Mason Hughes from Mystery at an Irish Wedding, A Half Moon Bay mystery, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to introduce us to Clementine and Half Moon Bay.

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

Hello! I’m Mason — street poet, gallery disruptor, occasional chaos magnet — and somehow, a suspect more often than I’d like.
 When I first arrived in Half Moon Bay, I wasn’t looking for mystery, heartbreak, or local gossip thick enough to paint walls with. I was looking for a canvas. A moment. A conversation that might turn into something more.

I’ve always believed that art should live where people do. Not confined to hushed galleries or overpriced exhibits, but scrawled on café napkins, chalked onto pavements, whispered between strangers. That’s why I set up camp at the Seashell Gallery — thanks to the kindness of Bridget and Arthur — and started turning blank walls into wild, word-drenched landscapes.

And then came Clementine.

You’ve heard of whirlwind romances? Meeting Clem was more like a stormfront laced with lavender and unresolved trauma. She’d just landed home from a year abroad, only to walk straight into a nightmare — the kind of betrayal that should only happen in soap operas or badly written indie films.

I didn’t mean to get involved. Honestly. But one moment I was helping her find a lost bottle of champagne, and the next I was watching a seaside wedding spiral into gothic farce. (Spoiler: she was not the one getting married.)

Here’s the thing: in Half Moon Bay, the waves might lap gently on the shore, but underneath, the current pulls hard. Secrets have a way of surfacing — and when they do, it helps to have someone by your side. Even if that someone dyes his hair turquoise and quotes haikus in awkward silences.

People say I’m eccentric. They’re not wrong. I think in metaphors and paint with conversations. But I also know pain when I see it. And I know when a mystery is more than it seems. What started with a champagne bottle turned into something far darker — something laced with poison, property deals, and a woman shouting “turtle dove” from a hotel balcony. No, really.

Anyway, enough about me. If you ever find yourself in Half Moon Bay, pop by the gallery. Bring a word, any word — I’ll scribble it on the wall, turn it into a poem, or maybe a clue. Because around here, art and mystery go hand in hand. And sometimes, solving a murder starts with just one honest sentence.

Yours in words,
 Mason Hughes
 Art vandal. Reluctant detective.
 P.S. If you see a suspicious bottle of champagne… maybe don’t drink it.

Thank you for sharing this with us, Mason, and good luck to you and your author, L. C. Winters, with Mystery at an Irish Wedding, the first book in the Half Moon Bay mystery series.

Readers can learn more about Mason and his author, L. C. Winters by visiting the author’s website and. her Facebook, Instagram and Goodreads pages. You can also follow her on Twitter and BlueSky.

The book is available online at Amazon

About L.C. Winters: This is the pen name for Laura Cavanagh & Colin Vaughan. We are from Ireland, and we aim to bring our culture, cozy Irish atmosphere, legends and history into our stories. We write cozy mystery romance novels. Our focus is on creating a set of clever clues with twists and turns to keep you guessing until the very end. Our first series is called Half Moon Bay Mysteries and it is set in a small, seaside village in Ireland. Our stories promote a romanticised view of small-town life with a host of eccentric, lovable characters.

As avid mystery fans (we love the classics like Agatha Christie as well as modern cozy authors like Richard Osman), we love deciphering clues and trying to beat the detective to figure out who committed the crime. So we decided to create mysteries with a complex set of interrelated clues which are delivered in an easy to follow story. We hope that the ending of each of our mysteries is both a surprise and, at the same time, feels inevitable and ‘right’.

Laura has a degree in Psychology and this is reflected in our protagonist Clementine who uses her Psychology know-how to figure out the motives, secrets and inconsistencies in each suspect.

With our cozy fiction, we aim to create heartwarming stories with lovable, quirky characters in a nice, soothing environment. Wherever you are when you are reading our stories, we hope to whisk you away to beautiful, picturesque Ireland to the seaside county of Donegal!