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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INTERVIEW WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER AND ROMANCE AUTHOR D.M. BARR

Today we sit down for an interview with psychological thriller and romance author D.M. Barr. Learn more about her and her books at her website. 

When did you realize you wanted to write novels? 

About forty years ago when I attended a summer writer’s conference for nonfiction but wandered into a fiction writing class by mistake. It took me another thirty years or so to get up the guts to do it.

 

How long did it take you to realize your dream of publication? 

I worked on my first novel, Expired Listings, for about ten years on and off before it was published in 2016.

 

Are you traditionally published, indie published, or a hybrid author? 

Hybrid. One novel self-published (despite five contracts from small presses), and three novels traditionally published with small presses.

 

Where do you write?

Usually on my family room couch but I can write wherever I need to.

 

Is silence golden, or do you need music to write by? What kind?

Silence, always.

 

How much of your plots and characters are drawn from real life? From your life in particular?

Some of the characters are drawn from real life but if I told you who, I’d be up to my eyeballs in lawsuits. So let’s just say they’re all fictional. 😊 Seriously though, Expired Listings is about a real estate broker (which is what I was at the time), Slashing Mona Lisa deals with weight issues (I’ve yoyoed all my life), and Saving Grace is an allegory for women over forty who don’t feel like they’re being heard. That would be me 😊.

 

Describe your process for naming your character?

For some characters, I Google what names were popular at the time they were born. But usually, the names just come to me.

 

Real settings or fictional towns?

A combination. Rock Canyon is based on Rockland County, Glen Valley is a made-up NJ town but the towns around it are real.

 

What’s the quirkiest quirk one of your characters has? 

They tend to spout sayings from their grandparents or parents who are from other cultures.

 

What’s your quirkiest quirk? 

I pun. I’m told this is very annoying. And yet, I persist.

 

If you could have written any book (one that someone else has already written,) which one would it be? Why? 

The Bible. It’s done quite well. 😊 Seriously though? I wish I’d written The Hating Game.

Everyone at some point wishes for a do-over. What’s yours? 

I wish I’d had the guts to write fiction when I was younger.

 

What’s your biggest pet peeve? 

Bigotry and hypocrisy.

 

You’re stranded on a deserted island. What are your three must-haves? 

Cell service, internet service, and a private, fully gassed-up jet with pilot.

 

What was the worst job you’ve ever held? 

I wasted eight months at a travel company that didn’t listen to my suggestions, though they’d hired me as management, and then laid me off when their misguided policies didn’t yield the sales results they expected. Plus, they looked down on women in general. 

 

What’s the best book you’ve ever read? 

Impossible to answer with just one book. Loved Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, The Grapes of Wrath,Lonesome Dove…it’s just an endless list and it keeps changing, the more I read.

 

Ocean or mountains? 

Ocean.

 

City girl/guy or country girl/guy? 

City girl who loves to escape to the country.

 

What’s on the horizon for you? 

I’m pitching a rom-con that deals with overcoming the regrets of the past. And researching a nonfiction travel book I’ve wanted to write for the past fifteen years.

 

Anything else you’d like to tell us about yourself and/or your books? 

I’ve admired authors all of my life. To be one of them is the greatest honor I could ever imagine. The other day someone in Sao Paolo sent me a note on Facebook, telling me she couldn’t wait to read Saving Grace. The idea that I could write a book on my family room couch that could entertain someone in Brazil I’ll likely never meet is amazing.

 

Saving Grace: A Psychological Thriller

Grace Pierrepoint Rendell, the only child of an ailing billionaire, has been treated for paranoia since childhood. When she secretly quits her meds, she begins to suspect that once her father passes, her husband will murder her for her inheritance. Realizing that no one will believe the ravings of a supposed psychotic, she devises a creative way to save herself—she will write herself out of danger, authoring a novel with the heroine in exactly the same circumstances, thus subtly exposing her husband's scheme to the world. She hires acclaimed author Lynn Andrews to help edit her literary insurance policy, but when Lynn is murdered, Grace is discovered standing over the bloody remains. The clock is ticking: can she write and publish her manuscript before she is strapped into a straitjacket, accused of homicide, or lowered six feet under?

 

With a cast of secondary characters whose challenges mirror Grace's own, Saving Grace is, at its core, an allegory for the struggle of the marginalized to be heard and live life on their own terms.

 

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FAVORTIES, FAILURES & FRUSTRATIONS--GUEST AUTHOR SYDNEY LAWRENCE

Author Sydney Lawrence has dabbled in many things in her life, from painting to raising cows. She is a fan of old movies and Britcoms. An avid reader, Sydney often finishes more than a novel a week. She wishes she could write equally fast. Learn more about her and her books at her Goodreads author page.

Failure—it’s not a word anyone likes to hear, least of all me. I prefer soaring success! Who doesn’t? Yet, along my path as a writer, I’ve encountered rejection. I think it just goes along with the work. Don’t believe me? Even Stephen King and the wildly successful J.K. Rowling have tasted the stings of rejection. I have to remind myself that this business is not for the thin skinned.

My latest bitter taste of failure came in the form of an Amazon Kindle Scout campaign. If you haven’t heard of the program, it is a mix of choosing novels to publish by popularity and then a deciding word from the Amazon Kindle Scout editors. A book’s campaign is under way for thirty days in which members can vote on your novel.

Let me stop here and say this is a brutal undertaking! It sounds simple enough at first but to keep a book campaign at the top of the popularity on the site actually takes a very well developed social media following combined with round-the-clock marketing. Worse yet, even if you do manage to keep the book hot and trending, meaning it’s popular with voters, Amazon’s editors still have the final say. Some books that lit up the charts were ultimately not published.

I began my campaign for a Christian romance novel called Date with a Billionaire.  I worked and pushed but it slipped in popularity. I waited anxiously to find out the results of the campaign from the editors. When I received my “Thanks but no thanks” email confirming my book hadn’t been chosen, I was deflated. Does this mean I think the Amazon Kindle Scout program is a bad idea? No, not at all. I think it gives authors and readers a chance to see unique books that might otherwise not be published. It was also a valuable learning experience for me in marketing. Those brutal 30 days were a trial by fire.

For me though, one of the best takeaways of the failure was freedom. Up to then, I’d only written romance novels. If I’d actually won the campaign, I’m sure I would have felt compelled to write a similar book. That’s what readers would expect, right? However, failure granted me another option. Why not try something different? So, I did. I wrote the short novel The Girl Within, a dark first person, psychological thriller. I loved the change of pace. I don’t like to ‘fail’ any more than the next person, but sometimes the lessons from a stumble outweigh our successes.

As it turns out, Date with a Billionaire, is doing okay, too. Readers like it and that’s always the ultimate success in my little world.

The Girl Within

Elizabeth Lyons steps into a nightmare when she returns home to find her husband and young son missing. Nothing is as it seems in this dark, psychological thriller.

Will Elizabeth unravel the tangled mystery or succumb to her worst impulses?

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST AUTHOR JK WINN

J.K. Winn is a published novelist, playwright, and poet. Learn more about her and her books at her website.  

The Scent of Suspense

There are many different avenues for structuring a thriller, but I chose of design my suspense novel, Out of the Shadow, around the olfactory sense. We all know the sense of smell is powerful and at the same time, often unconscious. Because of that, it's not unusual to experience a memory triggered by a forgotten odor. Our sense of smell is potent enough to determine whom we are attracted to, or repelled by, and acts as one of the most important deciding factors in choosing a mate. Even when it's outside of our awareness, it influences many of the choices we make and what we do with our lives.

With that in mind, I decided to use a whiff of cologne as the precipitating incident that sets my heroine Becca on the trail of the perpetrator. A single sniff causes her to experience thoughts and feelings which send her on a downward spiral, making her aware, even though she has only fragmented memory, that a traumatic event took place earlier in her life, and the person responsible for that crime is also behind her recent rape and her husband's murder. It soon becomes clear that her only hope of solving the current crimes and protecting herself from this faceless menace is to follow the olfactory thread back to the time and place in her life where it originated.

I'm hoping you'll find this concept intriguing enough to want to follow Becca's quest to discover this criminal's identify before he can do any more damage. And, if you enjoy this read, I hope you will also check out the soon-to-be-released sequel, Night of the Shadow, Book Two in the Shadow Series, this spring.

Out of the Shadow

Two women. One goal. To uncover the truth no matter the cost.

A survivor of rape and her husband's murder, all Becca Rosen wants to do is move on with her life, but how can she when she's being stalked by a psychopath with an attitude---and an agenda. The police are no help because they're convinced, with her history of mental illness, Becca has faked the rape to get away with murder. On top of that, Becca has begun to have flashbacks of childhood abuse, possibly at the hands of the rapist. Not knowing where to turn, and feeling like she might go crazy again, Becca hires psychologist Sarah Abrams.

Three men come into Becca's life around the same time. While each of these men has his charms, Becca can't be certain whether one of them is the perpetrator. Or could it be someone else? Together Becca and Sarah start on a course of hypnotherapy to discover the abuser's identity. Will their work reveal the real killer before it's too late, or will Becca fall prey once again to this demented criminal?

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