Month: December 2019

– with giveaway

By Leeann Betts

Readers—and writers, too, for that matter—often ask me where I get the ideas for my stories. Well, in this case, I wanted to set my story in Colorado so I could enter several state-based writing contests that require a Colorado setting.

As I do with just about every book in this series, I made up a fictional town based on a part of the state I’d recently visited and which I thought readers might like to learn more about. The Grand Mesa/Mesa Verde National Park area on the western slopes of Colorado is a world unto itself. The scenery is spectacular, the weather is iffy, but the people are warm-hearted and compassionate.

Well, most of the people.

Not the villain in my tale, of course.

I also wanted a politically conservative setting, because while not exclusively so, politically conservative folks also tend to be church-goers, and I wanted both Carly and Mike to be slam-dunked into a situation where they had to re-examine their spiritual beliefs. Throughout this series, a little here and a little there, Carly and her husband have been introduced to the Christian faith.

I don’t think that most folks make a huge decision about their spiritual journey the first time options are presented to them. It didn’t happen to me that way, either. So I’m using the entire series to take them along that path to deciding where they stand regarding their faith. And no, I haven’t decided what that is, yet, either. I’m hoping Carly will show me in the next book, which will come out in June 2020, Risk Management. If you want to know the answer, you’ll need to read that one.

The couple who hosts Carly and Mike on their working vacation are named after very good friends—first names, only. Their last name was drawn from a desire to design a brand that I could draw. A Lazy L, in brand terms, is one that lays horizontally.

The details about the black-footed ferrets are mostly true. Not about the truck accident that dropped several of the critters on the western slope, but they were transported down I-25 into Arizona and New Mexico. At the timing of this story, 2005, they were on the “extinct in the wild” list, although they have since recovered are now on the “endangered” watch list.

Leave a comment, and I will draw randomly for a print copy (US only) or ebook version (winner’s choice) of Missing Deposits.

About Missing Deposits:

Carly looks forward to a vacation when Mike is hired to assist an association of ranchers in western Colorado catalogue their various mineral rights following the discovery of several large deposits. However, Carly soon learns that the real wealth—and the real danger—aren’t below ground. Someone is out to keep a secret bigger and more profitable than gold and copper. And they’re willing to kill for it.

About Leeann:

Leeann Betts writes contemporary romantic suspense, while her real-life persona, Donna Schlachter, pens historical romantic suspense. In the Money is the tenth title in her cozy mystery series, and together she and Donna have published more than 30 novellas and full-length novels. They ghostwrite, judge writing contests, edit, facilitate a critique group, and are members of American Christian Fiction Writers, Writers on the Rock, and Sisters in Crime. Leeann travels extensively to research her stories, and is proud to be represented by Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary LLC.

Website: www.LeeannBetts.com Receive a free ebook just for signing up for our quarterly newsletter.

Blog: www.AllBettsAreOff.wordpress.com

Facebook: http://bit.ly/1pQSOqV

Twitter: http://bit.ly/1qmqvB6

Books: Amazon http://amzn.to/2dHfgCE and Smashwords: http://bit.ly/2z5ecP8

By The Family Mysteries

by Marcia Rosen

Recipes by Jory Rosen

Level Best Books

$15.95

www.theseniorsleuths.com

https://levelbestbooks.wordpress.com

My son Jory and I had a great time collaborating on this book. I wrote the mysteries and he provided the recipes. Together we created some murderous titles for the recipes and decided which types of food would best fit the various mystery stories.

Some of my stories were influenced by being a gangster’s daughter.

Remembering my father, and picturing him at a restaurant he owned in Buffalo, New York when I was a teenager, is what initially inspired me to write stories that took place in a restaurant.

I’m a mystery writer, so of course they had to be about murder, mayhem and, I thought, also a fun bit of madness. Loving short stories, I decided to write a series of short mysteries, all involving the same criminal organization and taking place in a restaurant called Manhattan Shadow.

My father’s life is a major influence. In the book, Zero the Bookie is fashioned after my father. He also appears in my Senior Sleuths Mystery Series along with Dick and Dora Zimmerman, reminiscent of the Thin Man characters.

The idea of adding recipes made good sense, since my father was a chef and the stories were set in a restaurant. Level Best Books, our publisher, suggested putting a recipe before each story.

I agreed. “Great idea. My son is a fabulous cook; he can create the recipes. Plus, we’ll give them names to fit the stories.

Indeed, we did. For example there is, “The Chicken Piccata Caper,” “The Sacrificial Lamb” and “The Quiche (Kiss) of Death.” Near the end we added, “A Deadly Delicious Dessert.”

As I considered mystery stories for the book, I thought about places familiar to me. One deadly story, “He’s A Dead Duck,” was a reminder of a duck pond we lived near on Long Island, years ago. I loved the idea of creating a story beginning with a duck recipe .

As for my son Jory, “In my family, today, we truly look forward to our evening meals. I have three kids (2 girls, 9 and 7, and a boy 3); my grandfather would have adored them. What I cook allows my children to get know my grandfather through every bite of the cuisine he created. I hope the recipes in my mother’s books inspire good memories and experiences in others, too.”

~~~

Exquisitely prepared food and Organized Crime ventures have long gone hand in hand and Marcia Rosen knows a lot about both of them. Her latest, The Gourmet Gangster, (Recipes by her son Jory Rosen) is another delectable entry to her fabulous menu of excellently written books. Be sure to savor this one like a fine dessert.

~Michael A. Black, winner of the Best Original Novel Scribe Award and author of Blood Trails, Legends of the West, and the Executioner series

(Dying Art and Stealth Assassins) as Don Pendleton

The mysteries are malicious. The recipes are delicious.

John Klopfenstein, Criminal Defense Attorney

~ Carmel/Salinas, California

“Begin reading The Gourmet Gangster and you are guaranteed a page-turner. With clever wit, Marcia and her son Jory Rosen give us the mercurial, oft gritty story of lives revolving around a 5-star, mob-run restaurant in mid-town Manhattan. A menu of gourmet recipes offers a superb bonus to their entertaining narrative.”

— R. Scott Decker, author, Recounting the Anthrax Attacks: Terror, the Amerithrax Task Force, and the Evolution of Forensics in the FBI.

About Authors

Marcia Rosen, (aka M.Genda Rosen) frequently speaks about writing mysteries and growing up as “the gangster’s daughter.” She is author of “The Senior Sleuths” mysteries and her publisher Level Best Books will be re-releasing her Dying To Be Beautiful Mystery” Series beginning in 2020. She is also author of “The Woman’s Business Therapist,” and the award-winning “My Memoir Workbook.” She was founder of a successful marketing/public relations agency and is a member of Sisters in Crime, Central Coast Writer’s and Public Safety Writer’s Association. www.theseniorsleuths.com.

Jory Rosen, her son, and collaborator of “The Gourmet Gangster” has been in the advertising and marketing business for over 30 years and is the owner of the J. Rosen Group, a full-service international advertising, branding and direct marketing agency. Jory worked as a cooking demonstrator for many years in NYC and now takes the show on the road by doing cooking demonstrations for his kid’s schools and classrooms. www.jrosengroup.com.

By Katherine Bolger Hyde

They call it Cabot Cove Syndrome: the unrealistic percentage of
murders happening in a fictional small town. Since most cozy
mystery series are set in small towns, and since a cozy mystery
more or less requires at least one dead body, it’s pretty much
unavoidable, and readers have collectively agreed to suspend their
disbelief. But sometimes the concentration of corpses can get to be t
too much—for readers and writers alike.

Writers have found various ways to deal with the syndrome.
Mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher—central character of Murder, She Wrote, from which the syndrome got its name—ended up traveling so much one had to wonder when she got any writing done. Most of Miss Marple’s cases cropped up when she was away from home, or else she got wind of a suspicious death and made up an excuse to visit someone in the village where it happened.

It’s a little easier for series that have a cozy vibe although the sleuth is a professional—the Miss Silver mysteries by Patricia Wentworth, for example, or the long-running Midsomer Murders. Private detective Miss Silver was called to cases all over England, mostly in villages. The fictional Midsomer County does have an awfully high murder rate for a mostly rural county, but at least Barnaby has a legitimate professional reason to travel among the many colorful villages contained within its borders.

In the case of my own series, Crime with the Classics, after three books in which five murders took place, not only in the same small town on the Oregon coast, but in my heroine’s own home, I felt readers would be ready for a break. (I certainly was!) Fortunately, I had a great excuse ready to hand for my sleuth to leave home. Emily Cavanaugh is a literature professor, not-quite-officially retired from a college in Portland, Oregon. So what could be more natural in the fourth book, Death with Dostoevsky, than for her to go back to her old home and spend a few weeks researching her long-planned book in the college library?

Changing locations is not the only way to shake things up. Series characters can come and go as well. When Emily moves back to Portland temporarily, she leaves behind her fiancé and crime-solving partner, Lieutenant Sheriff Luke Richards. So when murder inevitably follows her to campus, she has to find someone in the Portland police force who will put up with her amateur sleuthing. Emily’s usual companions, housekeeper Katie and her baby daughter Lizzie, are back home at Windy Corner as well, so we see a lot more of Emily’s college connections instead.

Every wandering sleuth has to touch base from time to time. Book five will see Emily back at Windy Corner, but in book six she and Luke will be taking off on their long-awaited honeymoon—where, of course, murder will follow them. After that—who knows? The sleepy coastal town of Stony Beach may go on to become the murder capital of the West Coast.

~~~

Katherine Bolger Hyde is the author of the Crime with the Classics series, including Arsenic with Austen, Bloodstains with Brontë, Cyanide with Christie, and Death with Dostoevsky. Katherine lives in the redwood country of the California central coast, where she shares a home with her husband and two obstreperous cats. When not reading, writing, or editing for her day job, she can generally be found knitting while watching British mystery series or singing in the choir at St. Lawrence Orthodox Church.

Amazon buy link: Death with Dostoevsky

Visit her at kbhyde.com or at “Katherine Bolger Hyde, writer” on Facebook.

Today launches the first of weekly posts–for mystery readers. Authors with books you will enjoy will appear every Friday to present their work for your consideration. All sub-genres of mystery will be covered: crime stories, thrillers, cozies, and even a romance mystery or two! Stop by every week to check out the newest edition.

I’m happy to welcome my good friend and colleague, John Schembra, for the inaugural post. John’s books are original and can-put-it-down readable.

~~~

First; Thank you Thonie, for having me as a guest on your blog.

At last, the fourth book in the Vince Torelli mystery/thriller series has been released – Blood Debt is a story of revenge. San Francisco Homicide Investigator and Vietnam veteran Vince Torelli strives to clean up the violence in San Francisco but, after a suspect in a double murder is killed during an attempted arrest, he finds himself protecting the police officers of the city he considers family. His efforts put him in the line of fire when he’s targeted. The brother of the suspect victim wants revenge on the officers responsible and he’ll stop at nothing. He kidnaps Vince, a man obsessively loyal to his job as well as those he works with and defends, a man as smart and committed to his principles as the criminals he catches almost without fail. Vince knows best, though, a blood debt always demands payment.

Though listed as a series, each book is a stand-alone story. I have taken Vince from his time as a Military Policeman in Vietnam (MP: A Novel of Vietnam) to his exploits as a homicide inspector in San Francisco (Retribution; Diplomatic Immunity: Blood Debt).

I have written two other books, not part of the Torelli
series, Sin Eater, and An Echo of Lies- Both are
supernatural thrillers., and I am hard at work on the fifth
Torelli thriller, What Goes Around.

I love to write! I have been an avid reader all my life and
really admired authors who could tell a good tale. My
favorite author is Edgar Rice Burroughs, writer of the
Tarzan books, and dozens of other novels. I have collected
almost all the Burroughs books. He was the main
inspiration for me to become a writer.

I have been fortunate to have my books receive several awards from writing competitions, and MP has been placed in the 18th MP Brigade museum as part of their official history. I hope you will take the time to visit my website for more info on me and my books. I have posted the first chapter of each book for your reading pleasure.

Website: www.jschembra.com

Available at: www.amazon.com , or through my Publisher, www.writers-exchange.com

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