Life in the Cracks

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I had an entirely different topic planned for today’s post until I learned that this date marks a celebration of “life in the cracks” for at least one community in California. I think it’s actually something we all should celebrate, especially these days.

It’s the Festival of Life-in-the-Cracks Day!

Time to celebrate the first signs of Spring that bring us fresh crops, fuzzy little ducklings, and even sprouts of greenery that rise up through our cracked sidewalks.

It is a day to celebrate rebirth and renewal, a day to appreciate the beauty of life anywhere you find it.

There’s something about new greenery popping up and out all around us that offers us a mental boost. Given the current state of the world, we could use a reminder to celebrate life. No matter how bleak the outlook, here comes Spring to remind us that things can change for the better.

Here comes the time to plant seeds, stroll through the woods, or simply bask in the sun.

In our park’s family garden, spring has definitely sprung. Cabbage, okra, tomatoes, figs, and apple blossoms abound.

Bees are buzzing, flowers blooming, and crops are bursting with life. Just to be surrounded by it all can lift our spirits.

With the world in turmoil, I can’t think of a more timely celebration than Life-in-the-Cracks Day. It calls to mind the encouraging message in Leonard Cohen’s beautiful Anthem which shares the wisdom that—even when life feels like there’s a crack in everything—remember this: it’s how the light gets in.

I’m no Pollyanna, but I am so very, very eager to mute the bad news and turn myself toward hopeful things right now. Here’s to a bright, refreshing Spring for us all!

How about you, friends and readers… Are you ready for a brighter day?

Gay Yellen’s award-winning writing career began in magazine journalism.  She later served as the contributing editor for the international thriller, Five Minutes to Midnight (Delacorte), which debuted as a New York Times “New & Notable.”

The Samantha Newman Mystery Series is packed with suspense and full of romance, heart, and humor. Available on Amazon or order through your favorite bookseller. 

 

book cover for Risky Biscuits

Judging a Book by Its Title

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book cover for Risky Biscuits

We often get asked about our book titles and we do have some fun with them. The Sparkle Abbey books sport titles such as “The Girl with the Dachshund Tattoo” and “Fifty Shades of Greyhound” and the Mary Lee Ashford books, “Game of Scones” and “Risky Biscuits.” As with most traditionally published authors, we had no guarantee that the publisher would keep the titles we’d created but in almost all cases they did.

Still, in this new world of hybrid publishing and ever more complicated methods of discoverability, we got to wondering about how much impact a title has for readers in finding the books they like to read.

Over time there have been different trends such as the X Y format – two word titles – “Demon Copperhead,” “The Maid” or “Gone Girl.” And then there’s the really long book titles. For example: “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” or a children’s favorite of ours, “Alexander’s Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day.” Or the lovely, “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.” There also seem to be some new trends with cross-genre type titles and a surge of retro-sounding titles. Though some of these are specific to particular type of books or sub-genres, most seem to cross the lines.

And as with all things in the publishing world, title trends are ever changing. So we’d love to hear your thoughts.

 

Do particular types of titles appeal to you? And how much impact does the title of a book have on whether you would buy it or maybe at least stop to take another look? 

sparkle and abbey

Sparkle Abbey is actually two people, Mary Lee Ashford and Anita Carter, who write the national best-selling Pampered Pets cozy mystery series.

They are friends as well as neighbors so they often get together and plot ways to commit murder. (But don’t tell the other neighbors.)

They love to hear from readers and can be found on social media or contacted via their websites:

Sparkle Abbey: Facebook  Website

Mary Lee Ashford: Facebook  Instagram  Website

Going Home

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By Leslie Wheeler

Three years after our parents died, my sister and I finally sold our childhood home. Giving up a place with so many happy memories was hard, but I believed we had to do it. Houses are meant to be lived in, and neither my sister, nor I, nor our children wanted to move in.

When I drove away, I didn’t know if I’d ever return. But I did in my dreams, shortly after I left. In those dreams, my parents were still alive and living in the house, though even in the dream world, I knew they were dead and shouldn’t be there. I realized that even more than my parents’ deaths, the sale of the house marked the end of my childhood and that made me sad.

Fast forward to the present day, and I revisited the house under happier circumstances when I used it in my mystery novel, Wildcat Academy. In the book, the main character, Kathryn Stinson, was born and raised in Southern California, as I was, but now lives in New England, as I do and have for many years. She returns to California to attend the funeral of a family member and stays at the house where her mother, who has remarried, now lives.

I went on the plane with Kathryn and shared her alarm when turbulence shook the plane, making it seem like “a paper airplane caught in a twister.” Fortunately, we landed safely at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), as I had so many times in the past on trips to visit my parents after I’d moved away. Like Kathryn, I was overwhelmed by the maze of interconnecting freeways that had to be navigated to arrive at our destination. But finally, we reached the house in Pasadena, “a rambling, mid-century ranch with shingles and lots of glass windows and doors” on a hill overlooking the Arroyo Seco and the Rose Bowl with the purple-tinged San Gabriel Mountains in the background.

Kathryn and I sat in lounge chairs by the kidney-shaped swimming pool, catching the last rays of the sun. Later, we had dinner with her family on the patio, and went to bed soon afterward, because we were both tired from the trip. But we both woke up at the witching hour of three in the morning. And since neither of us could get back to sleep, we tiptoed down the long, dark hall from the bedroom area to the kitchen with a flashlight to guide us, like thieves in the night.

In the kitchen, we made ourselves mugs of hot milk laced with molasses. This was an old family remedy for sleeplessness, which I still resort to, though without the molasses. And there in the kitchen, to our surprise, Kathryn’s mother joined us and she and her mother had a long overdue heart-to-heart talk. It was the kind of talk I wished I’d had with my own mother but never did. Still, I was glad Kathryn and her mother were able to share their innermost thoughts and feelings.

Kathryn and I stayed at the house for two more days. Most of our time was spent preparing for the funeral, but we still managed to take a walk in the neighborhood up Linda Vista Avenue past the fire station, then the large white building with a red brick roof where I’d gone to elementary school, and finally the small flat-roofed structure that housed the Linda Vista Public Library, which I’d frequented when in school.

When it was time to leave, I felt a twinge of regret, but mostly I was glad for the opportunity to revisit my childhood home and the surrounding area. I lived every moment of the visit intensely as I was writing it, and even now as I’m reading this, I’m smiling.

Readers, have you gone ever back to your childhood home or some another place that was important to you in dreams or fiction? If so, what was it like?

Wildcat Academy

A Berkshire Hilltown Mystery, Book 4

When Boston library curator Kathryn Stinson visits the Berkshires with her mother and other family, she doesn’t expect trouble. But that’s what happens when her stepsister’s teenage son, a student at a private academy, is found dead beneath a zipline—a device he feared. As suspicions swirl around his death, Kathryn is drawn into a tense search for the truth. Was it a tragic accident, or something more sinister? With resistance from the academy and locals alike, she must navigate family dynamics and hidden tensions to uncover secrets that some will do anything to protect.

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An award-winning author of books about American history and biographies, Leslie Wheeler has written two mystery series, the Berkshire Hilltown Mysteries and the Miranda Lewis series. Her mystery short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Best New England Crime Stories series, published by Crime Spell Books, where she is a co-editor/publisher. Leslie is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, serving as Speakers Bureau Coordinator for the New England Chapter of SinC. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Berkshires, where she writes in a house overlooking a pond.

Kathleen Kaska

Treasure Hunt: A True-Life Indiana Jones Saga

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Treasure Hunt: 

A True-Life Indiana Jones Saga

When you hear the phrase treasure hunt, you might imagine a chest of gold or a legendary artifact. But what if the treasure was a bird—and the hunter an ornithologist?

In the mid-1990s, I joined a field trip to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas coast to see the endangered whooping crane. That experience changed my life. I became captivated by the crane’s story—and by the man who saved it from extinction. That fascination grew into a seven-year research journey and ultimately my book, The Man Who Saved the Whooping Crane: The Robert Porter Allen Story.

In the spring of 1941, the whooping crane population had dropped to just fifteen birds. Written off as doomed, the species survived because one man refused to accept extinction as inevitable. Robert Porter Allen, an ornithologist with the National Audubon Society, launched a conservation campaign unlike anything America had seen before.

Long before television or the internet, Allen ignited a nationwide media blitz. Posters flooded public schools. Children wrote letters to lawmakers. Radio stations tracked the cranes’ migration from their winter home near Austwell, Texas, to a mysterious nesting site somewhere in Canada. Life magazine published a rare photo of a whooping crane family, and even an oil company altered its operations to avoid disturbing the birds.

By 1947, fewer than thirty cranes remained. Their nesting grounds—hidden somewhere in northern Saskatchewan, possibly near the Arctic Circle—had never been found. Without protecting that site, the species would vanish. After two failed searches, Audubon turned to its most tenacious ornithologist: Robert Porter Allen, newly returned from World War II.

What followed was a real-life treasure hunt—one that helped save a species and changed the course of conservation history, ultimately paving the way for the Endangered Species Act.

The story of Robert Porter Allen is best described as Indiana Jones meets John James Audubon—and it remains one of the most inspiring conservation adventures ever told.

I wrote the book to pay homage to a man who was all but forgotten. My research led me on my own journey from Texas to Florida to Wisconsin and beyond in an adventure I like to call “On the Trail of a Vanishing Ornithologist.”

Excerpt:

It was April 17, 1948, in the early hours of a muggy Texas morning on the Gulf Coast. The sun at last burned away the thick fog that had settled over Blackjack Peninsula. The world’s last flock of wild whooping cranes had spent the winter feeding on blue crab and killifish in the vast salt flats they called home. During the night, all three members of the Slough Family had moved to higher ground about two miles away from their usual haunt to feed. The cool, crisp winter was giving way to a warm, balmy spring. The days were growing longer, and territorial boundaries were no longer defended. Restlessness had spread throughout the flock. 

            As Robert Porter Allen drove along East Shore Road near Carlos Field in his government-issued beat-to-hell pickup, he spotted the four cranes now spiraling a thousand feet above the marsh. He pulled his truck over to the roadside and watched, hoping to witness, for the first time, a migration takeoff. One adult crane pulled away from the family and flew northward, whooping as it rose on an air current. When the others lagged behind, the crane returned, the family regrouped, circled a few times, and landed in the cordgrass in the shallows of San Antonio Bay. It was Allen’s second year at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. He had learned to read the nuances of his subjects almost as well as they read the changing of the seasons.

            In the days preceding, twenty-four cranes departed for their summer home somewhere in Western Canada, possibly as far north as the Arctic Circle. This annual event, which had occurred for at least 10,000 years, might be one of the last unless Allen could accomplish what no one else had.         

            The next morning, when Allen parked his truck near Mullet Bay, the Slough Family was gone, having departed sometime during the night. That afternoon, he threw his gear into the back of his station wagon and followed.

The Man Who Saved the Whooping Crane was published by the University Press of Florida in 2012. It’s still available in bookstores upon request, Amazon,  Barnes & Noble, and University Press of Florida. It’s also from my website: Kathleen Kaska

Contact me at kathleenkaska@hotmail.com for information on my presentation of The Man Who Saved the Whooping Crane: The Robert Porter Allen Story

Donnell Ann Bell

Reading: The Panacea for What Ails Me

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By Donnell Ann Bell

When my children were small, I’d plop one kid on my left side, the other on my right, and open a book. I’d read one page, hand it off to the one on the left and say, “Your turn.”

My daughter would read one page and hand it back to me. I’d read the following page, then hand it off to my son, and the ritual continued.

Over the 2025 Christmas holiday, I was reminded of this special time when I learned the tradition continued. My son and daughter-in-law take turns reading to their children every night before bed.

Reading is the gateway that makes all other learning possible.

Already at age nine, my granddaughter has read nine of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. “Grammy,” she asked, “Do you want to hear me read?”

Nothing would please me more, so I answered, “Of course.”

Not to be outdone, her brother, age seven, cut in, “Grammy, do you want to hear me read?”

“Love to,” I responded immediately.

My grandchildren’s elementary school hosts reading challenges, and clearly the competition is working. When I learned my granddaughter was reading C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I reread it so I could discuss it with her.

On this trip, I listened to her read chapters from The Curious Tale of the In Between by Lauren DeStefano, which I found to be an amazing middle grade book. While she stumbled over some of the bigger words, when that happened, we paused and discussed their meanings.

It was such an important, joyous time for me. I can’t think of a better bonding scenario.

For the past few months, I’ve been busy updating my books to become a hybrid author. What I thought would be tedious has turned into a fun opportunity for me to correct, tighten, and the best part is, I get to reconnect with my characters.

Periodically, Stiletto Gang member and critique partner Lois Winston asks if I have time to read a few chapters or even the rest of an edited book before she publishes. In no way is reading her work a sacrifice. I love to spend time with her reluctant amateur sleuth and the rest of her zany New Jersey crew. 😊

I certainly can’t read while I’m driving, so I turn to audio books. During a recent trip to Colorado, I listened to John Grisham’s The Widow.  Audio books make long car trips fly by!

Back to the recent 2025 holiday, not everything was perfect. Christmas afternoon, I came down with the flu, which sadly cut my family visit short. The bug lasted well into New Year’s, forcing me to reschedule my planned company for New Year’s.

Don’t feel too sorry for me, though. In between sleeping I spent the time reading. Whether I’m healthy, sick or simply in need of escape, I turn to reading. It’s the panacea for what ails me.

Glad to be back, Stiletto Gang. Wishing everyone a happy and productive 2026!! By the way, what are you reading?

Donnell Ann Bell is an award-winning author who began her nonfiction career in newspapers. After she turned to fiction, her romantic suspense novels became Amazon bestsellers, including The Past Came Hunting, Deadly Recall, Betrayed, and Buried Agendas. In 2019, Donnell released her first mainstream suspense, Black Pearl, A Cold Case Suspense, which was a 2020 Colorado Book Award finalist. In 2022, book two of the series was released. Until Dead, A Cold Case Suspense won Best Thriller in 2023 at the Imaginarium Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. Currently, she’s working on book three of the series. Readers can follow Donnell on her blog or sign up for her newsletter at www.donnellannbell.net.

 

Dead, but Not Forgotten

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Galvez Hotel

Galvez Hotel

Dead, but Not Forgotten:

Murder at the Galvez

When asked whether I use real people as inspiration for my stories, I tell folks that there are so many imaginary characters in my head vying for my attention that I don’t need inspiration from a real person. Except—there’s always an exception—right?

When I started writing MURDER AT THE GALVEZ, the third mystery in my Sydney Lockhart series set in Galveston, Texas, I used a real person in the first paragraph merely to jump-start the story.

My husband is from Galveston, and his grandfather, PoPo, who was the doorman at the Tremont Hotel, always had a pack of teaberry gum in his pocket. I’d never met him, but I couldn’t help but wonder what life as a doorman at a fancy hotel would be like. (Note: before I chose the Galvez Hotel for the book, I’d planned to set the mystery in the Tremont Hotel until I learned it was temporarily closed during the time the story takes place.) Thus, I gave PoPo the name James Robert Lockhart, made him the doorman at the Galvez Hotel, and Sydney’s grandfather.

As in all my Sydney Lockhart mysteries, Sydney checks into a hotel, someone is murdered, and she’s the primary suspect. I needed a reason for Sydney to be at the hotel, and what better reason than to visit her grandfather? But wait, he’d already passed away, so to bring him into the story, I have Sydney reminisce about the last time she saw him, when she was eleven.

When I was little, I used to run up the hotel’s front steps, and PoPo would say, “Let me get the door for you, ma’am.” He’d bow and open the door with a flourish. As I passed, he’d say, “Welcome to the Galvez, Miss Lockhart. Enjoy your stay.” I would lift my chin like a queen. Then I’d reach into his coat pocket and pull out a pack of Teaberry chewing gum.—Sydney Lockhart

Having Sydney reminisce wasn’t enough, so I had to develop this character and give him more purpose, which led to Sydney’s last visit with him being a traumatic experience.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Galveston was a rough-and-tumble gambling town that earned the title “Sin City of the Southwest.” A few powerful crime families operated illegal casinos, speakeasies, and backroom bookie joints that attracted tourists and celebrities. A hotel doorman would surely have inside information and connections to these establishments and operations. With this in mind, James Robert Lockhart began to develop.

Whenever my family came to the island for a visit, I’d make a beeline to the Galvez Hotel and stand next to Popo while he greeted guests. People who saw us together knew instantly that I was his granddaughter. We were cut from the same mold: tall, thin, and redheaded. I was proud of that fact, for James Robert Lockhart was the most handsome man I’d ever seen. When I found him crumpled on the floor in the hotel foyer, his body riddled with bullet holes, I knew my life would never be the same. Now, as I stepped into the lobby eighteen years later, the memory of that day hit me square in the gut.—Sydney Lockhart

Sydney had no intention of ever setting foot in the hotel again, but when she was assigned to write a news story about a planning conference at the Galvez involving a controversial development project on the island, she had to suck it up and go. As always, someone was murdered, but what if this murder was connected to the murder of James Robert Lockhart? Now I was building him a backstory in which Sydney suspected her grandfather wasn’t who he seemed. Soon she realized that clearing herself of murder charges meant delving deeper into her grandfather’s history.

One thing led to another, and Lockhart skeletons began jumping out of closets too close to home. So, was James Robert Lockhart a notorious con artist or someone who always did the right thing, regardless of the consequences? Either way, Sydney had to find out, and so did I.

Since then, Sydney has shared with me a few survival skills she learned from her grandfather: how to hotwire a car, pick a lock with a bobby pin, and win at five-card draw. Dead, but not forgotten, Popo’s influence and teaching made Sydney who she is.

PoPo had an unquenchable fascination with the wonders of life and had steered me toward more practical directions. He taught me to appreciate the creatures that washed ashore after high tide, the majesty of constellations as they traveled across the sky, and flocks of birds that descended on the beach after fleeing an offshore storm. He even took me on my first Christmas bird count.—Sydney Lockhart/MURDER AT THE MENGER

I’m sure the real PoPo was the benevolent grandfather my husband remembered, and if PoPo is reading this from upstairs, I hope he’s smiling down on me.

Look for my seventh Sydney Lockhart mystery, where PoPo’s lessons save Sydney’s tush once again. It’s scheduled for release in spring 2026. The hotel, and hence the title, remains a secret until pre-lease. Check out my other Sydney mysteries: https://kathleenkaska.com/

An Unexpected Gift

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My sister-in-law is a dynamo in a tiny package — an opera singer, actress, clown, energy healer, and animal lover. Lately, she’s been concerned that my elderly dog Teagan is overdoing therapy dog work.

True, together Teagan and I have done more than 200 visits to hospitals, courts, police departments, and even the King Soopers grocery store in the aftermath of the shooting. That’s a lot of draining emotional contact for both of us. If I thought Teagan didn’t enjoy the work, she’d retire, but she barks, dances in circles, and beats me to the car when I bring out the working vest she wears on visits (called a cape).

This year my SIL gave me a surprise for Christmas—a session with an animal communicator. She knew the communicator, a woman in Denver, and wanted to be certain Teagan wasn’t getting ill from any negative energy or emotions picked up during therapy visits.

I expected the communicator to talk in generalities or say things my SIL may have told her about my dog. I was even more skeptical when I learned the session could be done remotely over the phone based only on Teagan’s picture.

I dove into the session with some questions I’d prepared.

What was Teagan’s favorite toy? A little brown stuffed animal she calls Baby.

Okay. Good guess. Teagan does have a little brown moose she loves, but that’s a pretty common type of dog toy.

Who’s Teagan’s favorite parent? Your husband.

What!? That’s a question I never should have asked (LOL). But I’m the one who gives Teagan pills, injections, trims her nails, and performs all sorts of other unpleasantries whereas my husband rolls around the floor wrestling with her. Again, a good guess.

I shared that Teagan is allergic to chicken.

What food should I feed her? Definitely no fowl.

Of course not. I didn’t need the communicator to tell me that. I checked my watch. How much longer was this session?

Then the communicator continued: Try other proteins like beef, pork, and . . . hmmm . . . this can’t be right . . . kangaroo? Where did that come from all of a sudden?

Interesting. We’d recently tried a novel protein Teagan loved, which was — you guessed it — canned kangaroo. No way my SIL could have known that tidbit.

Okay, now I decided to throw the communicator a question from left field.

Was Teagan reincarnated? Turns out, Teagan never was a wild animal, and most of her past lives were as a human. Most vividly, the communicator saw Teagan in a small 18th century village as a midwife or healer, wearing a cape.

Whoa. Stop right there. A healer? Wearing a cape? Therapy dogs were known healers, but no way anyone outside the hospital therapy dog world called the dog vests “capes.”

At that point, the communicator had my complete attention, so I asked about Teagan’s health. After a few minutes, the communicator told me: Watch her liver.

Her liver? Teagan’s last blood work had shown slightly elevated liver values. No one other than the vet and my husband knew that.

Anything else about her health? Her left hip.

That’s odd. Teagan’s right hind leg sometimes gave her trouble, not her left one. I made a note to ask the vet on her next exam.

And, at the exam, the week before Christmas, the vet found a cancerous mast cell tumor on Teagan’s left hip. Since we’d caught the tumor so early, it hadn’t metastasized and was small enough to be cleanly removed.

Thanks to my sister-in-law and an animal communicator for the best gift ever.

Now I’m an openminded person. Do I believe? Well, I certainly don’t disbelieve. How about you?

Food Fight by Gay Yellen

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I’ve been stuck in a vigorous debate over an important cultural matter. It’s a food fight, of sorts, only with cookbooks. It would be nice to clean up the mess once and for all. So, here’s your chance to weigh in on the silliness.

Are you familiar with the ongoing on-line debate over whether a hot dog is or is not a sandwich? Well, my beef (!) is similar, except it’s about doughnuts.

Let’s start with a bit of history:

Today is National Pastry Day. A reason to rejoice, because the list of pastries associated with this event is mouth-watering, and includes one of my favorites: doughnuts.

A Wikipedia entry defines the doughnut as “a type of pastry made from leavened dough,” which seems straightforward enough to begin with. Wiki continues to state that it may come in many shapes, which explains the latest popular spinoff, the cronut, a mash up with another delicious pastry, the croissant. Given short shrift in the definition is the one made of cake, which contains no leavening yeast.

Lovers of the knock-off seem as passionate about their choice as I am of mine, the addictive, puffy, sugar-glazed delight which has fueled me through many long days at the keyboard.

In my world, as long as the doughnut-adjacent sweet remains qualified by its “cake” modifier, it may be okay, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing.

A bagel is similar in shape, but at least it has the dignity not to call itself a “bread” doughnut.

I believe a cake donut is merely cake trying to pass itself off as a something more interesting. This doesn’t preclude other people from  calling the doughnut-adjacent treat whatever they want. But it will never be the real thing for me.

Which brings us back to the hot dog debate.

If, as some skeptics claim, a hot dog is not a sandwich, I’d ask why the lowly sausage between two pieces of bread doesn’t deserve that appellation. If you slice a tomato, add some cheese, lettuce, and maybe a little turkey‚ then put it all between two pieces of mayo-slathered bread, is that a sandwich, or a chef salad?

I love doughnuts so much, I lent my addiction to the heroine in my Samantha Newman Series. Sam has been known to scarf down a few whenever she’s stressed. And in Book 3, The Body in the News, she manages to bond with a potential murder suspect over their shared appreciation of the glazed goodies.

Perhaps, one day all of us will settle our differences and agree on the same gastronomic appellation of a doughnut/pastry/cake thingy. Then, we could meet in the middle to share a baker’s dozen.

And from there, perhaps, move on to weightier subjects, like sharing Peace on Earth.

Where do you stand in the hot dog sandwich controversy? What about the doughnut/cake/pastry debate?

Gay Yellen’s award-winning writing career began in magazine journalism.  She later served as the contributing editor for the international thriller, Five Minutes to Midnight (Delacorte), which debuted as a New York Times “Notable.”

The Samantha Newman Mystery Series is packed with suspense and laced with touches of romance, heart, and humor. Available on Amazon or order through your favorite bookseller. 

 

Head shot author Kari Lee Townsend

Special Guest Author – Kari Lee Townsend

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by Sparkle Abbey

Head shot author Kari Lee TownsendToday we’re excited to welcome Kari Lee Townsend, a long time friend and national bestselling mystery author, who is going to tell us a bit about her writing process and her latest project.

Welcome, Kari!  We met you at a conference many moons ago and have been friends ever since, but for our blog readers who may not know you, would you please share a little bit about yourself? 

Hello! I’m Kari Lee Townsend—an upstate New Yorker at heart, from the Syracuse area where the winters are snowy, the summers are gorgeous, and the small-town charm never stops inspiring my stories. When I’m not writing, I’m usually spending time with my family, spoiling my 3 Samoyeds, traveling to lakeside towns and cozy villages for “research,” binge-watching reality TV, or designing fun graphics and reels for my books. I love everything whimsical, magical, and atmospheric…and it tends to seep right into my writing.

Now to some questions about how you got started writing, your favorite (and not so favorite) parts of it, and your process. 

  • What started you on your writing journey?

I’ve always been a storyteller. Even as a kid, I carried notebooks around and scribbled scenes and characters whenever inspiration struck. But the real push came when my children were young. I wanted a flexible career that allowed me to stay home with them while still doing something creative and fulfilling. Once I wrote my first book, I was hooked. I knew I had found my calling.

  • What do you write? And why did you choose that genre or sub-genre?

I write paranormal cozy mysteries, fantasy cozy mysteries, suspense, contemporary women’s fiction, and romantic comedies—stories filled with heart, humor, friendship, and a dash of magic or suspense. I’m drawn to these genres because they combine everything I love: quirky characters, tight-knit communities, twisty mysteries, emotional journeys, and worlds where magic or intuition lingers just beneath the surface. I adore creating stories that feel comforting yet thrilling, with characters who grow, love, stumble, and triumph right along with the reader.

  • What’s your favorite part of writing?

I love the moment when characters start talking in my head and taking on lives of their own. Worldbuilding is another favorite—crafting towns like Wishville, Divinity, Clearview, or Coldwater Cove, with their festivals, secrets, magical systems, and unique personalities. And of course, I love the “aha” moment when all the clues and twists finally click into place. All my books take place in the Northeast with the four seasons.

  • And what’s your least favorite part of writing?

The first draft. I love having written…but the actual drafting can feel like pulling teeth some days. I’m also not a big fan of the technical side—formatting, timelines, and continuity checks—though they’re necessary to keep everything running smoothly, especially across multi-book series. I love connecting with readers, but promoting a book can be scary and hard.

  • How much do you plan before you start a book?

I’m a hybrid. I like to plot enough to know the big turning points, emotional beats, and the overall arc of the mystery, but I leave plenty of room for spontaneity. My outlines grow and evolve as I write; they’re living documents. I need the structure, but I also love discovering surprises along the way.

  • Where do your very best ideas come from?

Everywhere. Festivals, places I visit, random conversations, dreams, Pinterest aesthetics, documentaries, and little “what if?” moments. I’m constantly inspired by folklore, history, small-town quirks, and the idea that magic might be hiding in plain sight.

  • What part of writing is the most difficult for you to write? 

For me, it’s slowing down to write deep emotional beats—especially grief, trauma, or the darker layers of a character’s past. I also find the middle of a book to be the trickiest, because that’s where everything must escalate without giving away too much.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us today.

And readers, we very excited as Kari’s latest is something a little bit different. Both cozy and fantasy in all the good ways. 

Kari,  what can you tell us about the book? 

Cover for the book A Well Kept Secret

The Well-Kept Secret, the first book in my new fantasy-cozy mystery series set in the enchanting town of Wishville, Vermont. The story follows Lyra Wells—half human, half Dweller—as she discovers her true heritage while investigating the mysterious death of a local man near the centuries-old wishing well. The book blends small-town charm, sparkling magic, a hint of romance, and a twisty mystery with deeper secrets tied to the Dweller realm of Elarion. There’s a love triangle brewing, a memory crystal connected to Lyra’s missing mother, a talking cat, a cast of quirky locals (including the delightfully chaotic Wellies), and a fragile treaty between two worlds that might unravel at any moment. It’s cozy, magical, atmospheric, and full of heart—an exciting beginning to the Wishville Mystery series. Out now.

We’ve already the first book: “The quirky town of Wishville, a delightful amateur sleuth and a police chief who’s not sure what he’s stumbled into make for an enchantingly different whodunnit. And then there’s the talking cat. I was charmed and can’t wait for the next book!” ~ Mary Lee aka Sparkle

And we don’t have long to wait! Up next is book two in the series, The Well-Laid Trap. 

This time, a beloved physical therapist goes missing, and Lyra Wells—half human, half Dweller—must uncover the truth while balancing a crack in the ancient Veiled Vault, her complicated feelings for two very different men, her judgmental talking cat Vex, and the chaotic Wellies who always manage to make things interesting. It’s atmospheric, twisty, heartfelt, and full of enchantment. And it comes out January 20, 2026.

Book cover for A Well-Laid TrapIn addition to this new series, Kari also writes two other cozy mystery series and also writes women’s fiction and suspense as Kari Lee Harmon. She is one busy lady!

You can find info on all her books on her website at :  https://www.karileetownsend.com

And you can connect with her on social media at:

Facebook

Bluesky

Instagram 

BookBub

Kari, thanks so much for stopping by the blog!  Great to “see” you and we hope to see you in real-life soon. Maybe at a conference?  

Just Another Saturday Night . . .

/in , , /by

Police light up another Saturday night

A high-pitched tone sounded over the crackle of the radio inside the cabin of the pickup truck. The driver’s eyes snapped to the computer screen mounted on the dash between us, then immediately returned focus to the road.

“Did you hear that? There’s been an accident. Backup requested.” He pointed to the screen displaying all the patrol cars in the area. “We’re closest.”

He responded over the radio, “Unit on its way.”

Earlier that Saturday evening, my ride-along with the police started quite calmly with a tour of the department. The officer assigned to me, I’ll call him Officer D, explained the workings of the dispatch center. Dispatchers are the equivalent of the central nervous system, akin to air traffic controllers, communicating and coordinating with everyone in the field. The law enforcement technology is impressive for a city of our size – drones, a backup emergency dispatch center, a mini-forensic lab, and countywide shared radio frequencies to facilitate actions across departments. I asked for a tour of holding cells, where people await transfer to the county jail. I’ll spare you the details of what the officers deal with inside those cells but wearing a hazmat suit wouldn’t be overkill.

My ride for the evening was a souped-up Ford F250, faster than their regular patrol cars. Think of riding in the cockpit of an airplane and you’ll get the idea – interior and exterior cameras, license plate readers, computer, a display tracking all units. Unlike an airplane, the back seat is equipped with a single-prisoner transport, and the truck bed holds LED traffic cones and deployable spikes.

Our first stop of the evening occurred before we left the parking lot. A lost set of car keys was duly logged using the on-board software. I never realized how much of today’s policing is paperwork, often taking hours after a shift ends.

The action picked up with a report of a man throwing rocks at cars. From prior encounters, Officer D had an idea of who the man was, and we patrolled his neighborhood without seeing him.

Next stop: a drive through a park frequented by groups at night, many of whom often had active warrants. After an uneventful patrol of the perimeter, Officer D pulled over less than 50 feet away from a four-way intersection to enter a report. As he was typing, he said, “Watch. Someone’s going to run that stop sign.”

I laughed. No way. The sun was still up and the Ford F250 with it light bar and emblems was highly conspicuous. Within less than a minute, and true to Officer D’s prediction, a car blew past the stop sign. We followed the car until we could safely pull it over. Officer D recognized the driver, whom he’d given a verbal warning a few months earlier. The hurry this time? The man was rushing to a baby shower at 7:30 on a Saturday night. Officer D let him go with a written warning. The next time the driver would get a ticket.

As we patrolled a residential neighborhood, I peppered the officer with questions about his job and training. How did the long hours and stress impact his personal life? He shared that the pain of a fistfight with three large drug-dealers didn’t compare to the heartbreak of trying— and failing —to save a baby that had stopped breathing. What about the effect on his own family? Officer D uses an app that lets his wife monitor his heartbeat real time.

When the implications of his statement sank in, I changed the subject. I learned he was a taser instructor, a weapon near and dear to some of the characters in my novel. He described being hit by one during training, not an experience to repeat. Did you know? Different propellants can fire the prongs up to 100 feet. Another interesting tidbit about pepper spray: Police departments now use water-based versus oil-based sprays. Turns out certain kinds of pepper sprays are highly flammable, and a taser hit can ignite the suspect.

A high-pitched tone interrupted his taser lecture.

“Did you hear that? There’s been an accident. Backup requested.” Officer D pointed to the screen displaying all the patrol cars in the area. “We’re closest.”

He responded over the radio, “Unit on its way.”

The wreck happened on a busy highway cutting through the town. One vehicle, no fatalities. With a few taps on the screen, a route appeared, and we accelerated past cars that decided to slow to a crawl with a marked police vehicle in their rearview mirror.

As we turned onto the highway, Officer D unhooked his seatbelt, a move that didn’t seem safe. He explained, “That was my sergeant on the radio. I heard stress in her voice. And I don’t want to get tangled in my seatbelt if I need to get out of the truck in a hurry.”

Lights on, we pulled behind two other patrol cars and a fire engine. A car had launched from the highway, through a brick sign, and landed upright on the other side of a ditch.

“Stay here,” Officer D ordered and jumped out. By some miracle, the driver, highly intoxicated, was ambulatory with only minor injuries. He proved to be an amiable drunk who knew the drill and went along with the officer’s instructions peacefully. With the driver arrested and in handcuffs, Officer D placed him in the truck’s transport cell behind me, and we drove to the nearest hospital.

I spent the rest of the evening in the emergency room with Officer D and his sergeant as they filled out paperwork and waited on third party EMT’s to do a timely blood draw. We weren’t alone. Other police officers and their arrestees soon trickled into the emergency room.

Then another high-pitched tone sounded over their hand radios. A shooting on the other side of town.

Just another Saturday night . . .

 

***

Brooke TerpeningBrooke Terpening – A former software geek and attorney, today I’m retired in Colorado with my husband. As a Miami attorney, some of the notable capital cases I worked on included Casey Anthony, Ariel Hernandez, and Michel Escoto. A graduate of the Lighthouse Book Project, I serve on the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America board as their newsletter editor. When I’m not writing mystery and legal suspense, I volunteer with my therapy dogs at hospitals, police departments, and mental health facilities.