Keeping Mum by Alyse Carlson: Guest Author/Giveaway

What's A Little Murder Among Friends?

Camellia Harris, my sleuth in The Garden Society Mysteries set in Roanoke, Virginia, has a sidekick, as is the tradition in Cozy Mysteries, but Cam has a little sumpin sumpin that I haven't seen much of, so I thought I'd talk a bit about the TEAM. Each of Cam's friends has a role that has propelled the sleuthing forward... or hindered it... depending on the book and the preconceptions of that particular character in that particular situation.

The overall dynamic though, is FUN. So I wanted to give you all a mini-intro to the “Fearless Foursome”

Cam:  Cam Harris is a practical, hard-working girl. She fell in love with gardening as a child because her mother was an avid gardener, and professionally, she has gone into public relations, so she feels extremely lucky to be working managing public relations for the Roanoke Garden Society (of which her deceased mother was a founding member).  Cam's primary character flaw is also her greatest professional asset—she tends to spin things into the best light, so the lines of truth are just a little bit fuzzy—but she is a loyal friend and family member, and she is smart and willing to do what is necessary when those she loves inevitably find themselves in trouble.

Annie: Some serious, practical people really NEED someone in their life who is sort of goofy, willing to push the boundaries, and who just urges them to laugh more and take life a little less seriously. For Cam, this is Annie. Cam and Annie have been best friends since middle school and Annie is the Yin to Cam's Yang. They are outwardly opposite, but fit together perfectly as friends. Cam likes to plan. Annie improvises. Cam is tidy, Annie is a tornado. Cam generally follows the rules and Annie has burned the rulebook. She doesn't endorse such nonsense.

Rob: is Cam's long-time boyfriend. He is a sports reporter, but of late he has managed to get the scoop on a couple murder stories. Cam and Rob met at a Young Media Professionals meeting (in fact more details to this story appear in this book), and Rob and Cam have a fair bit in common. They are both driven and ambitious, both have the 'snoop bug' (or they wouldn't have gone into their fields) and they both enjoy figuring out a puzzle. The place they come into conflict is that Cam has a vested interest in the story flattering her client, where Rob's interest is always in the truth. As a sports reporter, Rob is also an athlete, though only for fun these days, but his speed and agility have not gone amiss in this series.

Jake: Joaquin Moreno, or Jake, was originally just a teammate of Rob's on their city league baseball team, but as a police officer, during the first murder Cam encountered, he ended up a helpful friend or foil, depending on the moment, and in the end he was Annie's boyfriend, so he's been integrated into the group. Of the group, Jake most often plays Cam's foil, as he doesn't like the amateurs sleuthing, but he has good resources when he can be convinced, and Annie knows how to convince him to help now and then. Besides that, Cam acknowledges that Jake is good for Annie—he cares about her and is good to her, providing some much-needed grounding.

The Joys and Challenges of Sleuthing by Committee

I think with this many players involved, it has opened up doors for VARIETY in sources and clues. Both Rob and Jake have legitimate sources because of their careers, and Annie, the sneak, can sometimes get her hands on information she really shouldn't have, which leaves Cam to ask questions, but gives her some other tools in her box, too. It also means more can be communicated through dialog, which I enjoy [especially the Cam/Annie dialog—that stuff is a hoot to write].

On the other hand it also provides some challenges in 'directing' [wait, did he know that yet?] and figuring out ways to make sure everyone is informed without repeating the story three times.

Overall though, I hope this set of characters is one that most readers can say, “I'd really like to hang out with these guys for a while.” I know I would, though honestly, Annie channels my online persona and two people together with that inability to behave are surely asking for trouble.

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Blurb: Roanoke, Virginia, is home to some of the country’s most exquisite gardens, and it’s Camellia Harris’s job to promote them. But when a political fundraiser turns deadly, everyone’s a candidate for murder...

Cam and her best friend, Annie, are planning a gala for a local Senate candidate—a murder mystery themed silent auction where the guests bid on who will be the night’s “victim.” Coordinating a beautiful display of fall flowers and planning the perfect fake crime is hard enough, but with a guest list that is a “who’s who” of the Roanoke elite, Cam has her hands full navigating the egos and grudges of her high society guests.

When local financial tycoon Derrick Windermere is found dead next to a shattered pot of chrysanthemums, the night’s fun and games quickly turn serious. Half the guests had good reason to want Windermere dead, but only one is suspiciously missing in action—Annie’s father. Now Cam will not only have to figure out which partygoer is a killer, but find her friend’s father before all their reputations end up dragged through the mud...

Keeping Mum is the third book in The Garden Society Cozy Mystery Series:  Cam and Annie are simultaneously roped into organizing a political fundraiser, so Annie suggests they have fun with it and hold a murder mystery supper. There is nothing that could go wrong with that...  but when someone other than the intended victim turns up dead and an important guest goes missing, they have some sleuthing to do.

Alyse Carlson is the pen name for Hart Johnson. Alyse writes books from her bathtub. A social scientist by day, Hart spends her evenings plotting grand conspiracies and murdering people on paper. You can learn more about her at her blog: http://waterytart23.blogspot.com/

Giveaway: Leave a comment (don't forget your email address!) by noon EST on March 10, and you will be entered to win a copy of Keeping Mum. U.S. entries only.

An Interview with Rupert the Cat, Star of Rebecca M. Hale's Cats and Curios Mystery Series

HOW TO PAINT A CAT: Author Rebecca M. Hale facilitates a rare interview with Rupert the Cat

HOW TO PAINT A CAT is the fifth book in the Cats and Curios mystery series featuring fictional versions of my two cats Rupert and Isabella. In the books, the cats don’t talk – at least, not out loud – but they’ve agreed to make an exception for this month’s blog tour. Today, I bring you excerpts from an interview with Rupert the Cat.

RMH: The Cats and Curios mysteries are set in San Francisco, where you and your sister Isabella once lived. A few years back, we all moved to Colorado. How’s that transition going for you?

Rupert: Well, I’m a California cat, so it’s been an adjustment, especially in the wintertime. I spend a lot of time curled up in fleece blankets or sprawled on top of the heating vents.

RMH: You’re a Heater Hugger.

Rupert: I prefer the term “Airflow Reallocation Technician.”

RMH: I would have thought you’d get too hot after having hot air blasted on your stomach for forty-five minutes at a time.

Rupert: Oh, no. Trust me, you can never have too much hot air warming your chest and tummy. It helps the digestion process after a big meal.

RMH: It certainly blocks the heat from being disseminated to the rest of the house.

Rupert: Why would the rest of the house need to be heated?

RMH: Okay. Let’s move on. Speaking of food, you’re known for your love of fried chicken. That seems to be an important side story in each of the cat books. Can you share any food or fried chicken related tidbits about the upcoming book, HOW TO PAINT A CAT?

Rupert: The plot in the fifth cat book takes a very disturbing turn. The author (he pauses and glares at Rebecca) puts me on a diet. It was a traumatic experience.

RMH: To be clear, it was just the fictitious Rupert that went on a diet.

Rupert: Those passages were painful to read – imagining myself going through such desperate deprivation. I have to tell you, I’ve never been so hungry.

RMH: I don’t know. You look pretty well fed to me…

Rupert: (swooning) I thought I might starve.

RMH: Um, don’t you think you might be exaggerating a bit?

Rupert: Quite frankly, it was the worse half-hour of my life.

RMH: You’re a quick reader. How ever did you recover?

Rupert: I set down the book, paid a visit to my food bowl, and then took a long nap on top of the heating vents. It was a challenge, but I soldiered on. Hey, isn’t it about time for another serving of fried chicken?

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Blurb: San Francisco isn’t the biggest city in the country, but it feels pretty vast when you’re canvassing its neighborhoods looking for clues to your missing uncle’s hidden location. Aided by my two cats, Rupert and Isabella, I try to follow Uncle Oscar’s painted clues on a trail that leads from Coit Tower’s famous murals through San Francisco’s New Deal art—all while hoping my uncle’s sudden disappearance is unrelated to the murdered intern at City Hall.

Just when it seems our search has hit a wall, we receive some surprising help from beyond. But will it be enough to save us from our own brushes with death? Here’s hoping we don’t paint ourselves into a corner…

Giveaway: Leave a comment (don't forget your email address!) by noon EST on March 10, and you will be entered to win a copy of How to Paint a Cat. U.S. entries only.

Inherit the Word by Daryl Wood Gerber: Guest Author/Review/Giveaway

THE PERFECT GRILLED CHEESE

By Daryl Wood Gerber aka Avery Aames

Agatha Award-winning author of the national bestselling

Cheese Shop Mystery and Cookbook Nook Mystery series

“Life is good; cheese makes it better.” ~ Avery Aames

Do you love grilled cheese sandwiches? I do. They bring back memories of simpler times. When I was a kid, I used to go to Lake Tahoe in the summer with my family, and my mother would make a really cheese-y grilled cheese. She would also fix tomato soup. Comfort food extraordinaire. We would take a midday break—if we didn’t, we’d be sunburned prunes; my sisters and I loved swimming in the ice cold lake. We would sit on the porch eating our grilled cheese and look out at the water and count seagulls. Fun. Easy.

While writing the next book in the Cookbook Nook Mysteries, I did a lot of research for grilled cheese sandwiches. Why? Because the story revolves around a grilled cheese competition. I wanted to know my stuff. [Don’t I have it rough? LOL]  I’ve always been a good grilled cheese maker, but I wanted to be great. As a result, I’ve changed three aspects of my grilled cheese cooking techniques.

One: My cheese maven [a real person] wrote a blog post a couple of years ago that said, and I’m paraphrasing: “It’s called a cheese sandwich, not a bread sandwich, so make sure you use lots of cheese.” Ever since, I’ve doubled up on the cheese I put in a sandwich.

Two: Thanks to a suggestion in another article, in addition to buttering the outside of the bread, I now add a swath of cream cheese to the inside of the bread. As it turns out, cream cheese heats up fast and encourages the other cheese to melt. Brilliant tip.

Three: Lastly, I invested in a Panini grill. Have you ever handled one? They’re quite big and clumsy. They’re sort of like a waffle iron, but the back side is a little more flexible so that a cook can put in a grilled sandwich that is extra-wide, and it will still fit. Using a Panini grill has made all the difference in my grilled cheese results. Here’s why. I now have to eat gluten-free [I didn’t as a girl…long story…]. Gluten-free bread isn’t the easiest to grill. It’s, um, not very flexible unless you’ve just pulled it fresh out of the oven (which is great!). In fact, it’s stiff and hard. But if you put a gluten-free sandwich in a Panini grill, something about the weight of the two sides of the grill help the gluten-free bread get soft again. It also helps the cheese melt evenly throughout. Perfection.

By the way, while writing INHERIT THE WORD [The Word is a diner in town, short for Mum’s the Word Diner], I did a lot of taste-testing. I made one sandwich based on an appetizer my mother used to make for her bridge club. I’ve included the recipe in the book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

What’s your favorite grilled cheese combination? Have you ever participated in or watched a grilling competition? Tell us by noon EST on March 7, and you will be entered to win a copy of Inherit the Word. U.S. entries only.

Blurb: Jenna Hart moved back to Crystal Cove, California, to recapture her joie de vivre and to help her aunt Vera run the local culinary bookshop and café. But it’s hard to follow a simple recipe for relaxation when murder gets thrown in the mix….

The Cookbook Nook is set to host the town’s upcoming Grill Fest, a tasty tradition which pits local amateur chefs against one another to concoct the most delicious dishes. This year’s challenge: grilled cheese. But with competing chefs bearing grudges from past years, more mouths are running off than savoring the fare.

The expression “too many cooks” proves all too true when the eight-time champ is found murdered in the alley behind the café. Soon a local diner owner (and Jenna’s “second mother”) is suspected of bumping off the competition, and Jenna has to douse the flames before the wrong person gets burned.

Mochas, Mysteries and Meows Review: …Daryl Wood Gerber's second Cookbook Nook Mystery, Inherit the Word, is a feast for the senses as it takes place during Grill Fest with a focus on grilled cheese (just about my all-time favorite comfort food). The competition turns deadly when 8-time champion Natalie Mumford is found dead during a break, whacked upside the head with a discarded panini grill. Diner owner Lola, Jenna's second mother and mother of her BFF Bailey, is blamed as she had recently fought with the victim over a chef that left Lola to work for Natalie.

Jenna is also faced with a second mystery to solve when her kitten Tigger smashes a Lucky Cat statue which is filled with gold coins left behind by her late husband. What she uncovers about him and his mysterious death rocks her to the core, yet also assists in her hunt for a killer.

This is a fantastic story with a delightful cast of characters, a charming locale and a mystery that will keep you guessing. A preview of the next book in the series, Stirring the Plot (October 2014), is included at the end and is set at Halloween. I can't wait!!!

Celebrate 20 Years of Berkley Prime Crime

CELEBRATE 20 YEARS OF BERKLEY PRIME CRIME

  

NEW YORK, NY – March 1, 2014 – Twenty years ago, in March 1994, Berkley Books introduced Berkley Prime Crime, a mass market mystery imprint that included five launch authors.  This year, Berkley celebrates the 20^th anniversary of Prime Crime with special author events and promotional giveaways.

In its first year, Berkley Prime Crime (BPC) published approximately forty titles, all mass market.  In 2013, the imprint published 150 titles, including mass market originals, trade paperbacks, and hardcovers.  Every year, BPC launches approximately 25-30 new series, including several house-owned franchises that editors have developed from idea to execution.  In the past year, BPC debuted sixteen titles on the New York Times Bestsellers List (printed and extended lists combined), which comes out to more than one per month!

“When we launched Berkley Prime Crime in March 1994 I believed that the audience for the traditional or ‘cozy’ mystery was still largely underserved and untapped.  Twenty years later I can say without reservation that this has proven to be correct and that Berkley Prime Crime has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations,” said Natalee Rosenstein, Vice President and Senior Executive Editor of Berkley. 

This spring Berkley Prime Crime is hosting two events at mystery bookstores that have supported Berkley Prime Crime over the years.  On March 13, Julie Hyzy, Miranda James, and Rebecca Hale will be at Murder by the Book in Houston, Texas.  On March 25 the Poisoned Pen in Phoenix will host Margaret Coel, Carolyn Hart, Earlene Fowler, and Avery Aames.

Throughout the remainder of 2014, more events and promotional giveaways are planned, in addition to Berkley Prime Crime’s annual presence at mystery conventions BoucherCon and Malice Domestic.  You can find out more about Berkley Prime Crime titles and authors at The Crime Scene, our cozy mystery Facebook page at www.facebook.com/thecrimescenebooks.

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About Penguin Group (USA)

Penguin Group (USA) LLC is one of the leading U.S. adult and children’s trade book publishers, owning a wide range of imprints and trademarks, including Viking, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, The Penguin Press, Riverhead Books, Dutton, Penguin Books, Berkley Books, Gotham Books, Portfolio, New American Library, Plume, Tarcher, Philomel, Grosset & Dunlap, Puffin, and Frederick Warne, among others. The Penguin Group (www.penguin.com) is a Penguin Random House company.

GIVEAWAY: Berkley is giving away a special 20^th anniversary Berkley Prime Crime tote bag filled with 5 of their cozies. The cozies included in the tote will be a mystery, but all will be Berkley Prime Crime titles. Simply fill out the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win, and please don't forget to include your email address in your comments!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Dr Seuss Day 2014

Our favorite Seuss character...

Today we're taking part in the annual celebration of Dr Seuss' birthday, also known as National Read Across America Day. While it's customary to dress up in Dr Seuss' signature red & white striped hat, Truffles wanted to become my favorite Dr Seuss character:

Our favorite Seuss quote...

 I thank Dr Seuss for one of my all-time favorite quotes, and think it couldn't be more appropriate for how I feel about Tara:

Cat's Meow Mews & Mailbox #25

Cat's Meow Mailbox is inspired by the great weekly recap book memes (Mailbox Monday, Waiting On Wednesday, It’s Monday! What are you reading? and Sunday Post)

Last week on Mochas, Mysteries and Meows:
* Book Review: Tails of My Rescue Dog by Dawn Starek
* 5 Reasons Truffles Loves Winter
* Release Day Book Review: A Taste Fur Murder by Dixie Lyle
* Truffles Interviews...Yoshi & Gatsby from the Petectives Mystery Series (w/Review)
* Heart Disease in Cats: A #Trupanion Study
* A #PetBox Review & Coupon Code
* Caturday Art: Happy Mardi Gras!

Thank you Gallery Books!

Bought:
        

NetGalley:

     

I've mentioned before my reluctance to use precious Audible credits. Well last week I got an email that I was only allowed to accumulate 6 credits at a time and I needed to use one. At about the same time I got another Audible offer that if I used 4 credits I would receive a $10 coupon! I decided it was time to do some shopping...here's what I ended up with:

   

Caturday Art: Happy Mardi Gras!!!

Tying together the Caturday Art blog hop and this week's Photohunt theme, Truffles is ready to "boogie" at Mardi Gras!!!

Laissez les bons temps rouler!!!