Writers Who Kill

Kindness, Community – and Murder?

2026-04-30T03:00:00.000-04:00

By Cindy Brown

Kindness is my criteria, for well, almost, everything. It’s a “must” in my friends. It’s how I found my husband after a string of short-lived relationships. And my favorite books, TV, or movies all have kindness at their core. Oh, I don’t mind evil characters—I do love mysteries, after all. But I want good to triumph over evil, or at least give it a good kick in the pants.

Community is also really important to me. I love waving to neighbors on the street, being greeted by name when I walk into a place, or hanging out with groups of people with a shared goal or interest. I’m lucky to get this feeling of community from my neighbors, art class friends, fellow volunteers, church members, community gardeners, and my writer friends (more about that later).

What does all this have to do with mystery and murder, you ask? If you read cozy mysteries, you’ve probably noticed the kindness and community inherent in their small towns, knitting circles, and coffeeshops. But more serious mystery authors—like Louise Penny, Ann Cleeves, and William Kent Krueger— imbue their stories and characters with those qualities, too. In all their books, the murders are a way to explore human connections: to think about why people do the things they do, why some are bent on destruction, why some are victimized, and why others come to their aid.

That’s what I explore, too, and you’ll find that kindness and community connect all my books, including my new serious mystery, Echoes of the Lost (May 12^th from Ooligan Press), which explores the need for community and connection, and the consequences that follow their loss. I’m thrilled that early reviews acknowledge my focus, like this one from Booklist: “Brown’s latest, set amidst the houseless community in Portland, Oregon, features heartbreak, tragedy, and violence juxtaposed against heartwarming generosity, bravery, and humor…A superbly written story that highlights the massive social issue of houselessness and that will appeal to those who enjoy twisty mysteries combined with feel-good stories that deliver a strong social message.”

I can’t write about kindness and community without talking about my Hen friends (former Henery Press authors) at Writers Who Kill. Thanks, Kait, Annette, and Grace for your support and kindness. I feel lucky to be a part of your community.

If readers would like to be a part of my community, they can find me at cindybrownwriter.com, or sign up for The Slightly Silly Newsletter on Substack.

A Review of In the Spirit of French Murder by E. B. Davis

2026-04-29T00:30:00.001-04:00

After moving to France, Tabitha Knight has a new friend in fellow expat and Cordon Bleu student Julia Child, whose culinary tips can come in quite handy. But something’s cooking in postwar Paris, and it isn’t just cheese soufflé…

Tabitha has enjoyed an entertaining afternoon in Julia’s kitchen, but her return home is a bit jarring. As she arrives at her grandfather’s rue de l’Universitémansion, a woman bursts out the door babbling about messages from spirits and a warning Grand-père must heed. Oncle Rafe angrily sends the woman on her way, and neither man will answer Tabitha’s questions.

It’s not the last she sees of the mysterious visitor. While she’s on a date that evening, she’s accosted by her again—and learns that Madame Vierca is a medium who claims to have visions of a dark fate that awaits Grand-père and Oncle Rafe. The very next night, Tabitha’s messieurs host a soiree at their new restaurant, inviting fellow Resistance fighters from the war known as the Nine Bluets. To commemorate the work of the Resistance network, the vase on the dinner table sports nine of the pretty blue flowers.

But shortly after the revelers leave the restaurant, one of Grand-père’s old friends is found dead on the street . . . and one of the nine flowers is missing from the vase. When a second member of the Nine Bluets is found poisoned the next day, and a bluet flower is left with the body, Tabitha cannot ignore Madame Vierca’s frightening predictions about her dear messieurs. She has no choice but to share her suspicions and fears with the enigmatic and unruffled Inspecteur Merveille.

Tabitha soon finds herself caught up in an investigation that takes her and Merveille to the seediest, most dangerous parts of the Left Bank—home of strange, fantastical legends, disquieting events, and unusual people. As she and Merveille desperately try to find a killer, they know they don’t have much time before the rest of the Nine Bluets are targeted . . . including Grand-père and Oncle Rafe.

Amazon.com

In the Spirit of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge, the fourth book in the An American in Paris Mystery series, will be released by Kensington today. I’ve previously interviewed Colleen Cambridge, who writes two other mystery series. She’s a busy writer so I chose to review this book instead.

I loved In the Spirit of French Murder because the plot and backstory were tied together. By solving the mystery, main character Tabitha learns more about her grandfather and uncle, their trials and tribulations of working for the resistance during WWII and the often-sad consequences of their doing so. Julia Child, Tabitha’s neighbor and American cohort, doesn’t appear as often and isn’t a part of the solution, which I missed. Instead, Tabitha confides in Inspecteur Merveille, her heartthrob, who gives her subtle clues that he, too, feels attraction. C’est si bon!

A project left over from the last book in the series, Grandfather’s and Uncle Rafe’s restoration of a restaurant to pre-WWII conditions, wiping out the memories of Nazis who claimed it during the preoccupation, is now complete. The plot engages when they celebrate the restaurant’s opening by inviting their resistance working group, called the Nine Bluets (nine blue flowers). Tabitha connects the deaths of those attending as, one by one, they are murdered. She fears for her grandfather’s and uncle’s lives, motivating her to find the guilty party.

There is an element of mysticism due to a medium who predicts the deaths and the appearance of the Old Man Who Appears After Midnight, a Parisian legend, who makes his presence known to Tabitha. He tells her why evidence disappeared without a trace, just as he does. She is bewildered, and yet glad to have experienced his legend and explanation.

Colleen Cambridge’s books epitomize what Parisian mysteries should be. The tone of her books illustrates the style and charm inherent in the City of Lights, mysterious unto itself. When Tabitha solves the present crime and anticipates the budding future, the glory and horror of the past is revealed, set on top of a city that is much more than what is seems. Santé!

Do Your Characters Inhabit Their Space? by Martha Reed

2026-04-28T05:30:00.008-04:00

Being an author is a gift that keeps on giving. When I first started writing I thought that someday I would fully master the craft and from that point forward writing novels would become easier, almost formulaic. As I begin to draft my new and seventh novel I can attest that I’ve learned something new, wholly different, and wildly surprising from the previous six books for my continuing creative writing education.

In my first novel I went to a lot of trouble describing my characters in extensive detail. I specified height, eye and hair color, general build, and any accoutrements like nose rings or RayBan aviator sunglasses they habitually wore. I wanted to make sure I gave the reader a complete overall character snapshot. But I’ve learned since then that readers don’t really need this level of character detail. They may not even want it.

“Books allow us certain freedoms – we are free to be mentally active when we read; we are full participants in the making (the imaging) of a narrative. … then maybe this is a crucial component of why we love written stories. … Sometimes we only want to see very little.” – Peter Mendelsund, What We See When We Read.

Showing a character’s reaction to an incident or even how they inhabit the space they’re in may be more telling than offering the reader a lot of physical details. Instead of authoritatively saying that my character is morbidly obese, I’ll describe a teak deck chair that alarmingly cracks when he sits on it. This not only plants the suggestion of a character’s visual description more viscerely it also compels the reader to become a willing co-creator to the tale as they engage their imagination.

I recently had an epiphany over constructing my new novel’s timeline. Because I was a total newbie, my first Nantucket Mystery, The Choking Game was a completely soup-to-nuts linear telling because that’s the way I’d been taught to write in Journalism classes: inciting incident, puzzling middle, and conclusive, wrapped up, and satisfying ending. The Nature of the Grave, my second book was much the same although it offered readers a deeper dive into family backstory. It was my third installment, No Rest for the Wicked where I boldly stepped into uncharted territory by creating two linked yet separated by the passage of time plots.

My next bold step may be using first-person and multiple POVs but I’m not quite there yet.

I raised another thought provoking idea when I rifled through my unfinished story archive while cleaning my desk. Some of these odd bits and bobs were so stale they listed my twenty-year-old Aspinwall PA street address with my contact information. And yet when I reviewed them some of these ideas were yes, seriously ahead of their time but still gold: human sex trafficking, distrust of authority, voter restrictions, and rampant political corruption. It’s almost like they needed to marinate or be incubated before they were ready to pop.

Now I’ve come to believe that creative stories aren’t meant to be static like a forced march. There will be creative energy ebbs and flows, and that’s okay. As long as I continue to show up, the tale that needs to be told will be. Stories patiently wait for their right moment, and the truth will out. They may never have been meant to be linear.

“William James describes the impossible attempt to introspectively examine our own consciousness as ‘trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks.’” – Peter Mendelsund, What We See When We Read.

How about your creative experience? As you travel the writerly path, what have you learned?

Procrastination and Writer's Block by Nancy L. Eady

2026-04-27T01:00:00.001-04:00

Procrastination is my constant companion. After all, why put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow? The problem with procrastination is that sooner or later the deadline arrives anyhow, and you still are faced with the necessity of completing the task on time. Writer’s block is similar.

Over time, I have picked up a few “favorite” tasks to do in procrastination mode. On my list of necessary evils, housework falls somewhere between doing my tax returns and getting a tetanus shot, unless I have a major deadline. Then housework shoots right up to the top of my list of priorities. My apartment in college was cleanest right before exams.

Reading is a good thing to do any time, but it definitely works for procrastination purposes. Even better than reading for procrastination on a writing project is something like a computer game, which puts me at a computer with my fingers moving, giving me the illusion of accomplishing something. Googling random pieces of information on the computer are another procrastination tool.

Sadly, no matter what side efforts I drift into, the river of time pushes forward, and the deadline continues to approach. If the deadline involves writing, as for me it usually does, whether inspired or not, I reach a moment where I must force myself into a chair, put my fingers on the keyboard and start producing words. Even if what comes out is boring twaddle, at least I have something to work with and edit. Sometimes, the words I thought were the absolute worst as I was writing them turn out to be much better than expected.

Have you any good tips for breaking either writer’s block or procrastination cycles? I could certainly use them.

Murder Methods, Revisited by Edith Maxwell

2026-04-26T00:00:00.001-04:00

I'm pleased to welcome Edith Maxwell as today's guest blogger!

Thanks for inviting me back to Writers Who Kill, Annette! I’m delighted to hang out here for a pre-celebration of A Poisonous Pour, the third Cece Barton mystery, which releases on Tuesday.

Seven years ago, when I was a guest here, I took close notice of the name of the blog and wrote about all the ways I had fictionally killed people in my books. Since it’s been a minute, and I’ve had about two dozen more books published in those seven years, I hope you’ll forgive me for revisiting the topic.

In the 2019 post, I offered the following list:

· Gun – 3

· Some form of poison – 7

· Knife or very sharp object – 7

· Garrote – 2

· Strangle – 2

· Pitchfork – 1

· Push resulting in fatal injury – 3

Those didn’t include the murder methods in my more than a dozen published short stories at the time (I now have three dozen short crime stories in print, with one that might or might not have won an Agatha Award last night!).

So how’s my list looking today, with my 38^th book about to release?

· Gun – 4

· Some form of poison – 10

· Biological toxin - 4

· Knife or very sharp object – 9

· Garrote – 2

· Strangle – 3

· Pitchfork – 1

· Push resulting in fatal injury – 3

· Heavy object – 6

· Allergen – 2

· Starvation – 1

· Botched surgery – 1

· Smothering - 1

Note: Some of my books include more than one murder, and the list includes two written but not yet published Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, thus the numbers in the list add up to more than 38.

I’m clearly fond of killing people with poisons and biological toxins. I closely follow any workshop or conference session presented by Luci Zahray, the pharmacologist who goes by The Poison Lady. She’s great at suggesting commonly available drugs and plants that are lethal.

I also like to use heavy objects (including bocce balls), but I was surprised, when I tracked down all the murder weapons in my books, that I used guns four times. One of those was in my first mystery, Speaking of Murder. Another time was in the first Country Store mystery, and two were in my historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries. I don’t know anything about guns – neither do my protagonists – and I’m not really interested in learning. It’s no surprise that having a gun as the murder weapon came early in my career as an author. Now it just seems too easy.

Sometimes the title gives away the murder weapon. In Strangled Eggs and Ham, I kind of had to use strangulation to kill the victim. Four Leaf Cleaver? You got it. Also for Deadly Crush, Cece Barton #2, where the victim is found crushed under an auto shop lift. These books are centered in the wine industry in northern California, and the crush is also when they extract the juice from the grapes. Double meanings are always good in a title.

That brings us to A Poisonous Pour, the new book. Want to guess the murder weapon? You’ll have to read the book to learn which poison.

Readers: What’s your favorite fictional way to knock someone off? I’ll send one commenter a copy of the new book.

At the Memorial Day weekend classic car show and wine tasting, northern California wine bar owner Cece Barton witnesses heated discussions with local vintage car owners and overbearing association director Regan Greene. After Regan is later murdered, Cece once again enlists her twin, Allie, as her partner-in-sleuthing to clear the name of Cece’s elderly but muckraking neighbor. But they’ll have to act quickly to investigate various suspects in the case before the trail goes sour.

Maddie Day writes the Cece Barton Mysteries and other gentle and historical mysteries; as Edith Maxwell, she writes Agatha-Award nominated short crime fiction. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and a proud lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. Maxwell/Day lives north of Boston with her beau and their cat Martin, where she writes, cooks, gardens, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at edithmaxwell.com and at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.

How Writing is Like Running

2026-04-25T03:00:00.000-04:00

By Kait Carson

Many of you know I’m a runner. More when I lived in Florida than now. Maine has these things called hills. Something I never trained on and tend to avoid. Still, come spring and early summer, I’m out there running the circumference of our mowed field. On the hill. I should know better.

My running days began in the 1970s. I belonged to The Book of the Month Club, and I bought Jim Fixx’s book, The Complete Book of Running. I ran daily until Son of Sam appeared and murdered women in Kissena Park, six houses from mine and home to my running trail. Screech. Slide to a stop. After Sam’s capture, I took up the sport again, and then we lost Jim Fixx. Running might not be all it was cracked up to be, and I stopped.

Then I started working for lawyers. I’m sorry. I know several of my blogmates are Bar members, but truly, lawyers were the proximate cause of my rededication to the sport. Legal work is stressful. Running provided an outlet, and all the law firms I worked for fielded teams for the Miami Corporate Run. I never was much for racing. Not that I’m not competitive. Boy howdy, I am. It’s just that I’m SSSSSLLLLLOOOOWWWW, but preparing for and running is a great team-building exercise and it’s fun. Group suffering is the best.

What in the Sam Hill (who was Sam Hill? Anyone know?) does any of this have to do with writing? Oh, more than you think.

The hardest part of running isn’t ticking off miles. It’s lacing up the shoes. The hardest part of writing isn’t accumulating the word count. It’s butt in chair, fingers on keyboard. Once you get past the prelims, clear sailing. Not.

As with running, writing, at least my writing, proceeds in fits and starts. New ideas bring endless hours of plotting, pounding out chapters, working up characters, red herrings, clues, and research. Then, here comes the hill. Life gets in the way, or something doesn’t flow, or, and this happened to me twice, a key bit of story changes or disappears and it’s back to the drawing board. The setbacks may be temporary or permanent, but either way, they slow you down, or, in the case of losing a publisher (or agent) put your writing life on hold.

Then there are the days, weeks, and months when the ideas flow and you wish for a second set of hands to pound the keyboard. In running, this is called the runner’s high. It’s a real thing, and it is directly analogous to a writer’s high. When it’s good, it’s good, and the author knows it. Those are moments to crave and cherish. True confessions—I’m in one of those periods now, and I wish I could bottle it.

As an aside, lawyers figured in my writing life as well, and they are the reason I use a pen name. You see, in my first book, I killed off a lawyer. The book was a work of fiction, but after twenty years in the legal field, people knew me, and the firms I worked for, and I wanted to avoid the ever-popular game of pin the crime on the attorney!

How about you? Where are you in your writing life? Smooth sailing, on hold, or laboring up the hill?

Kait Carson writes the Hayden Kent Mysteries, set in the Fabulous Florida Keys, and is at work on a new mystery series set in her adopted state of Maine. Her short fiction has been nationally published in the True Confessions magazines and in Woman’s World. Kait’s short story, “Gutted, Filleted, and Fried”, appeared in the Silver Falchion Award nominated Guppy Anthology Hook, Line, and Sinker. Her nonfiction essay was included in the Agatha Award-winning book Writing the Cozy Mystery. She is a former President of the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime, a member of Sisters in Crime, and Guppies.

Life in a New House by Nancy L. Eady

2026-04-24T01:00:00.001-04:00

Life in a new house is fun, once you overlook the whole unpacking gig. Even so, I’ve had to make adjustments.

Remotes that are more than a simple on/off switch with up and down arrows to move the channels on the TV defeat me. Worse than that, they conspire against me. I can hit a sequence of keys on any remote more complicated than the aforesaid on/off model and nothing happens. My husband hits the same sequence of keys on the same remote and the thing does somersaults to keep him happy. The new TV’s remote has forty-two buttons. Even though Mark showed me what to do before he went to bed last night, it was a lost cause. I was trying to finish an episode of "New Tricks." All the remote revealed was a show about a colonial ship buried in Manhattan.

The charge cord for the laptop is still missing. I desperately need it for my writing. We have managed to locate every other charge card for every electronic device any of us own, as well as a few extra. Those last will be placed with honor into the graveyard for lost cords, otherwise known as the second drawer in my nightstand. That’s probably where they came from in the first place when we packed up the old house. Some of those cords have been with us since the mid-90’s.

Even after five years, I never was certain which light switch went with which light in the old house, so why I thought I’d learn them here in two weeks is anybody’s guess. At least in this house, every switch you touch turns something on or off. In the old house, the electrician put in a lot of three switch switchboxes, every one of which had at least one switch that did nothing. I never did learn why.

The irrigation system is a great feature to have, but it has a learning curve too. I bumped something on it by mistake the other day, lost the program, and tried to reschedule it. Wonder of wonders, it came on at the time I programmed into it. It must have stopped listening to me after that. When I stepped out of the house three hours later to run an errand, it was still running.

What adjustments have you made when moving into a new home or apartment?

The Art of Imperfection by Connie Berry

2026-04-23T11:19:00.005-04:00

Most of you know I grew up in the antiques trade. My parents taught me things—recognizing silver hallmarks, for example, understanding the process of creating cloisonné, and identifying the brush techniques used in oil paintings.

I wish I’d paid more attention!

One thing I will always remember is the “lemons to lemonade” technique used by Chinese porcelain makers. When they experienced a drip or imperfection in the glazing process, they often embraced it rather than discarding the piece and starting over. This photo of a small bowl I own shows how a few unintentional drips were turned into a tiny pattern.

Ancient Roman artists viewed perfection as a trait of the gods and would often make small, intentional errors as an act of human humility. This idea carried into the medieval period where master stone carvers incorporated intentional errors into the great cathedrals (usually where no one could see them). In the same period, monks copying Scripture might turn ink spills into small creatures or patterns in the margins of illustrated manuscripts.

What about books? Someone told me once that there’s no such thing as a perfect book. Is it true? I don’t know, but I remember after publishing my first Kate Hamilton novel when a reader contacted me through my website to point out that in one chapter, Kate uses her cellphone to take photographs while several chapters earlier she had surrendered that same phone to the police. Yikes. How did I not see that? How did my beta readers and small army of copy editors not see the mistake either? In another book, I have two Mondays in a row. Good grief.

Well, I’m not alone. Here’s a few famous typos, contradictions, and continuity errors:

*     * In Iliad by Homer (650 – 600 B.C.), Menelaos kills Pylaimenes in combat; however later in the story, Pylaimenes is still alive to witness the death of his son.
·       In Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona (1591), a ship sails between Milan and Verona, both of which are landlocked.
·       In Julius Caesar (1599), a clock strikes, centuries before clocks were invented.
·       The so-called “Wicked Bible” of 1631 tells us “Thou Shalt Commit Adultery.” The printers were fined £300 pounds each and their licenses were revoked. Most of the 1,000 copies were destroyed.
·       Daniel DeFoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) includes a scene where Crusoe swims naked to a shipwreck but then fills his pockets with useful items found there.
·       Lady Bertram’s pug in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) is a male. Later, however, he is expecting a litter of puppies.
·       In Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlett (1887), Watson’s war wound was to his shoulder. In The Sign of Four (1889), it had mysteriously moved to his leg.
·       In Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile (1937), the American heiress Linnet Doyle says they met her guardian, Andrew Pennington, at Cook’s Hotel in Cairo. Later her husband says they met him at Shepheard’s, another Cairo hotel—which is a second error since in a third place in the story, we’re told the Doyles stayed at the Mena House Hotel.

I refrain from mentioning more current errors and typos to protect my fellow authors. No one is perfect and neither are our books. Which simply proves we’re human. We could take a life lesson from this. As long as there is life, failures need never be final. In fact, it’s often out of failure that success comes…or at least a great story.

Do you have a story of a mistake or imperfection you turned into something wonderful?

The Poisonous Pour by Maddie Day: A Review by E. B. Davis

2026-04-22T00:30:00.001-04:00

Since moving from L.A. to California’s verdant wine country, widowed single mom Cece Barton has gone from Colinas wine bar manager to wine bar owner—with a chaser of sleuthing . . .

It’s Memorial Day weekend and Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley is buzzing with activity. For Cece, business at Vino y Vida is going great, as is her romance with new beau, Benjamin. Meanwhile, Cece’s neighbor, Richard Flora, is stirring up controversy with his newest article, an exposé of Regan Greene, power-hungry director of a valley district organization. Also in the mix is the town’s big classic car show, paired with wine tastings . . .

At the show, Cece spots Regan, who is displaying her restored green ’72 Thunderbird convertible. As Cece pours tastes, she witnesses several heated discussions with Regan—including an argument with wine afficionado and new Colinas hardware store owner Greg Jardis. Otherwise, all goes smoothly—until Sunday brings shocking news. Regan has been murdered . . .

Rumors fly that Richard may have orchestrated the homicide—or even committed it. But Cece knows that’s absurd. And others in Cece’s orbit seem to have discomfiting connections to Regan, from Cece’s employee, Dane, to her winemaking teacher’s sister, Yolanda, to Colinas Mayor Guittierez. And after Yolanda visits the wine bar, Benjamin says he recognizes her from a road race.

Determined to clear Richard’s name, and failing to extract any clues from detectives, Cece once again enlists her twin, Allie, as her partner-in-sleuthing. But they’ll have to act quickly, before the trail goes sour . . .

Amazon.com

A Poisonous Pour is the third book in Maddie Day’s (Edith Maxwell) Cece Barton mystery series. Kensington will release it on April 28^th.

I am at a disadvantage because I missed reading the first two books. From the current book, the reader derives that Cece Barton has moved to Colinas, CA, in wine country, after her divorce to be with her twin sister, Allie, a real estate agent. Although Cece is described as a single mother, her daughter is an adult, studying in Japan, so we don’t see much of that aspect in Cece’s character. Cece now owns a wine bar in the center of the historic district housed in an adobe building. Most of the wines she serves are from local wine makers. A big question I have is how Cece managed to own the bar, which was formerly owned by the town, for free—an arrangement somehow orchestrated by Allie. But then, that question may have been answered in a previous book.

At a town car show where Cece is displaying her 1966 Ford Mustang, she witnesses Regan Greene, the director of a regional organization, have arguments with three people, including one of her two servers at the wine bar, the town’s mayor, and the new owner of the hardware store. Regan is
murdered the following night. When Cece investigates Regan’s office, she discovers that her assistant hated her and doesn’t mind a bit that she’s dead. Eventually, the instrument of the murder is discovered to be poisonous wine, but anyone could have injected poison through the cork so that clue doesn’t eliminate suspects.

One character I loved is Cece’s ninety-two-year-old neighbor, Richard Flora, a former journalist who still writes the occasional feature. Cece and he find friendship in their backyard gardens where Cece’s two cats wander. One of Richard’s recent articles focused on Regan because of her clashes with the town government. Richard is at first considered a suspect because of his article, in which a sharp perspective on Regan’s management is apparent, but town detective Kelly Daniell gives him only a brief glance.

Henry and Ed are a married couple and friends of Cece’s. Henry owns an art gallery. Ed owns a local diner. Both host venues for Cece to investigate and trade informational tips.

Another character I loved is Ouro, a golden retriever, who is owned by JJ, a female friend of Cece’s and a vintage car mechanic. He hangs out at the shop with JJ and protects her at her yurt, where they live. Ouro helps Cece when the villain threatens her.

The book was a cozy likeable read with a rich backstory and enough twists that it kept me captivated until the last page. The question that remains, which will motivate me to pick up the next book in the series, is what Cece’s beau Benjamin does for a living. His job is a secret!

E. B. Davis

Getting Ready to Celebrate Malice Domestic 2026

2026-04-21T00:30:00.001-04:00

by Paula Gail Benson

This year, Writers Who Kill has so much to celebrate at Malice Domestic, which will be held this weekend in Bethesda, Maryland. We are all excited for the recognition being given to our blogging partners. Not only is Annette Dashofy the guest of honor, but also Annette, Connie Berry, and Marilyn Levinson are Agatha finalists! Many congratulations to our partners and to all the folks who have worked so diligently to prepare and present what has become like an annual reunion party. It will no doubt be glorious!

Ashley-Ruth Bernier

I’m delighted to get the party started with brief interviews from the finalists for Best Short Story and Best Debut Novel. Each year, I’m always impressed with the authors in these categories. They visited yesterday on The Stiletto Gang and today we’ll continue the conversation. Please note that the links will take you to the nominated short stories.

To learn more about these talented authors, just click on their names in the BIOS section and that will take you to their websites.

Best Short Story

Six-Armed Robbery by Ashley-Ruth Bernier, Malice Domestic Mystery Most Humorous

Baby Love by Barb Goffman, Double Crossing Van Dine

Lola’s Last Dance by Kerry Hammond, Celluloid Crimes

Boss Cat Rules by Nikki Knight, Malice Domestic Mystery Most Humorous

While the Iron is Hot by Edith Maxwell, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

QUESTION: Each of you has chosen a unique setting for your story. How has the setting influenced your plot development?

Ashley-Ruth: Like the vast majority of my stories, Six-Armed Robbery takes place in St. Thomas, Us. Virgin Islands. I’m a 7th generation Virgin Islander, and grew up on St. Thomas. It’s a wonderful place to live and a gorgeous setting in which to grow up. My oldest three kids were born there as well!

I try to highlight some aspect of Virgin Islands life in my stories, and in this one, it’s the fauna. Specifically, the creepy fauna that has terrified many a VI lady for countless generations! Maybe frogs, roaches, iguanas, geckos, and gungolos aren’t scary for everyone, but I know plenty of my countrywomen would agree with me that they aren’t exactly a comforting sight, either.

I don’t want to give away too much of the story, but we all grew up hearing the same admonition about gungolos. I’m okay with snakes, iguanas, and lizards, but like Sister Alice, I’ll give a gungolo its space every time.

Barb Goffman

Barb: I set "Baby Love" in a small town, which was necessary for the story to work. The premise of the story is that the main character, a PI, has a rich wife who keeps trying to lure her husband into bed so she can get pregnant, but at every turn she's thwarted—all her seductive moves give her husband an idea of where to look next for clues. In order for the wife to be able to keep trying to entice her husband, he needs to not only work from home but to have a current case that keeps him close to home. So I have him hired to find the next-door neighbor's missing dog. The neighbor fears poor little Brody has been stolen to be used as a dogfighting bait dog. (Don't worry; he wasn't.) The husband inspects the neighbor's yard and surrounding area for clues, talks to other neighbors, does online research, and relies on his knowledge of people in the small town thanks to his involvement in the local Kiwanis club. The wife tries to seduce him while he is investigating, approaching him, standing alluringly by their bedroom window, and more.

The story needed to be set in a place with grass and soil, with streetlamps outside homes, where there are friendly neighbors, local online newspapers, civic organizations, and not a lot of traffic (people and cars). All of these aspects of the setting enabled the PI to further his investigation. I also had the town have no known dogfighting, despite the dog owner's fears, which meant the town police wouldn't take the time to search for what they viewed as an escaped dog. That gave my PI free rein to investigate without having to deal with officers working the same case. I also needed the wife to be able to show off her assets, so to speak, so she needed to live in a place where she could stand seductively by her window without fear that someone other than her husband might see her. If "Baby Love" was not set in a small town, where all of these details could be put to work, the story itself would not have worked.

Kerry Hammond

Kerry: My story takes place in what some might call a "seedy" setting. Lola is a dancer at a club, but I don't want my readers to dismiss her as frivolous or inconsequential. I wanted her story to be compelling and I wanted readers of all types to identify with her no matter what she did for a living.

Nikki: My plots grow out of the world of the characters. This story started with Neptune, but he’s part of the larger Vermont Radio Mysteries setting, as the Boss Cat of the small-town radio station. While the murder itself was designed especially so Neptune could witness it from his window, the motivation is something very specific to that little Vermont town. No spoilers, but it relates to the kind of land-use issues I covered years ago when I worked at, yes, a small Vermont radio station. Though, sadly, we didn’t have an amateur sleuth cat!

Nikki Knight

Edith: The setting for "While the Iron is Hot" is a north-of-Boston modest home near the coast that two of the characters never leave. The narrator, Natasha, comes and goes several times. Because she grew up there, she knows where and how to use the surroundings to her benefit. I've also lived in that area for decades, and being familiar with the terrain and the seasons makes the writing come more easily.

Edith Maxwell

QUESTION: What have you learned from writing short stories that benefits any length or genre of writing?

Ashley-Ruth: Establish the energy of your story quickly, and sustain it throughout. Is it funny and light? Sweet and poignant? Shadowy and suspenseful? Begin in that vein and drop your readers into the mood that will carry them throughout the entire story. I’ve found that this kind of momentum keeps readers hooked and makes for a story that feels connected and complete.

Barb: Short stories require focus. You want to keep driving the plot forward. And you want to keep your writing tight and interesting. To do that, you want to keep reviewing your word choices to see if you can say something more clearly, with more forceful verbs and intriguing adjectives. You want to make your setting do double duty, if possible, not just showing where the story is set but helping to set the tone and move the plot forward. These skills can be put to good use in any genre, at any word length.

Kerry: I’ve learned to be concise and that everything you include in the final product must move the plot or character forward. Readers want a compelling story, not fluff or filler words.

Nikki: Start with the fact line. Whatever the length of the story, if you know the details of the crime, who solves it, and how, you have your roadmap. You can add scenery, and take useful side trips, but as long as you always keep track of the main fact line, you won’t get lost.

Edith: Focus! Whether it's a story of three thousand words or seventy-three thousand, every character, every word, every action needs to mean something and must move the story forward. Of course, novels have more room than short fiction to explore subplots and secondary relationships. As in a short story, it all needs to be important.

Best First Novel

Whiskey Business by Adrian Andover

Murder in the Crazy Mountains by K. L. Borges

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by Sandra Jackson-Opoku

Player Elimination by Shelly Jones

Voices of the Elysian Fields by Michael Rigg

QUESTION: How much of your own background or characteristics are incorporated into your novel?

Adrian Andover

Adrian: There's so much of myself in my novel, Whiskey Business—not so much my life experiences, but rather my emotional center. Even though my protagonist, Reece Parker, leads a life that is different from my own, I draw a lot from my own questions, passions, fears, doubts, ideas, and emotions when I write. I'd say there's a little bit of me in all of the characters. There are no characters that "are" me, but I do believe that when you finish reading the book, you'd understand who I am as a person a bit more. I've always written as a way to express what I'm feeling inside, and some of my loved ones have confirmed that they can feel my spirit in the story.

K.L.: A lot! So many little pieces of the story are inspired by actual events in my past that either happened to myself or friends. Many were things I had forgotten about until they bubbled up, clamoring to be included, as I wrote. The protagonist is essentially myself as I would be if I existed in her reality. Write what you know, right?

K.L. Borges

Sandra: I’m not a professional soul food chef, though I too was partially raised on the west side of Chicago and teethed on the fare of my Southern forebears. Like Savvy Summers, I’m a second generation migration of the Great Migration, when some six million souls made their way from the segregated South, to urban areas in the North and West.

Sandra Jackson-Opoku

Shelly Jones

Shelly: Like Wren and her nerdy board gaming besties, I too am very nerdy and love board games. I own a few hundred (not an exaggeration) and often have gaming weekends with my friends (when I’m not holed up writing away…). At the same time, I am very introverted and need a lot of down time to process and regroup, even after interacting with my closest friends (ala Charlie in my books). I also live in a small college town, like my books, and love being able to walk down to the bookstore/coffee shop and the farmer’s market each weekend. Having grown up in a much larger city, small town living is definitely for me.

Michael Rigg

Michael: Though I no longer practice law, I’m still an active member of the bar. I’m not a medical professional, though I’ve been involved with various medical personnel/experts over the years when I was in active practice. My brother is a physician (though now retired, I believe), so much of my medical information comes from him. In terms of personal characteristics, my protagonist is much like me, introverted and duty-bound. My professional career was mostly associated with the U.S. Navy, either active duty, reserve, or as a civilian. So, you’ll find that many of my characters, including the protagonist, have a military background. I might not have the experience to write from the point of view of a different gender/orientation/ethnicity than mine, but I feel fairly comfortable in “writing Navy” or other military branch, where the dedication to mission accomplishment transcends many interpersonal differences/backgrounds. And, at one point in my career, I earned certification as a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) practitioner, so I use those personality-types in adding depth to characters/character reactions.

QUESTION: How did you determine who your protagonist would be? Will this be part of a series? If so, what is in store for your next novel?

Adrian: My protagonist, Reece Parker, was born from the setting of the novel. Before I knew who'd be telling the story, I knew that I wanted to set a cozy mystery in a literary-themed cocktail and mocktail lounge. From there, I figured my protagonist would be a mixologist. Once I had a really good understanding of the setting, I spent a lot of time developing Reece's character, and now I feel like he's a real person.

I'm very excited to share that Whiskey Business is part of a series, and the next book is coming out on June 30, 2026. It's called Pour Choices, and it's available for pre-order now. The next installment takes place during an August heat wave in Hope Mills. Reece and the Subplot crew are hosting their first-ever Comedy and Cocktails night. When the comedian they hire tells some jokes that go too far during her set, she's found floating in the nearby Delaware River the next morning. With his best friend Nate tied up in the investigation, Reece commits to figuring out whodunit. I can't wait to share the story with the world in a couple of months

K.L.: The whole story started as a very involved daydream spun out during a long car trip, and I absolutely put a fictionalized version of myself into the leading role. Once I decided to put the story into a book, I kept that character the same. Why change horses in midstream?

Yes, Murder in the Crazy Mountains is the first in a series of at least three books. In the second book, to be released on October 14th, 2026, we again meet the same main characters, in the same Helena, Montana, dog rescue. This time, they become involved in a shady dog rescue from Butte, following the untimely and suspicious death of a friend who transported dogs for the Butte operation. Bodies pile up, and they find themselves fighting to stay alive long enough to solve the mystery!

All the books will be set in this Montana dog rescue and involve the same main characters, with readers able to learn about different aspects of animal rescue and different types of dogs or other animals, as they enjoy fast-paced, suspenseful mysteries that contain enough humor to keep from becoming dark.

Sandra: Influenced by the late Barbara Neeley’s protagonist sleuth in her quarter of Blanche White novels, I wanted to write a mature protagonist who was shrewd, smart, sexy, and as her nickname suggests—savvy.

Shelly: While Player Elimination revolves mostly around Wren Winters, it was important to me that she had friends who supported her and added to solving the mystery. Just like in a board game, the interaction between players is important and I wanted to pay homage to the idea of gathering around the table to play together by having my board gaming besties gather clues and share them out. Each character contributes in a meaningful way to the mystery and to each other’s lives, so that really their friendship is the heart of the story. Player Elimination is book one in the Wren Winters series, followed by Murder, She Rolled and Game Over, both of which are available now. I’m nearly finished with the first draft of my next novel, which is the beginning of a new series about a former medical examiner who moves back to her Catskill Mountain hometown and takes a job at the local community college when her sister dies unexpectedly.

Michael: I’ve always been fascinated by medico-legal (forensic) issues and procedures in crime solving, so I determined that my protagonist would be a Coroner, if possible. Without going into a lot of detail, the Louisiana Coroner System is unique. The Coroner is responsible for death investigations (autopsies) in designated cases, coordinating sexual assault examinations, and being involved in the mental health (commitment) process. That diversity provides wide latitude for a writer to craft twists and turns in a novel, which is why I settled on Louisiana/New Orleans as the location for my novels. Voices of the Elysian Fields is the first novel in a series. The second novel, Shadows of Frenchmen, is scheduled for release by Level Best Books on May 5, 2026.

Short Story Authors’ BIOS

Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier’s work appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023, and other esteemed anthologies. Originally from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Ashley-Ruth writes mysteries highlighting the vibrant culture of her home. Ashley-Ruth is a 2022 winner of the North Carolina Writers Network's Jacobs-Jones award, a 2023 Short Mystery Fiction Society Derringer finalist, a Killer Nashville Claymore finalist, a 2024 recipient of Mystery Writers of America's Barbara Neely grant for Black mystery writers, and a 2026 Agatha and Derringer Award nominee. THE BUSH TEA MURDER is her first novel-length work. She currently lives with her family and teaches first grade in Apex, North Carolina.

Barb Goffman has been a finalist for major short story crime-fiction awards fifty times, forty-seven for writing and three for editing. She’s won the Agatha four times, the Macavity twice, and the Anthony and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Readers Award once each. She’s also won the Derringer for editing, and in 2024 the Short Mystery Fiction Society awarded her the Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement. Barb works as a freelance editor, often focusing on cozy and traditional mysteries. She also is an associate editor at Black Cat Weekly.

Kerry Hammond decided to give up the practice of law to commit crimes—on the page. She is a two-time Agatha Award nominated author whose short stories have appeared in several anthologies, including Malice Domestic, Bouchercon, and Sisters in Crime. One of those stories was chosen for inclusion in The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year, edited by Amor Towles. Her love of travel means that her stories often take place in foreign locales she has (or wants to) visit, or while her characters are enroute to their next adventure. She’s a huge fan of the subtle surprise and is happiest when her readers don’t see the ending coming. She lives in Denver with her husband, who is her favorite travel companion. Kerry also writes downloadable Murder Mystery Party games at BlameTheButler.com

Nikki Knight (Kathleen Marple Kalb) is an author/anchor/mom…not in that order. The Agatha-nominated author of short stories and novels, she’s also a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award-winning anchor of New York City's #1 weekend morning show on 1010 WINS Radio. Her work includes fourteen mysteries across four series, and short stories in top mystery magazines, anthologies, and online, with recognition in National Excellence in Storytelling, Black Orchid Novella, and Derringer competitions. Active in writers’ groups, she is a Marketing and Communications Liaison on the National Board of Sisters in Crime, and a past VP of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and NY/Tri-State SinC. She and her family live in a Connecticut house owned by a large calico cat.

Agatha-winning and Macavity-nominated author Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and the Local Foods Mysteries, as well as award-winning short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she authors the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries. She also wrote two Lauren Rousseau Mysteries. Maxwell lives north of Boston with her beau, their sweet cat Martin, and her organic garden; she blogs with the other Wicked Authors and at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.

Debut Authors’ BIOS

Adrian Andover is the author of Whiskey Business, his Lefty Award-winning and Agatha Award-nominated debut novel and the first entry in the Mixology Lounge Mysteries series. In 2020, Andover was living alone in a 200-square-foot studio apartment at the height of the pandemic when he found a joyful respite in cozy mysteries. Not seeing many gay men represented in the genre, he set out to write his own. When he's not reading, writing, revising, or publishing a story, he enjoys taking long walks, attending live music events, spending time with friends, and tasting craft cocktails around his chosen hometown of Asbury Park, NJ.

Born and raised in Idaho, K.L. Borges moved to Montana over thirty years ago. She and her husband raised their three children there, alongside a series of herding dogs. K.L. Borges was a math teacher at a private Billings high school (Go, Rams!) for a decade, following an earlier career as an environmental engineer. Borges is an active volunteer in the animal rescue community of south-central Montana, a member of the Billings Gem and Mineral Society and is a member of Sisters in Crime. She and her husband can often be found enjoying the Montana outdoors with their two blue heelers. Murder in the Crazy Mountains is her first book; it has been nominated for an Agatha Award.

Sandra Jackson-Opoku is the author of three award-winning novels. The River Where Blood is Born (American Library Association Black Caucus Award), Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him (Essence Magazine Bestseller in Hardcover Fiction)and Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes (won the Malice Minotaur Award and is a finalist for the Edgar and Agatha Awards). Savvy Summers and the Po’boy Perils releases in July 2026. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic works are widely published and produced. She coedited the anthology Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks. Her professional recognitions include the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Chicago Esteemed Artist Award, the Globe Soup Story Award, the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, the Hearst Foundation James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell Arts.

Shelly Jones (they/them) is a professor at a small college in upstate New York, where they teach classes in transmedia storytelling, the mystery genre, and writing. A Pushcart nominee and Best Microfiction finalist, their creative works have been published in F&SF, Apex, and elsewhere. Their novel, Player Elimination, was nominated for the 2026 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. When they aren’t grading or writing, Shelly can often be found hiking in the woods or playing a board game while their cats look on.

Michael Rigg, an attorney for more than four decades, writes mysteries and thrillers set in two very different locations: Virginia Beach (where he lives) and New Orleans (which he visits as often as possible “for research,” including participation in three Mardi Gras Krewes). He is a retired Navy Judge Advocate and a retired civilian government attorney, formerly working for the Department of the Navy Office of the General Counsel. He is a member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and both the Sisters in Crime national organization and its Southeastern Virginia Chapter—Mystery by the Sea.

Running Aimlessly on the Hamster's Wheel

2026-04-20T00:00:00.001-04:00

Running Aimlessly On the Hamster’s Wheel by Debra H. Goldstein

One of my favorite characters in the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich is Stephanie’s hamster. At some point in every book, there are a few paragraphs devoted to Stephanie feeding the rodent and observing it mindlessly running around the wheel in its cage. Lately, I’ve been having a lot of days that I totally identify with the hamster’s aimless journey.

Juggling the desire to write with family and life responsibilities often resembles the hamster’s endless circling. Writing requires coming up with an idea or ideas and translating them into words clearly enough for a reader to recognize and engage with the thought. This process takes time and energy, but it isn’t the only demand on a writer. Other things, besides writing, come into play, too. These include selling the work, meeting editorial deadlines, launching the piece, publicizing the final product, praying that nothing goes wrong, and immediately repeating the process.

Although this sounds simple, real-life obligations often conflict with the writing process. Whether illness, death, the need to do one’s taxes, or simply enjoying pleasurable interactions with other people, each can stop creativity. When too many of these things co-exist, which often happens to me, the hamster’s wheel seems more attractive than the real world. I choke up with a fear or flight reaction. Eventually, reality steps in and I accept that the buck of avoidance stops with me. That still doesn’t stop me from feeling overwhelmed until I adopt a coping strategy.

For me, the best strategy is to let myself have a short freak out moment before creating a prioritized to-do list that I work through one item at a time. By the time I finish, I still may have the desire to flee to the hamster’s wheel, but what needs to get done is or I’ve accepted that it doesn’t need to be accomplished.

What about you? Are you ever overwhelmed? How do you cope?

A Lesson in Moderation (Revisited) By Sarah E. Burr

2026-04-19T00:30:00.001-04:00

For the past six years, Malice has held a special place in my heart, not just as an author but as a lifelong mystery lover. This year, I’ll once again have the honor of co-hosting The Bookish Hour at Malice, and it got me thinking back to a post I wrote a few years ago about best practices for moderators. Since writing that post in 2023, I’ve participated in more panels, attended even more, and seen firsthand how much a moderator's role can shape the audience’s entire experience. So today, I’m revisiting and refreshing those lessons with a few new insights for today’s ever-evolving conference world.

If you’re stepping into the moderator role this season, consider this your cozy guide to keeping the conversation flowing and the audience fully engaged.

Do Your Homework (Yes, Still the Golden Rule)

Given the time constraints authors face, this is probably the toughest bit of prep work. Yet, it remains the most important.

Moderators should know who they are speaking with and have insight into their work. You don’t need to read an author’s entire backlist, but reading their latest book is a great place to start. Becoming familiar with an author’s writing style, characters, and themes gives you the foundation you need to ask meaningful, specific questions.

New twist: In today’s world, it’s also worth checking out an author’s online presence. Have they recently gone viral for something? Are they known for a particular trope or niche? These details can help you connect with both your panelists and the audience in a more current, relevant way.

Allow Your Panelists to Shine

This part should feel natural if you’ve done your homework. Craft questions that highlight both the common threads and the contrasts between your panelists. Open-ended questions are your best friend; they invite storytelling, examples, and personality.

Avoid questions that lead to identical answers. If everyone responds with “What she said,” the energy dips fast.

New twist: Think of yourself as a conductor. If one panelist hasn’t had much airtime, gently guide the spotlight their way. A simple, “I’d love to hear your take on that as well,” can make all the difference.

Share Your Questions Beforehand

No one likes surprises, and moderating is not the place for them. Give your panelists at least a week to review your questions. This allows them to come prepared with thoughtful answers and examples, which leads to a smoother, more confident discussion. Prepared panelists are relaxed panelists, and relaxed panelists make for a better audience experience.

New twist: Let your panelists know it’s okay to stray a little. The best panels often feel like conversations, not scripts. Your questions are a roadmap, not a rigid itinerary. And if a spontaneous question pops into your head, go with it! Some of the best panel moments can come from unplanned questions.

Accept That It’s Not About You

Moderators are the unsung heroes of conference panels. You put in the work, guide the discussion, and keep everything on track, but you’re not the main attraction. And that’s exactly how it should be.

When framing your questions, it’s fine to include a light, natural reference to your own work if it fits organically. But your primary goal is to create an engaging, entertaining, and insightful experience for the audience.

Ironically, when you do this well, people will remember you.

New twist: Think of moderation as a form of professional generosity. You’re creating space for others to shine, and that generosity reflects back on you in the best possible way.

Keep an Eye on the Clock

This is one of the most underrated moderator skills. Panels often have more material than time allows, so pacing is key. Be mindful of how long each answer runs and gently steer the conversation forward when needed. You want to leave room for audience questions, which are often the most memorable part of the session.

Pro tip: Have a “lightning round” question or two in your back pocket in case time is running short but you want to end on a high-energy note.

Engage the Audience (They’re Part of the Panel Too)

A great panel doesn’t just happen on stage; it includes the audience. Make eye contact. Read the room. If the energy dips, don’t be afraid to pivot slightly or inject a bit of humor. When it’s time for Q&A, encourage participation and repeat audience questions so everyone can hear them clearly.

New twist: If appropriate for the setting, you can even weave in a quick audience poll or prompt.

Plan for the Unexpected

Technology glitches. Missing panelists. Time changes. It happens. The best moderators stay flexible and calm under pressure. Have a few backup questions ready, and be prepared to adjust on the fly if needed. A steady, confident moderator can turn a potential hiccup into a seamless experience.

Sarah’s Final Thoughts

Moderating is both an art and a skill, one that gets better with every panel you lead. At its heart, it’s about creating a space where authors feel comfortable, conversations feel natural, and audiences feel included. When all those pieces come together, it’s a little bit of conference magic.

With conference season in full swing, I hope these tips help you step into your role with confidence and maybe even a touch of excitement.

Because truly, there’s nothing quite like a well-moderated panel.

Do you have any moderating best practices you’d like to share? I’d love to hear them!

Small Towns, The Perfect Mystery Setting - by Judy L. Murray

2026-04-18T00:00:00.021-04:00

“It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches by Arthur Conan Doyle

The English may think they have the corner on dangerous villages, but we prolific American writers also create lots of small-town settings that affect our characters’ lives and charm our readers. We know small towns make for perfect incidents of murrrr-der whether we choose the Chesapeake Bay, the Midwest, or the Colorado mountains.

Cabot Cove, the beloved hometown of Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote, will always be one of the most famous mystery series locations, proving that cozies belong in villages. With boats in the harbor, a country doctor, and a small-time sheriff, Jessica’s travails became a genre theme. Over the years small towns as a location evolved into private jokes among authors. After all, how many murders can any one town handle?

What makes small towns the perfect cozy setting? Being from a small town in Pennsylvania, I think of local shops, teachers who taught generations, three-person sheriff departments, and two traffic lights. The anonymity a killer might count as an advantage in a big city is far less likely in a small town. Local killers have a harder time dreaming up alibis because everyone knows each other’s business, for good and for bad. If he’s new to the community, he’ll stand out like a red Maserati parked next to an old pickup truck.

Readers enjoy a small-town sense of community. They get emotionally involved with a book’s familiar cast of characters, even the annoying ones. Parks, shops, and libraries where characters meet to discuss the latest news are endearing. It adds to the shock and concern of a murder just discovered. Who did it? Why? Is the killer one of us? Gossip and accusations fly. Townspeople are less likely to set bad news aside and continue their lives untouched. Some will circle the wagons. Some will spill the beans. Someone decides to do some sleuthing.

The bakery, the church, and the hardware store all form an even smaller microcosm within the town setting. It’s here where co-workers become family even when not related. They are dependable and close-knit. They either welcome a newcomer or regard the newcomer with suspicion.

A crime in a small village provides a different element of fear, unlike a crime in a big city of strangers. The person killed isn’t a stranger. They know the victim personally. And the killer is highly likely to be someone they know. Secrets are closely guarded and loyalties are long, even when misguided. The town buzz is fodder for useless clues and valuable insight.

Amateur sleuths in small towns tend to nosey into solving crimes and step on the law’s toes. They’re good at talking among the locals to flush out clues. The small police force with limited resources may initially discount our sleuths’ abilities but grudgingly come around to their intrusions and deductions.

Although we might joke about the frequency of small-town crimes like in Cabot Cove, as readers we’re perfectly happy to set those doubts aside. We fall in love with the odd mix of characters. We stay up at night turning pages while we sort through the drama, the danger, the clues and the missteps. We hope we can ferret out the killer before the sleuth. Much like the all-too-famous line about Vegas, what happens in small towns stays in small towns. Until the next dead body. And that’s part of the fun.

A Found Memory by Nancy L. Eady

2026-04-17T01:00:00.001-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, the plan was to move this month. The plan worked. I will not be executing a similar plan in the foreseeable future.

We started moving in our new house Saturday. We can now walk in our bedroom, find clothes for work during the week, walk in the great room and the kitchen and the bathrooms, which is great progress. I have not yet found the cord for the family laptop, which made writing this post challenging, but I’m sure we’ll find it soon.

One of the heroes of this move was my daughter, Kayla. She’s a young adult now, and she worked incredibly hard. She helped with packing, cleaning, moving stuff out of one house, moving stuff into the other house, and unpacking. Plus, she has taken on the task of walking all three dogs as they need it until we get our fence. Currently the waiting list for the fence is four weeks.

But I was looking through some old notes, and found the following anecdote from when she was fourteen. Times have certainly changed! Here is the story, as told the night after it happened:

Things got a little tense at our household this morning thanks to contacts and baseball, strange combination that it is.
Kayla got contacts about a month ago and after the first three days, which were rough, had most of the kinks worked out – until this morning. I knocked on her bedroom door to tell her I was going to take a shower, so wanted to tell her good-bye in advance. In return, I got ~~screamed at~~ ~~yelled at~~ was informed tersely that her contacts were just “not working” this morning and she was afraid she was going to miss the bus. [How something with no moving parts or motor can “not work” is beyond me.]
When I told her she had nine minutes left and she should calm down a little, I threw a spark onto a pile of dry twigs and leaves. I am not saying I slammed any doors over the conversation —but I slammed my bedroom door over the conversation.
However, as we all know, Karma works its magic at the worst (or best) possible times.
Fifteen minutes after the bus came, Kayla texted. She had forgotten her permission slip for the baseball game field trip her class was taking today, and would I please bring it to her at school so she wouldn’t have to sit in the boring classroom all day long and my husband and I lose the twenty dollars we had plunked down for the field trip? [I’m sure it was our losing the twenty dollars that was worrying her the most.] [Insert sarcasm font.]
I contemplated telling her “No.” I should have told her “No.” I almost texted “No.” But instead I clenched my jaw and started looking for it. Once I found it, the following text exchange ensued:
ME: Leaving house now. Please be at front at drop-off line to pick up form. Do NOT make me park and come inside.
KAYLA: I can’t do that. It’s against the rules.
[At which point, I had grounds for justifiable homicide.]
ME: Then how the ^&*&%$%(*&^ do you expect me to get it to… [text deletion and rewording interrupted by further communication from Kayla.]
KAYLA: I’ll try it
ME: [Deletes previous text without sending.]
KAYLA: Coach Dean said I could come to the car-rider line.
My mood was not improved by the fact that I managed to lose the permission slip three times before I made it into the car to head to the school.
The smile on her face when she grabbed the form from me, though, made it worth it.

Finding forgotten memories like that are one of the great joys of writing for me. It’s a little snip of serendipity from the past. Have you ever thought of how you might use that type of “found” memory in a mystery setting?

Keeping Up With the People in My Life by Marilyn Levinson

2026-04-16T01:00:00.001-04:00

Like most people, I keep up with some old friends and with relatives I'm close to. I'm still in contact with a friend from elementary school days, and I Zoom every month with three of my closest college friends. Recently, I've found myself thinking about some people with whom I haven't been in touch, who have been important to me at different times of my life. Texting and emailing make communicating easier than sending a letter or even making a phone call. However, time is always limited and somehow I've found it's easier to call someone I was with the previous weekend than to call someone I hadn't spoken to in months if not a year or two.

This past year, several people I know have died. As we grow older, so do our friends and colleagues. I wondered if any of my friends had died without my having known. And so I made a list of the people with whom I wanted to reconnect. I planned to call someone on the list every three or four days.

I began contacting the people in my life, perhaps not as frequently as I'd thought I would. Alas, I discovered one had died. Another informed me that her husband had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. But others were, in relatively good health, and we enjoyed a long conversation as we caught up on each other's life.

At the end of every phone call, we said we'd stay in touch. Easy to say, but not always easy to do as once again the everyday and familiar takes over and making phone calls to old friends requires time I don't always have. But I will try.

Killer Questions - Our Favorite Things

2026-04-15T00:00:00.001-04:00

Killer Questions – Our Favorite Things (to be sung to the song from The Sound of Music)

Annette Dashofy - My cat. Foals (baby horses) and foals’ whinnies. Birdsong. Long naps. Mountains.

Heather Weidner -

Puppies, good books, and warm fuzzy socks
Cuddly sweaters, pizza, and not following clocks
Family celebrations, road trips, and a pretty rainbow
Beach life, dark chocolate, and fireflies that glow
These are a few of my favorite things.

James M. Jackson - Being outside in nature tops the list; if inside, then in no particular order: reading, creative writing, and helping someone learn something.

Martha Reed - Great coffee. Visits to exotic places. Funny and engaging people. Golconda diamonds. Italian cream cake.

Sarah E. Burr - Aromatic candles, aromatherapy soaps, faux fur coats, doggie outfits, blue convertibles

Kait Carson - Fog, Cats and kittens, dogs and puppies, Chocolate Croissants made with dark chocolate, scuba diving, the sun on my shoulders.

Susan Van Kirk - books, jigsaw puzzles, grandchildren, time to read, writing “The End”

Elaine Douts - Maple cream on waffles on a cold winter’s day. Hot tub with a glass of cold Sauvignon Blanc, please. And a hot day on the beach, sleeping under the umbrella.

Margaret S. Hamilton - The smell of summer rain on hot asphalt, cuddling a standard poodle, daffodils tossing in the spring wind, the first lilacs, yellow and orange sugar maple leaves in the fall, the fresh smell of a live Christmas tree.

K.M. Rockwood - The smell of summer rain on hot asphalt, cuddling a standard poodle, daffodils tossing in the spring wind, the first lilacs, yellow and orange sugar maple leaves in the fall, the fresh smell of a live Christmas tree.

Korina Moss - My cat, jigsaw puzzles, the beginning of each season, road trips with my son, when it’s raining or snowing and I have no place to go, long morning coffee chats with my sister.

Lori Roberts Herbst - Rocky Mountain National Park. Each season there holds a unique beauty and peacefulness.

Grace Topping - Listening to audiobooks—while driving, cooking, doing housework, and at night when I can't sleep.

Shari Randall - Broadway musicals, powdered sugar crullers from Neil’s in Middletown, Connecticut, sharpened pencils, dahlias, dancing, books, books books!

Mary Dutta - Books, dark chocolate, kitchen utensils

Debra H. Goldstein – Nothing…I’m a curmudgeon at heart!

Let's Play Fair by KM Rockwood

2026-04-14T00:03:00.000-04:00

Recently, I had few days with an extended window of opportunity to read! What heaven. I have a huge, varied TBR list. What shall I choose?

I go for the latest work of a favorite author who writes a beloved series of crime novels with strong mystery and thriller bends.

The book starts out invitingly. It’s Christmas time, with a raging snowstorm. I know Elmore Leonard’s first rule of writing is to never start with the weather, but like all rules, it’s meant to be broken. In this case, it looks like the weather will end up a true character, a hovering reality which presents challenges and obstacles, forming an intrinsic force in the story.

There’s some vague advanced technology featured which doesn’t ring true to me, but hey, I’m not up on what’s feasible and what’s not. Additionally, this is fiction. If an author wants to create things that don’t exist but make sense in the context of the story, fine by me. I’ll believe in it.

Some mysteries are who-dun-its, inviting the reader to try to figure out the solution along with the protagonist. While I do enjoy those novels, and I will give some thought to figuring things out, I don’t mind letting the story flow along, and I’m never disappointed if I am wrong. I also like the complicated crime novels, like Midsomer Murders, where so much is going on that I find it virtually impossible to solve the mystery myself. It doesn’t bother me that there doesn’t seem to be either solid clues or red herrings, although I do take note of a few odd happenings.

Partway into the story, the weather seems to lose its grip on the situation. The storm continues, but now that characters have to get to a destination reasonably quickly, traffic is conveniently no longer snarled by snow and wind. In fact, the protagonist is involved in a traffic stop. Not only is the officer apparently unconcerned about the difficult driving conditions and vehicles in distress, he conducts the traffic stop standing by the driver’s window with no regard for the pelting snow and fierce wind which must make it difficult to even stand there, much less have a drawn-out interaction with those in the car.

When the characters get to the crime scene, suddenly helicopters have no problem being dispatched to fly over the area. This is in northern Virginia, apparently along the Potomac River. If the weather conditions permit air traffic, it should be a very crowded area, with close monitoring by air traffic controllers. Most of us remember what happened when a military helicopter in the area asked for visual clearance and then collided with an airliner approaching one of the three major commercial airports in the area. Operator’s whimsey seems to be the controlling factor of this helicopter’s operation. Then our protagonists are whisked away by helicopter to another location to do more investigating, weather conditions and other air traffic be damned.

I can’t say I don’t find these issues disturbing, but the story is intriguing. There is a vicious serial murderer at work, and a very limited repertoire of possible suspects. All is tightly woven together. I tell myself I must have missed clues, both subtle and major. I feel invested in most of these characters.

I eagerly approach the dénouement.

When it comes, the villain is someone who has made no previous appearance in the story at all. Or whose existence has even been hinted at.

A deus ex machina solution? The “god of the machine,” where in Greek plays a god descends to settle all matters pretty much regardless of what went on previously in the entire story?

Pretty much.

I was disappointed. I felt like I had been cheated, wasting my time and musings.

I’m not going to mention the book or the author, since I recognize that perhaps others may view the story differently and enjoy it. I don’t want to take away either from the author’s hard work or another reader’s enjoyment. But I do have to say this series is no longer on my list of eagerly anticipated new releases.

Have you ever met with disappointment from an eagerly anticipated book from a favorite author?

A Poetry Month Surprise

2026-04-13T00:00:00.005-04:00

April is National Poetry Month.

I honestly can’t say that I’m a poetry reader – my TBR rarely has a collection of poems in it. I wonder why that is? Perhaps poetry makes demands on the reader that a novel doesn’t, requires a different level of attention, a deeper engagement?

As my professors used to say, discuss.

However, whenever I stumble upon a poem, I can’t help but fall under its spell. Poetry gets under my skin in a way that differs from other literature.

I do have one collection of poetry on my bookshelf. I’m a huge fan of Emily Dickinson. When I visited her home/museum in Northampton, Massachusetts last year, I signed up for the house newsletter. While following links from the newsletter, I fell down a research rabbit hole and discovered something I didn’t know about one of my favorite authors, Agatha Christie.

Agatha Christie wrote poetry. Quelle surprise!

I’ve been a Christie fan for decades and didn’t know this. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that she tried her hand at poetry. The versatile Queen of Crime wrote novels, short stories, and plays. You can explore information about her poetry here:

https://www.agathachristie.com/search/results?q=poetry

Her first collection of poems, The Road of Dreams, was published at her own expense in 1925. A critic praised her “lyric gifts” but also told her that it wouldn’t sell. Since only one edition was printed, it seems that he was correct. Luckily for us, she turned her prodigious gifts to other pursuits.

Are you a poetry reader? Did you know that Agatha Christie wrote poetry? Have you discovered anything about a favorite author that surprised you?

Shari Randall is the author of the Lobster Shack Mystery series set in charming Mystic, CT. As Meri Allen, she writes the Ice Cream Shop Mysteries.

MY FULL CIRCLE JOURNEY

2026-04-12T00:02:00.002-04:00

by Korina Moss

Some of our WWK members at Malice Domestic

‘Tis the season for Malice Domestic, an annual mystery fan convention that takes place in Bethesda, MD the last weekend in April.

My Agatha Award for Cheddar Off Dead

This conference has a special place in my heart because it’s where I get to meet readers who love mysteries as much as I do, hang out with my writing friends, and get to know some of my author idols. It’s also where I won an Agatha Award for Best First Novel for Cheddar Off Dead and was nominated the following two years for Best Contemporary Novel for Case of the Bleus and Fondue or Die. Being among the writers I admire in those categories and being recognized by the mystery community was an honor.

Selling and signing at the Little Falls Cheese Festival

As every published writer knows, behind the fun stuff like accolades and meeting readers, lies the hard work of writing and marketing your books. I keenly felt the pressure of having my first series published by an imprint of Macmillan, a big-5 publisher, along with then having to launch a new book every six months. By book six, I was pretty burnt out.

Event poster and my books on display at Barnes & Noble

When the series ended, I couldn’t imagine jumping into another book or series right away. However, I wanted to remain in the mystery writing community while my muse decided when to resurface. So about 16 months ago, I shifted my focus from cozy mystery author to freelance developmental editor specializing in cozy mysteries. I enjoy the work, and I get to revel in my clients’ successes: finding agent representation, receiving publishing contracts, and independently publishing their mysteries. And at this year’s Malice Domestic, I get to cheer on one of my clients whose book has been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. (In February, it won the Lefty Award for Best Debut Mystery from Left Coast Crime.)

Adrian Andover's lauded debut mystery

Expanding my role in the mystery community has been a balm for my burnout. Witnessing the determination and excitement of new writers has reminded me of my writing roots. It’s taught me to set aside the business aspects of being a published author to get back to what really matters—creating a story I want to tell.

Readers & Writers: If you’ve been to a mystery writers conference or convention, what has it done for you? If you haven’t, what would you hope to get out of it?

If you’re attending Malice Domestic, please find me on Saturday, April 25th at 2:00 PM on the panel titled Served with a Side of Murder: Food-Related Mysteries, with fellow authors Mary Lee Ashford, Jennifer J. Chow, Raquel V. Reyes, and moderator Debra Klein. I’ll be featuring my sixth book, Bait and Swiss. At 4:00 PM, you can find me in the book seller’s room signing my Cheese Shop Mysteries.

KORINA MOSS is the author of the Cheese Shop Mystery series, which includes the winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel, as well as two novels short-listed for Best Contemporary Novel. Listed as one of USA Today’s “Best Cozy Mystery Series,” her books have also been featured in PARADE Magazine, Woman’s World, and Writer’s Digest. Korina is also a freelance developmental editor specializing in cozy mysteries. To learn more or subscribe to her free monthly newsletter, visit her website korinamossauthor.com.

Dispelling the Myth: Being an Author is NOT a Lonely Life (Opportunities Abound to Make Friends)

2026-04-11T04:00:00.013-04:00

By Lisa Malice, Ph.D.

For generations, the stereotypical life of a writer was that of a lonely one, featuring an isolated wretch tucked away in a dark, dusty room typing away in an exasperating process of putting words on paper, ripping up uninspired paragraphs, if not whole chapters, until, at last, the story is not just complete, but perfect. A masterpiece worthy of praise and honors.

As writers in a contemporary world, that is far from reality. Sure, we do spend a lot of time alone, crafting and editing our characters and their stories. But our words won’t see the light of day without other writers being part of our writing journey.

This is a truth I learned early in my writing career from a local mystery author, Kathy Hogan Trochek, who made it New York Times-big when she switched genres to write southern women’s fiction under the pen name Mary Kay Andrews. She was headlining a library luncheon when I approached her to sign my book. When I told her I was working on my first mystery, Mary Kay told me to join three organizations, Sisters in Crime (SinC), Mystery Writers of America (MWA), and Romance Writers of America. Being active in these groups, she said, would give me all the support for learning to write and publish my work.

Mary Kay spoke the truth. Over the years, the people I met and worked with during local chapter meetings, sponsored workshops, conferences, book signings, festivals, and more, provided me with the support I needed to craft, pitch, publish and sell my debut psychological thriller, Lest She Forget. With the help of my friends, my book skyrocketed to the Amazon bestseller list for thrillers on its launch day and remained there for its debut month. My three-minutes of fame on local TV that first day I owe to a fellow author I met through International Thriller Writers who hosts Tampa Bay Reads on our local Fox affiliate.

Like any published author, building relationships with readers is also key to my success, and these are connections in which I revel. Whenever and however I meet them . . . chatting up books at a Barnes & Noble signing or a community book festival . . . discussing the intricacies of my characters with a neighborhood book club . . . sharing a break in the hospitality suite with a die-hard mystery fan at a crime-fiction convention . . . even meeting up at the gym . . . it’s a joy to share in the love of a good story of mystery, suspense, and thrills. (Selling a book is merely an added bonus, which usually brings to my reader’s face, too!).

The most challenging time for all writers during my journey was the first two years of the COVID shut down, leaving everyone feeling disconnected and depressed. In-person events, chapter meetings, conferences, book festivals, and hardest of all, book launches were cancelled.

Thankfully, technology came to the rescue. Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, and other video conferencing platforms brought us all back together again, and in some cases, extended our reach. Sisters in Crime, for example, made a deal with Zoom to provide its platform to all its chapters, which allowed its national members to become local chapter members anywhere in the world. For national members with no local chapter in their area, this proved to be a great asset.

The rise in virtual competency has fueled opportunities for authors to connect with readers across the country, especially with online book clubs. Delta Sigma Nu, the business fraternity my kids joined in college, hosts such an event monthly to bring together alumni from all across the world who share a love of books; my daughter, Olivia, snagged a spot on the calendar for me to share discuss Lest She Forget with the club shortly after its launch.

As another example, Karen Dionne and Hank Phillippi Ryan saw the need for programming that offered interaction with book authors and created The Back Room, a virtual 90-minute book club meeting every other Sunday evening that brings together readers to chat with four authors hawking their latest books. Learn more at www.The-Back-Room.org. Rogue Reads, a monthly book chat hosted by Rogue Women Writers (www.RogueWomenWriters.com), similarly grew out of the need to connect authors and readers during the pandemic.

This is all great, but at the same time, people are yearning for more in-person connections. Companies that relied on its employees to do their jobs virtually are now requiring people to return to the office, in part, to rebuild what can’t be fostered with people who never see each other face-to-face—teams of employees, interconnected and working well together not just because they share linked jobs, but more intertwined because they share their lives with personal conversations, celebrating birthday, enjoying lunches and other outings, that is, they are friends and not just co-workers.

This primal need to connect in-person is building among our writers’ organizations. A recent survey of my state chapter of MWA, for example, shows that members are eager to have more local events and gatherings, that is, a chance to get to know one another in-person. This sentiment holds fast especially with those people who rarely attend chapter meetings and events. As a result, there are plans in the works to create more regional groups within our state to offer members opportunities to build personal, and more meaningful, connections to each other. That should help grow the memberships in the area, as well, further building those critical connections for success as a writer.

I look forward to seeing this movement for personal connections grow in my own area.

How about you? How did the rise of virtual conferencing impact you personally or professionally? What do you like about it? What is missing? How are your local organizations working to make their members more connected?

2026-04-10T00:00:00.001-04:00

Is Your Generational Influence Showing in Your Writing?

By Heather Weidner

Recently, I’ve taken several management classes for work about communication and coaching different generations in the workforce, and some of the discussions of each cohort’s preferences and experiences made me think about my writing.

The generations and their birth years have been defined as:

The Generation	Birth Years	Description
Greatest Generation	1901-1927	Resilient, came of age and fought/supported WWII
Silent Generation	1928-1945	Influenced by the effects of the Great Depression and WWII
Baby Boomers Generation Jones	1946-1964 1956-1965	Post-war expansion and social change Came of age during the Vietnam War and the civil unrest
Generation X	1965-1980	Latch-key kids, self-sufficient
Millennials or Generation Y	1981-1996	First generation Internet and known for work-life balance
Generation Z	1997-2010	Digital natives or iPad kids
Generation Alpha	2010-2024	21^st Century kids
Generation Beta or Sigma Generation	2025-2039	AI and Automation generation

As I age and some of my newer series’ sleuths get younger, I found that there are some key things to be aware of to ensure that my writing is accurate.

Do I have the slang right? Are the expressions from the correct time period? We often do a lot of factchecking of things in our research, but dialogue is often overlooked. Here are some examples from each group. Sometimes the terms overlap generations, and other times, you need a dictionary, encyclopedia, a search engine, or an AI chat to translate.

The Generation	Slang for Fabulous	Slang for Awful
Greatest Generation	Swell, grand, top-notch, first rate	Lousy, rotten, no good, the pits
Silent Generation	Neat, keen, peachy, dandy	Crummy, bum deal, for the birds
Baby Boomers	Far out, groovy, cool, right on	Bummer, drag, bogus, bad trip
Generation X	Awesome, sweet, cool beans, rad	Lame, weak, harsh
Millennials or Generation Y	Awesome, epic, legit, amazing	Trash, cringe, fail, the worst
Generation Z	Slay, fire slaps, lit, hits different	Cheugy, sus
Generation Alpha	Slay, bussin’, fire, GOAT, cooked	Mid (mediocre), trash, NPC behavior (Non-player character in a video game)
Generation Beta	It’s Too Early to Tell	It’s Too Early to Tell

Your language choice is influenced by your experiences and those around you. I’m GenX, and I grew up with Baby Boomer teachers and co-workers. I tend to use slang from both of those groups. Now that I have more Gen Zs in the workforce, I’m adapting to a whole new set of words. (Some days, it’s like learning a foreign language.)

Do my allusions fit the age or experience of my character? When I first started working, the Silent Generation or the Boomers would always talk about where they were when certain historic events happened. (My generation was not born when Kennedy was shot, we were toddlers when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and we were in elementary school when Nixon resigned.) I have a Boomer on my team who often doesn’t get why some of his teammates don’t get his jokes and cultural references. (“Seinfeld,” and “Cheers” are available in reruns or on streaming, but Gen Y and Gen Alpha didn’t watch “Must See TV.” They are used to on-demand not cable or network television.)

Do my historical and cultural references match the age group? As authors, we check our facts to ensure authenticity, but sometimes we make mistakes when we reference things that happened before a certain group was born or when they had to be in bed before “Late Night TV.” (I didn’t get to see “Saturday Night Live” live until the eighties because of a nine o’clock bedtime.)

Does my technology reference the correct age group? Just ask someone younger than you what the little icon next to “Save” is in most computer applications. They all know the button is for saving, but those who didn’t use floppy disks have no idea what the picture is. (My Gen Z niece calls record albums “big CDs.”) I discovered when I did a ride along with my local police department that some of my law enforcement references were dated. (Most use digital fingerprinting now.) If you write police procedurals, make sure you keep up with the new technology.

There is so much research out there now about the different generations, their experiences, and their preferences, and if you want an immersive lesson in jargon, spend an hour or two watching TikTok.

For additional information on the generations, check out:

A Year-by-Year Guide to the Different Generations

The Changing Generational Values – Imagine | Johns Hopkins University

Age Range by Generation | Beresford Research

Through the years, Heather Weidner has been a cop’s kid, technical writer, editor, college professor, software tester, and IT manager. She writes the Pearly Girls Mysteries, the Delanie Fitzgerald Mysteries, The Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries, and The Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe Mysteries.

Her short stories appear in a variety of anthologies, and she has non-fiction pieces in Promophobia and The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers’ Cookbook.

Originally from Virginia Beach, Heather has been a mystery fan since Scooby-Doo and Nancy Drew. She lives in Central Virginia with her husband and a crazy Mini Aussie Shepherd.

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY: "A PINCH OF DEATH"

2026-04-09T02:00:00.001-04:00

By Margaret S. Hamilton

I originally wrote a much longer version of “Pinch of Death,” accompanied by a modified family recipe for turkey tetrazzini. When I reshaped the story for submission to Kings River Life, I focused on two varieties of wild mushrooms which appear at Easter time on Cape Cod: poisonous death caps, and black morels, which are edible.

Main character Beatrice “Bea” Rossi has spent twenty years building a take-out business in her in-laws’ former sub sandwich and pizza stand behind the Main Street shops in a Cape Cod town. She owns a thriving business in take-out dinners for summer visitors staying in rental cottages, plus customers from a growing year-round retirement community.

Bea has formed an unlikely but warm friendship with Emily Grayson, a well-to-do, long-time resident. Emily senses trouble when her grandson’s wife, Francesca, turns up, anxious to restart her television chef career on Cape Cod. Francesca is none other than Bea’s cousin Frankie, seeking fame and fortune. Bea suspects Frankie is up to no good, and that Emily is in danger. Bea is proven correct.

Much of the action takes place in Emily’s cedar-shingled traditional home overlooking Clam Pond, a sixty-two-acre saltwater estuary linking the pond via a river to the town harbor. The shoreline is dotted with docks, the houses on the surrounding hills surrounded by pine trees, with a small public beach at one end.

I infused many Cape Cod memories into the story. I worked in the kitchen of a seafood restaurant for three college summers. In addition to making salads and sandwiches and serving parfaits and slices of pie, I spent many hours whisking cornmeal into a simmering pot of milk for Indian pudding and neatly slicing loaves of cranberry and brown bread into serving sized pieces. I cut lard into huge containers of flour and salt for pie crust.

During my afternoon breaks on weekends, I swam in Clam Pond, floating in the warm saltwater while watching the sea and shorebirds. I knew many women like Bea—caterers, take-out shop and bakery owners, whose establishments featured quality, service, and family recipes.

Enjoy “A Pinch of Death” and a turkey tetrazzini casserole!

Readers, do you enjoy culinary stories with recipes? Writers, do you write culinary stories?

My family turkey tetrazzini recipe is on my website:

Home - The Official Website of Margaret S. Hamilton

A Pinch of Death, An Easter Mystery Short Story | Kings River Life Magazine

Entertainment That Keeps Me Sane by Grace Topping

2026-04-08T00:30:00.001-04:00

Before I retired, my commute to work nearly drove me insane. I became annoyed at every red light that held me up and enraged at drivers who cut me off. The trip seemed to take forever, where in reality, it was usually about an hour. Then I discovered something that changed my commute and my life forever—recorded books. My library had a large collection of recorded books, as they were known at the time. They were packaged in thick plastic binders and consisted of multiple cassette tapes that I was able to play on the cassette deck in my car.

The first morning I drove to work listening to one, it was like a miracle. I hardly recalled the trip, and if anyone tried to cut me off, I barely noticed. I was focused on my story (more than likely a murder mystery) and didn’t let little annoyances get to me. The recordings became so vital to my commute that if a cassette became jammed, and I couldn’t continue the story, I stopped at one of the libraries along my route home to get another one. I started carrying backup recorded books in case I finished one mid-journey. I even became quite expert at repairing any cassette tapes that broke.

The recordings were quite entertaining because the narrators didn’t just read the contents of the books but performed the stories. They used different voices or accents to distinguish the various characters. I thoroughly enjoyed them and frequently went through three or four a week.

As time went by, technology evolved and compact disks replaced the cassettes. Later, digital downloads replaced the compact disks. Now with digital downloads, I no longer had to visit my library to obtain copies of the recorded/digital books I wanted. I merely had to download copies to my iPhone through one of the systems my library used. Currently, I’m using Libby, which has an extensive collection of books in multiple genres. I have been known to whip out my phone and download a new book late at night, no longer constrained by the library’s hours. If I don’t want to wait for my library to have a copy of a digital book I want, I learned that I could pay to download it from online services like Audible.

Now that I am retired, recorded books still play an important role in my life. I play them while I cook, do mundane chores, or drive. They occupy my thoughts instead of stressful things that are happening in the world. More importantly, I play them at night when I can’t sleep, wearing earbuds so as not to disturb my husband. If I awake in the middle of the night, they frequently lull me back to sleep. I set the timer to turn the recording off after thirty minutes. If I forget to set the timer, the recording will continue to play throughout the night, and I find myself the next day trying to find the last bit of the story that I remember. I have had the experience where I have dreamed about the story while the book played while I slept, and when I woke, I couldn’t find the place in the story that occurred in my dream. A bit confusing at times.

If you have never listened to a recorded or digital book, I highly recommend giving them a try. It could possibly change your life as well.

Have you listened to a recorded or digital book that you’ve enjoyed and can recommend?

Grace Topping is the author of the Laura Bishop Mystery Series and a regular contributor to Writers Who Kill.

Author’s Choice Blogs – Three months of experience

2026-04-07T01:00:00.014-04:00

By James M. Jackson

A long-standing thought experiment involves the question, “If trees fall in the forest and no one is around to hear them, did they make a sound?” I have my opinion, and you might have yours.

How about this one: “If an author publishes a terrific book, will it automatically find an audience?” It seems obvious that the answer is no, until you turn the question on its head. Is a book really terrific if no one reads it? Visibility is required.

The Rule of Seven in Marketing

Way back in my MBA days, I learned the classic marketing principle that says a potential customer needs to encounter your message at least seven times before they’ll take action. Authors spend a lot of time (and often money) creating those potential touchpoints. I’ve benefited from the writer community providing space for me to share information about myself and my books. This year, I chose to create a new space for other authors to connect with potential readers.

Creating a New Touchpoint

Authors and readers have limited time. I wanted something fast and easy for authors and fun for readers who enjoy learning the inside scoop about authors. And after I set it up, I didn’t want to spend more than an hour a week on the project.

I chose a standard format so readers would know what to expect. Here’s the layout for desktop (on a phone, left comes first, then right):

The author’s picture on the left; two truths and a lie on the right. Everyone enjoys guessing the right answer or being fooled.
Eight forced-choice questions chosen from twelve about how the author writes (with room to elaborate or not—the author’s style showing through).
Three questions about their latest novel (or first in a series) on the left; book cover on the right.
The great reveal of the lie and two truths.
The book’s blurb, purchase links, and a link to find out more about the author.

How’s it worked so far?

I’m happy to report that the Author’s Choice blogs have not been trees falling in the forest that no one has heard. They have averaged 227 views. Because big outliers can skew averages, I checked the median, which is 245. The range is from 82 to 431.

Another encouraging thing is that views continue to grow after the week a blog appears. This means when readers come to the website, they often read more than just the current blog.

I had hoped the blogs would elicit reader comments and generate back and forth between the authors and readers. I should have known better. In the early years of the Writers Who Kill blog, we used to have a fair number of reader comments and some back-and-forth dialogue. Over the last few years, as social media sucks up more reading time, that’s rarely the case.

I haven’t tried to track direct sales from the blogs. What I see is engagement: Authors are enjoying the process and are happy with the results. Readers are exploring multiple posts. I’ve even had a few of my readers reach out to thank me for introducing them to new authors. The blog is creating additional visibility.

The Rule of Seven assumes repetition builds trust—what turns a name you’ve seen a few times into a book you’ll try?

* * * * *

James M. Jackson writes justice-driven thrillers with brains and bite, including the Niki Undercover Thriller series and the Seamus McCree series. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read Low Tide at Tybee, a novella featuring Seamus, his darts-throwing mother, and six-year-old granddaughter, Megan).

Jeff Tanner Interview by Teresa Inge

2026-04-06T05:30:00.042-04:00

Meet Jeff Tanner, whose novel The King's Collar will be released by Koehler Books on June 30, 2026.

Jeff holds a PhD in marketing and published fifteen books on sales and marketing, including two bestselling textbooks. He spent his career in higher education, retiring as dean of the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University. You may recall his daily business program on NPR.

In addition, he has published short stories in several anthologies and written/produced multiple plays. He, his wife, and a four‑pound Maltese named Boo divide their time between grandkids in three states and Virginia’s Eastern Shore. They add a bit of excitement by owning and racing thoroughbreds.

He is a member of Sisters in Crime and its Southeastern Virginia Chapter, Mystery by the Sea.

Tell us about your new novel, The King’s Collar.

I wanted to write a mystery that was part Maltese Falcon, part Indiana Jones. I’ve been surprised at how many readers described The King’s Collar that way without any prompting.

Expelled at Harvard and disowned by his father, Charlie “Bones” Bohannon quickly falls to the underworld’s fringe. Befriended by former sailor Punchy, he begins buying and selling smuggled items. Charlie discovers a statuette in a speakeasy bar, similar to one stolen from his dean, who says return it and graduate. But it vanishes, and the man who took it is found murdered. The dean accuses Charlie, whose ironclad alibi doesn't deflect the pressure to find the statuette.

Through a series of misadventures, Charlie and Punchy become members of the Solomon mob. Solomon demands the missing statuette and its legendary counterpart, the jewel-encrusted King’s Collar. Charlie, Punchy, and bold Beacon Hill socialite Olivia search while dodging rivals for the Collar, one of whom gives Charlie a week or face death.

When Olivia and Punchy are kidnapped, and the Collar is the ransom, Charlie’s time is running out. But finding the Collar is no guarantee that he—or his friends—will survive.

What kind of research did you do for the book? Any strange or odd fact that you uncovered in your research?

Comprehensive! I relied on books, archival websites, and historians’ YouTube videos. I even followed Charlie’s walks through Boston to ensure that I reported the distance and time accurately.

Irish Catholics weren’t permitted in the elite Protestant men’s clubs, so in the book, they meet at the Parker House Hotel. I visited the hotel and learned that my choice was accurate. In fact, Joseph Kennedy proposed to Rose at Table 40, which you can now visit!

Where are your books available for purchase?

The King’s Collar is now available for pre-order on Amazon, and Bookshop.

What are you currently writing?

Dolls, book two in the series, publishes in December. Books three and four I intend to bring out in 2027. I’m currently working on book five.

Anything else you want readers to know about you?

Besides being an avid golfer and skier, I’m also a furniture-maker. I took up the saxophone after a very long hiatus, and I’m loving it!

Jeff Tanner https://www.authorjefftanner.com