#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--AUTHOR J.V. CAGGIANO ON HOW WRITING A MYSTERY AND KNITTING GO HAND-IN-HAND

J.V. Caggiano has a day job as a part time feral child tamer. She has also worked retail and so knows true fear. She hoards yarn and knowledge, which guided her career and education choices to a masters in library and Information Science, or as she insists on calling it, her book dragon degree. She resides in the frozen wilds of suburban Anchorage, Alaska with assorted pets and relatives and the North American strategic supply of notebooks. Her website is under construction. For now, you can find her on Instagram and Facebook.

 

I will be honest with you dear reader; I have an obsession. Okay two if you count murder. Okay, three if we count chocolate. But we’re not. We are talking about the softest and most tactile of obsessions, the one currently easily occupying fifty percent of my limited storage space, the other fifty being filled with golden age mysteries, forensic manuals and true crime case studies. (Unfortunately, I don’t have anywhere near that much chocolate.) Before I digress for the second time in one short paragraph, lets get to the point. I am talking about yarn.

 

Yes, an obsession if we’re entirely honest, probably an addiction. Are there currently three packing cases stuffed to bursting with yarn in my office? Yes. Is there a basket under my coffee table the size of a hay bale also full of yarn.? Also, yes. Do I know the owner of my favorite yarn shop by name? Yup. Am I proud of any of these admissions? Well yeah, kind of. Can I drop triple digits in this fantasy land without breaking a sweat ABSOLUTLY. If you are ever in Anchorage, AK, stop at Far North Yarns on the corner of 36^th and Old Seward. You’ll leave broke, but you are not going to feel bad about it. Say hi to Annie for me.

 

Yarn is magic, and knitting is witchcraft. You make strange gestures and there is definitely cursing involved, but in the end that one long string turns into a thing! A thing you can wear or wrap around you. As an aunt and now great aunt, I do a mean baby blanket. Its magic in other ways as well. 

 

I have solved a lot of problems when elbow deep in a sweater pattern. It might be the repetition, the rhythmic pattern, but I find nothing fills a plot hole as well or as quickly as a few hours knitting. I plan my best murders when knitting. Knit and purl patterns work best for story beats and pacing but colorwork is my go-to for a good puzzle. Two color stranded knitting is particularly good for a tricky plot. If truth be told, like other mystery writers before me, I have found very few plot problems that can’t be solved by throwing another body in the mix, but a good Fair Isle or Nordic pattern is a very close second.

 

Perhaps the two are irrevocable linked in my mind because I found writing and knitting at the same time. I had learned very basic knitting, the occasional scarf and one or two half-finished blankets. I only pursued it in earnest when I was hurt at work. I couldn’t move a much between the back injury and the pain meds. We didn’t yet have cable in our first apartment, and you can only watch Divorce Court so many times, even on pain meds. But I will admit, it is the perfect way to watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on VHS. 

 

So I tried a hat pattern, finished a blanket, and then made four more hats. Then I got brave and tried a simple sweater pattern. Something about the process scratched the spot in my brain that was made itchy by inactivity. Of course, as a right-handed dyslexic taught how to knit by a left-handed neurotypical, I have been told that I knit upside down and backwards. B it works for me, and it looks the same when I’m done. So I don’t worry about it. I write much the same way, starting with the crime and working backwards and sometimes upside down until I figure out what is going on. And while it’s different from how other people write, it looks like a book when I’m done

 

I was also going through a lot of books, reading things new to me. Somewhere between Agatha Christie and No Stone Unturned, something inside my brain clicked. I wrote a few pages about a lovely woman who owned a tea shop with her wife and had built it into a community hub. And then a few pages later I killed her. 

 

At first, I didn’t know who had killed her despite having created her and her killer. Finding out what happened to my imaginary friend was the most fun I had had in a long time. Now with one published novel under my belt and plans for two series, I hope I have enough patterns to see it through.

 

At Witt’s End

Agatha Christie meets Arsenic and Old Lace. A classic Golden Age puzzle with a character driven plot.

 

Cerridwen Evan Jones has a very brief to do list: Finish and publish her novel. Avoid the head of the local historical society. Make sure Great Uncle Teddy is wearing pants.

 

But when her historic neighborhood is rocked by the discovery of a decades old murder, her list gets a little longer: Find out who broke into her house. Solve a murder. Find out why the hot new neighbor is telling people they are engaged. Stay alive.

 

Buy Links

paperback 

ebook 

AUTHOR KATHLEEN KASKA'S NEWEST CIRCA 1950S MYSTERY

Kathleen Kaska is the author of the awarding-winning Sydney Lockhart Mystery Series set in the 1950s and the Kate Caraway Animal-Rights Mystery Series. She also writes mystery trivia, including The Sherlock Holmes Quiz Book. Visit her website to learn more about her books read her humorous blog, “Growing Up Catholic in a Small Texas Town,” because sometimes you just have to laugh. 

Location, Location, Location

When my husband and I travel, we enjoy searching for historic hotels in which to stay. And we often return to stay in the same rooms. Before long, these places become like home. On one of these occasions, the idea to write a mystery series set in historic hotels was handed to me. We had checked into the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas for our annual stay during Thanksgiving week when this tall, young, attractive woman rushed out of the bathroom, complaining that a dead body was in there. I peeked in and saw a man’s hairy leg hanging over the tub. I jerked back the shower curtain, and darn if she wasn’t right. There he was, lying in a pool of blood. She assured me that she wasn’t the killer, and it was evident that she expected me to do something about it.

 

She introduced herself as Sydney Lockhart from Austin, Texas, a reporter with the Austin American on assignment to write a travel article about the hotel and Bathhouse Row, a collection of spas built along Central Avenue. Since then, Sydney’s world has grown. As in real life, she’s met new people, tweaked her career, and toughened her spirit. Sydney has since solved murders at the Luther Hotel on the Texas coast, the Galvez Hotel on Galveston Island, the Driskill Hotel in Austin, and the Menger Hotel in San Antonio. Now she’s at the Pontchartrain Hotel in New Orleans. 

 

Why turn back the clock to the 1950s for the setting of my mysteries? It’s hard to explain the feeling that overcomes me when standing in a vintage hotel lobby soaking up the past. I’m not exaggerating when I say the inspiration and excitement are explosive. I allow my imagination to drift back into a magical, glamourous world where men wear suits and fedoras and women don pencil skirts, seamed stockings, and stilettos. These old hotels make rich settings because they have their own tales to tell—about the guest, the events, and maybe even the scandals.

 

I can’t help but wonder about all the people who’ve stayed in my room. Were they on their honeymoon? Were they on a family vacation? Were they sneaking away for a romantic rendezvous or engaged in a nefarious activity. All these thoughts run through my mind while unpacking, and soon I’m spinning a new tale.

 

These hotels have accommodated U.S. presidents, notorious gangsters, famous movie stars, and popular musicians. Some were even turned into hospitals and military facilities during World War II. When writing my mysteries, I draw upon actual events and weave them into my stories. Think of my mysteries as whodunits wrapped around a scandalous history lesson. 

 

Sydney no longer flinches when she finds a dead body. However, she is often annoyed with me because I make her the number one murder suspect. She’s also not happy that I relax in my hotel room, propped up in a cushy bed with my laptop while she chases bad guys, or runs from bad guys, gets shot at, thrown into a river, and kidnapped and dumped in an alligator-infested swamp. But the incentive to find the killer is strong. She knows I’m waiting for her at the hotel bar with two olives, steeping in a gin martini. We toast and select the next hotel.

 

Murder at the Pontchartrain

A Sidney Lockhart Mystery, Book 5

 

I came to New Orleans to marry my boyfriend/partner Ralph Dixon. Unfortunately, wedding vows were not exchanged. So there’s no ring on my finger. Instead, I’m in the Louisiana swamp spying on the Ku Klux Klan while Dixon’s sitting in jail for a double murder. Back at the Pontchartrain Hotel, my so-called team is doing their best to help solve the case. My bubble-headed cousin, Ruth, is interrogating the hotel’s French chef. My charge, twelve-year-old Lydia LaBeau, is dressed as a voodoo queen, entertaining the locals at Pat O’Brien’s while looking for clues. Ghost detective Rip Thigbee is the only reasonably sane person assisting me on the case.

 

You probably think I’m making this up, but trust me, it’s just another day in my crazy life. I’m Sydney Lockhart, a private detective. I solve murders. Most of which I’m the primary suspect. 

 

So, mix yourself a Hurricane and join me in the Big Easy for another historic hotel murder case.

 

Preorder (available June 15th)

AUBREY NYE HAMILTON DISCUSSES MISS MARPLE AND MISS SILVER

Patricia Wentworth and Agatha Christie

Today we welcome Aubrey Nye Hamilton, a former librarian who is always searching for the next great read. She publishes a new review, usually crime fiction, on Kevin’s Corner on Mondays and another new review on her own blog Happiness Is a Book on Fridays. 

 

Miss Marple and Miss Silver

No one needs an introduction to Agatha Christie (1890-1976), that peerless symbol of the traditional mystery. Her books are among the most reprinted in the world and her name is synonymous with mystery. Starting in 1920, she created three very different kinds of investigators, one a former policeman turned private detective, the second a married couple who were undercover intelligence agents (debut in 1922), and the third an amateur sleuth with a reputation for sizing up people. Miss Jane Marple first appeared in “The Tuesday Night Club”, a short story published in the December 1927 issue of Royal Magazine. Her first full-length case was The Murder at the Vicarage (Dodd, Mead, 1930), followed by 11 more novels and many short stories. 

 

A few years older than Christie, Dora Amy Elles (1877-1961) was born in India during the British Raj and was educated in England. She began publishing in 1910 and steadily produced novels, mysteries, and poems, more than 60 volumes, until the end of her life. Writing as Patricia Wentworth, she’s mostly known for 32 Miss Silver mysteries. First appearing in 1928, Miss Maud Silver is a former governess turned private investigator. She consults with the upper class of English society. Each happy client refers friends and relatives to her, and she has no need to advertise. She is often compared to Miss Marple, with good reason. She is accepted and consulted by members of Scotland Yard, most notably Frank Abbott, who rises through the ranks during the series, one of the few changes over the course of the stories. His relationship with Miss Silver mirrors Miss Marple’s relationship with Dermot Craddock of Scotland Yard.

 

Miss Marple and Miss Silver are described as elderly or old. Their ages are indeterminate, 45 would have been considered old at the time. Typical for mysteries of the early and middle parts of the 20^th century, they do not change over the course of their adventures. Characters in traditional mysteries are secondary to the plot. There is no story arc about the life of the detective that is developed along with the solution of a crime. The characters are sketched when they are introduced and little, if any, further information about them is provided. Because there are no significant stories for the characters, each book stands alone. This means it is not necessary to start at the beginning of the series. The books lose nothing by being read out of order.

 

Both Miss Marple and Miss Silver are unmarried. I tend to think they are part of the flood of women who were left without marriageable contemporaries by World War I. England lost most of a generation of young men then, creating a cohort of women at loose ends because the men they would have married were all dead. Carola Dunn’s historical mystery series with Daisy Dalrymple is based on this situation. One of the final titles, Superfluous Women, describes the problem in explicit detail.

 

Miss Marple gained her keen knowledge of human nature from watching life in her village of St. Mary Mead. Miss Silver’s career as a governess gave her equal insight into human psychology. Both capitalize on their invisibility as an aging woman in a society that dismisses and undervalues that segment of the population. Generally, someone recognizes the error of doing so by the end of a book. 

 

Despite many similarities, there are important differences between the two ladies. Miss Silver always knew she would have to earn a living, unlike Miss Marple, and she is well aware of her value. Miss Marple tends to dither and receive compliments about her investigative work with self-deprecation. Miss Silver accepts them as her due. Miss Marple will accept money if someone offers it to her, but Miss Silver charges for her services and does not apologize for her fees.

 

Miss Silver’s adventures invariably involve a pair of star-crossed lovers, as in the Brother Cadfael historical mysteries by Ellis Peters. Miss Marple sometimes assists a romance but not always. Some of my favorite Miss Silver stories deal with World War II and its aftermath. Part of Miss Marple’s charm is that her cases are not time bound. 

 

For more about Miss Marple and Miss Silver, see the following articles:

 

“TNC & The Great Detectives: Marple and Silver Fight It Out” by Moira Redmond, Clothes In Books, April 10, 2018, http://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2018/04/tnc-great-detectives-marple-and-silver.html

 

“Miss Silver” by Kevin Burton Smith, Thrilling Detective, October 19, 2018, https://thrillingdetective.com/2018/10/19/miss-maud-silver/

 

“The ‘Other’ Golden Age Knitting Sleuth – Alice K. Boatwright on Miss Silver”, The Crime Readers Association, November 19, 2019, https://thecra.co.uk/golden-age-knitting-sleuth-alice-k-boatwright-miss-silver/

 

As previously stated, no need to consider order of publication in deciding where to start. Books in both series function as stand-alones. My favorite Miss Marple cases are What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw (1957), A Murder is Announced (1950), and The Moving Finger (1942). The latter case deals with an anonymous letter writer and the damage it causes. 

 

Miss Silver addressed a similar situation in Poison in the Pen (1955). I liked these other Miss Silver titles as well: The Chinese Shawl (1943), The Case of William Smith (1948), The Listening Eye (1955), and Miss Silver Deals with Death (1943). 

#COOKING WITH CLORIS--A LITTLE ROMANCE, A LITTLE FONDUE FROM AUTHOR ELLE HARTFORD

Elle Hartford adores cozy mysteries, cozy romance, cooking, and above all, learning new things. As a historian and educator, she believes in the value of stories as a mirror for complicated realities. She currently lives in New Jersey with a grumpy tortoise and a three-legged cat. Learn more about her and her books at her website where you can also sign up for her newsletter to receive bonus material, behing-the-scenes sneak peeks, and terrible jokes.

Celebration Fondue: As Easy as Falling in Love

Makes 4 servings (Cut recipe in half for a romantic dinner for two and serve with salad.)

 

Fondue might seem fancy and complicated. But magical café owner Sakura and her chef, Glacial, are here to prove that anyone can make this fun dish! It only takes half a dozen ingredients to create an enchanting evening. 

 

The following recipe is adapted from Joy of Cooking, with commentary provided by characters from the Pomegranate Café Romance series. Enjoy!

 

Note: Strict vegetarians may avoid gruyère, which is traditionally made with rennet. You can find vegetarian versions (not vegan, but simply gruyère without the rennet), or swap out for a softer cheese.

 

Ingredients:

1 clove garlic

1-1/4 cups dry white wine (plus extra)

1 lb. gruyère, chopped roughly

1 pinch nutmeg

1 T. cornstarch

Veggies, bread, or pretzels for dipping (see step one)

 

Like love, fondue is a dish that doesn’t like to wait. You won’t have much free time once the cheese starts melting! So, prepare your dipping foods beforehand. Sakura loves to use strips of crusty bread, pretzels, or even large croutons. 

 

Glacial recommends foods with vitamins: carrot sticks, red pepper straws, broccoli, tomatoes (either grape tomatoes or large tomatoes chopped so that the seeds stay intact), potatoes, or green apple slices. How you prepare the veggies is up to you, but roughly chopping and boiling the potatoes leads to greater ease of eating! Likewise, broccoli can benefit from a flash boil. Think of this as a chance to clean out the vegetable drawer and practice those knife skills! (Or an excuse to buy prepped veggies from the deli section at the store.)

 

Once you’ve set aside your dippers, it’s time to focus on the fondue. Grab a medium stainless steel pot and your clove of garlic. Peel and halve the clove, then rub it all over the inside of the pot. Think of this like prepping a baking tray with grease. Sakura says this step is silly, but Glacial insists that the oils and flavors from the garlic are important. Discard the garlic afterward.

 

Add wine to the pot and bring to a simmer over medium heat.

 

Once it’s bubbling gently, add in the cheese chunks and a pinch of ground nutmeg, another flavor which Glacial insists will enhance the cheese.

 

Stir everything together with a wooden spoon until the cheese is melted. It’ll look stringy, and that’s okay. Let it sit for a moment while you:

 

Whisk together the cornstarch with an extra two tablespoons of wine in a little cup. If you’re really fancy, Glacial says, you can use kirsch instead of wine here; but if you don’t have kirsch, you won’t notice it’s missing. 

 

Pour the cornstarch mixture into the simmering cheese. Make sure to keep stirring! Good fondue takes some patience–just like love, according to Sakura. It may take five minutes of gentle stirring and simmering, but the mixture will become smooth.

 

If your fondue is too thick, you can add yet more wine to thin it out (just be careful, because you can’t subtract wine once it’s in!). At this stage, you can also add salt or pepper to taste.

 

We’re almost to the good part! Transfer the cheese to a warm fondue pot, or any heat-proof dish set on a stand over a lit tealight. You could eat the fondue straight from the cooking pot or from a bowl, but having a constant heat source will keep the cheese nice and melty.

 

Time to eat! While you dip your bread or veggies, give the cheese a stir to make sure it stays smooth. If it starts to separate, don’t worry. You can always give it a little more heat–even putting it back on the stove for a moment–and with a little stirring, it’ll return to gooey goodness. After all, fondue–like love–is more forgiving than you might believe.

 

Worthy in Love

A Pomegranate Café Romance, Book 1

 

Sakura is desperate to make her new café a success. So desperate, in fact, that she’ll recruit some unsuspecting help . . .

 

Mel is a big city girl who’d rather live the quiet life. She’d also rather not set up a St. Valentine auction with a grouchy carpenter who seems to hate her guts. But she owes the witchy café owner a favor, and Mel’s not one to back down from a challenge . . . even if, in order to succeed, she’ll have to face her toughest test yet: believing in herself.

 

Ryuko isn’t looking forward to the holiday, and he isn’t excited about being in the auction. And he’s certainly not going to fall in love with the café’s new event planner. She has “fancy” stamped all over her, and Ryuko knows his place. But if the café’s meddlesome owner has any say in the matter, Ryuko’s days of staying silent and going unnoticed are numbered . . .

 

Valentine’s Day has come to Belville, and with it, the grand opening of the Pomegranate Café. Can Ryuko and Mel–with a little extra help from Sakura–make it a truly magical holiday? Or will shadows of the past overtake them?

 

Buy Link

BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--AUTHOR LOIS WINSTON MAKES LEMONADE FROM LEMONS

Sometimes things slip through the cracks. Such was the case today. Our featured author was juggling too many balls in the air and dropped one. Unfortunately, we were that dropped ball. So we’ve had to reschedule her to another date. 

However, in the time-honored tradition of making lemonade from lemons, this gives us one last opportunity to remind all of you that the ebook sale on the bestselling 2-book bundle of the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, featuring Revenge of the Crafty Corpse and Decoupage Can Be Deadly, is nearly over. You still have today and Saturday to grab your copy for only .99 cents. On Sunday, the price reverts to $6.99.

 

Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, Books 3-4

Revenge of the Crafty Corpse – Anastasia Pollack’s dead louse of a spouse has left her with more bills than you can shake a crochet hook at. Teaching craft classes at her mother-in-law’s assisted living center seems like an easy way to supplement her meager income. But when Lyndella Wegner—a 98-year-old know-it-all with a penchant for ruffles and lace—turns up dead, Anastasia’s cantankerous mother-in-law becomes the prime suspect in her murder. Upon discovering that Lyndella’s scandalous craft projects—and her scandalous behavior—made her plenty of enemies, Anastasia sets out to find the real killer before her mother-in-law ends up behind bars.

​

Decoupage Can Be Deadly – Anastasia and her fellow American Woman editors are steaming mad when minutes before the opening of a consumer show, they discover half their booth usurped by Bling!, their publisher’s newest magazine. CEO Alfred Gruenwald is sporting new arm candy—rapper-turned-entrepreneur and now Bling! executive editor, the first name-only Philomena. During the consumer show, Gruenwald’s wife serves Philomena with an alienation of affection lawsuit, but Philomena doesn’t live long enough to show up in court. She’s found dead days later, stuffed in the shipping crate that held Anastasia’s decoupage crafts. When Gruenwald makes cash-strapped Anastasia an offer she can’t refuse, she wonders, does he really want to find Philomena’s killer or is he harboring a hidden agenda?

 

Buy Links

Kindle

Kobo

Nook

iTunes

AUTHOR MARY SEIFERT WEAVES PUZZLES, KNITTING, A LABRADOR RETRIEVER, AND THE TITANIC INTO A MYSTERY

Mystery author Mary Seifert loves puzzles of all kinds and can get lost for days trying to solve them. As a former math teacher, she ties numbers and logic to the mayhem game. When not writing or reading, she often pretends to cook. You can also find her nibbling chocolate and sipping wine, both of which sometimes occur WHILE writing and reading. Learn more about Mary and her books at her website.

I’ve written for as long as I can remember and love contriving puzzles. Taking a local history class, I discovered there could have been a county north of us, but circumstances dictated it merge with our county in the 1870s. There could have been a Columbia, Minnesota in Monongalia County, and that’s the location of my story. I can use all the landmarks near home. I solved a cryptic TSA tweet from May 2014, searching for individuals interested in solving puzzles, and Katie Wilk was born. Columbia is a small town with many connections.

 

Katie is an ex-cryptanalyst turned high school math teacher, trying to recreate herself after the tragic death of her husband. The dog thrust upon her, Maverick, is the embodiment of all the fabulous and heroic characteristics of the hospice therapy dogs I have been honored to work with as well as the comical and conniving antics (the food stealing, table topping, and unexpected barking) of my own Labrador retriever. 

 

Katie’s landlady is an expert knitter with a skill I can only hope to aspire to. I love following patterns and watching them turn into lovely, artful pieces, whether it’s a Christmas stocking, a dishcloth (which I am proficient making), or putting together the pieces of a puzzle to help Katie solve a crime. The rhythmic clacking of the needles helps ground Katie. But it does seem that her forte is crafting a killer cocktail.

 

Each book includes a different kind of puzzle, for example: a cryptoquip, a Rubik’s cube, or musical cryptography, a geocache, a tidbit of Titanic history, a nod to the ingenious leading female cryptographers of WWI and WWII, a taste-tested cocktail recipe, and the beginning of a new relationship. I can’t wait for you to meet my cozy mystery family.

 

Maverick, Movies & Murder 

A Katie and Maverick Cozy Mystery, Book 1

 

After losing everything, Katie Wilk is starting life over in Columbia, Minnesota, with a new career—giving up cryptanalysis in favor of teaching school—and a canine companion, Maverick, a black Labrador retriever. But on one of their first outings, Katie and Maverick discover a dead body in a nearby marshland. As the county coroner, Dr. Pete Erickson is one of the first on the scene; as the doctor that day in the ER, he’s the one who stitches up Katie’s head; as the son of the police chief, Pete is also in on the investigation.

 

Meanwhile, the locals are gearing up for the premiere of a new docudrama film called Titanic: One Story, which would be the cornerstone piece of a new Titanic exhibit, to open Labor Day weekend at the Midwest Minnesota History Center. The director selected their town as the location for some of the scenes, and many local residents are featured as extras in the movie. There will be a huge gala dinner and celebration for the grand opening. Tragedy strikes when the director dies suddenly, and suspects abound.

 

Katie finds herself in the middle of it all and doesn’t know anyone in town well enough to know who she can trust.

 

Buy Links

paperback 

ebook 

audiobook 

CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--AUTHOR ELLE MITCHELL VISUALIZES HER STORIES BY CREATING MINIATURE SCENES

Elle Mitchell writes raw, character-driven dark fiction. She spends her downtime researching and eating more than her share of homemade baked goods. Learn more about Elle and her books at her website. 

I’m a visual person.

 

That sounds almost contradictory, given that I’m an author. I haven’t always been a writer, though. I used to be a special effects makeup artist. It was a lifetime ago, when I used another name and lived in another city. 

 

A long medical journey led me to leave my original career path in need of a more sedentary lifestyle; it led me to writing. But when the newness of my first novel wore off, I realized I missed that physical, tactile representation of my work. So used to seeing my vision on screen, it felt small on a page. 

 

In came crafting.

 

I’ve been a crafter since I was a teen, but not a focused one. Until that point, I’d tried a little bit of everything—from shadowbox necklaces to encaustics. Choosing what would best represent my books seemed impossible. So, for years, it was everything.

 

I made resin shakers of TVs and embroideries of cul de sacs, collages of inspiration photos, and beaded jewelry. It all still felt a little lacking. When I started making miniature books to keep track of my reading, things seemed to fall into place.

I dove into the world of miniatures headfirst. Something about me: I’m not good at trying or testing something. I just have to do it.

 

There were a lot of glue mishaps and ruined pajama pants. But eventually, I found my stride. 

 

Once the miniatures are in my hands, it’s like I'm able to let the stories go. They are truly complete.

 

With Another Elizabeth, I knew I wanted to make one or two crime scenes. My first instinct was to choose the bloodiest ones and tap back into the side of me that came home with blood splatters on her cheek and chunks of fleshy bits in her hair, but I went a different way. I chose by the location.

 

I wanted to make a dirty kitchen and a coffee table, to stain a piece of carpet with paint and have an overflowing trash can with a slimy pizza box. Making small and ordinary objects was so gratifying. 

 

I feel as proud holding a miniature loveseat that I made as I do holding a book I wrote. One took months, maybe a year or more, while the other only took a few hours. But both express how I view the world. That’s not nothing.

 

I plucked a still image of violence from Elizabeth’s imagination for the second miniature. She works at a grocery store and has a fun time picturing the murders of her customers. This led me to a checkout line conveyor belt covered in viscera.

 

Most of the materials I used are scrap paper, packaging from cream cheese or scissors, polymer clay, or plastic bits of broken electronics. There are a few 3D printed objects (the sink, for instance), and the silverware was purchased.

 

Bringing parts of the story into the physical world is like a bookend to the novel. My imagination has come to life in every way I can share it. 

 

I hope readers enjoy the extension of the novel, and it draws miniature lovers to the book because curiosity kills people (never cats).

 

Another Elizabeth

The Janes Series, Book 3

 

Elizabeth Dauphine’s life is taking a turn. She has three jobs, a boyfriend that loves her too much, and a recent diagnosis of Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. She’s coming apart at the seams. Now all she cares about is keeping her promise to her younger self before her body fails her—kill without getting caught.

 

Can Elizabeth physically handle satisfying her urge and maintaining her carefully built façade of normalcy? And if so, will she be able to stop with just one victim?

 

Note: This is a dark book with many graphic situations. There is no sexual assault or rape. No animals are tortured or die.

 

Buy Links

paperback 

ebook