Cara Mia Delgatto from Paint Can Kill, a Cara Mia Delgatto mystery, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to tell us a bit about her life on Jupiter Island.

Welcome, Cara. I’ll turn the floor over to you –

Thanks to my grandfather’s generosity, I live on Jupiter Island off the coast of Florida. The ocean is only 15 feet from my sliding glass doors. My house was originally a little guest house for a mansion, but it’s plenty big enough for me, my two dogs and my cat.

My next-door neighbor, Aurora Hamilton, she who lives in the mansion, is probably my best friend ever. When I first saw her house, I thought, “That woman and I will have nothing in common.” But we do. We share a quirky sense of humor, an interest in the world around us, and down-to-earth personalities. That makes us rare here on Jupiter Island.

See, a lot of the residents here were old friends from the New York suburbs who came down here to vacation. When I say old, I mean their ages are somewhere between mud and God. They belong to the very, very exclusive country club here. You have to be a property owner to apply to join. That makes the club one of the most expensive in the world. I am most definitely not a member. I’m not a joiner, and I’m definitely not wealthy.

I’m okay with all of that. There are nice rich people (as Aurora is) and not-so-nice rich people. But the part I can’t stand is the sense of entitlement. For example, I was standing in line at the local hardware store when one of my neighbors pushed past me. “I want to return this key,” she announced to the clerk. “I bought two and I only need one.”

It was as if I wasn’t even standing there, next in line. The clerk shot me a look over the interloper’s head, a pleading please-don’t-make-a-fuss sort of expression. I shrugged. If returning a key was that important, fine. I know how humpy customers can get. I own a store, The Treasure Chest, in a little town north of the island. We get our share of picky customers, too. For the most part, people are pretty nice because we’re a “trash to treasure” shop, and our offerings are unique. People love shopping with us. I credit my employees. There’s Skye Blue, a creative genius who can turn anything in to an object of desire. There’s Honora Macavity, a skilled miniaturist who makes tiny settings people love. And there’s MJ Austin, an expert on all things Old Florida, including Highwayman paintings. You could say we’re a sort of girls’ club because the three of us are fast friends. Even if they do tease me about tripping over bodies…

Thank you for sharing this with us, Cara, and good luck to you and your author, Joanna Campbell Slan, with Paint Can Kill, the latest book in the Cara Mia Delgatto mystery series.

Readers can learn more about Cara and her author, Joanna Campbell Slan by visiting the author’s website and. her Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, BookBub and Goodreads pages. You can also follow her on Twitter.

The book is available online at  Amazon

About Joanna Campbell Slan: Joanna is a New York Times Bestselling, USA Today Bestselling, and Amazon Bestselling author as well as a woman prone to frequent bursts of crafting frenzy, leaving her with burns from her hot glue gun and paint on her clothes. And the mess? Let’s not even go there.

Otherwise, Joanna’s a productive author with more than 80 written projects to her credit. Her non-fiction work includes how to books, a college textbook for public speakers, and books of personal essays (think Chicken Soup for the Soul). Currently, she writes six fiction series: The Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series (Agatha Award Finalist, contemporary, St. Louis setting, crafting), the Cara Mia Delgatto Mystery Series (contemporary, Florida setting, DIY, and recycling), the Jane Eyre Chronicles (Daphne du Maurier Award Winner, 1830s England, based on Charlotte Brontë’s classic), the Sherlock Holmes Fantasy Thrillers (late 1800s, based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s books), the Tai Chi Mystery Series (featuring a mature female amateur sleuth!) and the Friday Night Mystery Series (set in Decatur, IL in 1986 with a spunky female heroine.)

A former TV talk show host, college teacher, and public relations specialist, Joanna was one of the early Chicken Soup for the Soul contributors. She won a Silver Anvil for her work on the original FarmAid concert to benefit farmers.

In her ongoing quest never to see snow again, Joanna lives with her husband and their Havanese puppy, Jax, on an island off the coast of Florida.