#MidweekMystery: Sand Trapped by Joanna Campbell Slan

Cara Mia Delgatto was looking for a lost ball when found Jocelyn “JJ” Johnson face down in a sand trap. Gave a whole new meaning to “take a drop.”

It wasn’t a surprise. The neighbors hated JJ for the reckless way she drove her golf cart. Sure, she lived on the grounds of a swanky golf club, and yes, she had tons of money, but JJ ruined flowerbeds, terrorized grandkids, and made a nuisance of herself.

Except…except…she’s quiet now. Lying there in the dirt at Hole #6. Someone bashed in JJ’s head. (Who would risk ruining an expensive Homna golf club like that?)

Cara doesn’t want to get involved. But when Gerta Hunsickler is named the prime suspect, and Gerta’s husband is so angry at his wife that he’s starting divorce proceedings, Cara can’t sit on her hands. She knows what it’s like to be unfairly accused. So she promises to take a swing at it and see if she can hit a long drive down the fairway of justice!

Meanwhile, back at The Treasure Chest, Cara’s friends are busy creating fabulous and fun Mother’s Day gifts. There are two brides-to-be working for Cara, and their two mothers-in-law-to-be have decided not to play nice. Can you say, “Mama’s boy” ten times really fast? I thought you could.

If you love warm-hearted, clean books, that feature female amateur sleuths, fur babies, family, and friends, you’ll love this charming DIY/recycling/upcycling series set on the Southeast Coast of Florida.

Joanna Campbell Slan

Joanna Campbell Slan

Kiki Lowenstein Mysteries

“Our best friend, our next-door neighbor, and ourselves with just a touch of the outrageous.” That’s how RT Book Review describes Joanna’s protagonist, Kiki Lowenstein. The truth is that’s a pretty good description of Joanna Campbell Slan as well.
Joanna is a New York Times Bestselling, USA Today Bestselling, and Amazon Bestselling author as well as a woman prone to frequent bursts of crafting frenzy, leaving her with burns from her hot glue gun and paint on her clothes. And the mess? Let’s not even go there.
Otherwise, Joanna’s a productive author with more than 80 written projects to her credit. Her non-fiction work includes how to books, a college textbook for public speakers, and books of personal essays (think Chicken Soup for the Soul).
Currently, she writes five fiction series: The Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series (Agatha Award Finalist, contemporary, St. Louis setting, crafting), the Cara Mia Delgatto Mystery Series (contemporary, Florida setting, DIY, and recycling), the Jane Eyre Chronicles (Daphne du Maurier Award Winner, 1830s England, based on Charlotte Brontë’s classic), the Sherlock Holmes Fantasy Thrillers (late 1800s, based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s books), and the Zen Cozy Mystery Series (launch 2021).
A former TV talk show host, college teacher, and public relations specialist, Joanna was one of the early Chicken Soup for the Soul contributors. She won a Silver Anvil for her work on the original FarmAid concert to benefit farmers.
In her ongoing quest never to see snow again, Joanna lives with her husband and their Havanese puppy, Jax, on an island off the coast of Florida. You can email her at [email protected] or visit her website at https://linktr.ee/jcslan
Website Http://www.JoannaSlan.com
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/1602372550058785
Twitter http://www.twitter.com/joannaslan
BookBub http://www.BookBub.com/author/joanna-campbell-slan
Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/joannaslan/
Purchase Links – Amazon 

Featured Image: A Florida Golf Course where as far as we know, no dead bodies have turned up

GUEST POST: Cheesecake, love, and other mysteries by Laura Pauling

Laura Pauling writes about spies, murder and mystery. She’s the author of the young adult Circle of Spies Series, the Prom Impossible Series, the time travel mysteries, Heist and A Royal Heist, and the Holly Hart Cozy Mystery Series: Footprints in the Frosting and Deadly Independence with more coming.

She lives the cover of a suburban mom/author perfectly, from the minivan to the home-baked snickerdoodles, while hiding her secret missions and covert operations. But shh. Don’t tell anyone. And she may or may not actually bake cookies. You decide.

Laura Pauling

Laura stopped by to chat about cheesecake, love, and other mysteries.


cheesecake, love, & other mysteries

I wanted to write a cozy mystery. That much I knew. All I needed was inspiration in the form of an amateur sleuth. As I waited for the creative winds to blow my way, I happened to chat with a friend.

I found my inspiration.

My friend was branching out and starting her own business–selling cheesecakes! I loved it. I loved that with an already established career, kids, a husband, and two dogs, she was getting creative with her life. Pursuing a dream. Putting in the hard work and long hours it takes to launch a business. Making herself vulnerable.

Love, love, loved it. And I found my amateur sleuth. The facts that my sleuth, Holly Hart, bakes cheesecake and has red hair are the only similarities between her and the real-life inspiration.

How could I not be inspired? How could anyone not be inspired? If only in that it proves that we can do anything we put our mind to. It’s never to late to start a business or write that novel or attempt to combine what we love with what we do, whether it be for money or love.

After I found my sleuth, I dove into writing the mysteries. I have four written and two already published. Footprints in the Frosting came out in May, and Deadly Independence went live early June. If you sign up for my newsletter, you’ll receive a free mystery, Murder with a Slice of Cheesecake, which will release in July.

If you could branch out and try something new or follow a dream, what would it be?

Visit Laura at http://laurapauling.com to sign up for her newsletter and receive a free Holly Hart cozy mystery novella.

  • Author Links

Website/blog

Newsletter

Twitter

Amazon

  • Purchase Links

Footprints in the Frosting: Holly Hart Cozy Mystery 1LP cover
COMING SOON: Deadly Independence: Holly Hart Cozy Mystery 2


BE THE FIRST TO LEARN ABOUT PROMOTIONS, EVENTS, AND NEW RELEASES: SignUp

THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

GUEST POST and GIVEAWAY: The Right Kind of Skin (Rhino) by Joanne Guidoccio

In high school, Joanne Guidoccio dabbled in poetry, but it would be over three decades before she entertained the idea of writing as a career. In 2008, she took an early retirement from teaching and decided to launch a second career that would tap into her creative side and utilize her well-honed organizational skills. Before long, Joanne was a working writer; her articles and book reviews were published in newspapers, magazines, and online. Eventually she progressed to fiction, where she finds that reinvention is a recurring theme in her novels and short stories.

Author Joanne Guidoccio

Today, Joanne came by to chat about having the right kind of skin. Rhino skin.

Writers especially will appreciate this:


It behooves you to develop a thicker skin.

Toastmaster Rosalind Scantlebury did not mince words at a recent Table Topics Contest. Responding to the prompt—Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me—she focused on an individual’s responsibility not to take things so personally. She peppered her impromptu talk with provocative comments, among them, “What other people think of you is none of your business.”

Definitely inspiring, especially for writers.

Thirty-one years of teaching adolescents thickened my skin considerably, but I faced different challenges when I embarked on a writing career. I had to learn how to deal effectively with critiques and rejection letters from agents and publishers and, most important of all, acquire that coveted rhino skin.

These are some of the strategies in my toolbox:

Get the Back Story
Whenever I attend readings, I pay special attention to the author’s back story. I like hearing the details about his or her writing journey and the challenges encountered along the way. Occasionally, I pick up valuable nuggets of advice that help me along my own journey. For example, Guelph writer Nicholas Ruddock (The Parabolist) established his platform by entering and placing in short story contests. When New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny couldn’t find a Canadian or American agent, she crossed the pond and approached a British agent.

Read Bad Reviews
If I have enjoyed reading a book, I look up the one-star reviews on Amazon. That’s right, I gravitate toward the negative. While shaking my head at the nitpicking and negative comments, I realize that no author is immune from criticism. Not even authors of best-selling novels can please everyone.

Eliminate the Negative
Some writers file and keep all their rejection letters. I suspect they refer to these letters often and get discouraged all over again. It is important to keep accurate records, but it is not necessary to keep these negative reminders around for future reference. After reading a rejection letter, I update the information on a spreadsheet and delete the file.

Throw More Irons Into the Fire
We’ve all heard the advice. Send out the manuscript and then immediately start on another one. Easier said than done. After writing 70K words and looking at multiple drafts of that manuscript, the thought of starting all over again can be daunting. Instead, I like to work on shorter pieces: book reviews, short stories, articles, more blog posts. Entering contests and taking online writing courses also keep my skills sharp. It is important not to sit around waiting for a response. Some action—any action—is needed.

Get Support
I belong to Crime Writers of Canada, Sisters in Crime, Guppies, and Romance Writers of America. I also participate in discussion boards for The Wild Rose Press and Soul Mate Publishing Authors. I try to attend writing workshops, panels and readings offered within a fifty-mile radius. While interacting with these authors, I get valuable advice and feedback about my work. I appreciate all the help I have received, especially from good friend and fellow writer Patricia Anderson. I had only request: “Let it rip!” And she did, but in a constructive way.

From Toronto based freelancer Ian Harvey…
“Rejections are part of the game, but this is the only game in which rejection doesn’t mean no. It means not now, or not for me, or not for me right now. It doesn’t mean no forever.”

Get Joanne’s latest, A Season for Killing Blondes.

Buy A Season for Killing Blondes
Buy on Amazon

And the giveaway:

Rafflecopter

Enter to win a $25 Amazon gift card!

Follow Joanne:
Website/Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Pinterest/Goodreads/Book Trailer


BE THE FIRST TO LEARN ABOUT PROMOTIONS, EVENTS, AND NEW RELEASES: SignUp

THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

GUEST POST: The Worst Possible Cocktail Party by Mindy Quigley

Historian by training, globe-trotting university project manager by necessity, and fiction writer by the skin of her teeth, Mindy Quigley has had a colorful career.

She has won a number of awards for her short stories, including the 2013 Bloody Scotland prize. Her non-fiction writing includes an academic article co-authored with the researcher who created Dolly the Sheep. More recently, she was project manager of the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic, a research clinic founded in Scotland by the author J.K. Rowling. Her work as the coordinator of a pastoral services program at the Duke University Medical Center provided the inspiration for her bestselling Reverend Lindsay Harding mystery series.

Author Mindy Quigley

Mindy’s stopped by to talk about how she uses the Cocktail Party Test to guide her writing.

Intrigued? I thought so! Read on:


The Worst Possible Cocktail Party

My husband, Paul, dreads cocktail parties. He’s a mild-mannered, polite British man—a combination of traits that seems to make him easy prey for cocktail-party nutcases. You know the type. The high-strung lady who asks rhetorical questions only to give herself the opportunity to launch into what seem to be well-rehearsed, and incredibly inane, monologues. “Do you like cats? Well, I love them. When I was growing up, we had a cat named Feather who would pee on anything plastic…”

Another type of nutcase who often ends up cornering Paul, usually next to the alcohol table, are those with nutcasia temporaria (a short-term case of the disease). People who’ve recently been divorced or endured a breakup fall into this category. British men like Paul aren’t known for their ability to share their inner lives, nor are they equipped with the skills to deal with people who spew out their tales of failed romance in large, undigested chunks. When confronted with this type of nutcase, Paul often ends up staring uncomfortably into the middle distance, as if trying to endure a particularly thorough dental cleaning.

The worst offenders are the nutcases who take advantage of Paul’s soft-spokenness and good manners to “enlighten” him with their views on politics or religion. “America isn’t what it used to be. I mean look at the state of the economy/the environment/local schools/boy bands.

Those Democrats/Republicans/Hippies/Rednecks/guys from One Direction have flushed this country down the toilet.”

When I’m writing my Lindsay Harding cozy mystery series, I think of these nutcases.

Burnt Island Cover

I cast my readers in the role of Paul at that cocktail party and myself as a stranger, approaching him near the snack table. With each chapter, I ask myself, am I being a cocktail party nutcase? Here’s what I mean. Say I’ve written a bit of dialogue that’s outrageously clever, full of nimble-minded wordplay and athletic leaps of language. I’ve peppered each sentence with ten-dollar words and Oscar Wilde-esque wit. But when I examine this brilliant bit of dialogue using the cocktail party nutcase test, I may realize that, it is a clear example of the high-strung woman cornering the unsuspecting partygoer. The dialogue probably doesn’t sound very natural, and all those big words probably impose too much unnecessary work on my readers. I’m just talking to hear the sound of my own voice.

Because my books all incorporate true historical elements, I must be careful to avoid nutcasia temporaria, too. In my case, this might manifest itself in my desire to tell my readers every detail of the blow-by-blow, honest-to-gosh true background historical events. After all, I put a lot of research into understanding those events and I want my book learnin’ to show! But the truth is, just like the gory details of some stranger’s marital breakup, the research a writer puts into her books should blend subtly into the background. If I am disgorging chunks of my research like a drunken frat boy in a Wendy’s parking lot, I’m probably suffering from nutcasia temporaria.

The last one, which is probably even more prevalent at family Thanksgiving dinners than at cocktail parties, is the know-it-all jerk, trying to ram his beliefs down your throat. Since my books have a liberal, female hospital chaplain as the main character, this can be an especially delicate dance. I’ve got to be careful to include enough informative little tidbits about her beliefs to reveal her character, but avoid any kind of posturing, proselytizing, or punditry. I want my characters’ views to feel like a finely woven part of who they are, sitting respectfully in the background of their personalities, never demanding center stage. Unless my character is a know-it-all jerk at a cocktail party. Then it’s kosher.

So that’s the cocktail party test. If I can read what I’ve written and think, yeah, Paul would like this cocktail party, I know I’ve succeeded!

Mindy lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA, with her Civil War history professor husband, their daughter, and their miniature Schnauzer. You can follow her at

MintyFreshMysteries (Mindy’s blog and website), FacebookTwitter, and Goodreads.

Murder in Mount Moriah (Book 1), A Death in Duck (Book 2), and The Burnt Island Burial Ground (Book 3) are available on Amazon.

Enter to win a set of paperback copies of all three books on Rafflecopter!

Rafflecopter Giveaway


BE THE FIRST TO LEARN ABOUT PROMOTIONS, EVENTS, AND NEW RELEASES: SignUp

THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

Publishers Weekly reviews THE MUSUBI MURDER by Frankie Bow

designed by Freepik.com

PW Logo

“ . . . winning first mystery. . . Bow, who teaches at a public university, uses wry humor to alleviate the horror of her heroine’s situation and is familiar enough with island culture to know the popularity of Musubi rice balls with a heart of Spam.”

Read the full review at Publishers Weekly.

Order today and get a pre-order discount


BE THE FIRST TO LEARN ABOUT PROMOTIONS, EVENTS, AND NEW RELEASES: SignUp

THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

Amazon Gift Card Giveaway and Interview with Joanna Campbell Slan, author of THE GLASSBLOWER’S WIFE

Joanna Campbell Slan is the award-winning author of the Kiki Lowenstein Mysteries (an Agatha Award Finalist) and two other mystery series.

Joanna Campbell Slan

Her stories in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series have been read and loved by millions. Her books reviving the classic heroine Jane Eyre have won the prestigious Daphne du Maurier Award. In her past life, Joanna was a television talk show host, an adjunct professor of public relations, a sought-after motivational speaker, and a corporate speechwriter. The Glassblower’s Wife is her latest novel.

Q: Joanna, thanks for coming by to chat about The Glassblower’s Wife. Can you tell us about it?

A: The year is 1684, and glassmakers from Venice have been smuggled into France to create glass for the Hall of Mirrors. The Doge of Venice sends an assassin to kill all the artists, but he underestimates the intensity of one woman’s courage.

Q: Your protagonist is a disabled, a widow, and a member of a persecuted minority. How does this affect the way she approaches solving this mystery? What are her hidden strengths?

A: Because she is underestimated, Ruth is able to work a “miracle.” Ruth’s hidden strengths are her ability to observe carefully and her skill at remembering recipes.

Q: What inspired you to write this story?

A: My sister happened upon something about the Jewish glassblowers, and I was intrigued. There aren’t a lot of stories out there about this segment of the population, so I found what I learned particularly interesting.

Q: What kind of research did you do?

A: I read several books about glassblowers, including one about Daphne du Maurier’s family. Of course, I did as much researching on the Internet as I could. Finally, I consulted friends who know much more than I do about Judaism. (And did I mention that I’ve been to Versailles? I have!)

Q: Did your research turn up any surprises?

A:  I was amazed to hear that forks were considered pretentious, and that they were first used in Italy. And the process of turning a blown bubble of glass into a flat piece was fascinating, as well.

Q: Are you a “plotter” or a “pantser?”

A:  Both. I will work a little, then do an outline or a list, and then go back to the piece and see what develops. It’s different for everything I write.

Q: Is this book part of a series, and are you working on a sequel? What’s next for you?

A: I think it will be a stand-alone, but who knows? Next, I need to write All Washed Up, which will be the third book in the Cara Mia Delgatto Mystery Series. Back to research!

Joanna is raffling off a $50 Amazon gift card! Enter the Rafflecopter Giveaway here!

To find our more about Joanna and her work:
List of Joanna’s Works — http://tinyurl.com/JoannaSlan
Joanna’s Website — http://www.JoannaSlan.com
Facebook — http://www.Facebook.com/JoannaCampbellSlan
Blog — http://www.JoannaSlan.blogspot.com
Twitter — http://www.twitter.com/JoannaSlan
LinkedIn — www.LinkedIn.com/in/JoannaSlan
Goodreads — https://www.goodreads.com/JoannaCampbellSlan
Amazon Author Page – http://tinyurl.com/JoannaSlan
Pinterest — https://www.pinterest.com/joannaslan/

Contact Joanna by emailing her assistant, Sally Lippert, at [email protected].

Be the first to learn about promotions, events, and new releases: SignUp