Tag Archives: cozy mystery series

Do We Really Know the People We Know? (and a New Release)

by Kassandra Lamb

While writing my July 4th novella (which is releasing today, 19 days late, but, hey, it’s still July at least), I stumbled on an interesting and disturbing question. How well do we really know the people we know?

Unless we own a lie detector, how do we really know who we know? — **Unless we own a lie detector (and our friends and acquaintances are willing to submit to it) how do we really know the people we know?** (photo by Marcin Wichary from National Museum of Crime & Punishment, Washington, CC-BY-2.0, Wikimedia)

When we meet someone new—a new neighbor, co-worker, friend of a friend we meet at a party—we ask them about themselves. Where are they from, what do they do for a living, etc. And unless their eyeballs are bouncing around like jumping beans or they break out in a cold sweat, we take their answers on face value.

And after we’ve “known” them for a while, we assume we do truly know them, and all the things they’ve told us about themselves become solidified in our minds as fact.

But how do we really know the people we know are telling the truth?

A new employer or landlord will run a background check, or at least check one’s credit, but those we meet socially, we assume they are who and what they say they are.

In A Star-Spangled Mayfair, the mystery the protagonist Marcia (pronounced Mar-see-a, not Marsha) is trying to sort out revolves around her friend, Jess, who runs the local diner. When Jess becomes the prime suspect in her fiancé’s murder, Marcia discovers that the fiancé is not who he said he was.

Then Will Haines, Marcia’s significant other—who also happens to be a police detective—raises the issue of whether they truly know Jess:

“Look,” Will said, “when you think about it, what do we really know about Jess? All we know of her background is what she’s told us, and that’s precious little. She could be a Black-Widow type, on the run from other jurisdictions after knocking off multiple husbands and fiancés.”

I pulled away from him a little. “Will, she’s terrified of fireworks. No way would she have gotten anywhere near where they were actually setting them off, much less pick up one, light it and point it at her fiancé. It’s just ludicrous.”
He shook his head. “And how do you know she’s phobic of fireworks?”
“She–” My body slumped. “She told me so.”
from A Star-Spangled Mayfair, A Marcia Banks and Buddy Mystery, #8

By the end of that scene, Marcia is even questioning if she truly “knows” Will. After all, she’s yet to meet his family.

I don’t have an answer to the question do we really know the people we know. I just found it rather amazing that I’d never really thought about it before. Oh, it’s often a premise in fiction—the character who isn’t what they seem—but in real life, most of us blithely go along assuming everything that everybody has told us about themselves is true.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten you, and myself, all paranoid about our friends and neighbors, here are the details about the book. It wasn’t intended to raise profound questions … mostly it’s just a fun read.

A Star-Spangled Mayfair, A Marcia Banks and Buddy Mystery, #8

A flamboyant fiancé, a “Mob Killer” Roman candle, a yappy rescue dog, and a bison bull named Tarzan.

A recipe for chaos and calamity for Marcia’s introverted friend, Jess Randall.

When not serving up her to-die-for eggs and biscuits at the Mayfair Diner, Jess just wants to live quietly on their farm. But her fiancé Dan has impulsively offered to host the Mayfair Independence Day Extravaganza.

The day of the big bash, Marcia and her dog Buddy witness a public fight between the couple, and just hours later, Dan is found with a Roman candle through his chest. Was it an accident, or was it murder? And is Jess a killer, as the sheriff’s department believes?

Between dog-training sessions, Marcia feels compelled to investigate, especially when there are signs that the real killer may not be finished… Could Jess be the next target?

Just $0.99 for a limited time! (Goes up to $2.99 later.)

Available on:

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Posted by Kassandra Lamb. Kassandra is a retired psychotherapist turned mystery writer. She is the author of the Kate Huntington psychological mysteries, set in her native Maryland, and the cozy series, the Marcia Banks and Buddy mysteries, set in Central Florida.

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Do You Really Know What’s On Your Plate? (And a New Release)

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by Shannon Esposito

The murder victim in my new release, Pushing Up Daises (A Pet Psychic Mystery No. 5) is an infamous food critic who exposes local restaurants’ false claims—and flat out lies–about what they’re serving their customers. Unfortunately, seafood fraud is a real problem.

Is this really what you ordered? Seafood fraud is a real thing.

I always thought one of the perks of living in Florida was getting to eat fresh seafood, until I started doing research for this book and found out ninety percent of the seafood consumed in the US is imported from countries with loose aquaculture laws.

Okay, so it’s not fresh caught off our coastal waters. Is that so bad? Well, yes, it is.

When fish is imported, it has little oversight.

According to a recent study by Oceana—a non-profit ocean conservation organization—one in five fish sold in the US are conveniently “mislabeled”. Cheaper fish are sold in place of more popular fish. These are fish that contain higher mercury levels and fish that are farmed, instead of wild caught, which means you are consuming antibiotics, pesticides, artificial coloring and other toxins.

Restaurants in Florida have been caught serving foreign crab meat touted as Atlantic blue crab, Asian catfish as Florida Grouper, foreign shrimp as domestic, and Escolar—a fish with gempylotixin which causes gastrointestinal distress—as white tuna. Ordering red snapper? Odds are high that’s not what you’re getting, since it’s mislabeled eighty-six percent of the time. But one of the most troubling deceptions discovered is King mackerel, a high methylmercury-content fish, being served as grouper.

Can something be done about this deception?

The good news is it can be fixed. Europe had the same problem, but after voting for stricter labeling laws, and educating consumers about the issue, they managed to cut seafood fraud and mislabeling from thirty-three percent down to four percent.

What can you do? Learn what fish are in season in your area. Ask where the fish is sourced. You may not always get the truth, but if they know consumers are educating themselves about this issue, they may start thinking twice about their deceptive practices.

Does seafood fraud in the US shock you? Or were you aware of this problem?

Pushing Up Daisies (A Pet Psychic Mystery No. 5)

The dog days of summer are back, and Darwin Winters, pet psychic, is excited to attend the St. Pete Seafood Festival with her sister. Unfortunately, the festival gets shut down early when a despised, local food critic dies from ingesting pufferfish toxin while judging the Chef’s Golden Lobster Contest.

When Hana Ishida, the chef who served pufferfish to the victim, is taken in for questioning, Darwin agrees to dog-sit the woman’s dachshund, Daisy. Darwin receives a vision from Daisy showing Hana in a heated argument, but for Daisy’s sake, Darwin desperately wants to dig up the truth and help her boyfriend, Detective Will Blake, prove Hana’s innocence.

Though Will does have a few fishy restaurant owners on his suspect list, none of the clues are pointing to anyone but Hana. Can Darwin help him reel in the right suspect? Or will this killer be the one that got away?

Available on Amazon (free with Kindle Unlimited)

Posted by Shannon Esposito. Shannon lives in a magical gulf coast town with fluorescent sunsets, purple dragonflies and the occasional backyard alligator. Her mysteries transport readers to Florida without the hefty price of airfare. You can visit her at murderinparadise.com

We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.

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Overachiever Angst! (And a New Release)

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by Kassandra Lamb

One of the joys of being an indie author is that you set your own deadlines; one of the pitfalls is that you set your own deadlines. Or at least, it’s a pitfall for recovering overachievers like myself, who are struggling to ward off “overachiever angst” and maintain some semblance of balance in our lives.

I fell into the pit this year. In early January, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me that I could finish the Kate Huntington novel I was drafting, write another service-dog novel and then a novella I had planned for that series, and get all of those stories edited and published in order for the novella to be released around July 4th, since that story involves Independence Day.

Just reading back over that sentence is exhausting, much less actually doing all that. But I was determined to try.

So the deadlines were set…

The Kate book would come out some time in May, The Sound and The Furry would be released in mid-June, and A Star-Spangled Mayfair would come out on or before July 4th.

I made the first deadline; Police Protection came out on May 24th. The other two deadlines…not so much.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

Overachievers have trouble adjusting goals. Even goals that are self-inflicted (yes, I have chosen that word intentionally).

It was a downright painful decision to slide those other two deadlines. But it finally dawned on me that once the Independence Day novella is out, people will be reading it at all different times of the year in the future. It is an integral part of the series and the character’s ongoing stories. So its relevance is not limited to the time period around July 4th.

And as long as it came out during the summer “beach-reading” season, even this year’s readers probably wouldn’t mind that they are reading about July 4th on, say, July 24th.

Why did I do that to myself?

Why did I set myself up for overachiever angst by taking on more than I could possibly get done?

I used to do this kind of thing more often. I would almost always over-estimate how much work I could get done in a given amount of time and/or under-estimate how much work a project would require. I’ve gotten somewhat better and don’t make these miscalculations quite so often anymore, so I’m looking at this as a moderate setback in my recovery as an overachiever.

I think I also set these kinds of goals sometimes to create a challenge for myself. Let’s see if I can do this? That challenge can be stimulating, but it can also be a set-up for disappointment, when I can’t meet the nearly impossible goal.

I’ve gotten better at forgiving myself though, when I have to adjust a goal.

What Drives Us Overachievers?

In my younger years, I was trying to prove something to myself and the world. I had to be the “best” at everything I did. I got past that when it dawned on me that it was okay to not be the best at things I didn’t care all that much about.

It’s okay for me to be a mediocre cook and a less than stellar housekeeper, for example, since those are not high priorities for me. But I still tend to put a fair amount of pressure on myself to be the best I can be when something is important to me.

And that’s what convinced me to slide my self-imposed deadlines. My writing is very important to me. I did NOT want to produce inferior stories, just to get them out by a certain date. So I decided to push through my overachiever angst and make some adjustments.

The Sound and The Furry is releasing today. Yay!! And A Star-Spangled Mayfair is tentatively scheduled to come out on July 23rd. I hope to have it available for preorder soon. (Covers and blurbs below.)

How about you? Do you tend to be an overachiever, an underachiever, or (the sanest position) somewhere in between? What do you think is driving those tendencies for you?

The Sound and The Furry, A Marcia Banks and Buddy Mystery, #7

A tropical paradise turns deadly.

Service dog trainer Marcia Banks had thought it was the perfect arrangement—stay on her client’s private Gulf-coast island and get the human phase of the training done more quickly, while enjoying a much-needed break from the chaos of house renovations back home.

This certainly wasn’t the tranquil getaway she’d envisioned, however. Two resident ghosts, a sour-puss housekeeper and bearing witness to her client’s shaky marriage are bad enough. But within days, she’s discovered even deeper and darker layers of dysfunction.

Via emails and static-filled phone calls, fiancé Will Haines convinces her to get herself and her dog Buddy out of there, but before Marcia can accomplish this, a late-season hurricane abruptly changes course and strands them on the island… with a murderer.

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And coming very soon… A Star-Spangled Mayfair, A Marcia Banks and Buddy Novella (#8)

A flamboyant fiancé, a “Mob Killer” Roman candle, a yappy rescue dog, and a bison bull named Tarzan.

A recipe for chaos and calamity for Marcia’s introverted friend, Jess Randall.

The day of the big bash, Marcia and her dog Buddy witness a public fight between the couple, and just hours later, Dan is found with a Roman candle through his chest.

Was it an accident, or was it murder? And is Jess a killer, as the sheriff’s department believes?

Between dog-training sessions, Marcia feels compelled to investigate, especially when there are signs that the real killer may not be finished… Could Jess be the next target?

We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.

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Who Are The Guppies? (plus New Releases)

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by Vinnie Hansen

If you are a long-term reader of mysteries, you’ve probably heard of Sisters In Crime, but have you ever heard of a special chapter of SinC, called The Guppies?

So who are the Guppies? …Organizations for crime writers abound. Sisters in Crime (SinC) is one of the most well-known, with chapters across the United States. I belong to the Northern California Chapter. In spite of wide-spread chapters, writers can still face obstacles to active participation. Many chapters draw from a vast membership area. The Northern California chapter of SinC spans 150 miles north to south. I’m located near the southern tip of the area with a dangerous mountain road separating me from most of the monthly events.

Other areas of the country are too sparsely populated to support a chapter at all. And for some, even if a chapter is nearby, health issues prevent them from attending.

Because of such obstacles, the on-line Sisters in Crime Guppy chapter proves invaluable. Several unpublished members of SinC started The Guppies in 1995 as a place to support one another with advice and encouragement. The Great Unpublished (Guppies) became a nationally recognized chapter within a few years and quickly grew into SinC’s largest chapter.

Over the years, many Guppies have gone on to be published authors. Among our ranks we count five-time Agatha winner Hank Phillippi Ryan! The Guppy experience is so rewarding that members don’t leave just because they become published, or even famous.

So Who Are The Guppies Specifically and Why Become a Guppy?

The Guppies currently have over 750 paid members from across the country! I asked some of these members, “What is your favorite thing about the Guppies or being a Guppy?”

The Guppies’ table at CCWC.

The Guppies are “a supportive, welcoming group, regardless of a writer’s level of expertise and experience. … When I can get to a conference or writers’ gathering, I look for those little Guppy pins—I know I’ve found a friend,” said Kathleen Rockwood.

Indeed, I was just at the California Crime Writers Conference. At breakfast and lunch, I looked for the Guppies table where I knew I’d feel at home.

In addition to the warmth of the Guppy pond, Kathleen also pointed out that Guppies have the opportunity to submit short stories for the Fishy Anthologies. In conjunction with Wildside Press, the Guppies publish an anthology every other year.

Lida Bushloper and I at our CCWC signing table.

Many of the Guppies mentioned in this article have stories in the newly released FISHY BUSINESS. At CCWC, Lida Bushloper and I, both Guppies, were given a signing table.

Guppy Susan Bickford says, “I would never have been published without the Guppies. It’s hard to count the ways, let alone settle on just one: fabulous courses, including Necessary Parts; critique groups; lots of advice on a whole range of topics, including just good moral support.”

I was in the Guppy on-line critique group with Susan. She, Andrew MacRae, Connie Berry, and I all went on to have our critique-group novels published. It was a strong collection of writers and the best critique group experience I’ve ever had. I also second Susan’s recommendation of Ramona DeFelice Long’s class, Necessary Parts, which helps writers whip their synopses and query letters into shape.

In addition to classes and critique groups, our outgoing president, Debra H. Goldstein, benefited from the Agent Quest program and the Emerald Short Story subgroup. These were “instrumental in me landing an agent, selling/publishing five books, and having forty short stories published—including ‘The Night They Burned Ms. Dixie’s Place,’ which not only was my first submission and acceptance by Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, but went on to be a 2018 Agatha and Anthony nominee.”

(Sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com)

Who are the Guppies? Lida Bushloper summed it all up, “I’m lucky to be a member.”

To become a Guppy, one has only to join the national Sisters in Crime. Then just sign up and pay your dues. I recommend the group to all writers of crime fiction.

And check out Fishy Business for an introduction to some great authors.

Plus, Kass Lamb has a new release coming up, now available for preorder!

The Sound and The Furry, A Marcia Banks and Buddy Mystery, #7

The Sound and The Furry book cover A tropical paradise turns deadly.

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Posted by Vinnie Hansen. Vinnie fled the howling winds of South Dakota and headed for the California coast the day after high school graduation. Still sane(ish) after 27 years of teaching English, Vinnie is retired. In addition to writing, she plays keyboards with ukulele bands in Santa Cruz, California, where she lives with her husband and the requisite cat.

She’s the author of the Carol Sabala Mystery series, and LOSTART STREET, a cross-genre novel of mystery, murder, and moonbeams, plus her short fiction has appeared in a variety of publications and anthologies.

We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.

To see our Privacy Policy click HERE.