Maggie Pill Mysteries

MURDER IN THE BOONIES has been climbing the Amazon rankings, and watching it is a little addictive. Many authors admit to checking stats several times a day, and I do when a new book is released or a new giveaway is scheduled. The 3rd Sleuth Sisters is in the top 50 for cozies right now. It's just so cool to be loved! Today's the last day for 3 SLEUTHS, 2 DOGS, 1 MURDER on Kindle for free, so if you haven't snapped that up, you've been warned. I didn't know how a giveaway of the middle book of a series would go, but it sailed to #1 in free contemporary fiction (it's at #3 today) and over 50,000 readers have downloaded it, so I guess I'll call it a success. The theory is, of course, that if you like the one you get for free, you'll buy the others. So far it's working! Other than that, I don't have much of a sales strategy. Other authors tell how they adjust the price of a book for so many hours and watch their rankings to see if it helps. Or the...

Remember that old TV show, That Was the Week That Was ? (Um, me neither. That was way before my time. Really.) Anyway, this week is the release of the third Sleuth Sisters book: Murder in the Boonies. It's available in print now on Amazon and at Ingram. The Kindle version goes live on Wednesday , so all of you who pre-ordered should have it show up on your device then. This one concerns the sisters' family farm, which Retta manages, renting the land to a local farmer and their parents' home to a man, woman, and her three daughters. When they move away abruptly, the sisters become suspicious, fearing at least some of them didn't leave voluntarily. To make matters more complicated, the renters leave behind their animals, and the sisters have to figure out what to do with them. Strange things happen. Strange men appear on the property. And strange ideas lead to danger for not just Barb, Faye, and Retta but for a lot of others as well. Here's something for ...

That's how many days to the Kindle release of MURDER IN THE BOONIES! It's pre-orderable for Kindle right now, and if you're sneaky, you'll find out it's available in print on Amazon already. (They're the big dog and they do as they like.) Ingram is dragging its feet (if a book company can have feet), but it will happen, and then you'll be able to order the book in stores as well as online. Here's Retta's take on the release: Our third adventure, MURDER IN THE BOONIES, is pretty exciting. Not only do we foil the bad guys, I also make headway on my plan to truly become part of my sisters' detective agency. It's no walk in the woods--although there is plenty of walking in the woods involved. You see, the renters who'd been living on our family farm left unexpectedly. It really upset me, but Faye came up with an idea she thought would help out. Barbara got suspicious about the disappearance and started looking for the renters, a guy n...

Boonies, boondocks, down in the boondocks. Who'd have guessed the term has nothing to do with docks? It comes from the Philippines' Tagalog language: bundok , meaning mountain. It was picked up by U.S. military folk and apparently became associated with "way out there where the guerrillas are." When I titled Book #3 MURDER IN THE BOONIES, someone asked if most of America would known the term boonies . I think they do, because of Billy Joe Royal's song, "Down in the Boondocks,"  and an assortment of Vietnam-era movies. In Michigan we use it a lot. Someone lives "way out in the boonies" or we get "lost in the boonies" when our GPS goes crazy. Not sure if/how it's used in other places. (Chime in here!) In Book #3 we learn that Barb, Faye, and Retta were raised in the boonies, ten miles from town. Typically, when they were kids Barb never thought much about where they lived, Faye loved everything about the farm, and Retta felt...