This shouldn't be such a hard decision on National Coffee Day

Honestly, this shouldn't be that hard a decision. Tricia buys her ground coffee FROM The Coffee Bean across the street.  (She's a good neighbor and supports the other businesses in Stoneham!)

Still, what do you think she should do???

It's Foodie Friday! Pancakes on the menu

Some days you just need to eat breakfast for supper ... or lunch ... or even (heaven forbid!) breakfast.

That's the beauty of National Pancake Day -- you can eat them any time of the day or night. (Especially if there's an IHOP nearby.)

Pancakes have a number of aliases, too.  Like flapjacks, griddle cakes, hotcakes, crepes, blintz ... they all sound yummy to me.

So celebrate!

Related articles

FOODIE FRIDAY: Why British Food Doesn't Suck

Take a look at my new cover!

Here's the cover for the first Lotus Bay Mystery, WITH BAITED BREATH I hope to have it available for pre-order sometime in October. Cross your fingers.



Meanwhile, Here's a brief description of the story.

Tori Cannon and her grandfather, Herb, return from her grandmother’s funeral, and it’s with sadness that she learns the bait shop and small motel they ran has fallen on hard times. Jammed into one of the motel’s units is the body of one of Herb’s customers, his mouth filled with spikes. The victim had no enemies, except for the rich woman who wanted to buy his eyesore of a home. But he’s also got a daughter who’s resentful her father wasn’t a major force in her life, and friends who were anything but.

Tori’s BFF, Kathy, arrives to help spruce up the property, and the two of them find themselves mixed up in the petty jealousies and deadly consequences that murder entails. Can they save the bait shop and find a murderer before they, too, sleep with the fishes?

For more information about the series, check out my website!

International Day of Peace

With all that's going on in the world today, I sometimes wonder where we would be if Mark Chapman hadn't killed John Lennon. I like to think that the world would be a much better place where we didn't have to worry about radicals intent on destroying and where Gene Roddenberry's vision of a world at ‪#‎peace‬ reaching out a hand of friendship to the those who live upon other worlds would come to pass. We can't go forth in space in peace until we find it here. We're a long way from that, I'm afraid.

 
Today is International Peace Day.  Let's give it a chance.

Query ...

Will my new Union Jack mug be obsolete tomorrow?

And the logo is revealed!

We're working on the cover for the first Lotus Bay Mystery, With Baited Breath. This is the "finalized" version of the logo for the series. Of course, depending on what the cover designer wants, we can change the background color to match whatever she does. I hope to reveal the cover by early next week (if not sooner).


To read more about the series, check out my website page for The Lotus Bay Mysteries.

Now available in Japan!

Today the UPS man brought the my author copies of the third Booktown Mystery (Bookplate Special) in Japanese.



Here're the first three books together.  So cute!  Now, if only I could read Japanese!

Never enough cake!

Today is my brother's birthday. Back when we were kids, there were five of us in the family. That meant you were assured of having cake more than just on your own birthday.

Well, Mr. L likes pies. On my Mom's birthday, we have fruit cake (*shudder*) so it's now just once a year I get birthday cake. I'll bet my brother hasn't even had a cake in 20 years.

I think I'm going to have to start having an UN-birthday a couple of times of year, otherwise when am I going to get cake?

Do you have an unbirthday?  (If not, would you like to have one?)

A couple of letters makes a big different

To make a good pot of tea, you're supposed to scald the pot with hot water first, then make tea.  Not only do I scald the pot, I also scold it. ("Oh, you naughty teapot!")  Which do you think is more traumatic for the teapot?

P.S. Teacup Tuesdays will soon return!

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Teacup Tuesday: How do you take your tea?

Teacup Tuesday: Just Drink it!

Happy National Peanut Day!

Don't you just love having something to celebrate?

That's what the name on the paint chip said

Painted my mother's front door. The color is "blueberry pie." It should look good with the yellow on her house.



I read on Pinterest that baby oil will magically take latex paint off your skin. Well, only if the magic includes a scrub brush.

A new voice in mystery: M. Ryan Seaver

I was lucky enough to read (and blurb) No Bad Deed, first in a new series by a new voice in ‪#‎mystery‬ M. Ryan Seaver. All I can say is WOW! It's dark and it's riveting. I couldn't put it down.

Here's the description:

Private detective John Arsenal can’t tell you what terrible crime he committed to wind up in a sweltering urban hellscape, surrounded by thieves, drug addicts and murderers—only that it was very bad, and now he’s being punished. That’s because in Hell—or Brimstone, as the damned prefer to call it—your identity, your memories, even your name, are stripped away from you.

John is relatively comfortable in his damnation, working easy cases and making himself at home in the grimy squalor of the afterlife. That is, until a mysterious woman appears in his office, begging him to find her missing sister, and promising him the impossible in return—a glimpse of his old life, before Brimstone. 

To track down the enigmatic Sophie, John must delve into Brimstone’s darkest recesses, where murderous children run wild in packs, and a strange and terrifying new drug promises to deliver the user to the heights of ecstasy, but at the risk of being snuffed out of existence altogether. All the while, John must grapple with the vivid nightmares that have haunted him since his arrival in Brimstone, and confront the thing he desires and dreads the most—the truth of what he did to deserve damnation.

It's now available for preorder on Amazon and will be available on September 15th. Go for it!

First Tuesday = New Cozy Mysteries!

Okay, I admit it -- I took most of the summer off from blogging.  I hope to get back into the swing of things as the weather turns colder and I'm inside more.

In the meantime, it's the first Tuesday of the month and two of my Cozy Chick blog sisters have new books out.

My good pal Mary Jane Maffini is one half of the mother-daughter writing team of Victoria Abbott. Today, the third book in their Book Collector Mystery series, THE WOLFE WIDOW, is officially released.

As Thanksgiving approaches, Jordan Bingham is grateful for her job researching rare books for Vera Van Alst, the infamous curmudgeon of Harrison Falls, New York. But when an uninvited guest makes an appearance, much more than dinner is disrupted—and Jordan is thankful just to be alive…

Vera Van Alst doesn’t normally receive visitors without appointment, but she agrees to see the imperious Muriel Delgado upon arrival. Shortly thereafter, Jordan is told that her position is being terminated. Evicted from the Van Alst House, Jordan is determined to find out what hold Muriel has over her erstwhile employer.

Amazon  |  Kindle |US  |  Kindle Worldwide

Barnes & Noble   |  Nook

Indigo  |  Chapters

Kobo  |  iBooks

Mary Kennedy is a psychologist who just happens to write mysteries, and NIGHTMARES CAN BE MURDER is the first in her new Dream Club Mystery Series.

Business consultant Taylor Blake has eturned to Savannah, Georgia, to help her sister Allison turn her dream of running an old-fashioned candy store into a reality. Allison is also interested in dream interpretation and invites Taylor to her Friday night Dream Club, where members meet once a week to share and analyze their dreams.

When a local dance instructor, Chico Hernandez, is found dead in his studio, and the murder scene has an eerie resemblance to one of the dreams shared at their meeting, Taylor can’t help but be intrigued. And when her sister, who was briefly involved with the dance teacher, becomes the prime suspect, Taylor and their fellow club members can’t be caught napping. It’s up to them to dream up a solution to the murder before Allison faces a real-life nightmare.

Amazon  |  Kindle US  |  Kindle Worldwide

Barnes & Noble   |  Nook

Kobo  | iBooks

I hope you'll enjoy both of these wonderful mysteries as much as me!

Happy Labor Day!

That sounds like the perfect (un)Labor Day to me.  What are you up to today?