Fancy a Murder Mystery Cruise?

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Dianne Ascroft

Amber Royer, author of Out of Temper, a Bean to Bar Mystery, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to tell us how her experiences lecturing on cruise ships has contributed to her latest novel.

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

Have you ever tried to get a live plant on board a cruise ship?  It isn’t easy.  Even though I was an enrichment speaker aboard the ship specifically there to talk about growing and cooking with herbs, I would invariably wind up pulled aside, having to explain this to three different people, who would then have to call someone before being allowed to bring my little flat of greenery on board.  But once on board, the herbs were always conversation starters.  Ship staff wanted to tell me what various herbs were called in their hometowns, and how specific plants were used locally for both food and medicine.  Other folks just wanted to know what I was doing, and often showed up later at my presentations.  It was about making connections.

As a writer, it’s no different.  I write something attention grabbing, and I hope readers will connect with it, the way people on the cruise ship connected with a sprig of rosemary, or tiny sprouts of basil.

It’s been a long time since I was an enrichment lecturer on a cruise ship, but the experience was invaluable in making me the writer I am today.  A lot of the themes, and the wanderlust my characters experience, come from me having visited ports of call.  So it seems only fitting that I finally wrote a book set on a cruise ship. 

In Out of Temper, my chocolate maker protagonist Felicity is invited to do chocolate making demos aboard a cruise ship.  This combines several of my own personal experiences.  I did a chocolate tasting class for the ships I was privileged to lecture aboard.  And I’ve also taken a hands-on chocolate making class, and seen tabletop scale chocolate making equipment in action through the Dallas Chocolate Festival.

I tend to write what I call “kitchen sink” books, where I take a lot of things I like or am interested in and put them together in the same piece of writing and see how things come together.  Another thing I know a lot about is the writing scene, and how conferences and conventions work.  I’ve volunteered at conferences, and done some conference planning, as well as speaking on panels and such, so I know how the behind-the-scenes element functions.  It seemed obvious to make the cruise in this book a theme cruise.  In fact, it is a murder mystery cruise, which includes a number of writers as speakers.  (I should note, these writers aren’t based on anyone in particular and are individuals created to fill specific roles in the plot, in order to push Felicity’s best friend, who mysteriously quit writing after much success, to confront her past and face change.)

Writing about such familiar settings and backdrops made Out of Temper in some ways easy to write.  But I felt like I was able to push the characters more, possibly because I was in such comfortable territory myself.  Felicity has to come to terms with the fact that she’s now in a love triangle, when her greatest fear is hurting people.  Autumn has to deal with her past.  Ash finds out he’s adopted.  Drake realizes he hardly knows Autumn, though he has proposed to her.  These were the things I was focusing on as I wrote.

So much about this book feels like things coming full circle, with Felicity’s pastry chef making basil brownies that Felicity brings aboard the ship.  I hope the journey shows in the finished book, and that you enjoy Out of Temper.

Thank you for giving readers an insight into the inspiration behind your writing, Amber, and good luck with Out of Temper, a Bean to Bar mystery.

Readers can learn more about Amber Royer by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads and Youtube pages. You can also follow her on Twitter.

The novel is available online at the following retailers:

Amazon  – Barnes and Noble  – Kobo  – Apple Books

About Amber Royer: Amber writes the CHOCOVERSE comic telenovela-style foodie-inspired space opera series, and the BEAN TO BAR MYSTERIES. She is also the author of STORY LIKE A JOURNALIST: A WORKBOOK FOR NOVELISTS, which boils down her writing knowledge into an actionable plan involving over 100 worksheets to build a comprehensive story plan for your novel. She blogs about creative writing techniques and all things chocolate at www.amberroyer.com. She also teaches creative writing and is an author coach. If you are very nice to her, she might make you cupcakes.  Chocolate cupcakes, of course.

Posted in February 2022 | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Frozen in Motion

Posted on January 27, 2022 by Dianne Ascroft

Lori Roberts Herbst, author of Frozen in Motion, a Callie Cassidy Mystery, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to tell us about creating her characters.

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

I gave birth last year.

I am fifty-nine years old, yet I produced not one, not two, but over two dozen human beings—not to mention a dog and a cat. Oh, and an entire village…

The extended labor was intensive and, from my perspective, the births were nothing short of miraculous. As Athena sprang forth in full armor from Zeus’ head, the people of my clan clawed their way from my mind and onto the computer screen, emerging as adults who had gestated in the womb of my brain for many months.

Some of these “children” are older than I am. Some of them are more fully developed than their counterparts. Some are more difficult to love than their siblings. And spoiler alert: some have already passed through my world and departed.

This is what it’s like to be a cozy mystery writer.

A friend asked me recently how it felt to create characters. Do I feel as if I know them? she asked. Are they based on real people?

I admit I had given little thought to the process until she posed the question. Like a toddler standing wide-eyed next to a spilled glass of milk, it just happened. Characters who hadn’t existed before were suddenly alive in my imagination, taking shape and adding layers of flesh and personality with each passing day.

I focused on them a lot—still do. When I go to bed at night, they sometimes keep me awake with their conversations, their problems, their dreams. As I drive to the store, they confide their deepest desires. It’s akin to dissociative disorder, I suspect, except that I am never overtaken by them. They are with me, but they are not me.

And that brings me to the second question: Are your characters based on real people?

To a degree, I suppose they must be. How could I create human beings, even fictional ones, without knowing and internalizing human qualities from people I know in the real world?

Callie Cassidy, the protagonist of my current series, shares a few traits with her creator. Her idealism sometimes results in despair, and she occasionally grapples with impatience (all right, more than occasionally). Sometimes when Callie speaks (especially when she is being sarcastic), I hear my voice. But the similarities between us are less obvious than the differences. Callie proceeds more boldly than I do, and she takes risks I would never even consider. She is as unique as each of my real-life daughters; like them, she may have initially learned how to look at the world at my knee, but now she thinks independently and makes her own decisions.

Maggie, Callie’s mother, is about the same age as my mother was when she died, so it is understandable that traces of Mom’s quirkiness bubble into Maggie’s psyche. When Butch, Callie’s father, runs outside in the freezing winter weather to warm up her car, it’s something my father would have done. And the gentle good-naturedness and smoldering good looks attributed to Sam, Callie’s on-again-off-again (then on-again) boyfriend, obviously evolve from my own handsome, long-suffering husband. 

So the short answer is this: if I am acquainted with you, part of you either has or will someday worm its way into one of my characters. Whether that should serve as a source of anticipation or apprehension, I leave to you.

As characters incubate in my imagination, I try to remember Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote, “There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.” I hope you’ll come to experience my Rock Creek Village children as I do: a group of flawed individuals who are trying the best way they know to wrest a modicum of happiness out of life.

Some of them just find more socially acceptable—and legal—ways of doing so than others.

I can’t wait for you to meet them.

Thank you for giving readers an insight into how your characters develop, Lori, and good luck with Frozen in Motion, a Callie Cassidy mystery.

Readers can learn more about Lori Roberts Herbst by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook, Goodreads and Bookbub pages.

The novel is available online at Amazon.

About Lori Roberts Herbst: Lori is the author of the Callie Cassidy Mystery series. Her debut novel, Suitable for Framing, won first place in the Murder and Mayhem category at the 2020 Chanticleer International Book Awards. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and serves as secretary of the North Dallas chapter. She is also a member of the national Guppy chapter and Mystery Writers of America. A former educator, Lori spent much of her life writing, editing, and psychoanalyzing. Through thirty years of teaching journalism, advising newspaper and yearbook staffs, instructing budding photographers, and counseling teenagers, she still managed to hang on to a modicum of sanity. Then she retired and assumed her third career: author.

Posted in Archives, January 2022 | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Ice Cold Murder

Posted on January 25, 2022 by Dianne Ascroft

Today Charlie Kingsley is visiting Ascroft, eh? to tell us about Ice Cold Murder, the latest novels in the Charlie Kingsley and Secrets of Redemption mystery series.

Welcome, Charlie. Let’s get started, shall we?

Tell us about the novel you live inside. Is it part of a series? If so, please tell us about it, too.

Thanks for asking. I’m actually in two different series: The Secrets of Redemption (the original) and The Charlie Kingsley Mysteries (the spin-off). Yes, before you ask, I’m Charlie.

The original series was more of a psychological suspense (although it’s clean, like a cozy). It takes place in Redemption, Wisconsin, which is a small town with a haunted past. I’m actually dead when you first meet me, but I didn’t let that stop me. Becca, my niece, is the main character in the first three books, and I talk to her in her dreams.

Michele finally figured it out, and in Book 4, she let me tell my story of how I came to Redemption. Of course, that morphed into two books (I have a lot to say). And once I got going, Michele wasn’t able to stop me, so now, I have my own cozy mystery series, which take place in the 1990s in Redemption.

Does Michele control what happens in the story, or do you get a say?

Do you even need to ask?

How did you evolve as the main character?

Well, it wasn’t easy. For a long time, I didn’t even have a name, and then, Michele gave me the wrong name (“Lottie” … ugh). But we finally got that sorted out. Overall, it was quite the process, and it took more time than it should have (in my humble opinion).

Do you have any other characters you like sharing the story with? If so, why are you partial to them?

Pat, of course. She’s one of my best friends and my sidekick when it comes to solving mysteries. Claire is another one of my best friends—she struggles a little more than Pat as she deals with family issues and being a new mom. In fact, we dive into Claire’s dysfunctional family in Ice Cold Murder.

What’s the setting of this story?

I find myself trapped in a house that is supposedly haunted with eight other people (Claire’s family). It’s in the middle of winter, and we’re snowed in. Needless to say, a lot can go wrong in a situation like that … including murder.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?

While there is a touch of the supernatural in both The Secrets of Redemption and The Charlie Kingsley Mysteries, neither should be considered paranormal. Everything has a logical explanation … even the hauntings and ghosts.

Thank you for answering my questions, Charlie, and good luck to you and your author, Michele Pariza Wacek, with Ice Cold Murder, the latest book in the Charlie Kingsley mystery series.

Readers can learn more about Charlie and her author, Michele Pariza Wacek by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages. You can also follow her on Twitter.

The novel is available online at  Amazon

About Michele Pariza Wacek: When Michele was 3 years old, she taught herself to read because she wanted to write stories so badly. It took some time (and some detours) but she does spend much of her time writing stories now. Mystery stories to be exact, ranging from psychological thrillers to cozies, with a dash of romance and supernatural thrown into the mix. If that wasn’t enough, she also hosts a virtual book club you can check out and join (for free!) at MPWNovels.com.

Michele holds a double major in English and Communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently, she lives in the mountains of Prescott, Arizona with her husband Paul and southern squirrel hunter Cassie.

Posted in Archives, January 2022 | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

French Ghost

Posted on January 18, 2022 by Dianne Ascroft

Today Corinne LaBalme is visiting Ascroft, eh? to tell us about French Ghost, her first novel in Paris Ghost Writer Mystery series.

Welcome, Corinne. Let’s get started, shall we?

Tell us about your novel. Is it part of a series? If so, please tell us about the series too.

French Ghost is the first book in a trilogy. With a contract to pen a reputation-restoring memoir for a nasty French movie star, American Melody Layne relocates to Paris. Before the interviews begins, the star drowns (accidentally or not?) and things only get weirder when the actor’s estranged son, Carlos Ortega, asks Melody to write a feel-good bio about  the father he clearly despised.  In French Toast (first draft completed), Melody works on a cookbook-memoir for a celebrity chef whose restaurant gets sabotaged; Book 3, French Poster Girl brings Melody into the dark digital world of high-end influencers.  

Where did the idea for the mystery that is central to the story come from?

The first author I ever met was Harriet S. Adams (pen name Carolyn Keene), the grandmother of my best high-school friend.  I eventually got a degree in French literature but Proust and Flaubert have had less influence on my writing than the Nancy Drew books. I don’t think I’m capable of writing a book (or a laundry list) without a mystery theme.  

Is there a theme or subject that underlies the story? If so, what prompted you to write about it?

“Lies and the liars who tell them” is the major theme. The book’s moody and mysterious Spanish lust interest, Carlos Ortega, has a tortured relationship with the truth despite his noble intentions. Straight-shooter Melody has little patience for alternative facts. How will that work out?

How do you create your characters? Do you have favourite ones? If so, why are you partial to them?

Melody and her BFF, food-blogger Jenna Bardet, are both offshoots of my Paris journalism career. However, I am awfully partial to Charlene Trent, the booze-challenged, silicon-enhanced starlet who Melody meets at the Cannes Film Festival. Charlene’s a mash-up of all the dissipated Z-list actresses that one reads about in celeb mags at the hair salon. Charlene’s a perfectionist: she practices her wardrobe malfunctions.   

How do you bring to life the place you are writing about?

Paris is where I live but during lockdown, I used this book to ‘virtually’ revisit so many French towns that I’ve written about for magazines: Bordeaux, Vichy, Rouen, Dijon… I missed them!

What research do you do to provide background information to help you write the novel?

I love research, but books 1 and 2 of this trilogy treat facets of French life – food, fashion, cinema — that I know quite well. However, for Book 3, I am definitely all over the internet  map trying to figure out what makes an influencer hot. 

Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about the book?

French Ghost is all about having a laugh and a little escape. It’s no more serious than a glass of chilled Chablis in a Paris bistro or a cup of tea by the fireside

PS: I love your site and just subscribed!  

Thanks Corinne, and thanks for answering my questions. Good luck with French Ghost, the first book in Paris Ghost Writer series.

Readers can learn more about Corinne and her writing by visiting her website and her Instagram page. You can also find her on Twitter.

The novel is available online at Amazon.

About Corinne LaBalme: My first jobs after college (incredibly useful art history degree) were in the New York fashion industry (modeling, working for designers). When I gave up on my Greenwich Village walk-up (after realizing that I couldn’t bear to smoosh the cockroaches in my shower because they were a ‘family’), I cut out to Paris where I became Fashion Editor for the English language magazine PASSION.

I subsequently wrote and edited the gourmet destination guide LA BELLE FRANCE for fifteen years while freelancing for the NEW YORK TIMES Travel section, various in-flight magazines, and guide books (GAULT MILLAU, VIRGIN, ZAGAT). From 2011 – 2012, I wrote screenplays for the PBS travel series CUISINE CULTURE.

The cinema figures in FRENCH GHOST are loosely based on stars I’ve interviewed (and been groped by); the restaurateurs in Book 2 (FRENCH TOAST) are drawn from the lovely, often impractical, chefs I met through LA BELLE FRANCE.

I suspect that Book 3 will toss Melody Layne into the cut-throat Paris fashion scene. May the Gods of Ghosting have mercy on her soul…

Posted in Archives, January 2022 | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Daunting Darkness & Freaky Familiars

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Dianne Ascroft

Today Lily Luchesi, author of Daunting Darkness & Freaky Familiars, is visiting Ascroft, eh? to tell us about how she created her Paige Papillon mystery series.

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

In this day and age of self-publishing and small press, more and more books than ever are being released to the public. It’s a wondrous time for writers and bibliophiles alike. Unfortunately for writers, it brings about an unprecedented issue: what are we going to write about that hasn’t been done a million times before?

This was something I pondered when starting the Paige Papillon Paranormal Mysteries. Cozies MUST have a specific formula in order to work: quirky main character, likable best friend, a unique congregating area, no on-screen death, usually a handsome guy shows up somewhere, and law enforcement who doesn’t like the MC. An animal companion helps, too.

Well, plots are always reused. That’s a given. But no one, and I mean no one, wants to read or write about the same characters doing the same things, just with different names or appearances.

Recently, I was reading a book (names will not be named) where the main character was ripped right from a very popular movie franchise. Except for some physical factors, it’s a character I have seen at least a dozen times with a different face in both literature and film. I mention film because so many books become movies these days, it just seems right to include them.

Let me start on my other books, where I had the opportunity to really overdo character tropes. My book series, The Paranormal Detectives, could have truly been a cliche. Mortal cop, female vampire who can kick ass, love story background. It sounds awful when put that way, doesn’t it? I know it brings a sour taste to my mouth.

Just like writing that formula I mentioned above for Paige bothered the heck out of me.

More than a writer, I’m a reader. So when I wrote my first series, I sat down during my second draft of book one and removed every single common trope there was. Do you know what I found? I made a flat as heck book. I realized that sometimes character tropes aren’t just tropes. Sometimes, they’re a necessary plot device. So I went back and took my female lead, Angelica Cross, and took a good look at her. She’s exactly what I wanted her to be: a tough Goth girl who loves black lipstick and equally black leather. She can wield a sword against the best swordsmen of history, outshoot any sniper, and best Jet Li in combat (I am not bragging, and you’ll see why in the next few sentences). She differs from a typical character in a vampire novel because of one reason: she can be bested. She can be beaten and would have been many times in the stories I already published had she not done two things: worked hard to make herself stronger and had backup.

We’ve all seen the kick butt vampire chick who is invincible, and I bet you’re as sick of them as I am. Angelica isn’t one of them. And she is precisely what I talk about when I say some tropes are necessary, but they are malleable. Every good story uses a common character trope (Prince Charming, the kind old person, damsel in distress, the genius, the misunderstood villain, et cetera). Yes, all of them. But the best of the best also change those characters; they bend, twist, and deface a trope until it is nearly unrecognizable.

Because who doesn’t love a dashing leading man? Or a good villain with a tragic backstory? Or even a leather-clad vampire assassin? Or in Paige’s case, a cute little amateur detective. Every author worth their salt can take a trope and make it their own.

Some tropes should be avoided at all costs, such as damsels in distress. I like to think that most readers are sick of the women needing to be rescued. I know I am. So should the extremely archaic idea of a POC as a bad guy or just a sidekick. Certain tropes have to go, and they have to go for a great reason: we have evolved beyond them.

We will never evolve beyond a Lord Voldemort, a Count Dracula, a Prince Charming, or a Katniss Everdeen. Those are the types of characters we’ve grown up with, the kind we love or love to hate. They make a new story feel as warm and comfortable for our brain as a hot cup of tea and blanket does for the body on a winter night. Good versus evil, love and hate, darkness and light. Just as those plot basics are essential for most stories, so are the characters that go along with them.

So crafting Paige’s story, I realized I needed those tropes. I needed the formula, but who said I couldn’t be like a mad scientist and mix that formula with some cyanide?

Paige is a POC autistic Goth girl who uses her disability to help solve crimes. Her BFF is a POC lesbian who may or may not be inhuman. She has mentors who remind me of Gomez and Morticia, rather than the kindly older woman who gives cookies and advice.

The gathering place is a metaphysical new age shop called The Enchanted Elder.

And the handsome guy? Paige is asexual. So the relationship will develop slowly over the 5 planned books in the series.

Readers who read genre fiction love what they love. God knows I do. And I want to give it to them. I want them to feel like they have a warm blanket and have just arrived home when they crack open Daunting Darkness.

But I want the kids like me, the Goths, the outcasts, the LGBT+, the neurodiverse, to also find something they love in a genre that has excluded them for over a century. Books are amazing. Paige is amazing (yeah, I’m bragging here). I wanted her to be more than the typical cozy detective, and yet I wanted her to be able to easily sit at a table with Miss Marple, Jessica Fletcher, and all those classic greats we’ve come to know and love.

I hope I succeeded.

Thank you for sharing this with us, Lily, and good luck with Daunting Darkness & Freaky Familiars, the latest books in the Paige Papillon mystery series.

Readers can learn more about Lily Luchesi by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook, Instagram, and Bookbub pages. You can also follow her on her newsletter and Twitter.

The books are available at the following online retailers:

Daunting Darkness – Amazon Freaky Familiars –  https://amzn.to/3JLnZy6

About Lily Luchesi: Lily is the author of the bestselling and award-winning Paranormal Detectives Series. She grew up in Chicago and now resides in Los Angeles, where she writes horror and erotica stories in between going to concerts and comic book signings. She loves vampires, classic horror, metal and rock music, anime, Supernatural, and the color black.

She has also written short stories in the anthologies Naughty Bedtime Stories: In Three Words, Death Love Lust, and Lurking In The Shadows.

Posted in Archives, January 2022 | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Cold Brew Corpse

Posted on January 9, 2022 by Dianne Ascroft

Today Lana Lewis is visiting Ascroft, eh? to tell us about Cold Brew Corpse, the latest novel in the Coffee Lover’s mystery series.

Welcome, Lana. Let’s get started, shall we?

Tell us about the novel that you live inside. Is it part of a series? If so, please tell us about the series too.

My name is Lana Lewis, and I live inside the Coffee Lover’s Mystery series. This particular installment is called Cold Brew Corpse, and it’s the second book in the series. I’m the star of both books, and as far as I can tell, the writer is chronicling my journey from being a reporter in Miami to a barista on a small Florida island. That doesn’t sound too interesting to me, but I guess all the murders are fascinating. Well, and the fact that I keep solving murders while making the best coffee in Florida.

Does the writer control what happens in the story or do you get a say too?

Ugh, the writer is such a…writer. She controls all of the words. As a former journalist, this is incredibly frustrating. I try to tell her what to write and sometimes she ignores me. Can you believe that? The nerve of some writers. Sheesh.

How did you evolve as the main character?

The writer was actually a journalist in Florida as well, and she likes to say that my story is her love song to journalism. She wanted to write a character based on all of the reporters she’d met in Florida, and then I was laid off. Which is a pretty common occurrence these days, so she wrote about what happened after my dismissal from the Miami paper.

Do you have any other characters you like sharing the story with? If so, why are you partial to them?

I love to share! Especially with Stanley, my Shih Tzu, Erica, an amazing barista and my BFF, and of course, Police Chief Noah Garcia. I have complicated feelings for Noah because of my divorce, but I never mind sharing anything with Noah.

What’s the place like where you find yourself in this story?

I live on Devil’s Beach, Florida, an island in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s the most beautiful place in the Sunshine State, in my opinion. There are gorgeous sugar sand beaches, a cute downtown with shops, and lots of quirky characters. If you read COLD BREW CORPSE, I’ll introduce you to all of the eccentric Devil’s Beach residents. Including my dad, who is probably the biggest gossip (and most eccentric of all).

Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about you and the book?

I hope everyone reads it because this particular crime is interesting. A really gorgeous yoga teacher goes missing, and I decide to sleuth for an article. I end up in a few sticky situations, including men’s candlelight nude yoga. It was awkward and weird, and well, you just have to read it.

Thank you for answering my questions, Lana, and good luck to you and your author, Tara Lush, with Cold Brew Corpse, the latest book in the Coffee Lover’s mystery series.

Readers can learn more about Lana and her author, Tara Lush. by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook, Goodreads, and Instagram pages. You can also follow her on Twitter.

The novel is available at the following online retailers:

Amazon  Apple     Barnes&Noble      Kobo     Penguin Random House

About Tara Lush: Tara Lush is a Florida-based author and journalist. She’s an RWA Rita finalist, an Amtrak writing fellow, and the winner of the George C. Polk award for environmental journalism.

She was a reporter with The Associated Press in Florida, covering crime, alligators, natural disasters, and politics. She also writes contemporary romance set in tropical locations under the name Tamara Lush.

Tara is a fan of vintage pulp fiction book covers, Sinatra-era jazz, 1980s fashion, tropical chill, kombucha, gin, tonic, seashells, iPhones, Art Deco, telenovelas, street art, coconut anything, strong coffee, and newspapers. She lives on the Gulf Coast with her husband and two dogs.

Posted in January 2022 | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Absent from our hearths but not our hearts

Posted on December 23, 2021 by Dianne Ascroft

It’s two days until Christmas so it’s time for my annual Christmas blog post. The theme for this post changes each year but the topic of memories is often part of it. I’ve written previously about how warm and happy memories of holidays past can lift your spirits. Memories also bring friends and loved ones who aren’t with us this year close to us for a moment. These folk may be absent due to the restrictions the pandemic has imposed on gatherings, or they may be gone in a more permanent way. Either way, we miss them.

This year has been a somewhat sobering one for me as four of my friends died before their time during 2021. Two were people who became good friends since I came to Northern Ireland, another had been a friend since high school, and the fourth was Debbie, the Australian woman who was my first penpal. We started writing to each other when we were eleven years old and spent a summer together in Australia after I finished high school. We also spent time together when she and her husband lived in England for a couple of years. Although we lived across the globe from each other, in many ways we grew up together, and, after fifty years of friendship, her early death to cancer left a hole in my life.

Sorrow and sadness are not part of our concept of the Christmas season. Grief and heartbreak are incompatible with the jollity expected of us throughout December. But we can’t ignore the pain of loss, nor do we want to forget those who are gone.

In Northern Ireland where I live, many people visit loved ones’ graves to tidy the plot and place wreaths on them during the Christmas season. When I first arrived here, I found this a depressing tradition amidst the boisterous parties and frantic shopping that is typical of the season. But I’ve since realised that it’s comforting to take time out to remember those who are gone. The peace of the graveyard affords time and space to savour cherished memories.

As Christmas rolls around each year, we can’t help recalling holidays past, can we? Every year I think back to Christmas when I was growing up in my family home. In our small house we had a pair of wreaths, with electric candles set in them, hanging in our front windows; their flames glowed red and welcoming as I returned home each evening. A pint-sized tree stood on a table in the corner of the living room and tiny, knitted striped stockings hung on the rocking chair beside the tree. The room was decked with holly and tinsel. Of course, I remember the people who were there too: my mother and my grandparents, and aunts and uncles who visited. All of those people are gone now but they still live in my memories.  

In my house in Northern Ireland, my love of Christmas is evident. The living room is festooned with decorations, including some I brought with me from my family home in Toronto. These cherished items from my past include a set of brass bells on a bright green braided rope that a Dutch aunt brought with her when she emigrated to Canada after the Second World War, colourful and fragile tree baubles that belonged to my mother, and even the rocking chair and miniature stockings that sat in our Toronto living room; the rocking chair was crafted at my grandfather’s farm in Western Canada long before I was born.

Each of these items evokes the person who made it or gave it to me. When I look at them, they bring back happy memories that warm and comfort me. And by weaving the items into my present day celebration, they become part of it, linking past and present and keeping alive in my heart those who are not with us now.

I hope you also have fond memories of your Christmases past with friends and loved ones to cherish, and I wish you new, wonderful memories with friends and family this holiday season.

Posted in Archives, December 2021 | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Have you ever wanted to see the place where a story is set?

Posted on December 22, 2021 by Dianne Ascroft

I like to imagine the places where books I read are set, and the same goes for the books I write. I have vivid images in my mind of the historic stone cottage where Lois Stone lives in the Century Cottage Cozy Mystery series.

Last summer I started doodling with a room designer app and created an illustration of Lois’s living room to share with readers. From there, I created a 3D plan of her whole house. Using ‘photos’ from this virtual house, I’ve created an illustrated hardcover edition of A Timeless Celebration.

Readers will be able to peek into most of the rooms in Lois’s house and drop into the Honey Pot diner. Get a glimpse of a typical afternoon in Lois’s living room and another look at it when friends drop by later in the day to visit. Stand in the doorway of her dining room just after an intruder has made his escape out the back door. Sit with Lois and visitors at her kitchen table and on the back porch. Take a look at Lois’s personal items in each room to give yourself an intimate insight into her life.

The illustrated edition of A Timeless Celebration contains twelve illustrations. Two show the house and lawn in daytime and after dark. One takes you inside the Honey Pot diner and the other nine are a tour of some of the rooms in Lois’s house.

You can find the book here: https://books2read.com/u/m2YPvk

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How to Book a Murder

Posted on December 17, 2021 by Dianne Ascroft

Today Emma Starrs is visiting Ascroft, eh? to tell us about How to Book a Murder, the first novel in the Starlit Bookshop mystery series.

Welcome, Emma. Let’s get started, shall we?

Tell us about the novel that you live inside. Is it part of a series? If so, please tell us about the series too.

It’s nice to meet you. My name is Emma Starrs, from How to Book a Murder, the first book in the Starlit Bookshop Mystery series. The novel is about what happens when I try to help save the family bookstore and end up taking on the role of amateur sleuth. The series is set in a quirky and charming bookstore in the quirky and charming town of Silvercrest, Colorado.

Does the writer control what happens in the story or do you get a say too?

She’s the one who gets things moving, but I’ve surprised her during the writing by going in directions she didn’t expect!

How did you evolve as the main character?

As the first book developed, so too did the complexity of my situation: I love my work as bookseller for which I agreed to plan literary events, but I am also writing a mystery and hoping to teach classes at the local college one day like my aunt does. Coming home has brought up numerous issues from the past. Suffice it to say that I’m juggling a lot, on multiple levels, and changing as a result.

Do you have any other characters you like sharing the story with? If so, why are you partial to them?

My sister Lucy and my aunt Nora are my nearest and dearest—we have a lot of fun together and are super close. And everyone in Silvercrest is lovely. For the most part. Except for the insufferable Tabitha Louise Saxton Lyme Harmon Gladstone Baxter and her clique.

What’s the place like where you find yourself in this story?

The story opens in a store full of wonderful books, which is dotted with inviting reading chairs and watched over by a cat named Anne Shirley.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about you and the book?

We hope you’ll consider visiting Starlit Bookshop soon!

Thank you for answering my questions, Emma, and good luck to you and your author, Cynthia Kuhn, with How to Book a Murder, the latest book in the Starlit Bookshop mystery series.

Readers can learn more about Emma and her author, Cynthia Kuhn by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook, Goodreads, and Bookbub pages. You can also follow her on Twitter and sign up for her newsletter.

The novel is available at the following online retailers:

Amazon – B&N – Kobo – Google Play – IndieBound – Bookshop 

About Cynthia Kuhn: Cynthia Kuhn is an English professor and author of the Starlit Bookshop Mysteries and the Lila Maclean Academic Mysteries. Her work has also appeared in Mystery Most Edible, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Copper Nickel, Prick of the Spindle, Mama PhD, and other publications. Honors include an Agatha Award, a William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant, and Lefty Award nominations. Originally from upstate New York, she lives in Colorado with her family.

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Murder in the Badlands

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Dianne Ascroft

My scheduled guest today, Rita Moreau, is unable to join me due to a family bereavement, but I’d like to take a few minutes to tell you a bit about her most recent book, Murder in the Badlands.

The novel is Rita’s 3rd book in this hilarious series…

Everything about Mabel’s golden years has been a surprise. The divorce, Irma the ghost haunting her vintage camper, dead guys whose murders Mabel must help Irma solve every stop of the way.

Mabel and her ghostly roommate Irma, along with friend Lili and her retired homicide detective husband Bob, have made it to the Badlands. From the get-go, they were smack dab in the middle of another murder.

Ralph, an old Marine buddy asks Bob, to investigate the death of his son Danny. His death has been ruled an accident. Ralph didn’t agree. He’s sure his son was pushed off top of Mount Rushmore. Right near the Hall of Records, or as it’s called in the movies and YouTube, the Secret Chamber. But why?

Did Danny, a skilled rock climber and much sought-after guide, find long-lost gold?

Were Danny’s last words–those of Crazy Horse–Hokahey–it’s a good day to die–leave a clue as to his demise?

Will Irma run out of costumes from her ghostly cyberspace closet before they solve the murder?

Will Irma’s new friend Poker Alice–the wild west’s famous gambler and brothel owner help Mabel and Irma figure out what happened to Danny?

And what about Cindy Lou and her side-kick Top Gun Colonel Clark–did they have a secret that Danny uncovered that fatal night outside the Secret Chamber?

Can Mabel and Irma catch the killer before Mabel joins Irma crashing through the Pearly Gates?

Murder in the Badlands is the high spirited third book in the hilarious Ghost & the Camper Kooky Mystery series. If you like golden girl sleuths, zany characters, and sardonic humor, then you’ll love this kooky mystery. Hoping you like camping!

The book is available online at  Amazon

About Rita Moreau: Rita is the author of the Mary Catherine Mahoney Mystery series and the Ghost & Camper Kooky Mystery series.

A workaholic by nature, upon retirement, Rita Moreau began work on her bucket list, writing a book. Traveling the national parks with her husband George in a vintage Bluebird motor home, (on George’s list), Rita completed her first novel Bribing Saint Anthony. Back home she completed Nuns! Psychics! & Gypsies! OH! NO, Feisty Nuns and The Russian & Aunt Sophia and The House on Xenia. Last year when we entered the Twilight Zone Rita wrote the first two new novels in the Ghost & the Camper series. Rita and her husband live in a postcard called Florida where he has fun telling everyone he is the author’s husband. When not writing she joins PatZi Gil on the Joy on Paper radio program with Book Buzz Mysteries, or you can find her teaching SilverSneakers fitness classes and doing her best to keep busy. She loves connecting with readers. 

You can learn more about Rita by visiting her author website and her Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads and Radio show pages. You can also follow her on Twitter.

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