I’ve lived most of my life in a small town on the south shore of Eastern Long Island, along with four generations of my family. My grandfather owned a deli in town, where I started working stocking shelves and sweeping floors when I was twelve years old. When I was a little older, I started working the breakfast shift, the inspiration for the All-Day Breakfast Café Mystery series. I’ve always loved the small-town feel, the way everyone knows everyone, especially the families who have lived here for generation after generation as mine has. When I married a man from the neighboring town, it seemed natural to settle down where we’d grown up and start our family. Then my husband got a job offer in Florida, and he accepted. We moved down right after my daughter finished kindergarten. I had only ever been to Florida once, when my daughter was three and we spent three days in Disney World, so I had no clue what to expect. Just like Gia Morelli in SCONE COLD KILLER, I was in for a few surprises. I was used to deer crossing signs, since Long Island is home to a large deer population, but the…

I hope you’ve enjoyed our wonderful summer of guest bloggers at the Cozy Corner! I can’t thank my fellow mystery authors enough for stopping by and sharing their great posts! Hugs to all of them for the time, tidbits, and talents they’ve shared with our readers! If you’ve been following the Cozy Corner for long, you know I’m prone to step away from the cozy world from time to time and delve into a thriller. But not just any chilling intrigue will do. My escape from the safe, loving small town communities must take me into the intrigue and darkness of a city like Gotham with real-life multi-faceted characters. (Not men in dark masks with capes, scratchy voices and gadget belts; although they are nice on the big screen:) That’s quite a tall order. Especially if I want to read an action-packed mystery layered with clues and hidden agendas all written in graphic, but clean language—a rarity in the genre. What I really liked about the book I chose this week, was that it’s actually a prequel to a series that’s new to me. (Who doesn’t love discovering a backlist just waiting to be devoured?!) I found exactly what I…

The books in my Downward Dog Mystery series are all set in Pacific Northwest locations that I know and love. My second, A KILLER RETREAT, takes place on Orcas Island, a small wooded treasure off the Washington coast. The island is only accessible by ferry, so once you get there, you are truly an ocean away from it all. Of course, no writing project would feel complete without research trips, and I took more than a few. If you’re ever near the Washington coast, be sure to visit my five favorite spots on Orcas. You’ll be glad you did. Tracy’s Top Five Orcas Island Destinations 1. Doe Bay Resort and Retreat. This relaxing retreat center sits on 38 acres and was one of several meditation centers that inspired my vision for the Elysian Springs Resort, which is at the heart of A KILLER RETREAT. Visitors can choose from houses, cabins, tent sites and yurts. My German shepherd, Tasha, says that if you take your dog—and who wouldn’t?—you should stay in Eden, the cabin right outside the garden. Tasha likes wandering along Doe Bay’s trail system, resting on the beach, and staring at the deer that graze in the fields surrounding…

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying Dial Emmy for Murder. If you haven’t picked it up yet, I certainly hope you do and give it a read! It’s the perfect summer getaway! I thought that the best subject for me to blog about would be my writing “process”. It’s multi faceted actually because I have a writing partner and we certainly have our own process, and I write about the Soap Opera world and that is another process. And I have my own personal process of getting words down on paper! The first part of my process involves my writing partner, Robert Randisi who lives in Missouri and we write vis a vis email. I have come up with the basic premise for all three books and have written the first few chapters for all three, as well. I’ll email those to Bob and he takes it from there, usually writing the next few chapters and emailing them back to me. I’ll rewrite and/or change whatever he sends me and send them back to him. We usually do this for the entire book until we are finished. One interesting dilemma is Bob doesn’t like to map out the…

The great American author, Edna St. Vincent Millay, once wrote that she couldn’t get the woman onto the porch. What she meant, of course, was that she couldn’t figure out an organically sound reason for the character to do as the plot demanded.I struggle with this situation all the time. Plotting a mystery is, for me, a combination of architecture and sleight of hand. I lay the foundation, plan the structure, and use language to entice my readers to pay attention to something over here while something else is happening over there, unnoticed. In order for this complex process to flow seamlessly, I need to create characters whose actions mesh with the plot’s development. Click to read the rest of Jane’s blog and to comment. Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

As a kid, I couldn’t wait to grow up and get away from home. I thought my brothers and sisters were annoying. I thought my parents were straight from the Stone Age. After high school, I went to college, got married, then I was off and running. I lived in Texas, Japan, South Dakota, Colorado, moved back to Japan, then back to Colorado. Finally, twenty-two years later, I moved home to Cheyenne, Wyo. which is full of my relatives. After all those years and all those places, you’d think I’d sit down and write a book about my travels. Somehow I became fascinated by the dynamics of the home folks; the ups, the downs—everything. So I wrote a book about an off-the-wall family in the small, fictional town of Moose Creek Wyoming. I focused particularly on sisters Lexie Lightfoot and Lucy Parnell. In my book, The Saucy Lucy Murders and its sequel, Paws-itively Guilty, Lexie has moved back home after a divorce. She finds that with age, she and Lucy have mellowed. Nevertheless, the sisters still manage to backslide into the roles of bossy, older sibling and younger, rebellious sibling. After several mysterious murders occur in town, Lexie decides the…

My fourth Annie Seymour mystery, SHOT GIRL, came out on Election Day. So far, reviews and comments from readers have been good. All are saying it’s the best in the series. It was the hardest one to write. I decided to do something different with SHOT GIRL. With each book, I embrace a different style. My first book was a traditional mystery, the second is what I call my Mafia book, and the third is much more fast paced and thriller like. In SHOT GIRL, Annie is an unreliable narrator. I had a friend express surprise that I would do this in the fourth — and last — book in the series. Wasn’t it a risk? she asked. Sure it was, but I wanted to see if I could do it, if I could pull it off. When I’d started writing the book, I’d just finished reading Scott Turow‘s PRESUMED INNOCENT, in which he masterfully portrayed an unreliable narrator. Could I do that with Annie? I thought. It was worth a shot. My goal was to have the reader ask throughout the book: Is Annie telling me the truth? What is she keeping secret? I know she’s not telling me…

When a U.S. Senator is found dead on a golf course in Mexico, it falls to his estranged daughter to find out what really happened. That’s how the story begins in my latest novel Greasing The Piñata, which Library Journal called “a cracking good mystery.” The plot moves between San Francisco landmarks to some beautiful regions of Mexico, but the characters soon discover that even the most tourist-friendly destinations can harbor criminals and reveal dangers never seen on any postcard. As a writer I’ve always been intrigued by what lies beneath the surface, just out of sight. My first novel Stealing The Dragon explored the back alleys of San Francisco’s Chinatown, a city within a city that transforms from a bustling tourist destination by day to a world of shadows and secrets by night. The local Tong gangs are never mentioned in any travel guides for the city, and the local gangsters never mentioned in the local papers, and yet they exist in an unseen underworld, unless you’re willing to take a walk down the right (or wrong) alley and have a look. My second novel Beating The Babushka is a satire of the move industry that reveals what really…

I was staring at the wall, my hands still. My partner assumed I was taking a break and started talking to me. “Be quiet! There are voices talking inside my head and I have to hear what they’re saying!” He muttered something like, “Okay crazy person,” and left me to talk to my imaginary friends. Writing a novel is an extremely personal venture. For months, these characters live inside your mind as you get to know them and try to reveal their character, intent and actions on the page. When you write a series it’s even more personal, because you develop a long-term relationship with your protagonists. In THE FRAILTY OF FLESH, book two of the Nolan, Hart and Tain series, the storylines are very personal. In book one, events from the past are alluded to but not exploited. In book two, Nolan is confronted by some of his darkest fears, Tain struggles with a deep personal wound that will never heal, and Hart suffers a devastating loss. Some of my friends have wondered how I could put these characters through hell. As a reader, and as someone who loves series books and gets very attached to characters, I can…

Okay, well, almost….but honestly, that’s the only way I can describe the rush you feel having your first book sold, published, and now, ta-da!, getting fanmail! When I began to write LIFELINES I knew it would be a challenge to find our target audience. Afterall, we were breaking all the rules—combining thriller pacing with a women’s fiction feeling, a medical suspense told solely from the point of view of the women of Angels of Mercy’s ER, and finally, combining romantic elements in an on-going, multi-character series. Before the release, I worried. Would the mystery/suspense reviewers like it or would they find it too much like women’s fiction? Would the romance reviewers think there wasn’t enough romance? Would the “big name” reviewers pay any attention at all? Turns out the worry was for nothing. Publishers Weekly and the Baltimore Sun both loved LIFELINES, with Publishers Weekly calling it a “breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller”. Romantic Times Book Reviews made it a Top Pick and Romance Reviews Today gave LIFELINES a coveted Perfect 10! But us writers aren’t known for our neurotic tendencies for nothing, lol! Despite all this, I still worried about readers finding LIFELINES—and liking it. LIFELINES is shelved in general…