Today Mary Feliz is visiting Ascroft, eh? to tell us about Snowed Under, her latest novel in the Mary McDonald mystery series.
Welcome, Mary. 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.
Snowed Under is the sixth book in the Maggie McDonald Mystery Series. It takes 
amateur detective to a Lake Tahoe ski resort to help her friend Tess clear out her family’s cabin for sale. An epic High Sierra blizzard hits, and they’re snowbound. Maggie, who lives in the Mediterranean climate of the San Francisco Bay Area, is out of her depth. Things go downhill when they stumble on a body frozen in a drift.
The entire series focuses on Professional Organizer Maggie McDonald and her family, including a golden retriever with separation anxiety. Helping clear out neglected storage areas gives Maggie access to all the places people hide their secrets, including the skeletons in their closets. In each book, a dead body trashes her detailed organizational plan. Her investigation takes her to some of the most beautiful places in the area and touches lightly on some of the problematic issues of California living.
Where did the idea for the mystery that is central to the story come from?
I’ve always been fascinated by the power of storms, and love the tropes of traditional mysteries that strand characters in remote country houses far from help in terrible weather. One of my favorite books is Storm by George R. Stewart. published in 1941. While the technology is dated now, it follows the development of a storm far out in the Pacific Ocean and follows it as it grows and makes landfall, wreaking havoc across California.
Another building block of this adventure was an article called Winter Warriors about the heroic efforts of the transportation workers who keep the Interstate 80 corridor open in weather akin to the storms that stopped fated Donner Party. https://www/sierrasun.com/news/winter-warriors.
Is there a theme or subject that underlies the story? If so, what prompted you to write about it?
Most of the story is a light-hearted romp through the beauty of the Lake Tahoe area in winter, and the coziness that comes from being indoors when the weather outside is treacherous. But there are hints of danger introduced by the weather, a murderer, and a variety other nefarious forces. In any international resort like Tahoe’s ski areas, you have people coming and going quickly. Some have great wealth. It’s adjacent to a private airport and a major interstate freeway that means bad guys can come and go quickly. Smuggling and fraud of all kinds create a complex law enforcement problem I can’t begin to resolve or understand in detail, but it adds creepy backdrop to an otherwise pastoral story.
How do you create your characters? Do you have favourite ones? If so, why are you partial to them?
Most of my favorite characters developed like that Pacific Storm in George Stewarts book, from a small blip in my brain to a full-blown personality that I sometimes forget is fictional. Their quirks aren’t always ones I planned. The antagonists are created to become the perfect foils for the characters I love so much. But I try to make them well-rounded with reasonable explanations for what they are doing. No one in my books is all bad or all good. I think there’s a very interesting line between good and bad, and like to look at the reasons that good people do bad things and bad people do good things.
My favorite characters to write about are Stephen Laird, one of Maggie’s best friends, and his mastiff, Munchkin. They both suffer from PTSD and look after one another, but are also strong, courageous, and eager to help others.
How do you bring to life the place you are writing about?
I write about the places in California that I love, most of which aren’t portrayed accurately on the screen. Lake Tahoe in winter was a favorite vacation spot for me and my boys when they were growing up. We spent many weekends and holidays watching the weather reports and wondering if we’d be able to get home, even with the snow chains we always carried. But a holiday in an area doesn’t shed much light on what it’s like to live there. For that insight, I consulted a dear friend whose family has a house on the North Shore, has spent decades visiting in the winter, and also lived there year-round.
What research do you do to provide background information to help you write the novel?
I do far more research than ever ends up in the books. I’m an information junkie and love wallowing in tiny details told in books, magazines, newspapers, and the people who live the experience. But only the most interesting details that serve the progression of the story make it into the book.
Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about the book?
I have no idea where the car mechanic and his unusual garage came from, though I did once enjoy a gourmet meal elegantly served in a former roadside service station.
Thanks for answering my questions, Mary, and good luck with Snowed Under, the latest book in the Mary McDonald Mystery series.
Readers can learn more about Mary and her writing by visiting her website and her Facebook page. You can also follow her on Twitter.
The novel is available at the following online retailers:
Amazon B&N Kobo Google Books Kensington
About Mary Feliz: Mary writes the Maggie McDonald Mysteries featuring a Silicon Valley professional organizer and her sidekick golden retriever. She’s worked for Fortune 500 firms and mom and pop enterprises, competed in whale boat races and done synchronized swimming. She attends organizing conferences in her character’s stead, but Maggie’s skills leave her in the dust.
Hello, I’m Charlotte Reed, and my story starts in book one of the Booklover’s B&B series, BOOKED FOR DEATH. It’s a cozy mystery series set in Beaufort, North Carolina. Fortunately for anyone who loves the setting, Beaufort is a real place that you can visit! It’s a coastal town located only a few miles (across the Bogue Sound) from the sandy beaches of Atlantic Beach and the rest of the “Crystal Coast” of North Carolina. Although Beaufort isn’t located directly on the Atlantic Ocean, it does have a natural harbor that draws boaters of all kinds. It’s also a very historic area, with homes and other buildings dating back to the early eighteenth-century.
About Victoria Gilbert: She raised in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, turned her early obsession with reading into a dual career as an author and librarian. Victoria has worked as a reference librarian, research librarian, and library director. When not writing or reading, she likes to spend her time watching films, gardening, or traveling. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers and lives in North Carolina.
The poor, beleaguered writer is obliged to see, do, think, react, and comment precisely as I would! Sometimes my views seem frightfully archaic to her, but she steels herself and writes what I want her to. However, she seems determined to encourage my friendship, such as it is, with Mr. McBrae, and he is impossible to control.
About Barbara Monajem: Winner of the Holt Medallion, Maggie, Daphne du Maurier, Reviewer’s Choice and Epic awards, Barbara Monajem wrote her first story at eight years old about apple tree gnomes. She published a middle-grade fantasy when her children were young. When they grew up, she turned to writing for adults, first the Bayou Gavotte paranormal mysteries and then Regency romances with intrepid heroines and long-suffering heroes (or vice versa). Some of her Regencies have magic in them and some don’t (except for the magic of love, which is in every story she writes).
I definitely control what happens in the story. When my writer tries to deviate from my plan, she doesn’t get very far and usually ends up deleting everything she’s written. The only one who gets more of a say than me in how the story progresses is my best friend, Bee. I’m pretty sure he’s my writer’s favorite.
About Lena Gregory: She is the author of the Bay Island Psychic Mysteries, which take place on a small island between the north and south forks of Long Island, New York, and the All-Day Breakfast Café Mysteries, which are set on the outskirts of Florida’s Ocala National Forest.
It’s a little philosophical to ask someone whether they control their own destiny, isn’t it? All I know is when something bad happens around me or I’m in the middle of trouble and struggling to find an escape, I don’t see Marc Jedel, the writer, there helping me out. He tends to sit at his computer typing all day. Although I’ve seen his office and he now has a sit-stand desk so perhaps that midnight requisition that unfolds in HIT AND MIST was based on reality? For the most part, Marc takes my notes and turns what happened to me into a more polished story. Well, actually his copy editor does all the important polishing so I’m not really sure what Marc’s role is.
About Marc Jedel: For most of his life, he’s been inventing stories. His writing skills were honed in years of marketing leadership positions in Silicon Valley. While his high tech marketing roles involved crafting plenty of fiction, he called these marketing collateral, emails and ads.
There wasn’t a really strong lesson to the book as it’s simply a clean, twisty mystery, but I do want to portray a really strong sibling bond through this series, as well as the importance of giving shelter dogs a chance.
The most recent book I live in is Murder in the Wine Country, and it’s the sixth book in the Kelly Jackson mystery series. I’m Kelly, an executive administrator with Resorts International. I originally came to the small town of Redwood Cove, located on the coast of northern California, on what was to be a temporary assignment. I took over the Redwood Cove Bed and Breakfast after the manager had what appeared to be an accidental fatal fall from a seaside cliff. It was a straightforward assignment until a crime-solving group of senior citizens, the Silver Sentinels, cried murder. Thus began my adventures in the first book, Murder at Redwood Cove. The type of mysteries I am involved in are often referred to as cozies. My author, Janet Finsilver, prefers to call them safe whodunits. What she means by that is there is no graphic violence and the main characters won’t die. They will always return.
About Janet Finsilver: Janet is the USA TODAY best-selling author of the Kelly Jackson mystery series. She worked in education for many years as a teacher, a program administrator, and a workshop presenter. Janet majored in English and earned a Master’s Degree in Education. She loves animals and has two dogs—Kylie and Ellie. Janet has ridden western style since she was a child and was a member of the National Ski Patrol. One of the highlights of her life was touching whales in the San Ignacio Lagoon. MURDER AT REDWOOD COVE, her debut mystery, was released on October 13, 2015. Five books followed with her most recent release on April 28, 2020, of book six, MURDER IN THE WINE COUNTRY. Janet Finsilver and her husband reside in the San Francisco Bay Area. She enjoys cooking, and a recent attempt to reduce the number of cookbooks in the cupboard wasn’t very successful. She’s an avid reader—of course!
A mystery author has invited Lila to stay in her guest house while doing research, and the idea came about when I was thinking about this author’s backstory, especially as it relates to the mansion where they spend the semester. I imagined what her life had been like when she was younger, who had been a part of it, and how her writing back then could be related to the current situation.
About Cynthia Kuhn: Cynthia writes the Lila Maclean Academic Mysteries: The Semester of Our Discontent, The Art of Vanishing, The Spirit in Question, The Subject of Malice, and The Study of Secrets. Honors for the series include an Agatha Award for best first novel and Lefty Award nominations for best humorous mystery.
My writing hours are in the afternoon, after running errands, answering emails, and peeking at social media. Only once my mind is a relatively clean slate can I drill down into the Dodie O’Dell mystery series and play with the characters of Etonville, New Jersey. Especially Dodie O’Dell, my protagonist sleuth, who always has her hands full solving a mystery, managing the Windjammer restaurant, and supporting her friends at the Etonville Little Theatre.
About Suzanne Trauth: She is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and a former theatre professor at a university. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the Dramatists Guild, and League of Professional Theatre Women. When she is not writing, Suzanne coaches actors and serves as a celebrant performing wedding ceremonies. She lives in Woodland Park, New Jersey.
After their mama’s passing, Marygene Brown returned to Peach Cove Island to help her sister Jena Lynn run the family diner, renowned for its homemade peach desserts. But Mama is never too far away—her sassy spirit haunts the island, and more specifically Marygene. Lately Mama has been warning her that the dead will seek her out to solve their murders, an idea Marygene is far from peachy keen on.
About Kate Young: Kate writes Southern mystery novels. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and the Guppy Chapter. Kate lives in a small town in Georgia with her husband, three kids, and Shih Tzu. When she is not writing her own books, she’s reading or cooking.
dianneascroft.com 