Armed and Outrageous free on Amazon Dec 20-24th

Armed and Outrageous free run on Amazon

I have jumped through hoops and nearly broke an ankle while doing so. Agnes and Eleanor are pissed. I mean they don't want it spread around Tadim or Tawas, MI, that they give it away for free, they do have some morals. Armed and Outrageous will be free on Amazon Dec 20-24th. As an added bonus Coffin Tales Season of Death is also free thru the 24th.

US http://tiny.cc/vly4jw http://tiny.cc/zjy4jw

Book synopsis:
Senior sleuth — Grandma Mazur meets Murder She Wrote — cozy mystery.

Agnes Barton is not your typical senior citizen living in Tadium, MI, on the shores of Lake Huron. She drives a red hot Mustang, shops at Victoria's Secret, rankles local police officials, and has a knack for sticking her nose where it doesn't belong.

What does a murder that happened forty-three years ago have to do with missing tourist Jennifer Martin? Agnes makes it her personal mission to find out, and she's not letting the fact she's seventy-two get in the way. Butting heads with Sheriff Clem Peterson is something she's accustomed to, but lately Clem seems to be acting even more strange, making Agnes wonder what he may be hiding ala the Martin disappearance.

Agnes’ partner in crime, Eleanor Mason tags along, Watson to her Holmes.
Together, they unearth clues. If only Eleanor would behave, as although lovable, she has a knack for getting into trouble by tangling with her rival, Dorothy Alton, or flirting with anyone—male or female—and gossiping! She's incorrigible, but she does carry a Pink Lady revolver in her purse, one that has proved useful at times.

Life for Agnes and Eleanor is shaken up when Agnes' former boss and secret crush comes to Tadium. Before long, the lady sleuths have more on their hands to contend with as goons roll into town and bullets begin to fly

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Mystery We Write Wrap up Blog

I'm honored and happy to have such great mystery writers gracing my blog during the Mystery We Write Blog Tour.  Please feel free to visit their blogs and check out all their great books.

M. M. Gornell - http://mmgornell.wordpress.com

Collin Kelley - http://www.collinkelley.blogspot.com

Jean Lauzier - http://www.jeanlauzier.com

Joyce Lavene - www.romanceofmystery.blogspot.com

Jean Henry Mead - http://mysteriouspeople.blogspot.ca/

Marilyn Meredith - http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com

Rionna Morgan - http://chantingofmuses.blogspot.com

Larissa Hoffman - http://theexpatreturneth.blogspot.com/

Earl Staggs - http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com/

Anne K Albert - http://anne-k-albert.blogspot.com

SR Claridge - www.FeelingTheFiction.blogspot.com

Evelyn Cullet - http://evelyncullet.com/blog/

Patricia Gligor - http://pat-writersforum.blogspot.com/

Wendy Gager -http://wsgager.blogspot.com/

I will be announcing later this week the book winners.

Mystery We Write Blog Tour ~ Collin Kelley

Setting the Scene by Collin Kelley

Both Conquering Venus and Remain In Light, which are books 1 and 2 of The Venus Trilogy, were inspired by a trip I took to Paris in 1995. I was technically chaperoning a group of high school students on their senior trip, but I struck off on my own and met some very interesting people, who eventually became characters in the novels.

I’ve been back to Paris three times now (I wrote the end of Remain In Light last summer sitting in the Jardin des Plantes) and I’ve immersed myself in the culture. Paris is usually portrayed as a city of love and romance, but it has a dark underbelly that most tourists never see.

I wanted to look beyond the guidebooks and explore the Paris that is just beneath the surface of the postcards. As the character Irène Laureux says, “This city is not always full of light.” That’s where the mystery/suspense element came in and gave me the opportunity to explore the intersection of Americans and Parisians thrown into extraordinary circumstances. There’s murder, stolen identities, government secrets, missing persons, a hint of the paranormal and even a little poetry.

In Paris, I stayed in an out of the way hotel in the 11^th arrondissement. Rue Rampon was a narrow little street lined with small shops and apartment buildings. Across from my room was an apartment with a long wrought iron balcony full of flowers. The French doors were always open and the interior was lined with bookcases crammed with tomes. There was a big desk with an old typewriter, what appeared to be manuscript pages, and even more books. But I never saw the owner.

For a solid week, the doors were always open, but the writer was never at work at the desk. So I invented Irène Laureux in my head. A Parisian widow disabled by agoraphobia, who never leaves her apartment and works as a book editor. At night, she spies on the guests of the hotel with her binoculars.

Collin Kelley is the author of the novels Conquering Venus and Remain In Light, which was a 2012 finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction. His poetry collections include Better To Travel, Slow To Burn and After the Poison and the forthcoming Render. Kelley is also the author of the eBook short story collection, Kiss Shot. A recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year Award, Deep South Festival of Writers Award and Goodreads Poetry Award, Kelley’s poetry, essays and interviews have appeared in magazines, journals and anthologies around the world. He lives in Atlanta, GA. For more information, visit www.collinkelley.com, find him on Facebook at CollinKelleyWriter or follow him on Twitter @collinkelley.

Conquering Venus and Remain In Light are available in ebook and trade paperback formats from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, Smashwords and through your favourite local bookstore.

Mystery We Write Tour ~ Jean Lauzier

Madison, thanks for having me on your blog today.

How did I pick the setting for Dark Descent?  That’s easy.  When the idea for Dark Descent first came to me, it was years ago and I was just learning the craft. And, as a novice writer, one of the many pieces of advice I’d gotten was “write what you know.” So, that’s what I did.

We were living in the town of Tenaha, Texas at the time. It was a small town of about 900 people. And while that may seem like a lot, I’d bet there were at least 8-10 cows for each person. Everyone knew everyone else and usually their business.

One thing about Tenaha I loved (most of the time) was being able to walk into City Hall and have the people there know who I was and be greeted by name. The town had a grocery combination gas station/diner that actually left their outside ice box open so if you needed ice when they were closed, you could just get it and pay next time you were in the store.

That small town feeling is what I’ve tried to bring to DryLake; which is a mixture of several small towns around Tenaha. (I didn’t think the residents of Tenaha would like a serial killer living among them, even if it was fiction.) People in DryLake care about their neighbors, they trust each other. Sure, there are spats, but bad things happen, they rally together and do their best to make it better.

And that’s what I love about DryLake, that’s what makes it unique.

 Bio:  Jean Lauzier has always been a writer though life just recently settled enough so she can spend the time needed at the keyboard with her characters.  Jean writes mystery and fantasy for the most part but enjoys playing with romance and western genres ever so often.  When not writing, Jean spends her time trying to keep her Bonsai alive, learning Spanish and training the cat.

Her short story collection, Six Pack of Murder is available on Amazon.  She is president of the East Texas Writer’s Association.

During the tour, Jean will be giving away at least three copies of Six Pack of Murder and three copies of the soon to be released Dark Descent. Be sure to leave a comment along with your email address to be entered in the drawing.  

Mystery We Write Blog Tour ~ Joyce Lavene

Why setting is important to A Haunting Dream

Setting is as important as any character is a mystery novel. Setting plays a crucial role in determining what the world is like where your story takes place.

Setting can be anything, anywhere, which conveys the mood, place and time of a mystery. It gives the reader a sense of who a character is, and what that character is experiencing. Creating a believable setting is vital to any fiction.

The story can be humorous or thoughtful. It can be scary or paranormal—loaded with ghosts and demons. It can take place in the past, in the future, or in present day. All of these details become real in your setting.

Make your setting as dynamic as possible. Don't throw in a bunch of unimportant facts that have nothing to do with the movement of your story. Use setting consciously to communicate specific information and achieve a particular effect on your audience.

In our Missing Pieces Mysteries, our sleuth is Dae O’Donnell. She is the mayor of her small town, Duck, North Carolina. Duck is a real place in the N.C Outer Banks. We visited the area frequently as much to give our readers real landmarks (Kitty Hawk, the Hatteras Lighthouse) as a sense of what it’s like to live in this place. Pirate and ghost stories abound here. It’s a much different life than Dae would have if we’d put her character in Raleigh!

Our next book in the Missing Pieces Series is A Haunting Dream (December4th).  We hope to transport our readers to Duck again with the smell of the salt air, the sounds of the sea, the feeling of living in a small town of less than 600 people. Our mayor is facing re-election in this book and she’s forced to work with a woman she fears to find a missing child.

Bio:

Joyce Lavene writes bestselling mystery with her husband/partner Jim. They have written and published more than 60 novels for Harlequin, Berkley and Charter Books along with hundreds of non-fiction articles for national and regional publications. She lives in rural North Carolina with her family, her cat, Quincy, and her rescue dog, Rudi. Visit her at www.joyceandjimlavene.com, Facebook/JoyceandJimLavene.com. Twitter: @authorjlavene, http://romanceofmystery.blogspot.com.

Purchase: A Haunting Dream at: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-haunting-dream-joyce-and-jim-lavene/1111363964

Win a copy of A Haunting Dream, the fourth book in the Missing Pieces Mysteries, by leaving your name at my blog: http://romanceofmystery.blogspot.com

Mystery We Write Tour ~ Jean Henry Mead

Unusual Novel settings by Jean Henry Mead

Thanks for the invitation to visit your site today, Madison.

Selecting your novel's setting is important because it not only adds color to the plot, it serves as a secondary character. People against nature have created countless adventures, from Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea to Jack London's story, "To Build a Fire." Stranding someone in the middle of the Sahara Desert is far more intriguing than having a car stolen from a city street, so settings should be considered carefully.

My amateur sleuths travel in a motorhome around the West and the setting changes with each book. Although Dana Logan and Sarah Cafferty began solving murders in their California retirement village, Dana inherited her sister’s mansion in Wyoming, so the settings change considerably. Both 60-year-old widows are feisty and determined to get to the bottom of each mystery they encounter no matter their surroundings. In Diary of Murder, Logan and Cafferty are forced to drive through a Rocky Mountain blizzard in their motorhome, an experience I'd had years earlier. In Murder on the Interstate, they're caught in Arizona’s torrential rain when they discover the body of a young woman in her Mercedes convertible.

In my fourth and most recent novel, Gray Wolf Mountain, the setting is Wyoming’s Laramie Mountains, an area I know well because I live there. I also set a children’s mystery, Ghost of Crimson Dawn, on our ranch for the Hamilton Kids’ mystery series. The mountains provide countless possibilities for murder and is the backdrop for a mystery which includes the unwarranted killings of wolves by trigger-happy hunters. I researched the problem in Wyoming, and was shocked to learn that the situation exists in other states as well as Canada. The wolves are shot en masse from helicopters in the Yukon to increase the Caribou herd to 100,000, solely for the benefit of big game hunters. The Yukon is a setting that few writers have ventured to write about, with the notable exception of Jack London.

My themes usually encompass social problems and I incorporate humor and a little romance to prevent the storyline from becoming dreary. By setting each plot in an unusual area, the plot hopefully enhances reader awareness and interest by educating as well as entertaining.

Gray Wolf Mountain is available in print and on Kindle. A copy will be given away December 11 to a visitor who leaves a comment at my various blog tour stops.

Bio: Jean Henry Mead is the author of 18 books, nearly half of them novels which include the Logan and Cafferty mystery/suspense series, Hamilton Kids’ mysteries, books of interviews and western history, one of which served as a college textbook. She’s also a national award-winning photojournalist published domestically as well as abroad. Among her other positions, she served as news, magazine and small press editor.