Today Heather Day Gilbert is visiting Ascroft, eh? to tell us about Belinda Blake and the Snake in the Grass, her first novel in the Exotic Pet-Sitter mysteries series.
Welcome, Heather. 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.
HDG: Yes, Belinda Blake and the Snake in the Grass is the first in a three-book cozy mystery series called the Exotic Pet-Sitter Series. It features amateur sleuth Belinda Blake, who lives in a carriage house in wealthy Greenwich, CT. Her parents live in Upstate New York, and she visits them throughout the series.
Where did the idea for the mystery that is central to the story come from?
HDG: I wanted to come up with an occupation for my sleuth that hadn’t been overdone in the cozy mystery genre, and somehow I stumbled onto the idea for an exotic pet-sitter. Her first “mission” is sitting a ball python. It was challenging to bring that to life in a way that wouldn’t repulse readers, but I think it worked—one endorser (cozy author Emily James) said that although she didn’t like snakes going into the book, the snake wound up being one of their favorite characters!
Is there a theme or subject that underlies the story? If so, what prompted you to write about it?
HDG: I wanted to portray a twenty-something year old sleuth who has a strong family support unit, and Belinda does. She has a psychologist sister, Katrina, who’s always telling her to be more careful, as well as loving parents. Family is a kind of a theme running through the series, although Belinda does trip into some romance along the way…
How do you create your characters? Do you have favourite ones? If so, why are you partial to them?
HDG: My characters come to life as I write them. In the Exotic Pet-Sitter series, I’d say I’m kind of like a blend between Belinda and her sister, Katrina. But her all-natural, off-grid mom was a delight to write.
How do you bring to life the place you are writing about?
HDG: Well, we lived in Greenwich, CT, when we had our first child, and you could rent carriage houses just like Belinda’s, so I felt very familiar with that area, as well as NYC, which plays into some of the books (we lived there, as well). And with the rural Upstate NY scenes where Belinda’s parents live—we ALSO lived there too, for six years, and rural settings are easiest for me to write because I grew up in the mountains of West Virginia. So I felt highly familiar with all the locales in this series.
What research do you do to provide background information to help you write the novel?
HDG: I did research how Greenwich has changed since we lived there. I do a lot of research for names of places, and later in the series, for the Native American element that played into the final book. Not to mention hours of research on whatever exotic pet I happen to be writing about!
Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about the book?
Nothing I can think of! 😉 Thank you!
Thank you for answering my questions, Heather, and good luck with Belinda Blake and the Snake in the Grass, the first book in the Exotic Pet-Sitter Mystery series.
Readers can learn more about Heather and her writing by visiting her website and her Facebook, Pinterest and Goodreads pages. You can also follow her on Twitter and Instagram and sign up for her newsletter.
The novel is available at the following online retailers:
Kindle: Nook Kobo AppleBooks Google Play
About Heather Day Gilbert: Heather is an ECPA Christy award finalist and Grace award winner, writes contemporary mysteries and Viking historicals. Her novels feature small towns, family relationships, and women who aren’t afraid to protect those they love. Like Belinda Blake, Heather plays video games, although so far she hasn’t done any exotic pet-sitting or hunted any murderers.
KB: After years of dreaming, writing, and re-writing, Death by Dissertation is my first novel and the beginning of the Cassandra Sato mystery series set in the U.S. in rural Nebraska. After graduating with a Ph.D. and working a few years at a college in Hawai’i—where she was born and raised—Cassandra moves to Morton College in the heart of the Midwest because she thinks it will help her get experience to someday become a university president.
About Kelly Brakenhoff: Kelly is an American Sign Language Interpreter whose motivation for learning ASL began in high school when she wanted to converse with her deaf friends. As an American Sign Language Interpreter with more than twenty years of experience, Kelly’s worked in college classrooms for fifteen different majors. From traipsing across muddy farm fields to stomach-churning medical procedures, and stage interpreting for famous figures, Kelly’s community interpreting interactions number in the thousands. Unfortunately, once she’s stepped away from the job, she usually forgets 90% of what happened. Which helps her keep confidential information safe, but also makes it really hard to grocery shop for more than 5 items without a written list.
EMC: DECO DAMES is the last novel in my five-part series featuring Jasmine (Jazz) Cross, a society reporter who’s caught between two clashing cultures: the high society and high-rollers she covers in the Galveston Gazette, and her brother’s illicit underground world of gangsters, speakeasies and bootleggers.
About Ellen Mansoor Collier: Ellen is a Houston-based freelance magazine writer and editor whose articles and essays have been published in a variety of national magazines. Several of her short stories have appeared in Woman’s World. During college summers, she worked as a reporter for a Houston community newspaper and as a cocktail waitress, both jobs providing background experience for her Jazz Age mysteries.
MM: Died in the Wool is the fourth book in the Whisky Business Mystery Series. The protagonist is a young woman named Abi Logan. A highly respected, globe-trotting photojournalist who suddenly finds herself thrust into the male dominated world of whisky making in rural Scotland when she inherits a distillery from her uncle. Being both inexperienced and a woman she’s harassed and threatened, but she refuses to back down especially after one of her employees is found murdered in a vat of the distillery’s finest. It’s a murder mystery of course, but it’s also a journey of personal discovery for a woman burnt out by her own over-stressed life. In the whisky world she finds a new life, and a new purpose.
About Melinda Mullet: Melinda was born in Dallas and attended school in Texas, Washington D.C., England, and Austria. She spent many years as a practicing attorney before pursuing a career as a writer. Author of the Whisky Business Mystery series, Mullet is a passionate supporter of childhood literacy. She works with numerous domestic and international charities striving to promote functional literacy for all children. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her family.
“With the summer tourist season on Bay Island in full swing, shop owner Cass Donovan barely has a minute to breathe, and things at Mystical Musings become even more hectic when a fight breaks out at one of her psychic readings. Shaken by the fracas and discouraged that her sixth sense seems to be on the blink, Cass is even more dispirited to learn that one of the men involved in the altercation was later found dead—and that a close friend of hers is the main suspect.
About Lena Gregory: Lena 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, the All-Day Breakfast Café Mysteries, which are set on the outskirts of Florida’s Ocala National Forest, and the Puzzle Solvers Mysteries, which take place in a small town on eastern Long Island. Lena grew up in a small town on the south shore of eastern Long Island, where she still lives with her husband, three kids, son-in-law, and five dogs. Her hobbies include spending time with family, reading, jigsaw puzzles, and walking. Her love for writing developed when her youngest son was born and didn’t sleep through the night. She works full time as a writer and a freelance editor and is a member of Sisters in Crime.
JT: The inspiration for my story is derived from a tragic incident that rocked my hometown during my senior year of high school. The incident was the mysterious death of a girl in my class whose body was found along a remote country road two days after she went missing. One of the suspects was another of my classmates, a boy who unfortunately was killed in a car crash six months later. Today, even after almost 54 years, the girl’s death remains unsolved, and many people in town still insist her killer was the boy.
Cat has a full plate at her Aspen Hills Warm Springs Resort, as a group of aspiring cozy mystery authors arrives for a writers retreat. So when baker Dee Dee Meyer stirs up trouble by filing a false complaint with the health inspector against the B&B—all because she insists Cat’s best friend Shauna stole her recipes—Cat marches into the shop to confront her.
About Lynn Cahoon: Lynn is the award-winning author of several New York Times and USA Today bestselling cozy mystery series. The Tourist Trap series is set in central coastal California with six holiday novellas releasing in 2018–2019. She also pens the Cat Latimer series available in mass market paperback. Her newest series, the Farm to Fork mystery series, debuted in 2018. She lives in a small town like the ones she loves to write about with her husband and two fur babies.
LN: The Oakwood Book Club Mystery Series follows the adventures of amateur sleuth Charley Carpenter, a young vintage clothing shop owner. She’s a lifelong resident of Oakwood, a wealthy insular suburb of Dayton, Ohio. Since things can get a bit dull, she and a group of friends formed a book club in which they read nothing but murder mysteries by female authors.
About Leslie Nagel: Leslie is a writer and teacher of writing at a local community college. Her debut novel, “The Book Club Murders”, is the first in the Oakwood Mystery Series. Leslie lives in the all too real city of Oakwood, Ohio, where murders are rare but great stories lie thick on the ground. After the written word, her passions include her husband, her son, and daughter, hiking, tennis and strong black coffee, not necessarily in that order.
DD: Hi Dianne, and thanks for hosting me! Seeing Red is the second mystery in the Red Herring series. It centers around Alex “Red” Vlodnachek, a 30-something former reporter turned freelance writer.
“By expedition standards, the Quonset was relatively snug, albeit stiflingly hot. The wind from the steppes howled outside as it had for three days, confining the archaeological team to their huts. It was late May, a time of year when temperatures were soaring and dust storms frequent as the winds picked up dirt and sand from the desert.
About Eugene Linden: Eugene is an award-winning journalist and author on science, nature, and the environment. Deep Past draws on his long career in non-fiction as the author of ten books, including his celebrated works on animal intelligence and climate change: Apes, Men, and Language, the New York Times “Notable Book” Silent Partners, and the bestselling The Parrot’s Lament. His book, Winds of Change, which explored the connection between climate change and the rise and fall of civilizations, was awarded the Grantham Prize Special Award of Merit. For many years, Linden wrote about nature and global environmental issues for TIME where he garnered several awards including the American Geophysical Union’s Walter Sullivan Award. He has also contributed to the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and National Geographic, among many other publications.
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