MEET VERA DAY, COZY MYSTERY AUTHOR

 By Patricia Bradley

Today I want to introduce Vera Day to the readers of the Suspense Sisters! We met at The Killzone Blog and have become friends over the years. I read and reviewed When Did We Lose Sylvia on my June 9th blog. Check it out here. She's giving away a digital copy of  When Did We Lose Sylvia to someone who leaves a comment so be sure to include your email address in the comment!

Vera Day is an avid reader and a joyful writer. After decades coasting along as a lukewarm Christian, and after a few more years of writing in a secular genre under a different pen name, she experienced a series of events that can only be described as epiphanic… in the God sense, not the light bulb sense, though that also applies.

Vera lives in small-town Texas with her two-legged and four-legged family members. Her neighbor is a cow, but as far as neighbors go, Daisy is a good ’un!

Vera, what genre do you predominantly write in?

I write cozy mysteries with faith elements. Some day I’d like to write a Christian literary novel.

 

My favorite kind! What has being published taught you?

Being published has taught me that no book is perfect, but mistakes and weaknesses encourage us to learn and grow and become better writers.

 

You are so right about no book being perfect--it's one reason I don't read my published books--I'd want to change them! lol What is your favorite part about writing and your least favorite.

It’s fun to live vicariously through my main character. Besides, it would not be cool to snoop on a mysterious, new neighbor in real life! My least favorite part about writing is doing third-time edits and STILL finding mistakes, argh!

 

How well I know that feeling! What have you researched that makes you think the FBI might be interested in you?

Haha! Poisons, electrocutions, side arms, antique shotguns, hypothermia, lime (for body disposal), and burner phones.

 

Those would qualify! Tell us about your current book release, When Did We Lose Sylvia?

When Did  We Lose Sylvia? (Winged Publications) is book 1 in my Tulip Texas Cozy Mystery trilogy. Southern humor, faith, and murder intersect in small-town Texas.

 

What would you like readers to know about your story/characters?

The setting for my cozy mystery trilogy is based on the small town where I live. It’s in a darling area of Eastland County, Texas. The craftsman-style houses, the wildflowers, the chickens and goats, plus friendly neighbors (and one HUGE red bull) give a sense of being grounded. There are literary-poetic folks here, humorous folks, too, and a feed-n-seed that acts as a community watering hole. My favorite house is a pink bungalow off Main Street, and you bet it makes an appearance in When Did We Lose Sylvia?

 

Your town (and Tulip Texas) sounds like a great place to live! Would you share with us what you are working on now?

I’m knee-deep in edits for Who Framed Flora? which is book 2 in my Tulip Texas cozy mystery trilogy.

 

I cannot wait until it's released! What is the most valuable piece of advice you’d like to give to unpublished authors?

Don’t publish too early. Your first book might be kinda stinky, and that’s okay. It can be your practice book, a book that will never see the light of day.

 

I have a couple of those, Vera! What’s next from you?

Who Framed Flora? (Winged Publications) is book 2 in my Tulip Texas Cozy Mystery trilogy and will be released in October 2023.

 

What Was Larry’s Alibi? (Winged Publications) is book 3 in my Tulip Texas Cozy Mystery trilogy and will be released in February 2024.

 

I love those titles and the cover of When Did  We Lose Sylvia! Here's the Cover and back cover copy:

 

Betty Bell is a famous poet, or at least a local celebrity, in the tiny town of Tulip, Texas. Gossip runs amok when a Goth teenager, Sylvia Smith, and her elderly grandfather arrive. Even worse, they’ve moved into the creepy, old Sanchez place on the outskirts of town.

Betty volunteers to teach a summer poetry class to restless Tulip teens. Soon, the kids are expressing themselves in stellar stanzas and heart-rending rhymes. But what was supposed to be a summer of ministering to the teens becomes a season of sleuthing when one of Betty’s students, the spooky Sylvia, goes missing.

When Sylvia turns up dead, suspicions point to Sylvia’s reclusive grandfather. Deputy Miller is a good man and excellent investigator, but after a second death shakes the small town, Betty is convinced the deputy is after the wrong suspect. Betty, her left-brained husband Larry, and her quirky friend Flora must use haunting haikus, couplet clues, and lots of prayer to track down the real killer.

You can buy When Did We Lose Sylvia here.

And you can connect with Vera here:
Amazon author page

Christian fiction book review blog

Twitter/X

REVIEW and a Free Book!

The Visitor Arrived in Texas last week, and I’m glad she did!

The Visitor Mystery Series is a new, multi-author series with a main character that is something of a cross between Jessica Fletcher from “Murder, She Wrote” and Nancy Drew. The unique thing about this story, though, is that while The Visitor (Connie B. Wright) is considered the main character and travels from place to place where she meets with mayhem and mystery, the stories aren’t “from her.”

THE VISITOR MAKES A RETREAT is told from the point of view of a caregiver, Izzy Guiterrez, in the employ of Fanny Henderson. Fanny is The Visitor’s aunt. Connie and Aunt Fanny have set up a weekend to share the need for a riding camp for underprivileged and physically challenged children. (Connie is the head of her family’s Wright Foundation.)

Unfortunately, one of the invited guests is well hated by most of the others, and someone takes advantage of the timing to physically show him how hated he is. Izzy doesn’t even know Connie well enough to completely trust her, so when the sheriff starts investigating, the gloves are off.

Julie B. Cosgrove weaves a twisted little tale that has a full cast of suspects, both engaging and repulsing. And no, I didn’t quite figure out the whodunnit! All of the details were there in plain sight, but I didn’t catch a few of the clues. Maybe I’ll do better with the next THE VISITOR mystery!

Have you recently failed to figure out a mystery before the antagonist became obvious? Tell me about that book! You might just win An e-copy of THE VISITOR MAKES A RETREAT!

WELCOME MIMI GRANGER TO SUSPENSE SISTERS by Mary Ellis

Happy Friday, lovers of inspirational suspense and mystery. Today I'm pleased to welcome author Mimi Granger back to Suspense Sisters. Mimi has a brand new cozy mystery titled Murder of a Mail Order Bride. Leave Mimi a comment for a chance to win a copy of her new book. But first, I asked her my favorite question:

ME: Where did you get the inspiration for this book? When you live just outside the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, you get used to two things: the incredible beauty of the place, and the history. The Love is Murder mysteries give me an opportunity to explore both, especially in book #2 of the series, “Murder of a Mail-Order Bride.”

The mystery centers around the town of Tinker’s Creek, where heroine Lizzie Hale lives. But the investigation takes Lizzie into the heart of the park, a place she knows well since she and her friends use to explore it when they were kids. Sure, there’s a spectacular waterfall (Brandywine Falls), the magnificent views of the twisting Cuyahoga River, the Ohio & Erie canal, dug by hand to provide transportation between the Ohio River to the south and Lake Erie to the north. But the park also has plenty of folklore attached to it.

At the time the park was established by the federal government, some of the land was already occupied by the town of Boston. The government moved in, bought up the land, forced its residents out. And then they did nothing for years. Houses sat empty. Churches rotted where they stood. Quiet settled over Boston. These days, it’s all lush parkland, but nothing can erase the urban legends that grew up when Boston sat empty.

There are the mutants said to be lurking in the woods.

There’s a haunted school bus.

The church used to be a gathering place for cult members.

And then, of course, there’s the giant python that escaped from a circus and still slithers through the park.

Lizzie knows better than to believe the stories, but that doesn’t make it any easier when she has to visit the area to investigate.My inspiration for writing “Murder of a Mail-Order Bride?” With a setting like that, chock full of legends and history, it was impossible to resist!

ME: Here's a bit about our author: Mimi Granger’s Love is Murder mysteries give her an opportunity to combine two of her own literary loves, romance and mystery. The series revolves around Lizzie Hale, an amateur sleuth who owns Love Under the Covers, an all-romance bookstore in the idyllic town of Tinker’s Creek, Ohio. Under various pen names, Mimi has also written the Haunted Mansion mysteries (Lucy Ness), the Jazz Ramsey mysteries (Kylie Logan), and the Pepper Martin mysteries (Casey Daniels). She lives not far from the Cuyahoga Valley National Park that plays a prominent part in the Lizzie’s investigation in “Murder of a Mail-Order Bride” and like Lizzie, she once owned the biggest, shaggiest, whitest, most shedding dog on the planet! You can find all Mimi’s names and the titles of her books at: www.mystery-book-series.com


ME: Here's a little bit about the story: Lizzie Hale thought mail-order brides existed only between the pages of the historical romances she stocks in her bookstore, Love Under the Covers. But when not one, but two local men introduce her to their respective new wives, she's forced to reevaluate that notion. Lizzie is surprised when Al Little, the owner of the local hardware store, asks Lizzie and her aunt Charmaine to help Svetlana, his new bride straight from Russia, to settle into Tinker's Creek, but they agree. Everything is going swimmingly—until a wrench gets thrown into their plans when Svetlana is found drowned in the creek. With Al's suspicious best friend—who has his own mysterious mail-order bride—and the secretive matchmaker who put them together, Lizzie's got more suspects than she knows what to do with. But she'll have to nail down who the killer is fast, before someone else winds up dead.

This story sounds positively divine!! Leave Mimi a comment for a chance to win Murder of a Mail Order Bride and you can order it HERE

Have a great weekend, mystery and suspense lovers~ Mary Ellis, Suspense Sisters

BOOK REVIEW: Hang on Every Word

Even in a small town, things and people aren't always what they seem. 

This fourth, stand-alone book from Julie Cosgrove's Wordplay mysteries once again marries some of the best things together - mysteries and word puzzles. 

I love them both, so this totally works for me. But let me catch you up to speed. 

Wanda Warner is a closet sleuth that is suddenly not so closet anymore. In fact, she's the head of the neighborhood watch for the whole town of Scrub Oak, Texas, and she takes that role seriously. 

In this fourth stand-alone book of the Wordplay Mysteries, Wanda herself is up against it. Somehow, she has foreknowledge of terrible crimes, and a lot of the townspeople are beginning to doubt her integrity. 

Horrors. 

Here are the details from the back of the book: 

It can't be happening again!

Wanda Warner is delighted to design the wordplay puzzles in The Oakmont Gazette. But when the clues to her Hangman puzzle are used to coordinate robberies, some people in tiny Scrub Oak, Texas wonder if she's masterminding the thefts so she can "solve" them in order to bask in more glory.

Then her own nephew, one of the town's cops, hauls her into the police station as her neighbors look on. The totally embarrassed Wanda is determined to crack this treacherous word puzzle crime spree, but can she do it before her fellow citizens hold a lynch party?

My Take

Since I'm already a fan of word games (Can't get enough of Wordle!) these books are right down my alley. But I also really like the way Mrs. Cosgrove has built consistent characters with realistic responses and genuine friendship. 

Take Wanda for instance. She has a cute little dog. She doesn't forget the dog, draws her into the "at home" scenes, and generally pays attention to her dog. Like a normal person. And she struggles with exercise and her eating habits. She's even been known to put her foot in her mouth and regret a harsh word to a friend. 

Never once does the author paint Wanda outside of those lines. She doesn't change her stripes for the sake of a scene. She's consistently kind, sometimes a little impatient, sincere in her faith, and very sharp. I love it when characters are so real. They make an impact, and their stories (or in this case the entire series) are more memorable for it. 

I also like the interplay between Wanda and her nephew and friends. It isn't the same type of interaction with any of them. Another example of real life. I tend to speak differently to my husband than I do to my grown kids, than I do to my neighbor, than I do to my best friend. So does Wanda. The depth of these characters is keeping readers coming back again and again. 

Add to that a twisted little mystery that kept me guessing to the end. With a well-woven story, I can always reflect and see the details that led to the revelation of the culprit, even if I don't catch them upon the first read. While it's always satisfying to beat the sleuth to the punch, I love being able to plainly see what I missed if I fail. Mrs. Cosgrove does a brilliant job of layering the details that will ultimately make a difference.

I really enjoyed this book as I have enjoyed all of the Wordplay Mysteries. While you don't have to read them in order, it is more fun to watch Wanda's progression through them. 

HANG ON EVERY WORD is available on Amazon as an e-book or a paperback. 

Are you more a fan of cozy mysteries or of word puzzles? Which type of word puzzles do you like the best? (I'm a fan of logic problems along with Wordle!) Share your thoughts in the comments and you might win an e-copy of the first book of this series.