cozy mystery

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Culinary cozies with a touch of the islands.

Catherine Bruns writes in several different series of her own and has also contributed to a multi-author series set in Hawai’i. As with so many authors, including yours truly, Catherine works full-time and squeezes her writing around the edges of that full day.

For the second time in two weeks I’m introduced to a food dish I’d never heard of: Loco Moco. The dish originated in Hilo and consists of rice, a hamburger patty, a fried egg and gravy. Have you ever had it?

Today’s show is supported by my patrons at Patreon. Thank you! When you become a patron for as little as $1 a month you receive a short mystery story each and every month. And the rewards for those who love mystery stories go up from there! Learn more and become a part of my community of readers at www.Patreon.com/alexandraamor

This week’s mystery author

To learn more about Catherine and all her books visit CatherineBruns.net

[Read more…] about It Cannoli Be Murder with Catherine Bruns

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:08 — 13.8MB) | Embed

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Would you trade Hawai’i for Nebraska?

Kelly Brakenhoff’s amateur sleuth, Cassandra Sato, is ambitious: she wants to be a university president one day. So leaving Hawai’i and landing in Nebraska makes sense to her because it will further her career.

Kelly reads to us from the first book in the Cassandra Sato series, Death by Dissertation, and we talk about how creating a character who is a fish out of water can lend itself to interesting plot points and situations.

In the interview, I ask Kelly about her picture book for children called Never Mind. She shares what motivated her to write that book and the important issue the next book in the series addresses. (Hint: it has to do with farts.) 🙂 Below is the video she mentions where she reads Never Mind and Amy Willman does the signs for it.

This week’s mystery author

To learn more about Kelly and all her books visit KellyBrackenhoff.com

[Read more…] about An Education in Murder with Kelly Brackenhoff

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Debra Goldstein is a judge AND she’s been on the TV show Jeopardy!

How’s that for a line item on a CV?

My guest today reads from her brand new book, Three Treats Too Many, and we talk about her long-held desire to write, how publishing proved easy in the beginning and then got a little harder, and what it’s like to blank out when trying to answer the final question on Jeopardy.

In the introduction I mention staying up far too late watching the Disney Plus behind-the-scenes documentary about making the animated film Frozen 2 and how I am a sucker for any kind of show or book about what goes on during the making of a creative project.

This week’s mystery author

To learn more about Debra and all her books visit DebraHGoldstein.com.

[Read more…] about Murder on the Menu with Debra H. Goldstein

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Attention dog lovers who also love mysteries. (Or mystery lovers who also love dogs.)

A few years ago, a dear friend read my romantic mystery and said she liked it, although she got tired of hearing about the dog in the story, which made me laugh. I LOVE DOGS! In fact, I’ve even got a series of children’s middle grade novels where the main character is a dog. So it should be fairly obvious that I’m crazy for dogs and they’re going to crop up in my writing. 😉

ACF Bookens and I are cut from the same cloth that way. She loves dogs too, has one of her own, and in the excerpt from Publishable by Death, the first book in the St. Marin’s cozy series that she reads to us, there are no less than four dogs mentioned. A writer after my own heart.

In the intro I also mention another podcast you might like called Mysteryrat’s Maze. Episodes consist of mystery short stories, and first chapters of mystery novels, read by local actors. To listen to the episodes, and subscribe to the podcast, you can go to mysteryratsmaze.podbean.com, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and more. 

This week’s mystery author

To learn more about ACF Bookens and all her books, visit her website.

[Read more…] about A Sleuth and a Dog Walk Into a Small Town with ACF Bookens

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:24 — 14.3MB) | Embed

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Oh how I love a rag-tag bunch of characters!

In this episode Catriona McPherson reads to us from Scot on the Rocks, the third book in her Last Ditch mysteries. She and I share a love of stories with a rag-tag bunch of characters. (Examples that spring to mind for me are the TV shows Firefly and Parks and Recreation, and the movie Saving Grace, to name a few.)

This is not something you find every day in mystery novels because sleuths tend to work alone or with one partner and the characters change with each book because the mystery changes. But Catriona explains how, in the case of these books, the characters moved in and stayed, much to her delight.

This Week’s Mystery Author

To learn more about Catriona McPherson and all her books visit CatrionaMcPherson.com

[Read more…] about Valentine’s Dinner for One and an Ex-Husband’s Missing Wife with Catriona McPherson

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:13 — 14.0MB) | Embed

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Amateur sleuth Kendra Clayton has enough on her plate without adding murder to the mix.

Author and librarian Angela Henry introduces us to her Kendra Clayton series, reading from the first book in the series, The Company You Keep.

If you’d like to try more of Angela’s work, she’s bundled together excerpts from the first three books in this series and you can sign up to receive them here.

In the introduction, I go a little inside baseball about book covers, how impressed I am with Angela’s (and the fact that she designs them herself!) and the multiple jobs a book cover has to do to attract a reader’s attention.

In the interview portion of the show, Angela and I talk about how important it is for young readers to see representation of themselves in literature, including Black authors like Angela and characters like Kendra.

This week’s mystery author

To learn more about Angela and all her books visit AngelaHenry.com

[Read more…] about It’s a Thin Line Between Love and Murder with Angela Henry