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Raining Cats and Cats

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Sometimes an event gives me an idea for a book. The hurricane that hit the Tampa area in 2024 got lots of news coverage, and some of it focused on animals affected by the storm, often pets that lost their homes or their owners in the mayhem.  A running plot-line of the Cats & Crime series is that Lorilee can only have 8 cats, so she has to hide any extras that show up, as Esme does, on her doorstep. While cozies aren't particularly instructive for the most part, I have used them to highlight situations, so in this one, we learn about the re-homing efforts after the storm. I have great admiration for those who work to reunite pets with owners or find new homes if that isn't possible. Lorilee's empathy for homeless and damaged pets expands to concern for humans as well. Sometimes people who stay away from society do so because they care too deeply and must limit themselves to what they can handle. Raining Cats and Cats takes place after Hurricane Milton devastated the Ta...
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Cats and Crimes

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Years ago, my sister wanted me to write a book about a "crazy cat lady" who solves murders. I never got around to it back then, and she's gone now, but I am right now finishing the final book of the five-part series she envisioned. The first book, like the series, is called Cats and Crimes. I began Lorilee's story when she's at a rather isolated point in her life, partly from circumstances, partly by choice. The series arc covers her return to society, at least as much society as Lorilee wants. All the advice we see today for older people includes calls for socialization. You'll be happier with lots of friends, they say. You'll stave off mental decline. You'll suffer fewer "old person" problems. The other side of that is becoming tired of large groups of people. Like Lorilee, I don't want to be part of conversations about how the world is falling apart. (It's always been falling apart. You just weren't paying attention forty year...
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Third Crime's the Charm

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Here's where writers set themselves up. I liked the Once Upon a Trailer Park, Twice the Crime This Time , Third... idea in the titles, but that meant that the final book of Trailer Park Tales had to have THREE crimes. Talk about making work for myself! Throughout this series, I tried to showcase "types" of senior citizens (knowing of course that we are all unique and therefore never typical). One of our couples has been married forever, and they love each other dearly. That does not preclude anger at foibles, like leaving one's shoes in the way or spending too much time crafting. Another couple is newly married and still unsure of how to talk to each other. A third couple is dealing with the husband's decline in health, which changes a marriage in ways that can create stress. The fourth couple is adjusting to a new way of life after decades of working a farm, where there was always plenty to do. Secondary characters are the park complainers, those who think they s...
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Twice the Crime This Time

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 Writer brains are weird. I had no intention of playing off the title of Book 1, Once Upon a Trailer Park, in the rest of the series, but it seemed inevitable to follow Once with Twice. That meant two crimes, so I came up with a cold case and a current one. Such stories require balance, so I needed lots of help to keep the details straight and both cases moving along. This is where long-time readers are a blessing. Many of them will read a rough (sometimes really rough) draft and make suggestions to help clarify events and pinpoint characters' motivations. It's hard to find readers who do this well. Many read purely for enjoyment, so they don't look for flaws in a story. A writer needs someone who reads with a critical eye--not to nitpick, but to tell her where the story cracks open because something doesn't add up. I read a mystery recently where a nationally known radio host revealed the name of a person she suspected of murder on her show without the slightest bit ...
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Once Upon a Trailer Park

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 We winter in an RV park in Florida, and when residents there found out I was an author, I heard time and time again, "You should write about this place." So I did. An RV park is a strange microcosm of the nation (though our population is mostly from east of the Mississippi) in that people come from many different locales to escape winter weather. We're a mix of Canadian and U.S. We aren't Floridians. Most of us stay 3 to 5 months and then go back home. In the park people meet and mingle daily, but for most of us, that doesn't continue for the rest of the year. That means that you see people every day for say, four months, and then have no contact with them until your return next fall. I tried to recreate that feeling in Trailer Park Tales, my three-book mystery series. The events are seen through the eyes of four couples. That means eight narrators, which is a lot, so I give readers lots of hints as to who's who.  Using multiple narrators was purposeful, sinc...
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Cutest Little Killer

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Once the Sleuth Sisters series ended, I thought about what I'd like to write next. I came up with a precocious child (actually two of them) and a private detective who isn't quite sure what to do with them. This one took a lot more research than I expected, which is my own fault. I wanted the kids to have grown up in South America, which I knew nothing about. My interest stemmed from meeting a well-known archaeologist, Napoleon Chagnon, who hailed from my hometown. My daughter was thrilled when her class at Columbia was assigned to read his book, since she'd simply known him as her friend's "Uncle Nap" at their family reunions.   From there I went off on a tangent, with Lucy the child of a couple who'd lived among the tribal people of the Amazon jungle but died, leaving her and her brother stuck with an evil guardian. I toyed with making it a series, but while the reviews were good, there weren't many. It isn't worth a year of my life to write a se...
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Captured, Escape, Repeat

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  The final book of the Sleuth Sisters series didn't start out to be final, though I was aware that I was tiring of the adventures of Barb, Faye, and Retta. The appeal of a series is that readers eagerly await the next book, and I still have bookstore owners tell me that readers ask when there will be another one. The downside for a writer is that series have the tendency to become formulaic. Everyone knows the characters. We know the basic setting. All that's required is to invent a murder and solve it in the next installment. That can come to a point where it's no longer fun, and that's where I was.  What clinched the end of the series for me was that one of my sisters died. It seems wrong now to write happy tales of the sisters sniping at each other. I chose to move on, though I did finish this one, #7. I moved the setting to Green Bay, Wisconsin, which was fun. I let Retta's undisciplined dog Styx be part of the rescue. And I tied up the loose ends as best I cou...
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