Kate Collins's Blog, page 5

Welcome to the pool

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

Yesterday we opened our pool for the summer. It's always a potentially frightening event.  Will the water be clear or murky?  Will the bottom be full of dead worms who wiggled their way under the cover, fell in the water and drown? And...how's that liner doing?

We were relieved that upon peeling back the cover that the water was sparkling clear. (Whew!)

Last week, while poking around in our basement looking for something else, I came across a plastic yellow duck.

Hmm. Where did that come from?  Neither Mr. L nor I remember ever buying this duck. Did someone give it to us?  Was it conjured up by rubbing a lamp and asking a genie for a wish? Who knows! But it's now in our pool, floating around and looking a little lonely. Should I try to find her a friend? Many friends?  Where would I find it/them?

Since the pool was looking pretty spiffy, I decided to make a video using it as a background. What do you think? (I like the bird tweeting in the background.)


So, yup, if you'be been waiting for the paperback of A KILLER EDITION, it'll be available on June 30th.

 Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books A Million | Chapters/Indigo | Indiebound  Book Depository (free shipping worldwide)

Let's Turn This Year Around

by Gayle Leeson

I don't think the first half of 2020 has been easy for any of us. So let's work together to make the second half wonderful!

1. Enjoy the Cozy Chicks month of giveaways in July!

2. Make having to wear masks fun. I got these from Zazzle: one for self-promotion (that's PERILS AND LACE), one that's artsy--Monet's water lilies, and a funny one (a smiling mouth). I put it on, and my son said, "Please don't wear that out anywhere." LOL


3. Tell me in the comments what books, movies, and games you're enjoying. I'm reading craft books at the moment, and I recently watched the movie Yesterday. My son and I have also been watching some of the classics we've missed, so we've watched Fight Club and Jaws. We've been watching Doc Martin, Barry, and Psych too. And I'm glad Grantchester is back.
As for games, we've been playing Spades. The best part of that is having the entire family gathered around the table chatting while we play. Oh, and our choice of "cigars" are really good too.




4. What social media, are you following? On Instagram, I'm loving
https://www.instagram.com/the_photography_of_simon_dell/ :




5. Where are you going? My son and I have been walking at a local park in the evenings. It's so nice to get outside and enjoy some fresh air.


6. What are you doing to show yourself some love? I ordered this Beauty Box from Target. Only $7, and it's all about nails.


7. What made you laugh today? This bulldog all buckled in and ready to roll did the trick for me.


So, let's enjoy the little things and start the second half of 2020 off optimistically!

Extra Post Info

by Maggie Sefton

I forgot to include this information in my original Cozy Chicks Blog post earlier today.  

I'm giving away two Kelly Flynn Knitting mysteries in paperback form. The other Chicks are already ahead of me.   I will choose two of the regular Facebook Cozy Chicks readers.  The two mysteries are:  A KILLER STITCH and CAST ON, KILL OFF.   Next week I'll choose one reader and the last week in June I'll choose another Cozy Chicks reader.  

Incredible Times

by Maggie Sefton


Sorry for the delayed post.  I will have to plead overabundance of emails and posts from my large family.  Emails and phone calls have been flying back and forth as we've been checking on each other.  I have four adult daughters.  Daughter #2 Melissa rented an apartment here in Fort Collins, Colorado six months ago, and it has been very nice having her close by.  She's great company.  Both Melissa and I have traveled the world over the years so she has as many great stories as I have.  :)

I have also tried to be extra careful to avoid crowded areas where the chance of picking up the dangerous Coronavirus is more prevalent.  The daily news is quite sobering bccause the virus is a world wide Pandemic.  I'm still not sure if that's a word.  

Meanwhile, on the fiction front, I've promised myself that that I will start writing the second in the Historical Mystery series.  The first is SCANDALS, SECRETS AND MURDER and takes place in 1890 Washington, D.C. I've really enjoyed slipping back in time to my old Hometown of Washington.  Many villains populated the scene, too, and all of you know how much I enjoy writing about villains.  :)  

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP IN THE TIME OF CO-VID

By Mary Kennedy                                                   

This is a photo of Yogi, my grand-dog, visiting his girlfriend, Zoey. Proof that even with Co-Vid, love finds a way! Yogi sees Zoey almost every day (True confession time. He plays the field and is also involved with her sister, Tilley) They walk together (observing social distancing as much as they can), and except for an occasional nose-to-nose greeting, they do not touch.
I started think about how we maintain friendships in the time of Co-Vid. Certainly I've always kept in touch with a far flung group of friends and relatives by e-mail, and now I find I've upped my game. Instead of waiting until I have enough "news" to warrant an e-mail, I send a quick photo (like the one above) by text. Sometimes I get a quick reply, like Cute!" or a smiley face.
Jokes and cartoons are making the rounds more than ever and I forward those too.  The news is grim and who wouldn't want a laugh or chuckle to brighten their day? Political jokes are touchy so I try to avoid those.
As people spend more time at home, I find that more readers are contacting me with questions about their own writing projects. I try to give helpful advice and never chastise anyone for not doing more, or writing more. The truth is we all could "do" more, but sometimes it's hard to get motivated when things seem to be collapsing all around us. I've learned over the years that people do what they can, in writing as in other pursuits.
I'll print the most interesting questions in upcoming blogs, the questions that have a universal appeal. (Of course, some writing questions may have a universal appeal, but are simply unanswerable. In a time of financial uncertainty, I'm getting a lot of questions like, "So realistically, how much can I make from my first book?")                                                                         
Unanswerable because I don't have a crystal ball.  I can barely predict what I will make on a book, it's impossible for me to predict what your book will make (assuming it sells.) 
 I'm receiving a lot more texts and e-mails than before the virus.  At least forty or fifty a day. I wonder if you are, too? Is everyone feeling the lack of social connectedness and wants desperately to make contact in some way? Some of you are taking classes on line, and I wondered how that was going? Do you find it helpful, or do you miss the in person interaction with your instructor and your classmates?
Drop a line if you feel inclined, and stay safe everyone!
Mary Kennedy

Tea for You!

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

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”
– George R.R. Martin, Games of Thrones

You could turn the above quote around to have it apply to writers, too. How many characters have I written in the past (mumble, mumble) years? Thousands.

Maybe writers are just frustrated actors, too. We get to play all the parts in our heads.

One of the parts I like to play is owner of a tea room, just like my character Katie Bonner. I don't have any more time on my hands than I did before the pandemic, but for some reason I've done a lot more baking. I've made bread, banana bread, zucchini bread, stewed rhubarb and custard, rhubarb cake, snickerdoodles, and walnut cake just to name a few. Some have been extremely successful, and some have been duds, but I had fun doing all of that.

Imagine being able to bake everyday and everything came out perfect!

That's what happens at the Tealicious tea shop on Victoria Square. Every day, Katie and her chef/manager, Brad Andrews, turn out cookies, scones, pastries, and cakes for their customers.

EVERY DAY!

You can imagine you're a baker, too, with Gayle Leeson's and my cookbooklet, TEA FOR YOU and it's FREE!

We hope you enjoy this complimentary cookbooklet based on the Victoria Square Mysteries and the Life On Victoria Square companion series. They feature Katie Bonner, owner of Victoria Square’s anchor, Artisans Alley, and the Square’s tea shop, Tealicious. She is also the president of the Victoria Square Merchants Association.

These are some of the recipes Katie and Telicious’s chef/manager, Brad Andrews, prepare for their customers. We hope you enjoy them, too.



Kindle US  |  Nook  |  Kobo  | Apple Books  | Smashwords
If you enjoy this cookbooklet, please tell your friends and family about it and the Victoria Square Mysteries and Life on Victoria Square.

Thank you!

Stepping out of my comfort zone

It's only been 15 years in the making.

Back in the day (which means before I was published in novel-length), I experimented with several different genres. I started out with hard-boiled suspense (the Jeff Resnick series), cozy mystery (the Victoria Square Mysteries) and women's fiction.

Sabina Reigns started out as women's fiction, but then I wrote three chapters as a cozy mystery (for a contest, where it didn't even place), and then went back to women's fiction. But then I got contracts for Booktown and Victoria Square from Berkley Books and the Sabina manuscript went back under the bed. But I never forgot her.

This winter, when I was between projects, Sabina came out from under the bed and I spent two months rewriting the book. I've come a long way in 15 years and so Sabina and her cohorts have a much deeper, more sobering story to tell than they would have more than a decade ago. But there're still some elements of fun as Sabina makes her journey from housewife to successful entrepreneur. And it's more than just that (which means I probably need to work on the description a bit more). It's also a story about mothers and daughters and how those relationships change.

The book will be available in print and ebook on September 4th. (The print edition isn't yet available to pre-order, but if you read ebooks, it can be pre-ordered now.)

Sabina Reigns Miller had it all: a wealthy husband, a beautiful home, a daughter at a great college. Without warning seven words blow the bottom off her world. "I've met someone else-and she's pregnant." Her husband of twenty years wants a divorce so he can move his mistress into their former residence. Although Sabina loses her comfortable life, she refuses to fall on her face. Her ex-husband's girlfriend may be living in their house, but Sabina has interior design skills and a bucket of dreams.

Can she rebound from the unexpected change, stick to her principles, help out a friend, and find someone to love again?

Kindle US | Kindle Worldwide | Nook | Kobo | Apple Books | Smashwords

Will you give Sabina Reigns a chance?

Special Guest Ruth Hartman

by Gayle Leeson


Thank you to Gayle Leeson for inviting me to guest post this week! It’s an honor to be included with this wonderful group of cozy writers.
At a family reunion last year, a discussion with my cousin about possible book ideas turned into my first cozy mystery. She’s a book editor and great brainstormer, always giving fantastic ideas while at the time guaranteeing we both end up laugh-crying. She of course knows I’ve loved cats my whole life. And that every one of my books has at least one feline represented. She asked me if I’d heard of cat cafés.
Amazingly, I hadn’t.
How could such a cat lover not know about something so incredible? Where people can hang out with cats while drinking a latte?  But after some research about various sites, I was hooked. Yes, a murder would take place at a fictional cat café. And soon.The result of our phone conversations and endless texts resulted in, “Hairballs and Homicide.”


When Ellie Warren opens the Kitty Beret Café, her life revolves around finding forever homes for rescued cats and serving lattes. That is, until a woman’s body is discovered behind her shop—the same woman who’d thrown a hissy fit with Ellie in front of lots of witnesses. With Ellie’s cat, Templeton, supplying clues and the help of handsome Detective Simon Dare, she’s on the prowl for the murderer. Will Ellie discover the identity of the culprit before the murderer sinks their claws into her?
You can get the special pre-order price here: https://www.amazon.com/Hairballs-Homicide-Kitty-Beret-Mystery-ebook/dp/B086NWNKT2/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=hairballs+and+homicide&qid=1591621075&sr=8-1


 Ruth J. Hartman spends her days herding cats and her nights spinning mysterious tales. She, her husband, and their cats love to spend time curled up in their recliners watching old Cary Grant movies. Well, the cats sit in the people's recliners. Not that the cats couldn't get their own furniture. They just choose to shed on someone else's.
Ruth, a left-handed, cat-herding, farmhouse-dwelling writer, uses her sense of humor as she writes tales of lovable, klutzy women who seem to find trouble without even trying.
Ruth's husband and best friend, Garry, reads her manuscripts, rolls his eyes at her weird story ideas, and loves her in spite of her penchant for insisting all of her books have at least one cat in them.

Weddings as a cozy theme

Hi, Duffy Brown here.I’m working on Wedding Day and Foul Play but this is not the first time that a wedding has played a theme in my cozy mysteries. There is Killer in Crinolines.  I’m not a fan of flamboyant weddings so killing someone off there as fun.Killer in Crinolinesis set in Savannah and centers around a murder at a big old Southern style wedding with everyone dressed in GWTW period costumes. You know that old saying always the bridesmaid never the bride, well Reagan Summerside, the female sleuth in Killer, has been both. The bride part didn’t take proven by the fact that Reagan caught Hollis, her husband and the hound of Savannah, doing the horizontal hula with Cupcake right there in his office. The last wedding Reagan attended she was there to deliver a bowtie from her consignment shop to the groom as he misplaced his.  The good part of that wedding was that the cake was delicious. The deadly part was that the groom wound up dead in five tiers of icing and fondant, the bad part was that her BFF, Chantilly, the groom’s ex got accused of the murder. Chantilly shouldn’t have been at the wedding in the first place of course but she and her UPS truck just sort of wound up there. “You shouldn’t be here,” I said to Chantilly as she swiveled round in the driver’s seat of her UPS van. White icing and cake crumbs smeared her lips and a glob of raspberry filling dripped down her chin. A pink butter cream rose stuck to the front of her brown uniform blouse. “Dear God in heaven! You went and ate the wedding cake!”“One slice,” she mumbled around a mouthful. “Who’s going to miss one little old slice? The freaking thing is five tiers high. It took three Cakery Bakery employees and the owner Delta Longford herself to lug it in. They even made GracieAnn Harlow stand on a ladder to get the bride and groom thing on top.” Chantilly held up a chunk of mangled pastry. “This here should be my wedding cake, except for the pink roses. This should be my wedding day, my wedding colors of creamy-peach and blue-morning-rain. Simon is my man. We were engaged! How could he marry someone else!” Chantilly wailed, a tear sliding down her cheek and cutting a path across a white icing smear.  Hopefully none of the weddings you’ve attended were like this one with the groom dead as Lincoln right there in his own cake. So what do you think is the best part of a wedding? The cake? The first dance? The saying I Do? Let me know and I’ll give away two Killer in Crinoline tote bags from the answers.Hugs, Duffy Brown

Third in the Molly Malone Suspense series----BLOODY POLITICS

by  Maggie Sefton


Want to Read
Want to ReadRate this book1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 starsThis is one of the reviews that appeared when the 3rd in the Molly Malone Suspense series was first published a  few years ago. Don't let the title scare you.  There are no murders on the page.  It's an amateur sleuth mystery.  Of course, politicians can be scary.  :)  Bloody Politics(A Molly Malone Mystery #3)by 
Maggie Sefton (Goodreads Author)
A junior congressional staffer, Natasha Jorgenson was on her way to meet with Molly to hand over important research on an international banking bill. Natasha was the third person who knew about the research Molly was doing connecting powerful people in Washington----and the third person to die.  Molly fears Natasha won't be the last.

As she and her colleagues are targeted by break-ins, wiretaps, and harassment, Molly discovers that powerful players are working out a plan to change the course of history . . . and they will stop at nothing to make sure they succeed.

The latest Molly Malone mystery from New York Times bestselling author Maggie Sefton.