A New Mystery, Fun, Pain, and WHEN THE HOUSE BURNS

Today is Valentine’s Day and pub day for my latest, When The House Burns–sex, death, real estate. The writing of this book during the worst of the Covid Pandemic and a year of multiple traumas was not easy. I’m sharing here the blog I wrote for Women Writers, Women’s Books: Writing When Hurt, Writing to…

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Heroes, Alfred Hitchcock, Pandemics, Cary Grant, and Formulas

  That crop duster. The cornfield. Watch it. Isolated at home during the Covid-19 pandemic and a dreary rainy spell, I watched in Technicolor glory Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 film North by Northwest. Its lumens were intensified by the star power of Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason. Cinematic thrills when my day was…

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Book Launch: Publication and Party

This is the week when my family and friends gather to celebrate the publication of my mystery, Where Privacy Dies. It is a celebration of the community support it takes for a book to come forth from an author’s hand, and there’s nothing like the feeling of holding the actual thing in hand—joy. And the tremendous…

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Food: What Do Sleuths Eat

Fight and flight requires fuel. The pursuit of murderers requires strength. Those who investigate must feed their appetites. What will my detectives Erik Jansson and Deb Metzger consume so they can dodge death’s harvesting? Noir private eyes, the Sam Spades and Philip Marlowes, survive by downing hard liquor and bad coffee. Hardboiled doesn’t refer to…

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