Maggie Pill Mysteries

     To be honest, the path of least resistance for a writer is to keep churning out her most popular characters in book after book...like the Sleuth Sisters Mysteries. I had fun with Barb, Faye and Retta for years, and they're still my best sellers. Then my sister died, and suddenly the series wasn't fun anymore. The last book was written but not finished editing when the news came, and each time I had to read it again made me sad. How could those sisters have each other when our trio was now a duet? I decided to put the series on a shelf and try something else.   The people in our trailer park in Florida had for some time encouraged me to write mysteries in a similar setting. In condos and trailer parks all over the southern United States, residents come together for a few months each year from many different places. They live in close proximity, in small spaces. And they're retired, which means lots of free time. The old adage says, "Idle hands are the devil's w...

I can predict the future--but only when it involves my husband. Example #1: He asks, "Do you think we should buy a camper?" "No," I reply. "We've done that several times, and we always end up not using it much. It's so easy to drive anywhere we want to in a car and stay in a motel." At the same time, I begin watching second-hand stores for decent pots and such, because I know there will soon be a camper in my yard. The request for my opinion was academic; he'd already decided it was time to try the camping life again. To be honest, it doesn't make much difference to me, since he's willing to do all the work of setting up and taking down, but I knew from that initial question what my future held. Example #2: We're leaving on a camping trip. He says we should take off about noon, because most campgrounds have mid-afternoon check-in times. What I say out loud is "Okay," but what my spousal clairvoyance whispers is ...