get the even larger tree out of her truck. Lisa shouts instructions on how to remove the tree and get it into the house as Sid reminds her repeatedly that they’ve done this before. And the tree is five inches too tall. Again.

 

Yes, there are significant differences, which is part of the fun. But there is also a connection to the past Christmases that was so much fun to play with. It’s how real life happens, and it’s one of those things that makes Christmas and other such holidays so very special. Every year we celebrate Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or whatever we celebrate, is utterly new. We’re different people than we were before. But it’s also a connection to the past, as well. Not only the history that gave us the holidays, but our personal histories as well. And it’s fun to celebrate that, even fictionally.

 

Just Because You’re Paranoid

Operation Quickline, Book 9

 

It doesn't mean they're not out to get you

 

Lisa Wycherly and Sid Hackbirn find themselves up against a relentless enemy and about to get the shock of their lives in book nine of the Operation Quickline Series. First, there's the wedding. Not Sid and Lisa's, but her cousin Maggie's, where Sid and his son, Nick, raise all sorts of eyebrows. 

 

Then there's the attempt on Sid's life. Then Sid and Lisa's good friends are recruited into their top-secret organization. Then there's Lisa's sister being jealous, and a new house getting close to being ready, and Sid and Lisa's own wedding to work on, and Nick bringing home every bug there is at his new school and sharing it with his parents.

 

Being highly trained top-secret counter-intelligence agents will only help so far as the circles of family complications ripple outward. Sid and Lisa try to cope with the multiple surprises as they train their two friends and track down a ruthless killer determined to take both of them out.

 

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MEET AUTHOR CAROLE T. BEERS, WRITER OF COZY MYSTERIES AND RESCUE TALES

Today we welcome author Carole T. Beers, a former award-winning reporter/columnist for The Seattle Times, writing instructor, and contributor to romance and western publications before focusing her attention on fiction in 2015. Learn more about Carole and her books at her website. 

“Saddle up for a great read!” These words jotted on a chalkboard say much about what I write: New West Mysteries with Heart. Cozy but properly chilling amateur sleuth stories, or rescue tales, featuring spirited animal-lovers who stop at nothing to make things right. And have a laugh, love or tasty meal along the way. Why not play to all our senses?

 

I came up with the slogan and displayed it at an author’s booth at our Josephine County Fair in 2019 after finding a horse head-shaped chalkboard at a crafts booth. I might have added the word “hope,” since ALL my books, not only the PepperKaneMysteries, spotlight hope. Second chances, Country values. They deserve to be written on EVERY chalkboard.

 

These are themes of the books and stories I read, whether fiction or biographies, and many of you do, too. I look for tough challenges in reading and writing. Books I can relate to. Books with an appealing hero or heroine. I want to feel I am firmly seated in a book and practically holding the reins. Hence the riding allusion in my slogan. No wonder all my books feature horses, include dogs, and showcase the occasional cat or chicken!

I’ve loved and learned from nature, and animals, from childhood. They teach us so much when we observe and interact with them, such as how to use all the resources at our disposal, communicate in an honest way, and how to live (and love) unconditionally. My earliest scribblings (age 7) had people interacting with animals. Even if “just” a goldfish.

I was inspired to write stories including nature by books such as The Honeybear, Girl of the Limberlost and Desert Storm. Today I still get a lift and kick out of classics like My Side of the Mountain. I became a newspaper reporter to learn discipline and creativity. And relate interesting stories!

 

My non-human family includes my horse Brad, tuxedo cat Velvet, Boston terrier Georgie, and parakeet Sky. We live on a hill in southern Oregon. Interacting with them daily, riding, walking or just hanging out, contributes to physical and mental health. Such as it is. Hopefully you are blessed with innocent “others”—including young humans! And learn from them, too.

 

Always focused on reading and writing, as well as spiritual growth, I quit newspaper work after thirty-some years to tell my own stories. They’re traditionally published by a small independent press in North Carolina. They have a quick turnaround time and let me have a say in cover design and marketing. I love the freedom. It lets me “saddle up and enjoy the WRITE.” I don’t enjoy the edits and revisions as much.

 

Sometimes the mount is stubborn, wild, or willful. But sometimes it takes me to a better place than I could have thought of myself.

 

In from the Cold

Jack Pennington has a heart as big as Oregon’s Rogue Valley, where he’s delivered agricultural equipment and taken in foster children for years. Stalled in his marriage, dreading retirement, and making his final runs over the pass to Klamath Basin, he sees an old, abandoned horse that won’t make it through the coming blizzard.

 

Carly Brown’s life with druggie parents changed for the better when she joined Daddy Jack’s family, and then had a baby with her fiancé. It crashed again when her partner assaulted her, and the baby had special needs. Now her struggles to make a better life for her and her son also seem doomed to fail. 

 

As Christmas draws near, can a despairing old man and struggling young mother find a way through cold prospects to a warmer, brighter future?

 

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TRAVEL WITH SERENA--GUEST AUTHOR BRENDA MAXFIELD STUCK IN THE SNOW

When Young Adult author Brenda Maxfield isn’t teaching, she’s holed up writing in her lake cabin and write, often with a batch of popcorn and dark chocolate nearby. Learn more about her and her books at her website and blog. Today Brenda stops by to tell us of a harrowing holiday experience that happened years ago and how she brought the memories of that experience into her latest Christmas release.

  

Over the Mountain Pass

Before living in the tropics, my home was in Central Washington State.  When Thanksgiving and Christmas came around, it was cold — often below zero cold. To celebrate both holidays, my new husband and I would load up our VW Beetle and head over the Cascade Mountains toward the coast where our parents lived.

We’d chuck our tire chains — now illegal — into the trunk and pray the ice and snow wouldn’t be bad enough to have to use them.

One particularly blustery night before Thanksgiving, our prayers were not answered. When passing over the mountains, we hit a white wall of snow, fog, and sleet. We slid to the side of the road to put on the chains. In the middle of the job, our flashlight went dim and we finished chaining up in the dark.

Wet and miserable, we climbed back into the car and started the motor. We crawled from the shoulder back onto the road when we heard a deafening metal clunk. The car jerked to a stop, throwing us against our seatbelts.

Cell phones didn’t exist during those years. We were stuck.

Fortunately, tow trucks troll mountain passes for unlucky travelers like us. One stopped and we found out the chains were wrapped and tangled around the axle. Could our rescuer fix it? No, but he could tow us to the nearest wide spot in the road to find a motel.

We quickly switched to Plan B: Spend the night in the mountains and pass most of Thanksgiving at a car garage the next morning.

We did finally make it to the coast. Thanksgiving dinner was over, the throng of relatives had thinned, and the dishes had been washed. However, leftovers were in the oven and had never tasted so good.

In my new YA short story Seeking Christmas, Courtney carts her little brother from the Washington Coast to Idaho. She travels some of the same roads we used to travel. She worries about the road conditions just like we did. But her greater worry is meeting up with the father who deserted both her and her brother years previously.

How could such a meeting possibly go well? And would she even have the guts to follow through with it?

I hope you’ll grab a copy of Seeking Christmas and enjoy this holiday story of forgiveness and redemption.

Seeking Christmas (an Ocean Mist short story Two):

The Christmas season has eighteen-year-old Courtney crossing the state line with her little brother Dennis to rendezvous with the man who deserted them years ago. Courtney remembers him only as the tall man who ran away. Dennis doesn’t remember him at all.

Courtney is furious, but Denny is curious. Will their meeting result in a happy Christmas memory or another miserable disappointment? 

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