Kate Collins's Blog, page 124

Guys and Gals

Mystery books come in all shapes in sizes when talking about characters. 


Some of the best sleuths are guys. Sherlock, the Hardy Boys, Spade, Poirot, Magnum. They bring a certain charm and grit to the story. They can be tough and no nonsense and maybe tender and understanding. Usually they are at the local watering hole downing whiskey and shooting pool. They drive a fast car or motorcycle and always tooling around at breakneck speeds. They can charm the ladies to get their answers or beat it out of a bad guy to find out what’s going on.
Then there are the female sleuths. We have Miss Marple, Jessica Fletcher, Kate Becket, Nancy Drew and of course Reagan Summerside and Evie Bloomfield. They are charming and they can be tough but never brutal. Instead of the local watering hole then do tea in the kitchen or martinis on the front porch. 
What they lack in physical strength then make up for in sheer tenacity and never-give-upness.So my question to you is which sleuth do you prefer…guy or gal? Do you like someone a little harder edged? More whiskey than tea? 
And what about the sidekick? Would you like them the same gender like with Watson and Holmes or do you like to mix it up a bit like in Castle with Becket and Richard Castle?


The mystery is the mystery but who do you like telling the story?

It's Spring-ing!

by Maggie Sefton



Don't you love this sweet little "volunteer" flower, springing up in the midst of my rock garden?



I know others of you around the country have had your spring weather start already.
 I grew up Back East in Northern Virginia---Arlington, to be precise---a stone's throw across the Potomac from Washington, DC.  Spring would definitely start in early April and sometimes in March.  The gorgeous Cherry Blossoms are often in bloom by late March.


Tiny little purple lilac blossoms have appeared, ready to start growing fat and bloom.


After all, my old hometown area of WashDC/Northern VA is sea level (a couple of hours or so from the Atlantic Ocean, in fact).  Plus that entire MetroDC/Northern VA/Suburban MD is geographically located in the Mid-Atlantic area of the U.S.   But I've lived in Colorado since 1988 and have grown used to our later Springs.   Here in Fort Collins, CO, like Denver and the entire Front Range of the Rockies, we are a little over 5000 feet in altitude in the Rocky Mountain West.  They don't call Denver
the Mile High City for nothing.  Usually I don't start planting in my pots and flower beds until May 15th.


One of my oldest rosebushes---w hich has salmon-colored blossoms every year---is tired of waiting, too 


So----yes, our Springs start later than Springtimes do for those of you Back East and throughout the entire Midwest.  So, you may find my Springtime post and photos boring.  Apologies, folks, but I'm posting these Anticipating Spring photos anyway.    For someone like me whose favorite season is Summer, you can imagine how excited I am at the beginning of Spring.  :)  Spring birdies are chasing each other on the branches, and they're singing what I call their "Spring Songs."  Haven't you noticed the different songs birds sing at the beginning of Spring?  Call me crazy, but I have.  But, then, I've always been a little weird.  Okay. . .a lot weird.  But that's for another post.   

THE MOST AMAZING GIFT EVER!

by Mary Kennedy                            
 Have you ever received a gift that was a complete surprise, was exactly what you always wanted, and was so thoughtful and kind that it brought you to tears? (Happy tears!) I received a gift like this from my dear friend and fellow animal lover, Lynda Turpin. Lynda lives across the country in sunny California and we e-mail frequently about animal issues, promoting animal welfare any way we can.  We're especially fond of cats, of course, but we love all animals. I live 3,000 miles away in the chilly northeast (it actually snowed over the weekend) and we've never met. (Although I feel certain that some day we will.)                                                            Lynda is a proud supporter of LapCats, a wonderful organization  They're celebrating their 11th anniversary and have rescued, fostered and found homes for over 3,000 cats in the Sacramento area. You can read more about their mission here. http://www.lapcats.org/ Lynda is a volunteer and she gives an amazing amount of time and energy to fostering, socializing and rehabilitating these adorable furbabies. Since Lapcats is 100% volunteer organization, they need dedicated people like Lynda to continue their work. But now on to the gift! Here it is, my gift from Lynda--paintings of all 8 of my fur-babies!                                                               Lynda captured their beauty and their quirky little personalities.  From Henry, the orange cat looking through the bannister, to sweet Eliza, the little tuxedo cat who had five kittens on my sun porch, Lynda immortalized them on canvas. She's more than a talented artist, she's a generous friend, a creative soul who loves cats and cozies. I am in awe of her talents and I know you are too! Mary Kennedy

Getting to Know You…

Hi, Becky Wilhoite. Thanks for doing the interview. Love getting to know all our readers. 
I live in Garden City, MII have two fur babies. Lacey is an 8 yr old Chihuahua poodle mix. Sadie is a 3 year old jack russle beagle mix. Both are very spoiled.
I don't really have any hobbies besides reading and collecting books.  I collect Snow Babies also. Currently I’m a stay at home wife.
I don't really have up coming plans.  Just going with the flow.I enjoy reading of course and being with friends and family. Whether we're out bowling or having a game night. I love going to the movies.
My parents have property up north (about 4 hrs away. I'm from MI so we always say up north) that we spend time at every year. It's in the country away from busy life. Been going up there as long as I remember.  Sometimes from there we'll visit the Upper Peninsula and Mackinac Island. That's what we look forward to every year. Every few years my husband and I try to go out of state.
The loved reading The Boxcar Children when I was young but I wasn't an avid reader until after I got married. My mom is a huge romance reader. I felt like I couldn't connect with anything so I was following in her foot steps. I randomly found the first Lucy Valentine book by Heather Webber in the romance section. Then later the High Heel Mysteries by Gemma Halliday misplaced as well. Now cozy mysteries are my favorite! Because of finding Heather Webber, I found out about the cozy chicks then later found Tonya Kappes!
I use to watch Castle but lost interest in this pass season. I would say Pretty Little Liars is my favorite mystery now. It's so addicting! I loved Ghost Whisperer when it was one.
I read A New Tradition by Tonya Kappes every year. It's short but a sweet cute read.

The Spotlight is on Stoneham, NH

by Lorraine Bartlett / Lorna Barrett / L.L. Bartlett

Stoneham, NH is the setting for my Booktown Mysteries. It's a very pretty little village very close to the New Hampshire and Massachusetts state lines.  Back in 1822, the village was founded by Hiram Stone, who owned a granite quarry. 

The village was falling into disrepair until Bob Kelly, the then-president of the local Chamber of Commerce, recruited a number of used booksellers to come to the village. Among them, was Tricia Miles, who opened the vintage mystery bookstore, Haven't Got a Clue. It was Bob's vision that Stoneham should be known as BOOKTOWN.

Hay on Wey mystery bookshop.




What's rather odd about that is that Bob was never a big reader. What he was is an operator. He saw an online story about Hay on Wey, a little village in Wales that is full of bookstores (and antiques and other charming shops). Bob also became romantically involved with Tricia's sister, Angelica ... but that's another story.

The Chamber of Commerce has always been behind the village's rebirth, and that continues even though Bob is no longer its president. That job fell to Angelica Miles after a bitter election (and after she and Bob broke up).

For years, Stoneham was known as the "safest village in New Hampshire," but that changed when prosperity arrived--soon after the bookstores opened. A lot of people say that changed once Tricia Miles arrived. You see, she seems to have a knack for finding the recently deceased (and in some cases, the just-about-to-be deceased). After Tricia found her second body, she became known as "the village jinx," a title she loathes.

Since crime picked up, it was decided that Stoneham should try harder for another distinction: Prettiest Village in New Hampshire. Should being the operative word. That should be an easy title to win, considering how lovely the shops are, and all the beautiful hanging baskets of flowers that line Main Street (as well as the urns in front of every store) every summer. However, one year, someone was determined to make sure the village wouldn't be in the running.

Despite the bodies piling up, Stoneham really is a very nice place to visit. There are restaurants (The Bookshelf Diner, Booked for Lunch, and the Brookside Inn), a pub (the Dog Eared Page), and of course, many bookstores.

If you haven't already visited, try reading Murder Is Binding.  The village welcomes all new visitors.

If you have visited, what's your favorite thing about Booktown?

It's Fry Day!

by Lorraine Bartlett / Lorna Barrett / L.L. Bartlett

If there's one veggie I love (and boy does it love me -- I know every time I step on the scale), it's the potato. I mean, think about it. It's versatile!

You can boil it, bake it, boil it, fry it, saute it. It can be eaten alone (yup--many's the time I've just had a baked potato for lunch ... okay, toss some chili on it, and it's even BETTER), or as a side dish. (Mashed, as chips, etc.)

You can add it to other stuff (onions, peppers, and a little garlic). Corned beef and cabbage wouldn't be the same without potatoes (and carrots) on the side.

You can make amazing things with it.  (Deb Baker has a recipe in The Cozy Chicks Kitchen for potato doughnuts!)  My aunt can't go to any kind of family gathering without bringing her famous cheesy potatoes.

So, let's hear it for the amazing potato.  (Guess what I'm having with my dill-baked cod tonight?  Yup--FRIES!!!)

Have a potato recipe you'd like to share?  We'd love to try it!

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Monday, on Facebook, the Cozy Chicks will announce a BIG promotion we're a part of.  You won't want to miss this promo -- so LIKE us on our Facebook Page -- or better yet, join our Facebook Group.

One hint.  It's gonna be BIG.

Happy birthday to Daisy the Princess Dachshund!

Please join me Mary Jane Maffini aka Victoria Abbott in wishing Miss Daisy Maffini:

Happy Thirteenth Birthday!
Daisy at Four Months - ready to take on the world!
Daisy, who now has a little frosted face, has had quite a good career as a princess dachshund.  
Aside from being a model for some nifty outfits and liking her pearls, Daisy has also
Pearls are always right.
logged many days as an efficient doorbell system, terrifying the UPS and Fedex guys and many a repairman.  For all that she’s thirteen pounds, she can still manage to sound like an enraged Rottweiler. Just last week, she frightened a salesman into racing in a diagonal across the front yard to safety.  On the upside, she loves to see kids arrive and will even get dressed for Halloween. 
With luck, those kids will drop some candy in the right spot.
You may laugh, but back in the day, Daisy surprised a robber who had thrown a rock through our neighbor’s patio door.  From our second floor deck, she barked so loudly, that the young burglar fled in terror.  The robbery was thwarted, nothing was stolen and according to one friend ‘Daisy saved the neighborhood’.
Daisy suffered a ruptured disc when she was about five years old and required a complex neurosurgery to repair her spine.  She bounced back to have many good and happy years.

Daisy was the model for Sweet Marie, one of two rescued mini-dachshunds in mom’s Charlotte Adams mysteries, starting with kicking up a racket in Organize Your Corpses.  In the fictional series, “Sweet Marie” and her partner-in-crime, Truffle (looks a bit like Lily), become Therapy Dogs in The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder.
But in reality, Daisy became a successful and effective therapy dog along with her sister Lily.   Daisy and Lily proud therapy dogs.


By some miracle she managed not to bark during the exhaustive testing to earn her therapy dog scarf and badge. For a number of years until her retirement, Daisy had many happy visits to two different dementia wards where she brought many tears of joy to residents, staff and mom. She is still always very happy to meet a person in a wheelchair or a hospital bed and loves to visit her ‘Nonna’ in the nursing home.


Her current hobbies are napping on the sofa, napping on mom’s pillow
I'm getting away with it!
 napping in dad’s recliner and napping in the bed under mom’s desk and napping in a stripe of sunshine anywhere. To break the pattern, she enjoys a trip to the dog park, but only when there's no snow or rain. 
This park belongs to me!  She also maintains a lively interest in squirrels, when awake, and in finding food sources where people might think that food was safe from her. (Note to self: move the chairs a bit further away). She is sure that some day, she will find the secret to opening a can of food. Then, we'll see who rules the kitchen.
Someday it will all be mine!

Daisy’s other goal is to ‘take down’ Rocco, the king Doberman who lives on the other side of the paper-thin wooden fence next door. She is always thrilled to hear that Rocco is outside and can be barked at. Daisy is never the one to stop trash-talking first. 
She is hard of hearing and can’t see too well and has a bit of arthritis and a few other ailments, but she’s still a happy little pooch who greets every day with enthusiasm and a wagging tail, an inspiration to the rest of us.
Please join me in wishing her many more years of being a wicked little doxie! Now excuse me while I go giftwrap some dog treats!
Don't forget to come by and tell me about your beloved pets!  We love to hear about you and yours.

Festivals and Crash-landings

Hi, Duffy Brown here.
This is release week for Braking for Bodies. It’s set during the Lilac Festival on Mackinac Island. Because the island is a throwback to days gone by there are tons of festivals on the island along with parades and everyone gets involved.
There’s the Fudge Festival of course. What else would you expect on an island that sells ten tons...yes tons...of fudge a year.
There’s the horse festival as horses are how things get done on an island with no cars. Horses do everything...deliveries, taxi service, haul wood and construction stuff, furniture...you get the picture. The horses deserve a festival!
There’s the jazz festival that takes place at the lovely Grand Hotel and the bike festival where there’s a huge parade and everyone decorates their bike. Bikes are the main mode of people transport and sometimes that works out better than other as we see here as what happens to Evie in BFB...
Brakes! Holy cow brakes! I jammed the peddles in reverse, front tire skidding, back tire fishtailing the momentum carrying me forward. I flipped over the handlebars and I landed with a solid oomph on top of the bag with my bike tumbling onto my back, a pedal wedged where no peddle had any right to be. I lay there for a second in the dark my tongue counting teeth, the little bones in my spine realigning. Landing on garbage was not a high point in my day but the squishiness kept me from looking like skinned road-kill. It smelled like salad...Italian? Personally I think it needed more oregano. I blinked open one eye and then the other and stared at the Peepster, his face inches from mine. His eyes were open too but they weren’t staring back at me. They weren’t anything. They were cold, vacant and dead. Dead? No! I blinked a few times and refocused. The Peepster had a deep gash across his forehead and there was blood. Yes, dead!
But I digress, we’re talking festivals not bike crashes. So the point is do you have any Spring Festivals coming up in your neck of the woods? Do you have a Lilac Festival? Tulip Festival? Spring Fling get-together. 
If you do I wish you better luck than what Evie had here. Hugs, Duffy 
Get books here (Amazon) And here (B&N)

A Festival of Fiber

by Maggie Sefton



Last Friday for my Spotlight, I was moving too fast and neglected to add the photo for the first in the 
Molly Malone Suspense mysteries----DEADLY POLITICS.  So, here it is.  Yarn Fest photos follow below.   



Hi, Everyone.  Last Saturday I attended the 2016 Interweave Yarn Fest which was held at a large hotel right off the  main interstate between Fort Collins and Loveland in Northern Colorado.  I was there at the vendor booth for the Lambspun Knitting and Fiber shop here in Fort Collins (which I call Fort Connor in the books).  I was signing copies of the Kelly Flynn Mysteries, which most of you readers know includes the Lambspun shop as a main setting in the series.  




Interweave Yarn Fest is a large convention-like gathering held once a year for knitters, hookers (crochet folks), spinners, and weavers-----anyone who uses and/or enjoys working with fibers.  Interweave is the leading publisher of magazines on knitting, crochet, spinning, weaving, and all things fiber related.  The Yarn Fest starts on a Thursday with various classes on all kinds of fiber topics and continues through Friday and Saturday.  And all through the Yarn Fest there is an exhibition hall in the hotel which is filled with every type of fiber vendor possible.   And---there are also various breeders and farmers who provide bags of cleaned, carded wools from sheep, alpaca, yak, you name it-----ready to be spun, wound, and used.  If it walks around on four feet and has a fleece or coat of some kind, someone somewhere will shear that coat and use it to make a garment of some kind.   It's an absolute celebration of fiber.


Another reason I enjoy being at the Yarn Fest each year (I spend nearly four hours there) is
because I always meet the most interesting people.  And some of the nicest people as well.   Spinning and weaving have been around for millennia.  And knitting has been done for hundreds of years.  British sailors used to knit their own sweaters while they were at sea.  Really.  Truly ancient arts.    
 

ARE YOU GOING TO SCARBOROUGH FAIR?

By Mary Kennedy                              
                                                               
   "Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley sage, rosemary and thyme..."Couldn't resist the song reference. (And yes, I know you won't be able to get the tune out of your head!) Last week, I promised you a look at my summer herb garden. And as a bonus I'll share a way you can enjoy some frozen herbs all year long. I have a shady yard with awful, clay-like soil, but no worries, I grow herbs in pots and move them around so they catch the maximum amount of sunlight.                                                               I grow all the old favorites, parsley, basil, thyme, oregano, mint (make sure you put in a pot, it tends to overtake everything if you put it in the ground), sage, chives (which reappeared this year--amazing!) and rosemary.                                                              I'm not an adventurous gardener and I like to plant things that will actually grow without a lot of coaxing or extra care. When you plant basil, be sure to pinch back the leaves (choose leaves from the top) or the basil will grow tall and spindly.                                                             If you're space is really limited, you can try the "one pot" garden pictured above. Each plant gets plenty of sun and it takes up so little space. Some of my friends grow these on their apartment patios.  Here's another choice when space is at a premium.                                                                                         Of course, if you have more room, you can do something creative. Check out this clever wagon wheel idea for planting herbs.                                                                     
What do to do if you have leftover herbs at the end of the season? Don't discard them. You can freeze them in ice cube trays (you probably don't have ice cube trays on hand, but you can buy them at the Dollar Store).  Frozen herbs are fabulous to have when you're making soup or sauces during the cold winter months. You can freeze them in olive oil...                                                         or water...                                                         You will be so glad to have them next winter! What are you planting this summer?  Happy gardening. Mary Kennedy