It’s a new year and we’ve got plenty to meow about at the Cozy Corner, like T.C. LoTempio’s new Nick & Nora Mystery series! Welcome, T.C.! Q. Could you tell us about your journey to the release of your book MEOW IF IT’S MURDER, the first Nick and Nora Mystery? A.  That is a long answer! I’ve been writing all my life, but I only started with an eye towards publication sixteen years ago!  After a lot of false starts, I finally got an agent who subbed my vampire suspense novel with no success – and then the supervisor at my day job suggested I write about my cat…and thus was born Nick and Nora. Q. In your novel your characters have the same names as the husband and wife duo in THE THIN MAN, a book by Dashiell Hammett that was made into a movie in 1934 and then later a TV series. What about that story appealed to you and inspired you to use it as a reference for your new series? A. I’ve always been a big William Powell fan, the Thin Man movies in particular.  One night I was watching the movie on tv and my…

So you’ve spent enough nights fantasizing about finding your own square jawed and sexy cowboy to tame the bronco bucking inside your blue jeans.  You’ve finally made up your mind to get out there and snag one for yourself. It’s a no brainer at Starbucks on Saturday morning when you notice that the low-fat latte’ drinker filling out his gym clothes puts his phone down when you walk in the door.  Easy enough. This is your domain.  But sadly, there ain’t a cowboy in sight. That’s where I’m going to help you girls fulfill your cowboy fantasies.  By following these 5 simple steps, you’ll have your very own boot-strutting cowboy with his tight butt wrapped up in denim calling you his lady before the night is over. 1. You’re Going Honky-Tonkin’ There are plenty of places to find a cowboy in his natural habitat. The feed store. Dairy Queen. The gas station. Tractor Supply Company. But here you’ll find your cowboy in his work mode, and that isn’t very sexy. A cowboy at work is a dirty, stinky mess because he’s been working with cows all day. That’s why you’ve got to go to the honky-tonk to find your cowboy….

So my editor asked me if I wanted to do a series set in Texas.  I said “Sure, I’ll be happy to do a series set in Texas.”  Then I wrote the proposal and my three chapters and the synopsis and the editor called my agent and said, “Why, Elizabeth knows Texas like the back of her hand . . .” Well, hold on now.  It’s not all that easy.  Elizabeth doesn’t only not know Texas “like the back of her hand,” she’s never been there. Next thing, after having the hubris to think I could take on the whole state of Texas without ever going there, was to get there fast.  My daughter, Kathy, was up for the trip and we were off.  It was June—getting hot in some parts of Texas—but still nice in the hill country where I got to visit a pecan farm like the one my story family: the Blanchard’s, own in Riverville, which is down in south central Texas. Now, don’t ask me why I put my town there—I’ve got no idea—but when I got there and was hiking along the Colorado River and visiting the little towns, it was all pure Riverville.  I’d…

The Deadly Notions mysteries are set in the fictional nineteenth-century village of Millbury in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In LIE OF THE NEEDLE, my heroine, Daisy Buchanan, owner of the vintage sewing notions store, is conducting research for the Historical Society on the village’s connection with the Underground Railroad. It wasn’t a real railroad, of course, but a series of safe houses or “stations”. Pennsylvania was a destination for many fugitives because it had a reputation for being anti-slavery. They came from the nearby slave states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, and crossed the Mason-Dixon Line at the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania. A good number stayed in Chester and Lancaster counties, where there was a large free African-American population, but for some, the goal was always Canada, as it was simply safer. The underground line through Bucks County was less used than the main routes further west with more direct access to the north, but some slaves did come to the area by way of Norristown or Philadelphia. The towns of Solebury, Quakertown, Doylestown, Yardley, Newtown and Buckingham were all stops on the line, and they were hidden in churches, barns, spring houses, fields and caves. The last important stop…