Mystery & Me

Blame it on Nancy Drew. She was my first love (but far from my last) in the mystery genre. In the 1960s, as a young girl, I collected her books and began a life long commitment to binge reading. Which led to writing, which led to writing a mystery. My first mystery, Love and Death in Blue Lake, releases worldwide today.

Love and Death in Blue Lake didn’t start out as a mystery. I’d written several romance and women’s fiction titles and I thought for sure this book, about high school sweethearts who reconnect, would be another in the same genre. But no. Stories often take unexpected turns as this one did when I wrote a gun into someone’s purse.

What began as a small subplot came to be an equal plot to the romance story. It constantly threatened to take over the book, but I had my heart set on writing a rekindled love story. Eventually I found a way to get the thwarted lovers to reconnect over the mystery and that’s when I realized that this book would be different.

Love and Death in Blue Lake is the third in my Blue Lake series, and brings back several characters from the first book, Blue Heaven, to expand and deepen their stories. I love writing a series…I just hope readers like the new direction mine has taken as much as I do.

To celebrate the season, I am giving away two autographed print copies of Love and Death in Blue Lake to commenters #2 and #5 in U.S. only. The first commenter, US or UK, will receive free Kindle editions of Blue Heaven and Love and Death in Blue Lake.

Update: I opened contest on Facebook too and added a few more books:) Contest now closed. Congrats to all winners and I will get your books out soon!

Contest winners: Anita Dawes, my U.K. winner, plus Lynn Cobb (from DWW!), Tom Edwards, Louise Martin, and Cindy Springer-Holsing, three Facebook friends. Love sending people books!