Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 75

Three Shots to Celebrate Sherry Harris!

Edith here, on the fifth Wednesday of the month. We here at the Wickeds are so excited to celebrate the release yesterday of Three Shots to the Wind, Sherry’s third Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Saloon mystery! Many congratulations, Sherry.

Sherry shared the book’s description here yesterday, along with gorgeous photos of the Sea Glass Saloon’s setting.

So, Wickeds, let’s talk shots. What shot would you most want to have three of? Tequila or single-malt Scotch? Coffee syrup? A vaccine? Target practice rounds in the bullseye? All of the above? Tell our readers your preferences. Bonus points if your answer ties into Sherry’s series.

Julie: CONGRATULATIONS SHERRY!! I can’t wait to read this book! As for three shots–that’s a hard question! Vaccines come to mind. Three shots at editing a book are a gift. Three shots of espresso make a good morning.

Barb: Sherry, congratulations! I love this series. For three shots, I’ll go with the Rule of Threes, always handy in all forms of writing, including books, jokes, slogans, commercials, speeches, and of course, Declarations. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness!

Edith/Maddie: I love it Barb, and three hip-hip-hoorays for Sherry! I guess it’s on me to opt for three shots of alcohol, and better yet, at a seaside bar like the Sea Glass Saloon. To fit the tropical setting, I’ll try samples of three of their best rums, but I’ll have to rely on Chloe to tell me what they are.

Liz: Yay, Sherry! I’m an espresso shot kind of gal – three shots for sure! Morning AND afternoon

Jessie: Super congratulations, Sherry! And what a fun title! As for the three shots, I’m with Liz about espresso! I have a double each morning and sometimes a third in the early afternoon. But as to another kind, I would say I am not easily discouraged and am happy to give at least three shots at anything I would like to learn to do, try or be. Good things come in threes after all!

Sherry: Thanks so all of you — I love your different takes on shots! My editor came up with the title, Jessie. I’m so happy this book is out in the world. As to shots? I don’t really like them but for the purposes of the pictures from yesterday, I tried a lemon drop shot and it was delicious!

Readers: Share the kind of three shots you’d like.

Three Shots to the Wind is Out!

I’m so thrilled that Three Shots to the Wind is out today and I’m giving away a copy to celebrate! Here’s the back cover copy:

Chloe’s Windy City ex-fiancé gets blown away in the Florida panhandle . . .
 
DEAD EXES TELL NO TALES
 
Saloon owner Chloe Jackson appears to have a secret admirer. She’s pouring drinks at the Sea Glass Saloon in Emerald Cove when an airplane flies by above the beach with a banner reading I LOVE YOU CHLOE JACKSON. She immediately rules out Rip Barnett. They are in the early stages of dating and no one has said the L word. Then a bouquet of lilacs—her favorite flower—is delivered to the bar, followed by an expensive bottle of her favorite sparkling wine. It couldn’t be . . .
 
Sure enough, her ex-fiancé from Chicago has flown down to Florida for an accountants’ convention. But is he trying to mix business with pleasure and win her back? Unfortunately he’s not in a hotel conference room, he’s floating facedown in the lake next to her house, clutching a photo of Chloe. Who murders an accountant on a business trip—it just doesn’t add up. When Rip becomes the prime suspect, Chloe is determined to find the secret murderer. But if she isn’t careful, it may be closing time and lights out for her . . .

My family and I made a trip to Destin, Florida in the Florida Panhandle at the beginning of March to celebrate my mom’s 95th birthday and my birthday! I thought I shared some photos from that fun week. Thanks so my daughter, one of my birthday presents was a surprise visit from my dear friend Carol Williams. We’ve been laughing together since ninth grade. Carol actually met my dad before me. He was her eighth grade math teacher.

I love this photo that I snapped as we flew in. It shows several things that are mentioned in the Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Saloon mysteries. You can see the two sand bars — one close to shore and the second further out. On the lower right you can see one of the seventeen coastal dune lakes surrounded by trees. And if you look closely at the upper right corner and spot the Choctowhatchee Bay. It shows you how narrow this strip of land is!

The sunset the night we arrived.Lemon drop shots at the Crab Trap!The Gulf of Mexico sparkles in the afternoon sun.Carol and me! We had so much fun.

Yes, that’s a shark! It’s the first one I’ve ever seen and this is from eight stories up. Look how close it is to the shore. We’ve always heard that there are sharks on the other side of the second sandbar but this guy was close.

I did my first in-person event with a fabulous book group while I was in Destin. Chloe is always looking for firm sand to run on–and me to walk on. There aren’t many shells on the beach here. They are also rumored to be on the far side of the second sandbar.The sea oats that protect the dunes.The drinks menu at The Whale’s Tail which is one of the bars that inspired the Sea Glass.The spring breakers arrive the day before we left. Also the wood poles near the shore are part of the old pier that is mentioned in the series.One last sunrise. Okay, it was only the second one I saw. But I did see all the sunsets.

I hope you enjoyed the photos and I hope you love Three Shots to the Wind! Signed copies are available at One More Page bookstore.

Readers: Tell me about a favorite celebration or just say hi for a chance to win a copy of Three Shots to the Wind!

Guest Erica Ruth Neubauer plus #giveaway

Edith/Maddie with our last historical mystery author this month. Erica Ruth Neubauer is a fabulous writer and brings us stories about her 1920s traveling heroine, Jane Wunderley.

Check out Erica Ruth’s latest, Danger on the Atlantic – and the fun research she did for the book! I love these books, and I know you will, too. Be sure you read down for a giveaway.

Here’s the blurb. Atlantic Ocean, 1926: Voyaging from Southampton to New York, self-reliant American widow Jane Wunderly is determined to prove herself a worthy investigator on the stately ship—even awkwardly going undercover as the fashionable wife of her magnetic partner, Mr. Redvers. Few details are known about the rumored German spy the duo have been tasked with identifying among fellow passengers, but new troubles unfold once wealthy newlywed Vanessa FitzSimmons announces the sudden disappearance of her husband at sea . . .
 
Miles Van de Meter, the man Vanessa rushed to marry in Monte Carlo, has allegedly vanished into thin air along with his luggage. Redvers guesses the shifty heiress may be weaving tall tales for fun between flutes of champagne, yet Jane isn’t convinced—not after the stunning murder of a trusted acquaintance sends them into uncharted waters. Facing two dangerous mysteries and a boat load of suspects, Jane must navigate a claustrophobic quest for answers before the culprits can slip from her grasp on land . . . or, worse, ensure she and Redvers never reach their destination.

Taking a transatlantic cruise in the 1920’s sounds as though it was awfully glamorous—it was the golden age of cruising after all. So it was a bit of a no-brainer when I was looking for a setting for my third book DANGER ON THE ATLANTIC (coming out tomorrow!) to set it on one of the enormous ships. Of course, in order to get a feel for what it was like, I needed to take a cruise across the North Atlantic myself, and I was lucky to get one in right before the global pandemic kicked off.

I’d never taken a proper cruise before. The closest I’d come was doing a Nile River cruise while doing research for my first book, but getting on the Queen Mary II was not at all the same thing, both in scale and experience. My cruise down the Nile was warm and there was a lot of soaking in the sun. Let me tell you what there’s not on the North Atlantic in November—sun. Using any of the pools was out, and even spending time on our balcony wasn’t much fun—it was wet and slippery from the grey skies overhead.

I don’t suffer from motion sickness, but during our first night we hit some rough water.

By morning the bobbing up and down of that giant ship had my stomach feeling quite disagreeable about the trip, although once I had a ginger beer in the lounge and spent some time watching the horizon, I felt much better.

But there were plenty of positives. The food was fantastic. We only tried the buffet option one time (and I ate entirely too much gourmet cheese that night) and used the dining room for the rest of our meals where the options and presentation couldn’t be beat. Every meal was an absolute delight, as was much of the entertainment we enjoyed on board. There was a 1940’s dance with big band music, live performances of both singers and music as well as a movie theater where I caught up on some movies I’d been meaning to see. You could take yoga classes or fencing lessons—there seemed to be something for everyone.

All in all, it was a fun and informative trip—I was able to get a real taste of what conditions on a large ship would have been like for Jane, although I think her cruise would have been much more glamourous than mine. I’m very fortunate that I’ve so far been able to research the exciting things I have my protagonist do—and you can bet I’m already planning the next!

Readers: Have you ever taken a cruise? What are your favorite ways to travel? I’ll give away a copy of Danger on the Atlantic (as soon as my box of books arrives) to one commenter.

Erica Ruth Neubauer is the Agatha Award-winning author of the Jane Wunderly Mysteries, as well as an Anthony Award and Lefty Award finalist. She spent eleven years in the military, nearly two as a Maryland police officer, and one as a high school English teacher, before finding her way as a writer. She has been a reviewer of mysteries and crime fiction for publications such as Publishers Weekly and Mystery Scene Magazine for several years, and she’s a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. Erica Ruth lives in Milwaukee, WI. Visit her at Erica Ruth Neubauer.

Welcome Back Guest Susan Van Kirk #giveaway

I’m happy to welcome back fellow Midwesterner Susan Van Kirk! She’s celebrating two books The Witch’s Child and her upcoming book Death in a Pale Hue.

The Devil is in the Details  by Susan Van Kirk

Recently, I watched again the television series Friday Night Lights whose 63 episodes aired from 2006-2011. It told the story of a high school football team—the Panthers—in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas. Running for six seasons, FNL centered around a high school coach, Eric Taylor, his wife, Tami, and a group of football players whose various talents, decisions, and circumstances led them to a wider life beyond Dillon or a narrower life staying in the small town. When it ended, I felt I had lost a group of friends. Why? I am not drawn to football games or high school these days.

I’ve decided the town, its culture and expectations, and the human relationships reminded me of “a sense of place.” I understood and felt comfortable in that small town and with its characters—some with a huge sense of decency and selflessness, others guided by narcissism and selfishness, and still others somewhere in between. It seemed like a familiar place.

Sometimes a good book is like that too. I reach the last page and hate to leave that place and time.

For Robert Frost a sense of place was New England with its birches, snow, pastures, and streams. For William Faulkner, as well as Eudora Welty, it was the South with its brooding knowledge of the past. John Steinbeck’s sense of place was the California arroyos and the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression. For Nathanial Hawthorne the Salem area with its witches and dark forests provided a setting and sense of the familiar.

I am reminded of a sense of place when I read the local newspaper. [Yes, we still have one but it’s hanging on by inches.] Often its stories remind me of how wonderful it is to be surrounded by the familiar in the smalltown Midwest. A farmer is injured in an accident and his neighbors organize to help bring in his crop. Recognized names and places, local politics, even obituaries of familiar family names form an unconscious framework for my thoughts. Sometimes those details are magnanimous, and other times they can drive a plot because of the darker sides of community thinking.

My own children grew up in smalltown Illinois. They have memories of their neighborhood with “back door neighbors,” pick-up baseball games in the yard, walking to and from school, and weekend evenings at the roller rink. When one of them drove his Hot Wheel off the neighbor’s porch thinking he was a Duke of Hazzard, all the doors opened on the street, and everyone rushed to see what the noise was when he hit the sidewalk. When another rode her tricycle down the middle of the main street to go shopping downtown at age four, a local cab driver brought her back unharmed—fortunately it was to the next-door neighbor’s house since I would have died of embarrassment at her escape.

It is these small details and memories that help me create a sense of place in smalltown America for my cozy mysteries. The Witch’s Child, fourth book in my Endurance series, sees a young woman come home to bury her mother, a self-proclaimed witch. Her mother died in prison after being convicted of a double homicide in a sensational trial ten years earlier. Immediately, the local denizens begin talking about Fiona Mackenzie and her mother Sybil based on their memories of life in their town. Every little detail of their strange lives—strange compared to “normal” inhabitants of the town—are dredged up and judged. Out-of-town media descend on the town, greedily after stories that will make the national news. The local coffee houses are filled with discussions about the witch’s daughter. When the judge from that trial dies in a very strange fashion, it isn’t hard to attribute it to witchcraft. A sense of place can be positive, but it can also reveal all our human tendencies to gossip, theorize, and judge. A sense of place pushes the plot.

Now I’m beginning a new series with Level Best Books called the Art Center Mysteries. The first, Death in a Pale Hue, will be out June 7. Thirty-year-old artist Jill Madison is moving home from the Chicago art scene to the small town where everyone knew her growing up. Her journey back to Apple Grove is partly for a new job and passion, partly a chance to redeem her art career from its downward slide. Her family was orphaned six years earlier when their parents were killed in a senseless accident. Her mother, Adele Marsden, was a world-renowned sculptor, and the new art center in town is named for her. Everyone in town knew the Madison family because they were the only biracial family in town.

Jill will be executive director, responsible to a non-profit board that is somewhat supportive, somewhat skeptical she can manage this huge job. Two brothers, one a detective and one a business owner, support her in her new work, and she’s so anxious to make this happen. Old faces and new surround her, remembering her parents from years earlier and Jill’s childhood. It’s all on track until an irreplaceable sculpture is stolen, and a huge surprise awaits her in the basement.

A sense of place, culture, and the people who reside in a particular location create the details of life that make the plots of mysteries work. The past looms over the present. Memories are long.

Readers: Is there a TV show or movie that gave you a strong sense of place? Susan is going to give away a copy of the Witch’s Child (US only) to someone who leaves a comment.

Bio: Susan Van Kirk is the President of the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime and a writer of cozy mysteries. She lives at the center of the universe—the Midwest—and writes during the ridiculously cold and icy winters. Why leave the house and break something? Van Kirk taught forty-four years in high school and college and raised three children. Miraculously, she has low blood pressure. Her Endurance mysteries include Three May Keep a Secret, Marry in Haste, The Locket: From the Casebook of TJ Sweeney (a novella), Death Takes No Bribes and The Witch’s Child. Her Sweet Iron mystery is A Death at Tippitt Pond, also available in audio. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. Her website: https://www.susanvankirk.com

How many books are too many?

By Liz, wondering when, exactly, my reading habits got so out of control

First, let’s be clear. This is not about how many books are too many to own. There’s no such thing in my mind. Books HAVE to be everywhere, it’s just the way it is. No, my question is a bit different. So here it is:

Just between us girls, I’m wondering how many books are too many to be reading at once.  I’m asking for a friend, of course.

Here’s the thing. I went through this phase recently of feeling like I’d sacrificed a lot of learning in recent years. Like, I hadn’t stayed up to speed on, well, pretty much anything—the podcasts I loved, shows I wanted to watch, books (omg, the books! My current TBR list and all the new stuff), and even the latest on marketing and communications, where I spend my daily life. 

So when I found myself in possession of some time that I didn’t normally have, I went on a crusade. I created space in my Passion Planner to track all the books I read, the podcasts I listened to—both current favorites and new ones I heard about—and shows to catch up on. And I started getting up to speed. It felt really good. Then, like I tend to do, I got carried away. 

Because when you’re constantly consuming, it means you’re going to, by default, keep hearing about new things you want to consume. For me, that looks like this: I listen to a podcast, that directs me to another podcast, that talks about a new author or speaker that resonates with me, which leads me to their website and inevitably a book or two, along with a whole slew of other videos to watch or articles to read that keep leading me to other new people, or people whose content I want to revisit, hence taking me further and further down the rabbit hole. 

Also, I had a conversation with someone about the classics, and how reading them again years later could be really enlightening. So of course I pulled a couple of those off my shelf too.

A few of my books-in-progress

The result? I have literally nine or ten books in progress right now, all with varying degrees of progress made. And that doesn’t count the audio books, of which I have one fiction and three non-fiction in progress. 

And then at night I’m torn. Do I watch a show on my list, or do I read one of the books? What if I’m not in the mood for crime right before bed? I can turn to a personal development or self-help book. But which one?? Do I want to heal my inner child, or my relationships, or read the latest branding book, or dig into something to help renew my creative writing spirit? 

I’ve always been a learner. I loved school (well, once I hit college) and to this day am always taking new classes and adding things I want to learn to that list (yes, another list – someone save me).  But I’ve always also been one of those people who overwhelms herself. Instead of devoting 15 minutes a day to reading one thing, I feel like I can’t read anything if I can’t spend a couple hours on it. So then I just look at the whole pile of stuff and feel like there’s no point because I’ll never get through it all. And head to the TV to watch one of my shows, and then Netflix gives me a new recommendation…

Yes, it’s a vicious circle. Probably the easiest thing to do would be to limit myself to one thing at a time. But what if I’m not in the mood for that thing? The struggle is real. 

Readers, what about you? How many books do you read at once? Do you know a good support group for my kind? Leave either of those insights in the comments!

Wicked Wednesday: Dining with Impressive Babes from the Before Times

Edith/Maddie here, with our fourth Wicked Wednesday celebrating the ladies who went before.

Wickeds, who are the badass babes – real or fictional, related or not – from the before times you would most like to have dinner with? What would you serve, and why? Tell us about your dinner party!

Sherry: I’d love to have dinner with Jane Austen. She might not be someone who would kick someone’s butt, but she did write about her times in a way that most authors didn’t. I’d love to find out what gave her the courage to do that. I’d take Jane out to dinner probably at a nice Italian restaurant. We’d have a nice glass or two of wine, some great pasta.

Julie: I have so many answers to this! I love the idea of taking Jane Austen out for Italian. I could go a few ways with this. A dinner party with Ida B. Wells, Eleanor Roosevelt and Gloria Steinhem could be great for the conversation. A dinner party with Amelia Edwards (real), Amelia Peabody (fiction), Barbara Mertz (creator of Amelia Peabody and Egyptologist) and a current day Egyptologist would be fun to the knowledge, and the updates. A dinner with Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and the Wickeds would be a blast. As for the food? Does it matter?

Edith/Maddie: Those all sound like great combos, Julie. And Jane Austen for an intimate dinner out does, too. Author Leslie Karst actually cooked dinner for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her husband (and wrote a memoir about it, which might be coming out soon)! I’d love to assemble the Notorious RBG, Amelia Earhart, Alice Paul, and Gloria Steinem (after she’s done with dinner at Julie’s) and let them talk about women’s rights. I’d keep the menu simple: a big pot of beef bourguignon, crusty bread, a big green salad, and apple pie.

Barb: I think I’d have the late PD James and Ruth Rendell (who were friends despite a political divide), and living authors Anne Cleeves, Louise Penny and Tana French to talk mysteries and writing.

Guest Jess Montgomery #giveaway

Edith here north of Boston, madly trying to finish a first draft.

I’m delighted to present Jess Montgomery, our next amazing historical mystery author in this month of Badass Babes from the Before Times. I love her Lily Ross and the Kinship books so very much, and I’m excited I have this new installment, The Echoes, to read. If you haven’t started the series, you must. Read to the end for a giveaway!

As July 4, 1928 approaches, Sheriff Lily Ross and her family look forward to the opening of an amusement park in a nearby town, created by Chalmer Fitzpatrick―a veteran and lumber mill owner. When Lily is alerted to the possible drowning of a girl, she goes to investigate, and discovers schisms going back several generations, in an ongoing dispute over the land on which Fitzpatrick has built the park.

Lily’s family life is soon rattled, too, with the revelation that before he died, her brother had a daughter, Esme, with a woman in France, and arrangements have been made for Esme to immigrate to the U.S. to live with them. But Esme never makes it to Kinship, and soon Lily discovers that she has been kidnapped. Not only that, but a young woman is indeed found murdered in the fishing pond on Fitzpatrick’s property, at the same time that a baby is left on his doorstep.

As the two crimes interweave, Lily must confront the question of what makes family: can we trust those we love? And what do we share, and what do we keep secret?

Take it away, Jess!

What a delight to contribute to “Badass Women from the Before Times!”

My Kinship Historical Mystery Series, set in the Appalachian southeast corner of Ohio, is inspired by the state’s true first female sheriff in Ohio… in 1925. Maude Collins, the real-life sheriff who inspired my protagonist Lily Ross, took on the job after her husband was killed in the line of duty. In 1926, Maude ran for office in her own right—and won by a landslide. All while working as a single mother, and solving crimes including a murder that was written up in the national press. Not only that, but she did so in an era well before modern technology and investigative tools (looking at you, DNA testing), while navigating the tough terrain of Appalachia.

Maude Collins busting a still.

Talk about being a badass.

Lily, too, is a badass as she investigates and solves murders, most recently in my fourth novel in the series, The Echoes, out from Minotaur Books on March 29.

Badass implies toughness, strength, not backing down or wimping out. Lily certainly has those attributes but she also employs de-escalation in tense situations, which requires an inner toughness. She also works closely with members of her community. Sometimes, it takes a village of badasses, after all, to take down the villain.

Her wisdom in understanding she must work with her community to do her job is one reason each of the Kinship novels is dual-narrated by Lily and one other member of her community. (So far, all of Lily’s co-narrators are female.) In The Echoes, Lily’s co-narrator is her mother, Beulah.

Beulah—or “Mama” as Lily calls her—has been a strong, supportive woman for Lily in the background of each of the three preceding novels. I thought it was time for Beulah to share her viewpoint, and this novel was the perfect opportunity as the plot turns on what really happened to Roger—Lily’s older brother and Beulah’s son—during The Great War.

To create Mama, I admit I drew on my own feelings as the mother of two badass daughters. But I also drew on strong women from my family of origin, particularly my paternal aunts, Aunt Opal and Aunt Mary. Both women were innovators in their careers in education and telecommunications, forging new paths as women. Yet, they never bragged about their accomplishments. They led by example—perhaps the best kind of bad-assery. (More about my Aunt Opal here).

Readers: Who in your family or from your childhood was a badass woman who inspires you? One commenter, drawn at random (U.S. only), will receive a copy of The Echoes.

Jess Montgomery is the author of the Kinship Historical Mysteries, set in 1920s Appalachian Ohio and inspired by Ohio’s true first female sheriff. Under her given name, she writes the “Level Up Your (Writing) Life” column for Writer’s Digest. She was formerly a newspaper columnist, focusing on the literary life, authors and events of her native Dayton, Ohio for the Dayton Daily News. She is a three-time recipient of the Individual Excellence Award in Literary Arts from Ohio Arts Council, a two-time recipient of the Montgomery County (Ohio) Arts & Cultural District (MCAD) Artist Opportunity Grant, and has been a John E. Nance Writer in Residence at Thurber House (Columbus, Ohio). Jess lives in her native state of Ohio, where she enjoys spending time with family and friends, reading, swimming, baking, crocheting, and occasionally fishing and hiking. Learn more at http://www.jessmontgomeryauthor.com

On Helping

Edith/Maddie here, trying to feel hopeful.

Caution: Today’s post is a diversion from writing-related topics – sort of.

We are living in somber times. A war resulting from a brutal invasion is waging in Europe. Many Ukrainians and Russians are suffering, and I know I’m not alone in feeling at a loss to understand what we can do to help.

I’m here to suggest a few ways.

Kensington Publishing opened an auction on Friday to raise money for Ukraine relief, with many authors and publishing professionals contributing. It runs until March 24.

The Wicked Authors as a group have two donations: a set of signed books, and a Zoom cocktail (or tea) hour. Barb has signed ARCs up there, and I have a jigsaw puzzle as well as a foodie-cozy-and-apron donation. The Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen blog also donated a bundle of recipe cards. All proceeds will go to Direct Relief, who is working closely with Ukraine’s Ministry of Health.  Start exploring the auction here: https://www.32auctions.com/benefitforukraine

Authors for Ukraine is another charity auction that’s coming up. Maddie and I have donations there, too, along with many dozens of other authors. Proceeds from that auction will go to CARE’s Ukraine Crisis Fund. The Authors for Ukraine auction starts on March 29 and closes on April 12, and I hope you’ll check out the hundreds of items on offer.

Yevgeniy M, a US military physician friend of my son who was born in Ukraine and now serves in Texas, is collecting certain medical supplies to send. If you have access to that and would like to contact Yev, please write to me at edith@edithmaxwell.com.

I’m a long-time Quaker, and our Meeting has been in touch with the Quakers of Kyiv. Many around the world have held them in prayer and sent messages, and the Ukrainians have been so touched. We have also heard stories of non-violent resistance by those under siege, with Ukrainians removing highway and street signs so their GPS-less invaders get hopelessly lost, for example.

And then there are solidarity actions any of us can do. Standing in peace vigils. Adding gold and blue to profile pictures or to your lamppost. Oh, and baking cakes. I wanted to bake a cake last week. I had sour cream in the fridge and looked up Ukrainian desserts. Poppyseed cake, full of sour cream and butter, appears to be a typical dessert in the region. (It was delicious.)

And if you need a small bright spot of hope, here are baby pre-daffodils just up in my garden next to the relentlessly cheerful dancing frogs.

Readers: List your suggestions for how to help – or how to keep your spirits up.

Guest Peggy Ehrhart plus #giveaway

Edith writing from north of Boston, where we’re getting a real taste of pre-Spring!

And I’m thrilled to welcome fellow Kensington author Peggy Ehrhart, who has a new mystery out.

Here’s the blurb: When a professor is poisoned, Pamela Paterson and the members of the Knit and Nibble knitting club must take a crash course in solving his mysterious murder. Pamela has organized a weekend-long knitting bee as part of a conference on fiber arts and crafts at Wendelstaff College. But when pompous Professor Robert Greer-Gordon Critter, the keynote speaker at the conference, crashes the bee, he seems more interested in flirting than knitting. The man’s reputation as a philanderer supersedes his academic reputation. After coffee and cookies are served, the professor suddenly collapses, seemingly poisoned—but how? Everyone had the coffee and cookies. Joined by her bestie Bettina and the Knit and Nibble ladies, Pamela sorts through everything from red socks to red herrings to unravel the means and motives of a killer dead set on teaching the professor a lesson . . .

Rescued Treasures

I can almost hear their voices: Please rescue me and take me home with you!

Like my sleuth, Pamela Paterson, I find it hard to resist tag sales, thrift shops, charity bazaars—any place where cast-off treasures can be found. Estate sales are my latest passion. These sales, usually involving the entire contents of a house after the death of its owner, are now officially a thing, to judge by an article in a recent issue of the New Yorker (7 January 2022).   

A website has sprung up—estatesales.net—on which one can search by zip code for estate sales in one’s area. In pre-internet days, a house’s contents would have gone to relatives, an auction house, dealers in used goods, or thrift shops. Now the first step in clearing out a house is often to hire an estate sale company—of which there are many. I’m coming to recognize the major operators in my part of New Jersey, and I’m sure they all recognize me as a regular.

The household goods don’t have to be grand. In fact they can be quite humble—but a house inhabited by the same people for twenty, forty, or sixty years can yield up items that are now quite collectible, like these vintage tablecloths.

Or antique children’s books.

Some sales are elegantly organized, with items displayed on tables and clothes racks and plenty of room to move around and examine the wares. Others take place in the houses of people who were clearly hoarders, and the sale operators simply open the doors and stand back. Showing up after the sale has been going on for a while one is confronted with a scene as if a tornado had blown through, with clothes, shoes, books, pots and pans, and anything else one can imagine intermingled on beds, tables, counters, and the floor.

I sometimes feel like an intruder, glimpsing the private aspects of a person’s life. One time I noticed papers in an open drawer. I pulled them out and discovered a report from a private detective apparently hired to investigate the deceased’s husband.

Usually items aren’t marked with prices, except in cases where the homeowners had accumulated items of genuine value. The shopper simply browses, picking up things and making a pile in an out-of-the-way place. The sale operator names a price for the whole pile and one can bargain if one wishes. I’ve come away with piles of goodies for as little as five or ten dollars. Sometimes they are things I never knew I needed.

But sometimes they are useful—at least if one has an occasion to serve pickles.

The deceased homeowner is most often a woman, the husband having passed on years earlier. And if she lived into her eighties or beyond, she was of a generation for whom sewing and other handicrafts weren’t just a hobby but a necessity. It’s not unusual to find one of those sewing machines that was actually a piece of furniture, taking its place in a sewing room equipped with carefully organized thread in every color, bins of buttons, snaps, hooks and eyes, packets of rickrack and seam binding, lengths of fabric bought but never used.  

Even more common is evidence that the homeowner knitted or crocheted. I’ve been fascinated by granny-square afghans ever since, as a child, I admired one that my grandmother made. Hers was the style I’ve always thought of as classic, with the squares crocheted from random colors of yarn, even several colors to a square. This was obviously a frugal way to use up odds and ends of yarn, just like patchwork quilts use up odds and ends of cloth. But each square was edged in black, an effect that gave coherence to the design.

            My grandmother’s afghan eventually came to me, and I’ve augmented my granny-square afghan collection with others found at estate sales. Just last week I went to an estate sale in a small, very old, house. The second floor had been emptied of nearly everything—most of the action was happening in the downstairs rooms, where sixty years of bric-a-brac had been laid out on long tables. But I ventured upstairs. A small curtainless room was empty except for a large cardboard box. Spilling out of the box were a few afghans, obviously handmade. One of them was this.

My first thought was Oh, my goodness! But then I reflected that, eccentric as it was, someone had put hours and hours and hours into making it—and what would happen to it if I didn’t take it home?

To see more rescued yarn treasures, click on the Yarn Mania tab at www.PeggyEhrhart.com .

Readers: What’s your favorite rescued treasure, from whatever source? I’ll send three commenters a copy of the new book (US and Canada only)!

  

Peggy Ehrhart is a former English professor who currently writes the Knit & Nibble mystery series for Kensington. The eighth book in the series, Death of a Knit Wit, has just been released. Her amateur sleuth, Pamela Paterson, is the founder of the Knit & Nibble knitting club, and Peggy herself is a devoted crafter. Visit her at www.PeggyEhrhart.com

Genre Hopping with Kellye Garrett

I’m thrilled to have Kellye with us today! We met when we both were on the board of Sisters in Crime. She’s an amazing advocate for other writers and was instrumental in forming Crime Writers of Color. I’m reading Kellye’s just published book Like A Sister and love it. I also love her Detective By Day mysteries.

Here’s a bit about Like A Sister: “I found out my sister was back in New York from Instagram. I found out she’d died from the New York Daily News.”

When the body of disgraced reality TV star Desiree Pierce is found on a playground in the Bronx the morning after her 25th birthday party, the police and the media are quick to declare her death an overdose. It’s a tragedy, certainly, but not a crime.

But Desiree’s half-sister Lena Scott knows that can’t be the case. A graduate student at Columbia, Lena has spent the past decade forging her own path far from the spotlight, but some facts about Desiree just couldn’t have changed since their childhood. And Desiree would never travel above 125th Street. So why is no one listening to her?

Despite the bitter truth that the two haven’t spoken in two years, torn apart by Desiree’s partying and by their father, Mel, a wealthy and influential hip-hop mogul, Lena becomes determined to find justice for her sister, even if it means untangling her family’s darkest secrets—or ending up dead herself.

Name (s)

Kellye Garrett

Genre(s)

Traditional mysteries and Domestic Suspense

What drew you to the genre you write?

I write what I want to read. (Yes, I’m a cliché!) I grew up loving cozy and amateur detective novels by the likes of Joan Hess and Jill Churchill. Then over the past decade, I’ve fallen in love with domestic suspense by authors like Megan Miranda and Lori Rader-Day.

What sets your book apart from what is out there?

I’m a black woman who writes about black women. You’d think this wouldn’t be such a big deal but unfortunately in crime fiction, it is. There’s a startling lack of diversity in our genre. It’s gotten better since 2016, when it took over a year to sell my first traditional mystery, but we still have a long way to go.

My books have everything you love in the genres—like twists, voicey narrators, family drama, beach read feel—just from a decidedly black perspective.

What are you currently writing?

I’m working on my second domestic suspense standalone. I got the idea while doing a writer’s retreat at a friend’s four story rowhouse. She wasn’t in town so I was alone and remember thinking, “I could walk downstairs tomorrow morning to find a dead body and have no clue how it got there.” So that’s the story. A black woman goes to the New York City area for a romantic getaway. She comes downstairs one day to find her boyfriend gone and a missing woman dead in her foyer.

Do you write a series or standalones? Why?

Both! I actually think there’s a lot of crossover with both amateur detective novels and domestic suspense. It usually involves a close knit community, a first person narrative, and a main character who isn’t professional law enforcement but has to deal with the fall out of a crime. Of course, the tones are wildly different.

What are you reading right now?

I’m on deadline so it’s hard to find time to read.

What is your favorite deadline snack?

Tears? Seriously, I love a minibag of movie theater butter popcorn.

Do you have a favorite quote or life motto?

As anyone who’s ever received an email from me will tell you, my email signature has the following quote from Dorothy Parker: “I hate writing. I love having written.”

It’s been in my signature for over a decade.

Favorite writing space?

I have this lovely desk space…that I have never used. I usually write in bed or on my couch because then I can trick myself into thinking I’m not doing work.

What do you see when you look up from writing?

The above mentioned tears in my eyes!

Readers: Do you like to try and figure out the mystery as you read? Like a Sister has be complete entranced and trying to guess what will happen next.

Bio:

Kellye Garrett is the acclaimed author of the upcoming Like A Sister (Mulholland Books) suspense novel in which no one bats an eye when a disgraced reality TV star is found dead in the Bronx—except her estranged half-sister, whose refusal to believe the official story leads her on an increasingly dangerous search for the truth.

She’s also the author of the Detective by Day mysteries about a semi-famous, mega-broke black actress who takes on the deadliest role of her life: Private Detective. The first, Hollywood Homicide, won the Agatha, Anthony, Lefty and Independent Publisher “IPPY” awards for best first novel. The second, Hollywood Ending, was featured on the TODAY show’s Best Summer Reads of 2019 and was nominated for both Anthony and Lefty awards. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Sisters in Crime and is a co-founder of Crime Writers of Color. Learn more at KellyeGarrett.com.

Award winning author, Kellye Garrett was photographed at Archer Hotel in Florham Park, New Jersey on March 11, 2021. ( Carucha L. Meuse | For CLM Visuals )