Island Confidential: blog tour

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Sinful Science #1 in Kindle Worlds Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense

The next one in the series is coming soon!

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from Sinful Science #1 in Kindle Worlds Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense

Giveaway and Author Interview: Lida Sideris, Murder and Other Unnatural Disasters

“A smart caper with a heroine to match.” –Kirkus Reviews

Corrie Locke belongs behind a desk, not behind a Glock. She should be taking VIP calls, not nosing around a questionable suicide. Instead, she’s hot on the trail of a murderer.

Murder and Other Unnatural Disasters
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Paperback: 408 pages
The Wild Rose Press, Inc (September 30, 2015)
ISBN-13: 978-1509202409
ASIN: B014BVSWTE

Q: Lida joins me today to talk about her debut romantic suspense novel, Murder and Other Unnatural Disasters. Can you tell us a little more about the book?

A: Aloha Frankie! Thanks so much for hosting me today. My book is about a newly minted lawyer who lands a dream job in a Hollywood movie studio, only to be blackmailed into investigating the suspicious death of a co-worker.

Q: What kind of research did you do for your setting?

A: Very little. I set the book where I lived and knew well, in Southern California. I did revisit some of the places mentioned in the book to be certain I’d gathered all the details needed. For instance,

when my heroine, Corrie Locke visits a jewelry store in Newport Beach, she hides out in some bushes near the store. I traveled to where the store is supposed to be to figure out the best hiding place, and inserted Corrie behind some banana trees. Also
in a subplot, Corrie investigates a kidnapping of a lucky charm in Bel Air. I happened to walk the street where the action takes place. It’s near the Playboy Mansion, and I got to view the street on a Sunday morning, after a big party at the Mansion. That was used
to describe what my heroine saw.

Q: Tell me about something unexpected that happened when you when you were writing this book.

A: I completed it! No one was more surprised than I was when it was finally finished. The whole way I wondered and fretted whether I could type “The End” with some degree of confidence. It happened! Yes!

Q: Like your heroine, you worked as an entertainment attorney. Is there anything from real life that made it into the book?

A: Yes. There is an f-bomb tirade that occurs on my heroine’s second day at work. That happened to me. I picked up the phone, as Corrie did, and someone unleashed a slew of expletives. Someone I didn’t know, a talent agent of a client, and had had no interaction with, but who needed to express himself. It unnerved me. I was able to calm him down…as did Corrie.

Q: Lawyers have to read and write a lot. Did you find that any skills or habits from your legal career transferring to your fiction writing?

A: Absolutely. The words we pick are important. One word or a sentence could shift a viewpoint. The right word or sentence, that is, and I tried really hard to make sure the words and sentences I used fit well. It’s a learning process. I’m still learning.

Q: What’s one great piece of advice for any aspiring writers reading this?

A: Never ever, ever, ever give up. The only magic behind success in any endeavor is persistence. If you find the writing is not flowing, put it aside. Come back when you’re good and ready.

Q: What do you read for pleasure?

A: I really enjoy the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich and love the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith.

Q: What’s next?

A: I’m working on Book Two in the Corrie Locke series. Corrie’s best friend/possible love interest is implicated in a homicide, and it’s up to her to save him.

About The Author

Like her heroine, Corrie Locke, Lida Sideris worked as an entertainment attorney for a film studio. Unlike her heroine, she did not get blackmailed into investigating the suspicious death of a co-worker. Lida resides in the northern tip of Southern California with her family, their rescue shepherds, and a flock of uppity chickens. She was one of two national recipients of the Helen McCloy/Mystery Writers of America scholarship for mystery writing.

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Filed under: Author Interviews, Fun, Writing Tagged: blog tour, Lida Sideris, Los Angeles, Mystery, romantic suspense, Writing
from Giveaway and Author Interview: Lida Sideris, Murder and Other Unnatural Disasters

Author Interview: Sybil Johnson, Paint the Town Dead

The Ocean Painting Society invites you to join the painting wave…

It’s June in the quiet Los Angeles County city of Vista Beach, the place computer programmer and tole-painting enthusiast Aurora (Rory) Anderson calls home. Decorative painters are flocking to the newly built Akaw hotel to attend the Ocean Painting Society’s inaugural convention.

During the week-long event, Rory plans on shopping the trade show floor, working in her mother’s booth, taking classes and connecting with other decorative painting fans. She doesn’t expect to witness her childhood friend collapse in class and die. When the police find no evidence of foul play, Rory embarks on her own investigation. Can she brush aside the lies to uncover the truth and bring the killer to justice?

Q: Can you tell us what the book is about?

I’d love to! In PAINT THE TOWN DEAD, computer programmer and tole painting enthusiast Rory Anderson attends a painting convention at a newly built hotel in downtown Vista Beach, the California beach city where she lives. The hotel is embroiled in controversy. Protesters picket outside the main entrance and generally make life miserable for its owners and guests. Rory herself is targeted because she wrote software for the hotel. Even with all that’s going on in the city, she’s looking forward to shopping the trade show floor, taking classes, working at her mother’s booth and connecting with other decorative painting fans. She’s not expecting to witness a childhood friend collapse in class and die. When the police find no evidence of foul play, Rory launches her own investigation into her friend’s death.

Q: What is tole painting?

The term tole painting is traditionally applied to the art of painting on tin but, when I started taking classes in the 90s, it was used in a broader sense to mean the decoration of objects using various painting strokes and techniques. These days the term decorative painting is more commonly used, though I tend to use the two terms interchangeably. Folk art such as Norwegian Rosemaling, German Bauernmalerei and Russian Zhostovo fall under this umbrella. Today there’s a broad range of pattern books and packets available for the painter to choose from or you can come up with your own designs. Don’t tell my husband, but I’ve got a whole closet full of wood and other surfaces to paint. So many projects, so little time!

Q: How does your own painting experience inform your writing?

From all of the painting projects I’ve done over the years, I’ve learned a lot that I apply to my writing.
• Be patient with yourself, you can only paint/write based on your ability at the time. With regular practice comes improvement.
• Don’t constantly compare yourself to others, thinking everyone writes or paints better. Just do the best you can.
• You won’t know what a project will look like until it’s finished. The intermediate stages often seem ugly both in painting and writing. Don’t fret over it. Don’t give up. A painting project looks better after it’s varnished. A writing project looks better after it’s polished.
• Nothing is written in stone. You can always start over. Wood can be sanded. Paint can be removed from most surfaces. Characters can be changed, plots restructured, sentences reworded. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that, just because you’ve written something down, it can’t be modified.
• You don’t have to do everything the way the instructions say. Paint colors can be changed. Parts of a design can be omitted. Writing rules can be broken as long as you understand what those rules are and why you’re ignoring them.

Q: Your covers are so cute, who designed them? Who came up with the idea?

They are great, aren’t they? I really love them! Both of them were designed by the same artist, the talented Stephanie Chontos, in collaboration with my publisher, Henery Press.

Q: Being a writer seems like a big shift from working in computer science. How did you make the decision to leave tech?

I moved from the software development world into writing mysteries because I was looking for a new challenge. At that time, I was working freelance and my contract had ended. One morning I woke up with this vision of a young woman finding the body of her painting teacher in her garden so I decided to try writing. From that germ of an idea my first book, FATAL BRUSHSTROKE, was born and published many years later. I was lucky enough to be able to quit my day job and devote myself full-time to writing.

There are more similarities between programming and writing mysteries than you might think. The approach to writing a mystery and writing a program is fairly similar. In both, you start with an idea and a set of requirements. For a mystery it’s what a reader expects to see in the story; in programming it’s a list of features. They also both involve a period of design. At least that’s true for me since I’m an outliner not a pantser. In writing, I’m plotting the storyline and “designing” characters; in programming, I’m designing algorithms and deciding how to structure the code. There are also artistic aspects to writing code. An elegant piece of code can take my breath away just like a well-written/well-plotted book.

Q: Writing can be very solitary. How do you balance the need for solitude with the need to get out and be with people?

Even though I do enjoy being around people, I’m pretty content with staying at home for long periods of time so I try to schedule regular outings. I study Ancient Egyptian and Coptic with a group I’ve been a member of since the 90s, so that gets me out of the house on a regular basis. And I plan lunches with friends and attend Sisters in Crime/LA’s monthly meetings.

Q: Give your fellow writers one great tip–productivity, craft, marketing, anything!

Take time to celebrate your accomplishments. This is something I know I don’t do enough. With all the deadlines and writing one book while finishing up another, I think writers sometimes forget to take time to acknowledge what we’ve accomplished. Taking a germ of an idea and fashioning it into a finished novel is a huge achievement.

Q: What’s next for Aurora?

A heat wave, a little romance, a trompe l’oeil painting class and, of course, a murder to solve.

Sybil Johnson’s love affair with reading began in kindergarten with “The Three Little Pigs.” Visits to the library introduced her to Encyclopedia Brown, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and a host of other characters. Fast forward to college where she continued reading while studying Computer Science. After a rewarding career in the computer industry, Sybil decided to try her hand at writing mysteries. Her short fiction has appeared in Mysterical-E and Spinetingler Magazine, among others.

She’s the author of the Aurora Anderson Mystery series, set in the world of decorative painting. The first in the series, Fatal Brushstroke, will be released by Henery Press November 18, 2014.

Originally from the Pacific Northwest, she now lives in Southern California where she enjoys tole painting, studying ancient languages and spending time with friends and family. Visit Sybil at http://bit.ly/1Oay8Fc

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Filed under: Author Interviews, Fun, Terri L. Austin Tagged: Author Interviews, blog tour, cozy, cozy mystery, funny, paint the town dead, tole painting
from Author Interview: Sybil Johnson, Paint the Town Dead

The Secret Crime on Campus: Guest Post by Bourne Morris, author of Rise of the Red Queen

“With The Rise of the Red Queen, Bourne Morris is poised to become the queen of academic mysteries and suspense.” – Gigi Pandian, USA Today Bestselling Author of the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mysteries

A beautiful journalism student is abducted by a man with unusual and frightening expectations. While searching for her missing student, Red Solaris must contend with a university committee quarreling over the rights of the victims and those accused in sexual assault cases. And, in the midst of all this, a journalism professor brings a gun to school and shoots a colleague. Will Red’s ambition to become dean be destroyed by scandal around her? Will she and Detective Joe Morgan ever acknowledge their true feelings for each other?

The Secret Crime on Campus

Guest Post by Bourne Morris

I was a college professor for 26 years and now I write fiction about campus violence. In the past two years, we have all seen the number of discussions and articles in the media about sexual assault on American campuses. It’s raised some serious questions in my mind about my own college experience and about the health and safety of the students I taught for 26 years. I know the topic is not cozy, but if you have a child going to college these days, it’s worth thinking about.

Should the names of Sexual Assault victims be kept secret? Some women are coming forward with stories of what happened to them. Not just older women, but often young women who are still in school. Those who go public call themselves survivors, not victims, and many regard the process of telling their stories as a step toward healing.

Yet, at many universities, the policy of the administration is still to protect the identity of the victim. And many major news organizations still have policies requiring that the name of the assaulted be kept secret from the community.

Is this discretion reasonable? From time to time someone argues that if a man or woman was robbed, his or her name would be revealed. If she was murdered her name would be known as soon as the body was identified and the family notified. If he was beaten up in a parking lot, we would know his name as well as what he could tell us about the event.

But sexual assault is a crime of violence still shrouded in secrecy. It seems we have a hard time separating the word “sexual’ from the word “assault.” The difference in attitudes, often reflected in varying state laws, is enough to drive you crazy. In some places, unless the victim actively fights back, no crime is committed.

One of the more surprising facts I learned in my research is the number of times the female victim is fearful she will lose her friends if she reports assault. In too many cases, it’s not the accused who tells her to keep her mouth shut, it’s other girls in her dorm or sorority.

Perhaps we are unwilling to identify the victim of a sex crime because even if she (or he) is badly hurt, we still think that somehow the victim was partly to blame.

Or maybe it’s because we still think that a young woman is somehow so altered by the event it will affect her chances of marriage. Or that a young man who is assaulted must be some sort of weakling.

Or maybe it’s because it’s so darn difficult to prove a crime when it’s two people telling very different versions of the same event

Or because, every once in a while, someone makes it up to get a former lover in trouble.

Whatever our reasons, the rule of secrecy causes more sorrow and depression than we know. One has only to understand what it is like to keep a traumatic event a secret for years, to keep from seeking justice for a crime committed against yourself or someone close, to know what price the survivors pay for the discretion as well as the act itself.

Why I decided to write about sexual assault in “The Rise of the Red Queen.” The basic theme of the Red Queen series is campus crime and violence. And trying to cope with the problems posed by sexual assault is a major issue for today’s university administrations. The variety of policies now in place or under consideration indicate the predicament we find ourselves in.

It seems to be no trick at all to decide that campus crimes of murder, theft, battery and vandalism are immediately reported to the police and described in the media.

Perhaps some day we will be as open and swift about sexual assault. We will believe is not about sex. It is not a form of bullying or a drunken error in judgment. It’s an act of violence and should be treated as such.

That’s what my protagonist, Dr. Meredith “Red” Solaris hopes as she battles with the murky politics of her campus and searches for a kidnapped student taken by a deranged man.

About The Author

After Bennington College, I worked at McCall’s Magazine and then went to Ogilvy&Mather, New York during the “Mad Men “ era. David Ogilvy and his colleagues treated me wonderfully, promoted me several times and then sent me west to become head of their agency in Los Angeles. I had a splendid run in advertising.

In 1983, I joined the University of Nevada Reno as a full professor in Journalism where I taught until 2009. I learned about campus politics when I served as chair of the faculty senate. I retired to write mysteries in 2009 after a wonderful teaching career.

I live with my husband of 34 years in a ranch house with a view of tall trees and mountains. We have four children and eight grandchildren. Life is good.

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Filed under: Author Interviews, pychology, Writing Tagged: academic mystery, Author Interviews, blog tour, Bourne Morris, campus crime, red queen
from The Secret Crime on Campus: Guest Post by Bourne Morris, author of Rise of the Red Queen

Author Interview: LynDee Walker, Cover Shot (part of an Agatha-nominated series)

It’s been a slow news month in Richmond, and crime reporter Nichelle Clarke is enjoying the downtime when ominous messages and a dead body kick things into high gear. And that’s before the guy with the rifle takes a hospital full of people hostage.

Up to the top of her knee-high Prada boots in leads, Nichelle finds her favorite detectives under pressure to make an arrest, but it doesn’t add up—and ignoring the “why” of this story could cost Nichelle the most important person in her life.

With too much to lose, a shot at the story of a lifetime, and a missing bullet that might be the key, landing this headline could save the day, but can Nichelle dig up the truth before the killer buries her with it?

Books in the Headlines in High Heels Mystery Series:

Q: Aloha LynnDee, and thanks for stopping by! Cover Shot is #5 in the Agatha Award-nominated Headlines in High Heels Mystery series. Can you tell us what the series, and the newest book, is about?

A: The series follows crime reporter Nichelle Clarke as she moves into more investigative reporting. The books are humorous mysteries with a little romance, and the main storylines take on some big issues: police and political corruption, religion as a business, the healthcare system…Nichelle chases important stories, and we all get to have some laughs along the way.

For this book, I wanted to show how pivotal photos can be to a story, and I also wanted to take a big issue from current headlines and flip it on its head to see what would happen. It was probably the most complicated book in the series so far, but it’s also the one that gives me the biggest sense of accomplishment when I look at the finished product.

Q: You started out as a journalist. Was there anything about news reporting that you brought with you to fiction writing? What did you learn about drawing in readers and keeping them engaged?

A: The most helpful skills I brought from the newsroom are the ability to write in any noisy environment (great whether the noise is coming from my littles or a crowd at Starbucks) and the ability to write on deadline. When you’re a journalist, you don’t have the luxury of “waiting for the muse:” the editor expects his copy on time, and you’d better have it ready.

I think the ability to hook a reader and keep them turning pages has less to do with journalism and more to do with just being a good storyteller, though it’s a skill that serves authors and reporters both well. News writing did teach me that the first sentence is everything. That line is the one that gets picked apart and tinkered with the most in every one of my books.

Q: What are some similarities and differences between writing articles for a deadline and writing a novel?

A: With a first novel, you have the luxury of taking your time. You can study every single word and rewrite to your heart’s content. When you’re working under deadline, like with journalism, there comes a point when you have to be finished. That said, I do think it’s true that practice makes every author better, so what would’ve taken months of revising on a first book take s a couple days by the fifth. That part is nice.

In both cases, you want to write the best story you can in the fewest words you can. When I first started writing fiction, I made the mistake of using way too many big flowery words, and they weakened the story. Use strong words. Make every scene count. The same lessons I learned in journalism school, just reworked slightly for the longer form of novels.

Q: Your website is gorgeous, and fits very nicely with the feel of your books. What went into its design?

A: Weeks of work and a whole lot of swearwords. (I’m kidding. Sort of.)

Thank you for the sweet comment—I’m really proud of the fact that I did it myself. I am not a technical girl at all, but I had an idea of what I wanted and I taught myself web design via Google (“why are there gray boxes around my photos? Oh. This says to use this code to make them go away. Copy. Paste. Fixed.”) My editor sent me the artwork and color codes from the cover of Front Page Fatality, and I used those to make the site go with the books.

Q: Over the five books in the High Heels series, how have you allowed the characters to change, and what has stayed the same? How do you address characters’ aging over the course of a series?

A: I think everyone has changed in some way—it’s one of my favorite things about writing the series. The characters are like friends to me, and I love watching them learn and grow. Nichelle has realized a lot of things about herself, good and bad, that have given her more confidence or are helping her be a better person. Bob has learned he’s not Superman and has some limits, and he’s gotten more protective of Nichelle. Parker has gone from Captain Notch on the Bedpost to a one-woman guy. Joey has tried to fight his attraction to Nichelle pretty unsuccessfully, while Kyle has tried just as hard to win her back. I love opening a new file and getting to catch up with them all. The constant in my stories is that the main characters are good people at heart—flawed, sure, but all trying to make some kind of positive difference in their corner of the world.

Nichelle is aging, and since I have so many stories of hers I’d like to tell, I started her out pretty young (28) and I’m moving the timeline by only a few weeks or months at a time.

Q: Do you have any cast iron skillet recipes for a beginner? I have a cast iron skillet and no idea what to make in it.

A: My mother made the world’s best cornbread, and the skillet was the secret. Here’s how you do it:

1 cup white cornmeal
1 cup yellow cornmeal
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup water
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter (softened)
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 375.

Before you start mixing the batter, put the oil into your cast iron skillet, and put it in the oven to heat while you’re making the batter.

In a large bowl, beat sugar, butter, eggs, milk, honey, and water (I have a kitchenaid stand mixer that does this beautifully: use the flat paddle beater and speed 3).

In a separate bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt.

While mixing, slowly add dry mixture to batter. It will be slightly lumpy when fully mixed.

Take the skillet out of the oven (careful, it’s hot!), and tilt it so the inside gets coated with the oil. Quickly pour your batter into the skillet (the outside of the bread gets flash-fried in the hot oil, which is how you get the crispy crust), and then pop it into the oven.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Q: So now that you’ve given us something delicious and fattening, what one or two things would you recommend to writers and other computer-bound people to maintain health and sanity?

A: Sunshine and exercise. It’s sometimes hard for me to follow my own advice, because between children and deadlines, my days stay full—but getting outside for a walk or a bike ride recharges me like nothing else.

Links to where readers can follow you (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)

Twitter:
Facebook:
Pinterest:

Thanks so much for having me today! What a fun interview!

LynDee Walker’s award-winning journalistic work has appeared in newspapers and magazines across the nation.

Her debut novel, FRONT PAGE FATALITY, is an amazon and Barnes & Noble #1 bestseller, and was nominated for the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. DEVIL IN THE DEADLINE is the fourth in LynDee’s Headlines in High Heels mystery series. The fifth COVER SHOT is out November 2015.

LynDee adores her family, her readers, and enchiladas. She often works out tricky plot points while walking off the enchiladas. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she is either playing with her children, working on her next novel, or admiring beautiful shoes she can’t wear.

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Filed under: Author Interviews, Fun, Terri L. Austin Tagged: Author Interviews, blog tour, cozy, cozy mystery, funny, high heels, LynDee Walker
from Author Interview: LynDee Walker, Cover Shot (part of an Agatha-nominated series)

Author Interview: Murder in a Two Seater by Billie Thomas

“Bille Thomas strikes again, merging her signature with and uncanny knack for suspense that turns on a dime. I laughed, I cringed, I worried, I cheered. I only wish the author would write a little faster, because I’m already in withdrawal.”

– Amazon reviewer

A cheating wife in a classic car drives someone to murder.

Interior decorators turned amateur investigators, Chloe and Amanda Carstairs have spent the summer transforming their client’s creepy old castle into a luxury hotel. But before the first guest checks in, the owner’s wife checks out – with the help of a bullet to the head.

When Chloe’s dad is accused of the crime, there’s no time for the ladies to drown their sorrows in the hotel’s mini bar. Instead, they have to contend with a sneaky blackmailer, an unsolved murder from the past, and a cunning killer with nothing to lose.

The second Chloe Carstairs Mystery is filled with the same clever twists and hilarious mother-daughter relationship that made Murder on the First Day of Christmas such a fun, fast-paced read for an appreciative readership. The mystery will keep you guessing, but as any good decorator will tell you, even a beautiful setting can’t hide the ugly truth.

Q: Can you tell us what the book is about?

A: MURDER IN A TWO-SEATER is the second Chloe Carstairs mystery, and it takes place several months after MURDER ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS leaves off. Once again, Chloe and her mother Amanda are embroiled in an investigation when someone is murdered at a home they’re decorating. This time the home is a creepy old castle that they’re transforming into a luxury hotel. But before the first guest checks in, the owner’s wife checks out – with the help of a bullet to the head. When Chloe’s dad is accused of the crime, she and Amanda will stop at nothing to get to the truth, even if it means tanging with a sneaky blackmailer, a ghostly presence or two and a cunning killer with nothing to lose.

Q: There’s an unexpected and touching story behind Billie Thomas. Would you mind sharing that?

A: Billie Thomas is my pen name. My mom, Billie and I always traded mysteries back and forth and one day, out of the blue, I asked her to collaborate on writing one with me. I think I surprised us both. We had something of a rollercoaster relationship, but the idea of a fun, funny mystery with a mother-daughter relationship much like our own, appealed to both of us. After mom passed away unexpectedly at the end of 2011, getting MURDER ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS published was my top priority – it seemed like the perfect way to honor the mom who had given me a lifelong love of books and mysteries. I’m so thankful I have this series because working on it makes me feel close to my mom. Whenever hear that a daughter loved it and passed it along to her mom, or vice versa, saying “this is so us”, I’m thrilled. I bawl my eyes out but sometimes I do that when I’m thrilled.

Q: Was there a real-life inspiration for the castle-turned-hotel?

A: There are actually 10 castles in Alabama! I loosely based the castle in my book on Rocky Hill Castle, which also had a tower and was also thought to be haunted. I first learned about Rocky Hill Castle in “The Ghost of the Angry Architect”, by the fabulous storyteller Kathryn Tucker Windham.

Q: With a full time job, how do you make time for writing?

A: It’s a struggle, let me tell you! I work in advertising so a lot of my creative energy goes to that. Still, I try to be disciplined. I write every day unless work is out of control. When I’m really into a project, I get up early to write. It’s the only time I can truly call my own before the day spirals out of control.

Q: Do you have a target daily word count? Do you have a method, or are you a pantser?

A: A thousand words a day is my goal but I often do more if the story is taking off. And it never takes off if I’m not writing consistently. I keep a journal and scribble ideas all the time, so when I sit down to write every session is productive. And I definitely plot out my story before hand. That’s the control freak in me talking.

Q: Has working in advertising helped you learn how to hook readers?

A: I think it has. In advertising, you have to be very concise and choose every word carefully for maximum impact. Commercials are like very short short stories. And writing novels has definitely helped my advertising writing. Consumers are very savvy these days. They don’t like to be sold to, and they appreciate advertisers who get that.

Q: What’s next for Chloe and Amanda?

A: The end of MURDER IN A TWO-SEATER sets up the mystery in Book Three – the search for one of the recurring character’s missing sister. Chloe and Amanda will have to team up with Amanda’s nemesis to crack this case, so I’m sure there will be hilariously complicated for everyone.

Thank you so much, Frankie, for hosting me on your blog! I had fun with your questions.

About The Author

Billie Thomas is the pseudonym of a Birmingham-based author. After the real Billie passed away unexpectedly at the end of 2011, getting MURDER ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS, the first of in the Chloe Carstairs mystery series, revised and published was her daughter’s top priority as a way to honor the mom who had given her a lifelong love of books. In her real life, Ms. Thomas works at an advertising agency, which might explain why she’s constantly thinking up ways to kill people without getting caught. She has a really cute boyfriend and an even cuter dog. Like MURDER ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS, its follow up, MURDER IN A TWO-SEATER are both filled with mystery, romance, humor and decorating – because these are a few of her favorite things. Visit her blog at ChloeGetsAClue.com or connect on social media

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