Happy Spring! At least, I hope it is spring where you are. Here it quite can’t make up its mind… shorts and tees one day, jeans and jacket the next. And people wonder why I carry a jacket in my car 24/7/365! At least I can get out to do my exercises in the hot tub some mornings!
This has been a really distracted month – our freezer door failed to latch one night and we lost a lot of stuff. If it was in the back of the freezer it was okay, but in the front… ick. This month has also been the drivers license dance month. I could renew mine by mail – thank goodness! – but The Husband’s mother and aunt (both of whom I love dearly) needed help. They are 97 and 93, respectively, and both very good drivers. However, they only drive in their own neighborhoods and the only places we could get them appointments (imagine having to get an appointment to get your drivers license renewed – absurd!) were two of the furthest offices from their homes. I mean, like an hour away! So The Husband and I volunteered to drive each of them to their respective appointments.
Both passed their tests with flying colors! And my license appeared in the mail a few days ago, so we’re all set for a couple of years.
Now for the really exciting news! My very first audio book is now available! I had always wanted to do audio – meaning do it myself, as I’ve narrated books for other authors – but time and obligations made it impossible. So when an opportunity came to partner with Cassandra Arnold, one of the top narrators in the world, I jumped at it! THE HOUSE IN THE PINES, one of my Janis Susan May modern Gothic romances, is now available in audio at:
Now Cassandra is working on the recording of A KILLING AT EL KAB – the Janis Patterson mystery for which The Husband and I were invited to stay at the El Kab archaeological dig in Egypt. It should be available in a couple of weeks. I’m still trying to get accustomed to the ACX schedules!
On to ebooks – this month’s re-releases are two of my favorites.
Number 10 in my re-release binge, THE LETTER is a Janis Susan May Christmas Regency romance, where a letter from long ago helps two couples find love.
Can a letter from the past change the future of two lonely young women?
Antonia Carstairs is reduced to being a companion to her cousin, reclusive Marianne Marchworthy. While cleaning out the late Lady Marchworthy’s room Antonia discovers a letter proving Marianne’s mother deliberately destroyed her romance with Robert Wickerham, now Duke Edenthorne. Impulsively Antonia writes the Duke, setting in motion an unexpected chain of events that forever changes not only her cousin’s life but her own.
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Number eleven, EXERCISE IS MURDER is not only a Janis Patterson mystery, it is the first appearance of Flora Melkiot, my older sleuth who is the wealthy widow of a jeweler. She is the heroine of MURDER IN DEATH’S WAITING ROOM, which is already out.
Invalided out of the police force after a shootout that almost killed her, antique dealer Rebecca Cloudwebb is delivering a pair of earrings to Flora Melkiot, elderly resident of the exclusive Olympus House condominiums. At Flora’s request she brings them to the so-called Jewel exercise class – the better for her to show them off to the other women – where the newest member of the class, a suburban transplant named Laura Tyler, is horribly murdered by a dose of drain cleaner in her health water.
Though the Olympus House simply bristles with strong and somewhat unpleasant prominent women, all of whom have secrets, no one had anything against Laura Tyler. Most didn’t even know her. Rebecca wants nothing to do with the case, but Flora, disgusted with the way the police are – according to her – mishandling things, calmly blackmails Rebecca into helping her solve the case. Sublimely assured that she can do anything she puts her mind to, Flora digs into the histories of the women in the Jewel class, upsetting a lot of them in the process. Rebecca and Flora finally find the key to solving the murder of the unknown, inoffensive Laura Tyler, but only after finding themselves in danger several times, not the least of which is the dislike of the police.
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So why isn’t this the first book in the Flora Melkiot series? Because this was supposed to be the first book in the Rebecca Cloudwebb series. I had an entire series planned out about Rebecca and Flora was supposed to be just a recurring secondary character. Humph! She just sort of came in and took over. (I don’t only admire her, I want to grow up and be her!) So although Rebecca officially solved the case, Flora is the personality who shone through. I’m working on another Flora book, called MURDER AT FIVE TO ONE, set in Las Vegas.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I still have enough books to re-release one every other Wednesday until mid-October or thereabouts, and then there are the upcoming audio books… Yes, it’s going to be a busy summer.
Do you have a favorite book of mine you’d like to have in audio? If so, use the ‘Contact’ feature on my website and let me know – I’ll see what I can do!