Maggie Pill Mysteries

Writers are supposed to write what they know, but once you start writing, you realize you don't know as much as you thought you did. I was raised on a farm, so I have a sense of life there, but that was (mumble-mumble) years ago. Things are different now. As the Sleuth Sisters Mysteries go on, I find myself wandering through Fleet-Farm type stores with new interest. "Look!" I tell my husband. "This is how they water chickens nowadays." "Huh,"  he replies. In the Work In Progress, there is real estate fiddling, so I need to know about deeds and sales and Realtor duties (and yes, that has to be capitalized.) I visit an acquaintance in real estate, and he gets me started. When I run into a snag, I call him and he helps me make it work. "Wow!" I tell my husband. "Dan sure knows the real estate business." "Huh." I've mentioned before the friends who help when I write about exotic animals, like the reindeer in B...

I'm reading a book by author Alice Duncan, who writes a series I'd call cozy historical with a fake medium as the protagonist. Daisy Gumm needs to earn a living, so she hires out for seances and such, and she always seems to get pulled into solving a crime. I enjoy the books, but that's not why I bring them up here. My topic, guns, cats, and quilting, was suggested by the fact that it's obvious in the series that the author loves dogs. Another friend, Laurie Cass, writes a series in which a cat named Eddie plays a major role. I know for a fact Eddie is real (though his participation in solving mysteries is not), and he's very well-loved by the humans he deigns to associate with. A third author friend, Barbara Graham, writes a series of quilting mysteries, and while you don't have to be a quilter to enjoy them (I'm not), those who are clever enough to quilt like the books even more because of shared insider knowledge. As a reader of a wide range o...