Hello Everyone! I’ve been doing a bit of reading here and there and this one I’ve just finished. A SPELL OF MURDER is a supernatural sort of cozy with witches. Before I get into my thoughts, here is the back cover copy:

In the sleepy town of Lost Maidens Loch, people sometimes disappear…

Down a quiet lane in town sits a little shop full of oddities you’d probably miss if you weren’t looking for it. This is Love’s Curiosities Inc., and its owner, Temerity Love, is sought by experts all over the world for her rare and magical gift: the ability to find lost things and learn their stories.

When Lost Maidens’ pretty local school teacher is found murdered by a poisoned cup of tea, a strange antique hand mirror is discovered nearby. Temerity – with the help of witchy sister Tilda, their cats Scylla and Charybdis and the lovingly eccentric local townspeople – is determined to divine the story behind the mirror and its part in Miss Molly Bayliss’ untimely death.

If only grumpy out-of-towner Angus Harley of Lost Maidens Police wasn’t on the scene. Temerity can’t solve the crime without him, but he’s distracting, and in more ways than one. Can this unconventional duo solve the most mysterious murder ever to blight Lost Maidens Loch before the killer strikes again?

My thoughts:

There’s something I really like about small town mysteries with busybodies, smart country cops, and quirky denizens. This book falls into that category. Temerity is an engaging characters and I like that she has friendships throughout the community and that she’s known for being a psychic antiques expert. Specifically, she’s known for tracking the provenance of antiques that nobody has any idea about. She’s world-renowned, actually. However, despite being so famous, she rarely leaves the village, even to be the keynote speaker at a major upcoming conference.

A murder happens soon within the story–a local school teacher–and Temerity gets involved with the local police chief asks for her help, as she’s helped before with missing persons and so on. She ends up working with a new deputy who she finds offputting and a bit rude, although very handsome. There’s  a bit of romance in this book between them, but not much.

One of the things I like about this book is that everybody’s smart and nobody’s bumbling. I wasn’t as much a fan of the overall mystery as I could have been because for the murderer, there’s not really any clues. The background of the story and the reasons for the murder aren’t terribly simple or obvious, which I appreciated. I just wanted a few more clues sprinkled in.

Overall, though, it’s a fun read. The characters are engaging and the magic and locale are unique and interesting. I loved the animals, particularly the cats and the parrot. I loved that Angus wasn’t at all stereotypical as the handsome potential love interest. He was smart and interesting and didn’t ever get weirdly high and mighty or put Temerity down. She was confident and strong, and yet vulnerable in a couple of ways, but not in a way that irritated me.

I’ll definitely look for the next book in the series.

Hello everyone! I’m sorry I’ve been off the radar. I’ve been getting my son ready for college, running around with my daughter for band, dealing with a very sick dog, going to the emergency room with my son who dislocated his knee, minor car accidents, and various other things. So I’ve done a piss poor job of visiting here. I’m going to try to be much better.

I’ve become a fan of Midsomer Murders. I enjoy the mysteries quite a bit and the characters. I also want to go bike riding in some English villages. Though I suspect there will be many places where I’d bap my head on the doorways and other low ceiling type of areas.

But I’m posting because I’ve had a number of questions about DCM5. Yes there is a fifth book! And I’m writing it now. It’s come along a little bit slowly because while I know what needs to happen, I’ve had trouble braiding the strands together. It’s become complicated and I’m working on sorting out the best way to tell the story. That means a few false starts and a number of backtrackings to throw out a bunch of stuff and rewrite. Plus the plans I had all along for one plot thread have become a problem for the turns I’ve taken and so now I have to come up with a better explanation for that.

But it’s definitely in process and I hope to start sharing some snippets very soon.

Di

Hi Everybody!

This Saturday, July 13, is Readers and Writers Seattle, 2019. I will be there along with many other writers, selling books and giving away swag, and chatting and hanging out.

If you can make it, do! I’d love to see you. Here’s a link to the Facebook Page.

In other news, I’m still alive. I know, I’ve been really quiet here lately. Life has been overtaking me. But we have my son registered for college in the fall, we’ve been working with Merlin to get him past biting, though the fireworks really upset him and he bites when he’s scared. And vomits. A lot. Ten times on the third. On the fourth we tried to drug him up with an anti-anxiety medication. It took the edge off for him, but wasn’t super great. The next day we got a sedative from the vet, but it was like Merlin ate Crack. The dog was lively. Sigh.

I was almost done with The Elf Job when I realized it had jumped the shark and I have to scrap and rewrite the last third or so. I hate it when that happens, but at least I discovered it before I published it. I just have to keep reminding myself that that’s a good thing.

I’m also working Diamond City 5. Plan to turn that in to my editor in September. I just have to get on top of the writing. Seems like every time I turn around I’ve got life stuff to deal with . I kind of want to go be a hermit for a month or so and get some work done.

I hope all is well with you. I’ll report in again soon.

This is a picture of some roses from my yard. I have a lot of rose bushes and this year I’m finally getting enough that I can have fresh roses in the house at all times. I’m delighted with this. Aren’t they pretty? And they smell diving.

I have journeyed far and wide, searched through stores and catalogs and even kickstarter, searching for the perfect pillow. My demands are not too grand or onerous, I think. I believe myself to be perfectly reasonable, searching for a pillow that allows me to sleep and wake again refreshed, without a sore neck, shoulders, or spine. Alas I have come so close, even believing I have discovered The One, and then to find in a week or a month, that the pillow was leading me on, pretending to be perfect, mayhap hiding its extra fluff, sucking it in until it could no longer manage and then bursting into a giant puff all. Or supporting my neck and head at just the right angle, holding its breath until it could no longer and then slowly deflating into a torpid puddle. There has been down, chunked up memory foam, spaghetti memory foam, gel, fiberfill. There has been gussets and no gussets, King size and standard size. Strange bumps and shapes and traditional rectangles. Firm and soft and medium and medium firm and medium soft.

And yet, my neck and shoulders and spine continue to ache.

Woe unto me. Woe. Where is The One? The pillow destined to make me the happiest of women? What will I have to sacrifice to obtain it? First born? My soul? Where is my fairy godmother to deliver me into sleeping bliss?

Thank you to those of you who told me about the format problems with The Witchkin Murders ebooks. I’ve notified my editor and I *think* the corrected files are uploaded. If you have bad files, do redownload and let me know if they are correct. And I’m really sorry this happened. We don’t know what FUBARred them. And really, thank you so much for your patience.

Once again, I have lost. Was walking the dogs today in a lovely big park with tons of oak trees, a creek, lots of meadows and tall grasses, and squirrels. Lots of squirrels. The dogs find these highly entertaining and try to yank my arms out of their sockets as often as possible. However, the dogs had little to do with today’s events.

We were walking along a little stretch where there are lots of squirrels and the dogs were running back and forth to eagerly look at them. I was walking along, entertained by the puppies, when I stepped in a squirrel hole. These little guys excavate like crazy and while they do run up and down trees, the live in holes.

The hole I stepped in was really a divot because it had been filled in mostly, which actually made it all the more embarrassing when I fell. Like a freaking tree. I sat myself up and discovered that my left knee was all scraped up and painful. I managed to get up and get dusted off, and limp off into the sunset, so to speak. When I got home, I found I had the beginning of a really impressive bruise on the inside of my left wrist and heel of my palm. It’s growing bigger and more impressive every moment.

And lo, once again, Di lost in the game of Di versus . . . Whatever.

I want to mention that I do have a new book out,  called The Witchkin Murders and it’s a fantasy police procedural with some romance. If you’d like to read a couple of chapters for free, click here.

Also, today is my 29th wedding anniversary. My son graduated High School last week. So happy things!

I recently read The Dark Bones by Loreth Anne White. It’s a romantic suspense, and I’ve got to say, it’s just about a perfect book.

First, the back cover blurb:

Want a chance to support me in a different way and also get some cool chances to read things in draft and before anybody else sees them? Then consider joining my Patreon! It’s a lot of fun. Today I posted the first two chapters of the second Mission: Magic book, The Elf Job.

Magicfall is actually the same world as The Horngate Witches books. These books are entirely separate with new characters. Here’s what it’s about:

Four years ago, my world—the world—exploded with wild magic. The cherry on top of that crap cake? The supernatural world declared war on humans, and my life went straight to hell.

I used to be a detective, and a damned good one. Then Magicfall happened, and I changed along with the world. I’m witchkin now—something more than human or not quite human, depending on your perspective. To survive, I’ve become a scavenger, searching abandoned houses and stores for the everyday luxuries in short supply—tampons and peanut butter. Oh, how the mighty have fallen, but anything’s better than risking my secret.

Except, old habits die hard. When I discover a murder scene screaming with signs of black magic ritual, I know my days of hiding are over. Any chance I had of escaping my past with my secret intact is gone. Solving the witchkin murders is going to be the hardest case of my life, and not just because every second will torture me with reminders of how much I miss my old life and my partner, who hates my guts for abandoning the department.

But it’s time to suck it up, because if I screw this up, Portland will be wiped out, and I’m not going to let that happen. Hold on to your butts, Portland. Justice is coming, and I don’t take prisoners.

About the book:

An unlikely pair, an impossible mission, and a hilarious hunt for somebody to love.

Henry was only tasked with fixing the leaky office pipes. So, when a crazy woman barges in and confesses all her secrets like a challenge, he’s faced with two choices: Tell her he’s not the man she’s looking for, or roll with it.

Rachel knows there’s something amiss about her new shrink–he’s far too handsome for starters–but she’s desperate to straighten her life out. With only three weeks to find a date to her best friend’s wedding, she’s willing to try anything. Even rely on a complete stranger to help her find love.

My take:

I’ll be honest. I was a little put off at first by Cassy, who I was afraid would be a more prominent character in the book, but luckily, she wasn’t. Mostly she was really obnoxious and Rachel took it laying down in the beginning, which I found annoying. But then she walks into the office and she’s so funny, and so real, and she’s not at all flat or one-dimensional. She’s got some hangups as we all do, but she’s also talented and smart and not at all a doormat. AND she stands up to Cassy at the end, which made me very happy.

I like Henry. Clearly he was an asshole and knew it, but meeting Rachel made him reevaluate himself and his friends. It wasn’t an instant transformation, but one where he grows into love, same as Rachel. His family is amazing, and I’m really hoping Taylor and Neil figure things out. His friends are both obnoxious and wonderful, which I found delightful.

Nobody was perfect, and Henry showed his true colors in a dramatically embarrassing and realistic moment and I may have fallen a bit in love with him at that point, too.

The story is well written, fun, breezy, real, and feel good. It’s fast and I really love Rachel and Henry as people and as a couple. Definitely read this book. I’m going to look up other books by Fray for sure.