I couldn’t figure out how to get a dead body down this embankment, about 50 feet above the water. I decided this would be a great place to dump a dead body! I used this location, outside the city limits, for where Amy found a tarp. While I never found an exact duplicate of Amy’s house, this one helped as a working model. This is a photo of me visiting the Chamber of Commerce. This made me think of Dolores’ historical home. It’s the perfect location for a séance, don’t you think? Alfie and I parked the car on this bridge over the Verdigris River and contemplated various ways to get a dead body over the railing. The Independence Police Department is in the basement of City Hall! Complications in the life of an author When my doctor first learned that I was writing a mystery novel, he suggested we go out for coffee.  Now mind you, he wasn’t suggesting a date.  No.  He wanted to go over some possible ways to off someone. Fortunately for me, the mystery I was writing was a little less complicated than that.  For DIARY OF A CONFESSIONS QUEEN I didn’t need obscure and…

October 2009On Sale: October 1, 2009Featuring: Delilah Dickinson304 pages ISBN: 0758225679EAN: 9780758225672Paperback$6.99 Mystery Woman Sleuth, Mystery Amateur Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com Frankly My Dear, I’m Deadby Livia J. Washburn No one is surprised when feisty Delilah Dickinson opens her own literary travel agency in Atlanta after her divorce. But during her first group’s tour of an old plantation modeled after Tara from “Gone with the Wind” – complete with a full cast of actors – things go south really fast. The actor playing Clark Gable playing Rhett Butler is found dead, apparently the victim of a fatal dose of Southern in-hospitality. Before anyone can even think ‘Where shall I go? What shall I do?’ Delilah finds herself taking over the investigation when the number one suspect turns out to be her son-in-law. But life starts imitating art when the actors begin taking their roles a little too seriously – believing they actually are Ashley Wilkes, Scarlett O’Hara, and Melanie. Next stop: Sunset Boulevard. Excerpt I didn’t mean to lose it. Really, I didn’t. It must have been the two squabbling teenagers. Or the two annoying adults. Or the pressure of setting up a new business and knowing that if I…

It’s almost time for the Academy Awards, which is a big time of year for my day job as a film critic. While I could attend as press to the awards, I prefer to stay at home and watch in my pajamas on the couch just like everyone else. If you’re press, you are usually stuck in a big tent somewhere or next door at the hotel in a ballroom where you have to listen to foreign press ask inane questions that embarrass the room. Since most of my job is done before the awards, I choose to stay home. I thought I’d go through the list and talk about some of the folks I’d like to see win. This is not necessarily who will win, though I’ll try to help you with that too. We’ll go through the Best Picture and Acting categories and I’d also love to hear about some of your choices. Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, “Nine”; Vera Farmiga, “Up in the Air”; Maggie Gyllenhaal, “Crazy Heart”; Anna Kendrick, “Up in the Air”; Mo’Nique, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.” I think the woman to beat here is Mo’Nique, even though I despise that film,…

PJ Sugar #2 February 2010On Sale: February 1, 2010Featuring: PJ Sugar300 pages ISBN: 1414313136EAN: 9781414313139Trade Size$13.99 Mystery Woman Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com Double Troubleby Susan May Warren With one case firmly under her belt, PJ Sugar is ready to dive into her career as a private investigator. Or at least a PI’s assistant until she can prove herself to Jeremy Kane, her new boss. Suddenly PJ’s seeing crime everywhere. Everyone’s a suspect. But is it just in her head, or can she trust her instincts. When she takes on her first official case–house sitting for a witness in protective custody–Jeremy assures her there’s no danger involved. But it soon becomes clear that there is someone after the witness… and now PJ. Can she find the suspect and prove she’s ready for that promotion? Or will she give in to Boone’s please to quite and accept his proposal? Excerpt Chapter 1 PJ Sugar had been born to sneak up on people. She clearly possessed the instincts of a panther, with the ability to find her prey and slink up to them in the shadows, pouncing only when they least suspected. Suspected adulterer Rudy Bagwell didn’t have a prayer of escaping. “I’m…

Where would we be without friendship? I’ve often pondered that question and my answer is this-a big fat nowhere! One of the underlying themes in Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is the importance of cultivating and maintaining meaningful friendships in our lives. I think friends are the diamonds in life and I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for the uplifting friendships I’ve enjoyed. Along with the issues of mother/daughter relationships, loss, anger, and forgiveness, I wanted to explore friendship in my novel. But I wanted to do it in a surprising way. CeeCee lives the first 12 years of her life trying to hide from the curious stares and snickers of neighbors and the hurtful teasing from her classmates. But with a psychotic mother who parades around town wearing a tattered old prom dress and a tiara, it’s impossible. Early in life CeeCee develops a strong friendship with an elderly neighbor woman who is her only confidante. It is this one friendship that gives CeeCee ballast. But when tragedy strikes, CeeCee must leave her only friend when she is sent to live in Savannah with a distant relative she’s never even met by the name of Tootie Caldwell. As…

I emerged from my winter hibernation to attend ConDFW in a snowy Dallas the weekend of February 12 through 14. I didn’t come across any late-breaking or astonishing publishing news or book industry gossip, but it’s always fun to get together with other authors and talk about our work. I ended up as an emergency fill-in on the Fantastic Realms: Trends in Fantasy panel. The thing about trends is that they can change in a heartbeat, so it’s not something aspiring writers can really look at and plan their careers around. By the time you get that book written and submitted, the trend will have changed. It does seem like the dark, edgy urban fantasy that has a lot in common with paranormal romance is currently dominating the market — you know, those books with tough-looking women in black leather holding big weapons on the covers (though now the women are more likely to be looking at you instead of keeping their backs turned). But who knows what will start striking editors’ fancies next. One difficulty in spotting trends is that the books may be shelved all over the store. With blended genres, books can fall into science fiction/fantasy, mystery,…

Murder 101 Mystery #3November 2009On Sale: November 3, 2009Featuring: Alison; Bobby Crawford352 pages ISBN: 0312376766EAN: 9780312376765Mass Market Paperback$6.99 Mystery Amateur Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com Quick Studyby Maggie Barbieri She thought that dating a good-looking cop would be exciting and involve lots of riding around in cruisers and putting away sleazy crooks. So why hasn’t NYPD officer Bobby Crawford ever invited English professor Alison on any high-speed car chases or stakeouts? Life on the sleepy college campus just north of Manhattan may not have changed all that much with Alison’s new romance. But things are about to heat up when an man named Hernan Escalante asks Alison for a favor: Can she help locate his nephew, an illegal Ecuadorian immigrant named Jose, who has mysteriously gone missing? Always up for a challenge, Alison agrees to help Hernan—and begins her investigation by asking Bobby for some expert advice. Turns out Bobby already knows about what happened to Jose, since he’s the one who pulled his corpse out of the Hudson River a few days earlier. With this case, it seems Alison’s still got a lot to learn… Excerpt “I don’t know who you are, but I love you!” The voice was deep,…

About a week ago I experienced winter in a way that I haven’t had to since we moved to Texas. Our area had a record snowfall of 12.5 inches, and while I realize that’s nothing compared to the rest of the country, for Dallas it’s paralyzing. All that winter weather got me to thinking about books with winter or some other season in the title. Off to Fresh Fiction I went searching, and found The Edge of Winter by Luanne Rice. I read this when it first came out and was unfortunately less than impressed, but Luanne Rice is still one of my must read authors, and I have several favorites by her including Cloud Nine which is what my friends call a weepy read…so if you decide to read it have the Kleenex handy. The opposite of winter is summer…so I went searching for titles that have summer in them, and was amazed at how many there were, and that I needed a list to remind me of one of my favorite books, The Summerhouse by Jude Devereaux When I read this book it spoke to me on so many different levels, and if I were a keeper it…

It has been nearly a decade since I had a snow day…one of those days made for curling up under a blanket with a good book, watching the big fluffy snow pelting down. In Texas it never happens But this month we were blessed with a foot of snow. WOW plus two days to “enjoy” it, and a week to recover from the repercussions of the snowfall…you know, collapsed roofs, broken trees, fallen tree limbs etc. But I enjoyed my day off with escape to foreign climes… went to India! Yes, it seems to be a new trend in the romances, adventure in the subcontinent during the late 1700s early 1800s. Two of my favorite authors brought out books with part of the story set in India. Lauren Willig‘s latest Carnation is BETRAYAL OF THE BLOOD LILY and Stephanie Laurens new quartet, the Black Cobra. Lauren Willig has taken us all over England and parts of France with her amazing series of spies during the Napoleonic era, but now she’s taking us off to India with a bride who’s perhaps made a not-so-wise choice in trying to escape her life. Captain Alex Reid has better things to do than play…

Rough Riders, #8 November 2009On Sale: November 3, 2009Featuring: Keely McKay; Jack DonohueISBN: 1605046841EAN: 9781605046846e-Book$5.50 Romance Erotica Sensual Buy at Amazon.com All Jacked Upby Lorelei James Pulling off the ultimate con…if they can keep from pulling off their clothes. Keely McKay knows Jack—and Jack Donohue is a certified pain in her Wranglers. The lone girl in the prolific McKay family, Keely needs another man giving her orders like she needs a hole in her boot. What she does need is a restoration specialist so she can open her physical therapy clinic—and prove she’s left her wild-child days behind. That means dealing with buttoned-down, uptight Jack. Jack is this close to securing a career make-or-break project, until he learns his lack of marital status puts him out of contention. When the notoriously hot-tempered and hot-bodied Keely begs him for help, he proposes a crazy idea. He’ll oversee her project—if she acts the part of his loving fiancée. Their sizzling lust makes it all too easy to go from butting heads to knocking boots—but outside the bedroom they’re as mismatched as ever. The McKays remind Jack of the humble upbringing he left behind, and cowgirl Keely feels she doesn’t measure up to…