COZY PARANORMAL AUTHOR AVERY DANIELS CRAFTS A VAMPIRE SLEUTH WITH A SUNNY OUTLOOK ON LIFE

Paranormal cozy author Avery Daniels resides in Colorado with two brother black cats as her spirited companions and volunteers at a cat shelter. She enjoys scrapbooking, card making, photography, painting and crochet. Learn more about Avery and her books at her website where you'll also find links to her other social media.

Affirmations and a Positive Thought Vampire?

I knew I wanted to write a paranormal cozy mystery, but the standard is to make the main character a witch. I wanted to stand out, so I told myself the witch would make a good sidekick, but not the heroine. So, I went with a vampire.

 

Vampires aren’t very cozy, so I had my work cut out for me. First, I wanted her to counter the standard image of a vampire. I gave her curly blond hair and glasses and named her Misty Summers. She’s like an adult version of Shirley Temple. That’s a good start but I had to make her more unique to break the barrier some folks have against a vampire lead for a cozy mystery.

 

What would be the most against-type characteristic for Misty Summers? What about a vampire who is a positive thought believer, who says affirmations and is working on being the best person she can be, who reads self-help books and has a heart for helping people? She a sunny, fun vampire.

 

In the process I had to get a little more into what affirmations were to have Misty be a believer. But to understand affirmations, we must address the inner critic. Everyone has an inner critic. Some have a more aggressive critic than others. In the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey refers to it as the scripts that have been handed to us by parents, society, cultural influence, friends, co-workers etc. It is the concept of how other’s perception of us and our behavior shapes that inner critic, so we perpetuate that perception with our inner thought life. 

 

Have you ever heard of the "self-fulfilling prophecy?" It’s the theory that, if you believe in a certain outcome, you will act in accordance with your belief of the outcome in such a manner that you actually bring about that outcome. So, if your inner critic keeps telling you that you really don’t deserve such-and-such or people like you don’t get such lucky breaks etc. you are likely to act in a way to make sure you don't get it.

 

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
- Patrick Overton

 

Before long that inner critic can become the self-saboteur of our lives. But we can start to address our self-defeating inner thoughts with a technique called Affirmations. And that is what my “look on the sunny side” Misty Summers does. She uses affirmations to deal with her lacking self-esteem from her uninterested parents. 

 

Affirmations are constructive, positive statements that you repeat to yourself aloud at least once daily. More often is better. Many make it part of their morning and evening ritual to incorporate it into their habits. Affirmations don’t work miracles, so if you don’t like yourself or have some deep traumas, this won’t work. Affirmations are a slow reprogramming of established outlooks. It will take a while to work, but it does help shift that negative talk as you become more aware of it and consciously reject them with new constructive thoughts.

 

If you are interested, you can write your own affirmations. The book Self-Esteem for Dummies by S. Renee Smith provides many tips

 

In the first book, Misty Summers uses affirmations to deal with becoming a vampire. She keeps saying them every morning. She will continue to use affirmation in future books, but as she grows and adjusts I’m sure she will develop new ones to help her where she is at in the moment. I really like this aspect of my newly turned vampire dealing with her extreme life changes with as much positivity as she can. Will she still struggle? Absolutely, but she will keep looking for the silver lining and bright side, and those simple affirmations are part of her tool belt to deal with what life throws her.

First Bite

An Accidental Vampire PI Mystery, Book 1

What's a positive thought girl to do when she finds herself one of the undead? Recite plenty of affirmations and use those new toothy skills to assist her PI boss, of course

In 24 hours, Misty Summers had the worst date of her life, was bit by a vampire, and her PI boss may close his business as he goes through a divorce. Looking on the sunny side, she decides to use her new vampire assets and become the investigator to keep her job and income. She doesn’t know what her future holds, but it can’t be any worse! When she starts following up on a missing woman’s case, she finds herself in the middle of murder. Even with her positive thinking and affirmations, she is finding her new reality daunting. But she vows to take a bite out of crime in her small lake resort town.

If you like Duffy Brown, Nancy Warren, Nova Nelson, Dionne Lister, Trixie Silvertale, and Leighann Dobbs, then you'll love this series with a quirky intelligent sleuth, small town lake setting, and tantalizing mysteries. Misty Indigo Summers is a positive thinking kind of gal and a most unlikely vampire and PI. Buy these fun and clean cozy mysteries and start enjoying Misty's adventures today!

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AN INTERVIEW WITH COZY MYSTERY AUTHOR KATHLEEN BAILEY

Today we sit down for a chat with cozy mystery author Kathleen Bailey. Learn more about her at her website.

When did you realize you wanted to write novels?

I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was in the first grade. The practicalities of life along with a few plot twists along the way, though, had me travel the long and winding road to realize that dream. 

 

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

The little voice inside me that kept saying “I want to be a writer” remained constant for over forty years. In the intervening decades, I worked as a pediatric physical therapist treating children with special needs. When I transitioned from that career to writing, it took about eighteen months from ground zero to publication.

 

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

Indie published.

 

Where do you write?

These days I write at my desk in my living room where I have a view of my front yard.

 

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

Silence, please. Thank you!

 

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

I refute all allegations that I’ve drawn any of my plots from real life. I deny any involvement in an actual cozy murder mystery, though I do like to bake pies, have an adorable feline fur baby, and try not to swear. Characters, however, often are combinations of people I’ve come across along the way. There is never any one-to-one correlation, though. Sophia, who is Olivia’s best friend, is a pediatric physical therapist, and her role and knowledge are drawn from my experience. 

 

Describe your process for naming your character?

Character names are important to me. Some are chosen for personal reasons or because of the meaning the name has in relation to the character. Foremost though, names must be memorable and distinguishable for the reader. I take care not to have characters with like sounding names that may lead to reader confusion. I research popular names from different decades to ensure my characters have names that would be appropriate for their age and background. 

 

Real settings or fictional towns?

Apple Station, Virginia, is a fictional town set in the Shenandoah Valley. It is based on a few towns in that area, but all other place settings in the series are real. 

 

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

I love how my character Tori (one of Olivia’s best friends) is completely unfiltered in what she says, though never in a mean or rude way. She says exactly what’s on her mind, and it’s often what Olivia needs to hear.

 

What’s your quirkiest quirk?

It’s not so much my quirk as my kitten’s quirk. As soon as I open my laptop to write, she trots into the corner of the room just out of my view and then won’t stop meowing until I come over and devote all my attention to her.

 

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

I would have written any of the collected works of poetry by Mary Oliver. She expressed the simple truths of life with exquisitely crafted, accessible verse. 

 

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

No do-overs for me. Every experience in my life, good or bad, has made me who I am today, and I don’t want to be anyone other than myself. 

 

What’s your biggest pet peeve?

Bigotry.

 

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

Ample food, clean water, and a working satellite phone.

 

What was the worst job you’ve ever held?

I worked a hot second part-time as a substitute teacher at a public high school. Brutal.

 

Who’s your all-time favorite literary character (any genre)? Why?

Favorite all-time character? Are you kidding me? Why would you do this to me? My brain is hurting from overload … too many choices … next question, please!

 

Ocean or mountains?

Both and equally.

 

City girl/guy or country girl/guy?

Country girl always.

 

What’s on the horizon for you?

I’m working on book three in The Olivia Penn Mystery Series.

 

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

I want to thank all my readers for their support! You can connect with me through my website at kathleenbaileyauthor.com. For updates, news, and occasional photos of my adorable feline fur baby, please join my newsletter!

 

Silence Says the Most

An Olivia Penn Mystery, Book 2

 

Five days before Halloween, fall turns frightful in Apple Station when a child’s drawing entangles Olivia in a murder at a park lake.

 

Olivia’s hometown is gearing up for its annual Halloween festival, and pumpkins, corn mazes, and autumn vibes are everywhere. All is cozy in the crisp fall air as excitement builds for the costume parade on Friday. A casual Monday lakeside picnic lunch with her forever friend, though, sets off a chain of events that catches Olivia in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

When a body is discovered amid an algae bloom under mysterious circumstances, everyone points fingers, but one among them is not telling the truth. The only apparent witness to the crime is a child who doesn’t speak. Motives abound, suspects are plenty, and it’s up to Olivia to discover why the child has implicated her as the key to solving the murder.

 

Can Olivia unmask the killer before the endangered evidence vanishes, and she becomes the next victim?

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--AUTHOR S. LEE MANNING DISCUSSES RESEARCH, INTERNATIONAL CUISINE, MAPLE SYRUP, AND A NEW THRILLER

A reformed lawyer, S. Lee Manning is the award-winning author of international thrillers, featuring a Russian-Jewish immigrant to the United States working for American intelligence. When not writing thrillers, she occasionally performs stand-up comedy. Manning lives with her husband and fellow author, J.B. Manning, and their cat Xiao in Vermont. Learn more about her and her books at her website and keep reading for a special giveaway. 

The Bitter and the Sweet 

Writing international thrillers is a challenge. It not only requires an exciting plot and intriguing characters but also descriptions of different cities and countries: their cultures, customs, and of course, their food. I don't visit every place I write about - it would be prohibitively expensive and given that I'm not a New York Timesbestseller (yet), I can't really afford it. But the researching is fun, and with every book I've written, I've explored the local food.

 

To write Bloody Soil (available for preorder now and releasing Nov. 9^th) required detailed plotting and crafting new characters who would be involved in helping (or hindering) my returning protagonist and friends in their attempt to stop a neo-Nazi plot in present day Germany. But in between moments of high tension, a character's got to eat. 

 

I read through travel books, online recipes, and cultural comparisons. I learned that Germans eat huge breakfasts with different kinds of bread, cheeses, sausage, jams. To compensate, they eat smaller dinners. Something called currywurst - sausage with curry on a crispy bread roll- is a favorite street food in Berlin. 

 

Germans also eat a lot of potatoes, which appear in many forms: potato pancakes, potato dumplings, bratkartoffein - potatoes flavored with herbs and bacon, potato noodles, and of course, potato salad and mashed potatoes. I also researched recipes that contain something besides potatoes for my characters' meals. Zurich ragout - veal, white sauce, and mushrooms, and kaesespaetzle, small pasta layered with cheese and topped with fried onions - also sounded damn good.

 

Much of my first novel, Trojan Horse, takes place in Romania. Like Bram Stoker, who wrote about Dracula in Transylvania, without ever leaving England, I traveled to Romania from my office, using travel books and the Internet. (Pointing out the obvious, Bram Stoker, writing in the 19th century, used travelogs but not the Internet.) I not only had to describe the area where the action took place, but what the characters would be eating - although my poor hero was imprisoned and starved for most of the book. But bad guys also have to eat. I researched traditional Romanian meals: rasol moldovresca (boiled chicken with horseradish and sour cream) and muschi poianna (beef stuffed with mushrooms, bacon, pepper, and paprika, served with a vegetable puree). The team rescuing my hero chowed down on a type of cream donut called papanasi. 

 

For the second book in my series, Nerve Attack, I didn't need to research the location where my hero stops a plot to kill Americans with a nerve poison because I set it in the beautiful state of Vermont - where I currently live. And I also know the local food. Ben & Jerry's, the famous Vermont ice cream with the factory in Waterbury, Vermont (only 45 minutes from my house, so in Vermont terms, practically in my neighborhood) gets applause (and a gangster's cooperation) for its innovative flavors. My personal favorite from Vermont - maple syrup - is only mentioned in passing, when a character describes eating pancakes with the real stuff. But maple syrup deserves so much more than the few words that it gets in my novel. 

My love of maple syrup is not only because I love the flavor. I combine my love for the flavor with my love for Vermont. Maple syrup is an item of cultural pride here in Vermont. You can buy maple syrup at general stores, sugar shacks, clothes stores, or even sports stores.

Along with writing about local food in every novel, as a proud Vermonter, I try to sneak in at least one mention of Vermont. 

 

Which is why I'm celebrating the release of my latest novel, Bloody Soil, with two giveaways of maple syrup - to honor the inclusion of local foods in my novels and to honor my home state. Everyone who signs up for my newsletter is entered into a lottery for a half-gallon in November, and the first two hundred people to answer two questions about Bloody Soil will be entered into a drawing for a gallon in January. If you're interested, check out my website, where I describe the contest in more detail. I also write more about the history and culture of maple syrup in my October blog.

 

And with my work-in-progress set in Paris, I'm eager to get back to work on the descriptions of food - although maybe this time, I'll manage some in-person research.

Bloody Soil

A Kolya Petrov Thriller, Book 3

 

In BLOODY SOIL, pub. date November 9, 2022, a mysterious American calling himself “Michael Hall" arrives in Berlin to join Germany Now, a far-right group and must prove himself by shooting a prominent Jewish anti-Nazi activist or face certain death. Afterwards, Germany Now welcomes him into its ranks, planning to use his weapons expertise to create a dictatorship dedicated to the Nazi ideals of blood and soil.

 

Michael, though, has attracted the deadly attention of an unexpected enemy. Lisette who infiltrated the group to avenge the assassination of her father years earlier, is eliminating the killers among them one by one and has targeted Michael as her next victim. But is Michael the murderer she believes him to be, and by killing him, could Lisette unknowingly destroy the chance to save German democracy?

 

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MYSTERY AUTHOR SARALYN RICHARD ON WRITING ABOUT DEATH

Saralyn Richard’s award-winning humor- and romance-tinged mysteries and children's book pull back the curtain on people in settings as diverse as elite country manor houses and disadvantaged urban high schools. Along with writing, Saralyn also teaches creative writing and literature. Learn more about her and her books at her website where you’ll also find links to her on other social media sites.

Writing About Death

by Saralyn Richard

 

As a mystery author, I’m often asked how and why I write about death. “You’re such a genteel lady. Why don’t you write about happy things: parties, petit fours, and puppies?”

 

I do write about happy things. Parties, petit fours, and puppies inhabit my books, for sure, because those are some of the delightful things about life. Authors of fiction do their best to represent life in all its magnificent aspects, and sometimes that includes writing about death.

 

Because I write mysteries, and characters sometimes die, I’ve interviewed numerous people who have experience with death: funeral home employees, gravediggers, policemen, physicians. I’ve always been struck by the serenity and matter-of-fact attitudes these sources have exhibited. The “death is a part of life” philosophy prevails. 

 

Once I spoke with a mortician, who told me that when she prepares a body, she is humble and respectful, realizing that she is the last person to interact with the deceased. When she finishes the job, she goes out into the wide world and her senses are sharpened. She feels more alive than ever, more determined to make every living moment count.

 

That’s how death is. Death reminds us of life, how precious, how fragile, and how fleeting it is.

 

Mystery novels should not be confused with treatises on death. On the contrary, most mysteries I read, and certainly those that I write, are entertaining whodunits, designed to engage readers in solving intellectual and emotional puzzles. If a character dies along the way, the event is more plot than theme, a challenge for other characters to overcome, a life’s lesson to learn, a world order to restore.

 

Bad Blood Sisters 

Bad Blood Sisters is the story of Quinn McFarland, a young woman who has grown up in her family business, a mortuary. Quinn’s family has often joked about death, but this summer death stops being funny. Quinn’s estranged BFF is brought into the funeral home, a victim of violence, and Quinn realizes that the blood oath they took and the secrets they buried now put Quinn in extreme danger. 

 

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AUTHOR JUDITH COPEK DELVES INTO THE ROARING TWENTIES WITH HER NEWEST NOVEL

Mystery author Judith Copek has discovered that bad guys and scary situations are not limited to mystery fiction. In her latest novel, she leaps into another genre with an historical novel set in the nineteen twenties. Learn more about her and her books at her blog. 

Did the Twenties Really Roar? 

In 1928, my late mother took the Santa Fe Super Chief from Newton Kansas to Pasadena California. She would spend the summer with some girlhood friends who once lived in her hometown. She left a scrapbook, now in tatters, and a photo album, as well as a couple letters. The letters hinted at something darker, but photos and souvenirs just show everyone having a good time. 

 

My mother’s scrapbook opened my eyes to life with a nice middle-class family in 1928 Southern California. These were not the nineteen-twenties I had expected. Where were speakeasies? The skinny girls in short dresses? Did my mom or her friends, all in their early twenties, do any roaring at all? They knew how to have fun. 

And single people partied a lot. At home, at country clubs, at the dance hall on the mountain. Sometimes girls drank, but often they didn’t. At lease not this bunch. They were not averse to being around parents. Most of the girls didn’t drive, and parents were available for trips to Yosemite and other landmarks. I discovered that clothing for such excursions consisted of sweater, jodhpurs, striped socks, and boots or sturdy shoes. Rather fetching, actually. Women’s hair was worn short, some bobbed, some curly. Dresses were often fancy with lace and lots of ruffles.

 

My research found much sleeker women with shorter skirts and definitely bobbed hair. Seductive, vamping, dancing wildly. The image we all have of the twenties. Where did the truth lie? As usual, somewhere in between.

 

I couldn’t write a novel about young people swanning around and having a wonderful time all summer. It would have been dullsville. But on the other hand, I wanted some semblance of reality. I finally found a middle ground. And characters I could love. In a million years my mother would not recognize herself. But that’s okay, because her life-long friendship with these girlhood pals, and the inspiration she left-behind helped write Such Stuff As Dreams.

Some women of the time were serious about business careers and had their own organizations with meetings and what we would now call networking. 

Bridge was a popular came both for women and men. Colorful placecards and bridge tallies echo the times. Life was more formal then, often with cards for seating as in the sample above. 

 

Such Stuff As Dreams

Carla Curby, a young teacher and photographer, arrives in Southern California from rural Kansas to visit girlhood friends. Carla anticipates an exciting summer away from her staid Mennonite town, a summer where lipstick, bobbed hair, and dancing the Charleston are normal. She doesn’t anticipate the graft and corruption that permeate life in the Golden State where many dream of finding gold or striking oil.

 

Carla is pulled into the local art scene and is smitten with a Bohemian artist who admires her photography, but he has a huge strike against him. When her mother demands that Carla return home to help with summer chores, Carla, in an act of uncharacteristic defiance, sells her return ticket, sends her mother the money, and determines to stay in California.

 

Her choice haunts her, but love beckons as she becomes involved with two men: the artist and a get-rich-quick dreamer. On the uncertain road ahead, Carla travels far from her safe Kansas life. A young woman with gumption and perseverance, she will be required to make hard decisions and to face challenges that were never part of her dreams.

 

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🎃 HALLOWEEN FLASH SALE THIS WEEKEND ONLY FROM BLACKBIRD WRITERS + FRIENDS 🎃

This weekend only, October 29th and 30th, the Blackbird Writers and some of their friends are having an amazing Flash Sale featuring more than 50 free and deeply discounted books. Genres include mystery, suspense, thrillers, paranormal, cozies, amateur sleuth, crime fiction, police procedurals and more--including middle grade and young adult books! Click here to scare yourself silly this weekend on amazing deals from award-winning and bestselling authors.

One of the books featured in this sale is A Stitch to Die For, the fifth book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series. The Kindle version, regularly $4.99, is available for only $1.99.

A Stitch to Die For

An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 5

 

Ever since her husband died and left her in debt equal to the gross national product of Uzbekistan, magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack has stumbled across one dead body after another—but always in work-related settings. When a killer targets the elderly nasty neighbor who lives across the street from her, murder strikes too close to home. Couple that with a series of unsettling events days before Halloween, and Anastasia begins to wonder if someone is sending her a deadly message.

 

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--SUE VIDERS AND BECKY MARTINEZ ON THE PROCESS OF CO-AUTHORING A BOOK

Today we welcome the writing team of Sue Videos and Becky Martinez to tell us about their working partnership. Learn more about them and their books at their website.

Sue:

H.G.Wells said it perfectly…and I use his words in reference to co-authoring ….

 

No passion in the world is equal 

to the passion 

to alter someone else’s draft.

 

Which of course is what co-authors do on a daily basis, or should I say on a critique basis.

 

Becky and I have worked together for many, many years, first as just friends in the same writing groups, and then as teachers. We taught on-line writing classes together all over the county.  Then suddenly, about two years ago, Becky emailed me one day and asked if I would like to write a book with her.  My answer, “Oh, yes!” I was thrilled, because we both brought to the table different, unique skills based on how we write. 

 

Becky is definitely a fly-by-the-seat type of writer--that is, she comes up with an idea for a plot and characters and simply starts writing. Her characters and scenes come to life as she writes the story. 

 

On the other hand, I am a planner. I don’t even begin to write until I have the whole idea planned out and the ending written down.

 

So how do these two different ways of writing blend so well? First of all, when writing with another writer, ground rules need to be determined before the first word is typed.

 

Our ground rules were:

 

1- Decide on the type of story to write. 

We agreed on a light cozy mystery.

 

2 - Create the plot and the main characters.

We wanted an artist as one protagonist and a small boutique owners as the other, and we wanted to set the story in a small Colorado town (since we both know the area.)

 

3 - Decide who would do what.

We had meetings to loosely plot the story. I would write the first draft of each chapter. Becky would heavily critique it and add any additional information. I would then critique what she changed. Then together, on the phone, we would critique the chapter, line by line, word by word until we were satisfied. We set deadlines and did this once a week. 

 

The reason this worked so well for us, is that I am dyslexic and cannot spell very well and have absolutely no idea where the damn commas go. Becky, on the other hand, as a retired journalist, spells exceptionally well, and is a comma queen. 

 

I kid her a lot because she is also the world’s best editor. She takes my short, sometimes unfinished sentences and often in the wrong tense, and smooths them out. She has, hidden on her keyboard a “delete” key which she uses all the time. And this makes the writing flow smoother and better.

 

If I were to give any advice to a writer who is contemplating co-authoring any genre, I would state that before writing anything agree on these ground rules:

 

1 - Lose the ego.

2 - Learn how to critique constructively.

3 - Set deadlines.

4 - Learn how to disagree.

5 - Be honest in your comments.

6 - Bottom line, all that really matters is how to make the book a great read. 

 

Becky:

…and that’s the way it is…--Walter Cronkite at the end of  every CBS news broadcast

 

Sue and I have been able to make co-authoring work because of our constant desire to collaborate and to join together to make our books as entertaining and correct as possible. Sue is well known for her nonfiction books on writing, and we have worked together both on nonfiction and fiction over the years. She excels in creating characters from the very beginning, while I often let my characters come to life on the pages as I write them. She fills out character charts in advance, while I have character charts that I fill out as I write the story. I usually know the beginning of my story and the ending, but everything in the middle comes out as I write. It’s not that I can’t plan—I just know that things will change along the way. So I like to be prepared for when that happens and a character gets out of line and starts acting differently.

 

As a television news producer, who had to plan a newscast every day but never saw one go in the exact order I planned it, I have learned to be flexible over the years, and I do that with my fiction writing. One thing I always knew as a TV news producer—the network news was coming on the air at 6:00pm no matter what I did, so my newscast better be done at that exact second! 

 

I do that with my writing too. I know how I am going to begin and end my books and everything else in the middle might change, but I need that beginning to make my readers want to keep turning the pages, and I want to end the story with them feeling as though they got everything they needed to know and ready to “tune in” (or buy my book) the next time they see my name as an author.  

 

As co-authors Sue and I have had to combine our distinctive styles, and it can be quite rewarding even though it can also be challenging. She considers me the queen of commas, but I consider her the queen of character building, and she is also very dedicated to the writing process itself. Together we work hard to make our characters, our locations, and our plots come to life. We both also love to talk about writing and learn from and about other writers, which is why we began co-authoring books on writing and teaching classes many years ago. We’ve learned everyone has a different style, so we recommend, find what works for you and your writing co-author, and then team up and enjoy the process.

 

Together we have managed to write not only not only nonfiction but fiction books together.  Our newest co-authored novel, Secrets and Swindles, is a cozy mystery that was published this month.  It took months of working together, both formulating the plot and then writing and editing it, but it was a fun book to do, and we are now working on a second installment even while we both work on individual fiction. 

 

Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, the writing process may be challenging, but neither one of us intends giving it up any time in the future, continuing to work together as well as write our own suspense books. 

 

Secrets and Swindles

A Sleuthing Sisters Mystery, Book 1

 

All Josephine and her sister want to do is enjoy their senior years in a small community in the Rocky Mountain foothills, but when Josephine discovers that someone has made prints of her artwork without her permission and is profiting off them, she is determined to track down the thief. She knows the person must be nearby, but who could it be?

Olivia runs a resale clothing shop in town and has growing problems of her own. The alcoholic husband of her store clerk, Ginny, has just been killed in a suspicious automobile accident. Now police are questioning the cause and Ginny may become a suspect in his mysterious death. Olivia wants to help, but how? And now she has her own doubts about Ginny.

As the two sisters search for answers with the help of an elderly ex-judge and his grandson, they suddenly find themselves caught in a web of deception and danger. Someone is watching them…leaving vague warnings to stop their sleuthing. The next warning could cost them their lives.

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