Today Cheryl Hollon is visiting Ascroft, eh? to tell us about Still Knife Painting, her first novel in the Paint & Shine mystery series.
Welcome, Cheryl. 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.
Still Knife Painting is the first book in the Paint & Shine Mystery Series. I’m writing the third book and will turn it over to my editor at Kensington Books in the middle of July. The mysteries are about a young woman who starts a cultural adventure business in a rural community in eastern Kentucky.
Where did the idea for the mystery that is central to the story come from?
I was born in Hazel Green, Kentucky where most of my family have been farmers, engineers, musicians, and my grandmother was the postmistress for Trent, Ky. Although my parents moved to Dayton, Ohio when I was incredibly young, I spent most of my summers living with my grandparents and running wild like a barn kitten.
Is there a theme or subject that underlies the story? If so, what prompted you to write about it?
The strength of family bonds and creativity through art. Everyone I know from that area has an artistic talent for painting, embroidery, quilting, dressmaking, cooking, and fantastically beautiful flower gardens.
How do you create your characters? Do you have favourite ones? If so, why are you partial to them?
A cobble together a Frankenstein collection of traits – trying on this quality and adding on that quirk. They I play around with the name until they suddenly everything snaps into place and they become themselves.
How do you bring to life the place you are writing about?
I’ve been to the farmhouse described in the books several times a year since I was a toddler. After I left home, it became a summer house for my parents. Their favorite time to visit was for a few weeks in the spring and a longer visit in the fall.
What research do you do to provide background information to help you write the novel?
Of course, internet and e-mail are a writer’s best friend. But I have to good fortune to still have cousins there who live right down the road from my father’s farmhouse.
Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about the book?
While I was drafting the first book in this series, my father had a bad fall and ended up in a rehabilitation facility to regain his strength. Unfortunately, his health took a bad turn and he passed away while I was writing the second book. I am so thankful we had time to share long conversations about his happy boyhood in this remarkable corner of eastern Kentucky.
Thanks for answering my questions, Cheryl, and good luck with Still Knife Painting, the first book in the Paint & Shine Mystery series.
Readers can learn more about Cheryl and her writing by visiting her website and her Facebook page. You can also follow her on Twitter (@CherylHollon).
The novel is available at the following online retailers:
About Cheryl Hollon: Cheryl now writes full-time after she left an engineering career of designing and building military flight simulators in amazing countries such as England, Wales, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and India. Fulfilling the dream of a lifetime, she combines her love of writing with a passion for creating glass art. In the small glass studio behind her house in St. Petersburg, Florida, Cheryl and her husband design, create, and produce fused glass, stained glass, and painted glass artworks.
The series all have a Christmassy title: Not A Creature Was Stirring (1), Better Watch Out (2), and Dash Away All (3). The series features Merry Winters, an empty nester who specializes in handcrafting Christmas décor and gift items. After Merry’s children grow up and move out, she decided it was time to stretch her dreams and herself as her children were no longer dependent on her. Her first throw-all-caution-to-the-wind moment though led her investigating a murder to keep herself out of jail.
About Christina Freeburn: Christinas has always loved books. There was nothing better than picking up a story and being transported to another place. The love of reading evolved into the love of writing and she’s been writing since her teenage years. Her first novel was a 2003 Library of Virginia Literary Award nominee. Her mysteries series, Faith Hunter Scrap This Mystery and Merry & Bright Handcrafted Mysteries, are a mix of crafty and crime and feature heroines whose crafting time is interrupted by crime solving.
I was at a Renaissance Faire and I fell in love with the art of fairy gardens. A woman who was there glowed with a lovely energy. I wanted to connect with that same glow. I found a garden store not far from me that focused on fairy gardens. There aren’t a lot of them. For me, it was Kismet! I went to the store and fell in love with everything there. So, I decided to create a character who could live the life of a shop owner who brings joy to customers by helping them design fairy gardens. It’s well known that seeing a fairy will bring luck into one’s life.
About Daryl Wood Gerber: Agatha Award-winning author Daryl Wood Gerber writes the nationally bestselling Cookbook Nook Mysteries as well as the French Bistro Mysteries. In June 2020, her new series, the Fairy Garden Mysteries debuts. As Avery Aames, she pens the popular Cheese Shop Mysteries. Daryl also writes the Aspen Adams novels of suspense as well as stand-alone suspense. Fun tidbit: as an actress, Daryl appeared in “Murder, She Wrote.” She loves to cook, garden, and read, and she has a frisky Goldendoodle named Sparky who keeps her in line!
Murder isn’t always crystal-clear . . . especially when the prime suspect discovers she’s a witch.
About Cate Conte: Cate is the alter ego of Liz Mugavero. Liz is the author of the Pawsitively Organic Mystery series from Kensington Books, the first of which was an Agatha nominee for Best First Novel. Cate is the author of the new Full Moon Mysteries for Kensington and writes the Cat Cafe Mystery series for Minotaur Books. As you can imagine, her canine and feline rescues demand the best organic food and treats around. She is a member of Sisters in Crime National, Sisters in Crime New England, Mystery Writers of America, and the Cat Writers’ Association. She currently lives in Connecticut.
When Jolie and Ava are in the Dominican Republic in Blueberry Cobbler Blackmail, they want to learn about Dominican cuisine. They end up taking an online cooking course while they are there. From that point on, the idea of a murder taking place on-screen during an online class was born!
Die a Yellow Ribbon is the ninth book in the Pecan Bayou series. When I wrote it, I wanted it to be part Amazing Race and part It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I wanted to write a great summer read where the characters of my little Texas town are running around in the heat trying to find a plastic pecan spray painted gold.
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.
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.
