Secret, Lies & Crawfish Pies

I am thrilled to welcome Abby L Vandiver back to the Stiletto Gang! Abby's new book releases June 12th. Don't you love the cover???

Romaine Wilder, big city medical examiner with a small town past, has been downsized and evicted. In steps her “Auntie Zanne,” with a plan to save her. But that plan involves going back to her hometown, Robel, in East Texas, and that’s the last place Romaine wants to be. Leaving the man she’s dating, and the life she’s worked hard to build, she plans her escape as soon as she arrives.  

Suzanne Babet Derbinay, proprietor of the Ball Funeral Home, has left behind her French Creole upbringing and traded it in for Big Texas attitude. She’s a member in a number of ladies’ auxiliaries and clubs, including being in charge of the Tri-County Annual Crawfish Boil and Music Festival. Hanging on to the magic of her Louisiana roots, she’s cooked up a love potion or two, and now she wants nothing more than her niece, Romaine to settle down, get married and have children. Luckily, she knows just which brew to concoct – if she could only get Romaine to drink it.

But both of their plans are derailed when the Ball Funeral Home, bursting at the seams with dead bodies, has a squatter stiff. Dead Guy is a problem. Auntie Zanne can’t abide by a murderer using her funeral home as the dumping grounds for their crimes, and Romaine doesn’t want her newly elected cousin, Sheriff Pogue Folsom, to fail on his first murder case so they set off to solve it.

With a dash of humor, a dollop of Southern charm, and a peek at current social issues in the mix, it’s can’t help but be a fun romp around East Texas to solve a murder mystery of the cozy kind!

***

Write what you know. Do what you are passionate about. Old adages that express a worthy truth about being a writer. But I can’t say that I write with either of those in mind. That’s because I write about murder!

Cozy mysteries to be exact. And thankfully, other than what I write in my books, I don’t know much about murder, and I am definitely not passionate about it. I can say that I am passionate about mystery and intrigue and have found that even everyday life is full of it, and that’s probably why I write mysteries. It may not be easy for all to see, but it is how I observe things - with wonder and curiosity.

I think what I have come to realize is that my writing is an exercise in life, not whodunits that fill the pages of my books. As I walk through my day I see the stories I want to write about unfold right in front of me. Why is that baby still crying when her mother is rocking her so gently trying to soothe her? Did she just fall? Is she not feeling well? Why does the guy sitting in that booth keep looking at his watch. Is he waiting for someone who is late? Or, waiting for the right time to make the phone call he thinks may change his life?

People are endlessly interesting and their daily lives brim over with fascinating experiences, and then I get to add even more to their predicaments when I weave my stories around what I’ve seen. No, I don’t write what I know, but I try to write my stories filled with the personalities and experiences of people I meet and speak with. The incidents that I see unfold in news clips and overhear in conversations in crowded restaurants. Stories passed on to me by family and stranger alike. I want to include in my stories the things we all know.

In my new book, Secret, Lies & Crawfish Pies, there is a little murder, a dollop of humor and Southern charm, and, I hope, a whole lot of the character that we see in people all the time. In the book, I deal with depression, love, and change among other things. I hope you enjoy it.

Please email me at abbylvandiver@aol.com or visit my website, www.abbyvandiver.com. I love interacting with my readers.

WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR, Abby L. Vandiver loves a good mystery. Born and raised in Cleveland, it’s even a mystery to her why she has yet to move to a warmer place. Abby loves to travel, and curl up with a good book or movie. A former lawyer and college professor, she has a bachelor's degree in Economics, a master's in Public Administration, and a Juris Doctor. Writer-in-Residence at her local library, Abby spends all of her time writing and enjoying her grandchildren.

Grandmother's Basket

by Linda Rodriguez

It's National Poetry Month, and I have a new book of poems out. Dark Sister is a book of the heart for me, in which I tell stories from my family and other spaces that really matter to me. Some of the poems, of course, are lyric poems, but with me, the narrative drive is overpowering, so most of them are stories, little and big.  Many of the stories I tell in this book are concerned with my beloved Cherokee grandmother, who was one of the strongest influences on my life. 

If you'd like to check out the book in more detail--or even order it--you can learn more about it here.

https://mammothpublications.net/writers-m-to-z/rodriguez-linda-dark-sister/

So, to celebrate both National Poetry and the publication of my tenth and newest book, Dark Sister, here is a story in a poem about my grandmother and her baskets.

GRANDMOTHER’S BASKET

I loved Grandmother’s baskets when I was small.

They had intricate patterns and figures

woven into them in brown, black,

yellow, red, and orange.

She had different sizes and shapes,

used them for storage rather than display.

My favorite was in reds and yellows with a black border.

It looked to me as if woven of fire and grasses.

I would climb into cupboards, find one,

and ask why she didn’t keep it out on a tabletop

where everyone who came in could admire it.

“These aren’t the best ones,” she said

as she fingered baskets that looked beautiful to me.

“We used to make them from rivercane,

which makes a better basket and dyes the best,

but they rounded us up in concentration camps

and drove us on a death march to a new land

that didn’t have our old plants like rivercane

so now we use buckbrush and honeysuckle.”

Grandmother shrugged. “You make do.”

I asked her to teach me how to make a basket

like the one I loved with feathers of fire

along its steep sides. She shook her head.

“It’s a lot of hard work.

First, we need black walnut, blood root,

pokeweed, elderberry. Yellow root’s the best yellow,

but blood root will have to do.

They’ve dug all the yellow root

for rich people’s medicines, call it goldenseal.

Got to have our dyestuffs first.

Got to forage for most of them.

It takes lots of trips, out and back,

to get enough to make good colors.”

I knew I could do that and said so.

She laughed. “You’ve got to know what to pick

or dig or gather. It’s like with my medicines.

Can’t just go taking any old weed.”

I pointed out that I was learning from her

about the Cherokee medicine plants. She just shook her head.

“It’s not the same. I grow most of those.

Haven’t taken you out for the wild ones yet

because you’re too little still. Same for dye plants.”

I nagged at her for days, begging her to teach me

so I could have a basket of my own.

I had in mind that amazing fire-flickering basket.

I wanted to make one just like that.

My visit was over without her ever giving in.

I was used to Grandmother’s strength of will.

I knew I would have to try harder next time.

There was no next-time visit.

My mother had always hated her mother-in-law.

Now, she won the battle to keep us away.

Our relationship poured out in letters

until my mother destroyed them,

refused further correspondence.

Years later, Grandmother wrote me—

a letter that slipped past my mother’s scrutiny—

that she was making a basket

one last time for me.

I knew she was very ill,

soon to die.

I don’t know who got the beautiful baskets

when Grandmother died, especially the one

that I loved when I was small.

Her sister and niece who cared for her

in her last illness, I suppose.

That’s fair. My parents had divorced by then,

and my mother allowed no contact

with that family. But

a lumpy, brown-paper-bag-wrapped package

with Grandmother’s shaky, spidery handwriting

arrived for me after her death.

My mother opened it first and laughed.

I stood waiting eagerly to snatch up

the last thing my grandmother would ever give me.

“Look at that,” Mother said with more laughter.

“That ugly old thing’s supposed to be a basket,

I think. She sure lost her knack for that

at the end, didn’t she?”

When I was small and visiting, I knew

Grandmother already had arthritis

in her hands. That’s probably why

she wouldn’t teach me to make baskets—because she didn’t have the dexterity any longer

to make the kind she once had.

I still have that simple handled basket

of vines (probably honeysuckle).

The whole thing is dyed black.

There are no intricate patterns of flames

or anything else. It’s just solid black.

I can see her plodding out to gather

butternuts for the black dye

and to pull the honeysuckle vines,

stripping off the leaves.

I can see her gnarled hands

painstakingly weaving under and over,

no fancy twills or double-woven sides.

Hard enough to shape

a shallow but sturdy gathering basket

for her long-unseen granddaughter.

All these years later

I have my own herb garden

where many of her medicine plants grow.

When I gather them to dry for teas and poultices,

I use that black vine basket.

I think it will last forever.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications, 2018)

Linda Rodriguez's Dark Sister: Poems has just been released. Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, an anthology she co-edited, were published to high praise in 2017. Every Family Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police chief, Skeet Bannion, will appear in August, 2018, and Revising the Character-Driven Novel will be published in November, 2018. Her three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—and her books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart's Migration—have received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

Travel Plans aka Adventures

by Sparkle Abbey

What's that saying about the best laid plans? Oh, right...the full quote is "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." From the Scottish poet, Robert Burns.

It seems that particular quote is often true for us. And especially when it involves travel plans. Or as we like to call them travel adventures.

More times than we can count we've had flight delays, road construction delays and bad weather (ice, snow, thunderstorm) delays. Heck, we've even had a tumbleweed delay on a flight into Denver. Now, there have been a few times when the travel plans gone awry, were out own fault. We may or may not have missed a turn and ended up in Michigan. Twice.

Has anything like that ever happened to you?

We have, more than once, completely missed mystery conferences or apperances because our rebooking couldn't get us on-site in time. Not good. So you can understand our trepidation as we booked our flight for the Malice Domestic conference at the end of this month. We love attending Malice Domestic. We love meeting readers, reconnecting with friends and fellow authors, and hanging out with book people. So, we're thinking positive travel thoughts and hoping for smooth sailing...er...flying.

If you're planning to be at Malice we look forward to seeing you there. In fact, if you see us at Malice we're happy to share a cocktail or a coffee and hear some of your travel adventures. Or perhaps you'd like to share here?

Sparkle Abbey is the pseudonym of mystery authors Mary Lee Woods and Anita Carter. They’ve chosen to use Sparkle Abbey as their pen name on this series because they liked the idea of combining the names of their two rescue pets – Sparkle (ML’s cat) and Abbey (Anita’s dog).

The authors co-write the best-selling Pampered Pets Mystery Series which focuses on the wacky world of precious pedigrees, pampered pooches, and secrets in posh Laguna Beach, California. The main characters and amateur sleuths are Texas cousins, Caro Lamont, a pet therapist, and Melinda Langston, a pet boutique owner. The two would join forces and work together if they were speaking, but they’re not.  Midwest Book Review calls the series “A sassy and fun mystery!”

At Malice Domestic this year Sparkle Abbey (aka Anita and Mary Lee) will be on the Murderous Wit panel at 3:00 PM on Saturday along with Paula Gail Benson, Ginger Bolton and Lida Sideris.

Clicking Our Heels - Spring and Our Favorite Flowers

Clicking Our Heels – Spring and Our Favorite Flowers

Spring is here. With snow gone and flowers blooming, the Stiletto Gang wanted to share our favorite flowers with you.

Linda Rodriguez: Dogwood and redbud tree blossoms always mean spring to me because in northeast Oklahoma, they show up all over the wooded sides of the hills outside of Tahlequah and throughout the town itself as the heralds of spring.

Debra H. Goldstein: Yellow roses. They represent optimism, friendship, health, and joy and for me, pure happiness.

J.M. Phillippe: I am not great at knowing when things bloom as I grew up in Los Angeles. But Jasmine, particularly night blooming jasmine, has always been my favorite flower, probably followed by honeysuckle. Both grew in abundance in California, and often I would smell the jasmine before I could find it. I wish I could get it to grow in New York.

Shari Randall: Lilacs are my favorites. We had a huge old lilac in my family’s backyard, and my friends and I would climb inside to a tiny, hidden hollow space for our secret club meetings. The scent is lovely and brings back so many good memories.

Juliana Aragon Fatula: My favorite flower in spring: tulips, pink tulips.  My father picked them from the mansion he worked as the gardener and brought them home to me, my mom, and sisters all born in April. Poor man surrounded by all those fiery Aries.

Judy Penz Sheluk: Purple lilacs. Love the fragrance, but mostly, lilacs say “spring is here” after a long, Canadian winter.

Kay Kendall: I live in a part of the country (Houston, TX) where the flowering azalea bushes herald spring. Many homes are surrounded by mounds of these brightly colored plants, and I just love the effect. I also love the lush flower of a peony, but that grows on a bush as well.

T.K. Thorne: Always loved pansies. I like intense colors and pansies do this well without putting on airs.

Bethany Maines: Daffodil. It was the first flower I learned to draw and it still makes me happy every time I see one. For no good reason, they always feel like my flower.

A.B. Plum: I’m a rose lover and write about them in nearly every book I write. In The Dispensable Wife, AnneSophia plants over 200 bushes. Her husband thinks no Romanov wife should “play in the dirt.” Well, we’re all entitled to opinions.

Sparkle Abbey:

Mary Lee Woods:  My favorite flower is the jonquil as it’s an early flower and it means that spring is just around the corner. I love their bright yellow color and, because I’m not much of a gardener, I also love how easy they are to grow. They come back year after year.

Anita Carter: I love hydrangeas. I’m fascinated that their color is determined by the soils ph balance. My favorite color is blue. Every year when I see them, my husband has to talk me out of buying one, thus saving an innocent plant life!

The Book That Started the Dream

By Judy Penz Sheluk

"People were never right in saying I was Anne. But in some respects, they will be right if they write me down as Emily." L.M. Montgomery

Emily Climbs has had many covers over the years.
This is the dust cover of my book.

Like many mystery writers, I grew up on Nancy Drew, graduated to Agatha Christie, and have discovered many other favorite authors since. But unlike others, Nancy wasn't my first inspiration, nor was Dame Agatha. In fact, my inspiration came from a Canadian author who didn't write mysteries.

L.M. Montgomery is best known for her Anne of Green Gables books, and yes, I've read those. But it was her Emily of New Moon books, specifically, Emily Climbs, that first made me think, "I want to be a writer when I grow up."

The book was a Christmas gift from friends of the family when I was about eight-years-old, and it's still on my bookshelf, despite many moves and bookshelf-thinning since. For those of you unfamiliar with Emily Climbs, here's a brief synopsis:

Emily Starr was born with the desire to write. As an orphan living on New Moon Farm, writing helped her face the difficult, lonely times. But now all her friends are going away to high school in nearby Shrewsbury, and her old-fashioned, tyrannical aunt Elizabeth will only let her go if she promises to stop writing. Fortunately, cousin Jimmy provides a solution: Emily can't write a word of fiction. While Emily isn't convinced this is much of a concession, it paves the way for her future success as she hones her skills as a journalist and storyteller.

I so loved this book that I promised myself that when I wrote my first novel, the main character's name would be Emily. When I started writing The Hanged Man's Noose, the first book in my Glass Dolphin Mystery series, Emily Garland came to life, and she's back in A Hole in One. Thank you, Lucy Maud Montgomery, for creating a character who quite literally changed my life.

What about you? Do you have a favorite childhood book that inspired you?