Before I was published, back when a pair of rose-colored
glasses were fused to my nose, I was sure my first book was a special snowflake.
Everyone would fall in love with it.
Maybe not everyone. Maybe not men (the first book I
wrote was a romance). Maybe not women who read contemporary romance (the first book
I wrote was a historical romance). Maybe not women who read Regency
romance (the first book I wrote was set in New Orleans in 1902). Those maybes
left me with a small (tiny) slice of potential readers but everyone in that
slice would love it.
I’d written a niche book and the niche was small.
Not surprisingly (in retrospect) it took forever and a day
for that book to sell to a publisher.
While I waited, I wrote a second book. A mystery. Had I
taken off the rose-colored glasses, I’d have written a book about a woman who moves
to small town, runs a dress shop, cooks amazing muffins, keeps a strangely
intelligent cat, and talks to dead people. Instead I wrote about Ellison Russell,
a woman who lives in the city of her birth, paints, can’t cook, keeps a dog,
and finds dead people. Oh, and I set the story in the 1974.
The mystery sold. Quickly. Go figure.
Next week, the ninth book in the Country Club Murders
releases. Ellison still paints, she definitely can’t cook, her dog has yet to
solve a crime, and the rate at which she finds bodies would depopulate a small
town.
Thank heavens for rose-colored glasses.
If you’ve not yet made Ellison’s acquaintance, the first book in the series is free (this week only, so grab it now)!
She is a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean--and she's got an active imagination. Truth is--she's an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions.
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