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For the month of April Kobo has a mystery/thriller buy one, get one promotion and the first three books in the Maggie May and Miss Fancypants mysteries series are included. So if you haven’t read them yet, now might be a good chance to get one for free.

And if you have, plenty of other excellent mystery/thriller titles to choose from.

The promotion is in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Here are the links:

Australia: https://kobo.com/p/aprilthrillsau

Canada: https://kobo.com/p/aprilthrillsca

New Zealand: https://kobo.com/p/aprilthrillsnz

UK: https://kobo.com/p/aprilthrillsuk

US: https://kobo.com/p/aprilthrillsus

First, Happy Holidays! I hope you and yours (including your furry friends) are well. I am currently sitting here typing away to the snores of my girl as she keeps me company. Finally I’ve found an office setup she likes enough to actually be in the office when I am! Victory is mine.

Now for the surprise: There’s a new Maggie May and Miss Fancypants Mystery available!

I hit publish yesterday so it’s still making its way through the various channels and into the various formats, but it should be fully available everywhere by Christmas when we will all need a few days of downtime to recover from the season and this crazy year and family who we have missed dearly I am sure but are still family. (Or you could read it now, which is why I just went and hit publish instead of put it on pre-order until mid-January.)

I will update the links in this post as each version becomes available, but here’s what we have for now: Universal Link, Apple, Amazon, Nook, Google, Kobo, Amazon Regular Paperback (ISBN 978-1-950902-69-9), and Amazon Large Print Paperback (ISBN 978-1-63744-026-1).

Paperbacks are making their way to other stores. Here are the Nook Regular Paperback and Nook Large Print Paper back links. As well as the Large Print Hardcover (ISBN 978-1-63744-027-8) version on Amazon.

(Also, just a reminder that the hard cover version is a case laminate version, meaning it doesn’t have a removable cover like a standard hard cover you’d buy in the store. This version is mostly there for libraries to purchase, but obviously you’re welcome to do so if you want.)

Kobo is having a sale in Canada and the U.S. for the next week of various mysteries in both audio and ebook. Check it out here. If you somehow haven’t read the first three Maggie May mysteries, the box set is part of the promo and on sale for $4.99 right now.

As for me…

I really don’t know where time goes. I made the (foolish? smart?) decision to sell my house earlier this year which meant that writing took a back seat to staging, packing, moving, living in a hotel for three weeks, moving again, unpacking, etc.

I wish I could say I’d moved into my forever home and wouldn’t be doing this again anytime soon but the pup and I actually moved into an apartment so that’s not true.

Fortunately my old girl (she’s now EIGHT) is loving apartment life. She’s been dragging me on hour-long walks most mornings exploring the neighborhood which has at least six of those mini free libraries. (A very good sign of a good neighborhood IMO.)

She’s lost ten pounds which makes the vet happy. I…have not, I don’t think. But that’s because I’ve been enjoying chocolate croissants, Coke, and good beer, so I’m okay with that.

Unfortunately I realized that by writing the Housebound Holiday book I wrote myself into a corner and I have yet to decide how to get myself out of that corner. In the meantime it seems I’m making videos about how to use a software no one uses. (It’s sometimes painful to be a Learner. See CliftonStrengths for an explanation…)

That may lead to my recording audio versions of the books at some point, though, so who knows it may work itself out in a positive way.

Anyway. I wish I had better news than that, but it’s been one of those years. Probably for most of us at this point.

I just got the call that my grandpa passed away. He was the inspiration behind Grandpa Lou in my cozy mystery series and truly one of the most stand-up men I’ve ever known.

Unfortunately, real life is not as sunny and shiny as the world of a cozy mystery so my grandpa didn’t live in the mountains of Colorado anymore nor was he living next door to give me a hard time about my narrow-minded misconceptions of the world.

Sadly, I hadn’t seen him in years. My pup and I were able to visit with him and his lovely wife on our way back to Colorado seven years ago and it was a good visit. But he wasn’t up for travel anymore at that point so never made it here to visit me and I tend not to travel too much because of the pup so I never made it back to him.

I probably never said as much as I should’ve to him about how much he meant to me.

He didn’t have an easy life. And he certainly didn’t start off on the right side of the law. But the man I knew always had a good heart and a gentleness about him. He loved my grandma and was by her side until the day she passed.

He was a gifted craftsman, too. For thirty years I’ve had a cedar chest he made for his mother that’s a thing of beauty. While other furniture might’ve been left behind on various moves, that’s always been one of my most treasured pieces.

And I’m grateful to him for the years he and my grandma spent with us in Colorado helping my dad to run his often struggling sign business. Those were good years when they were with us. Eventually they had to move on to more steady work–he was a hard-rock miner most of his life–but I won’t forget the times we had.

We lost touch after my grandma and then my dad died. (18-year-old kids aren’t the best at keeping those ties alive, especially in those pre-internet days when you had to send letters or make expensive long-distance phone calls.) But thanks to the efforts of his new wife we were finally able to reconnect about a decade ago and spend those few days together.

I’m glad he was able to find love and family and a good home and that he lived his last days with someone who loved him by his side. He deserved that happiness. It was a good end for a good man who made the best of a tough start.

Love you, Grandpa.

For those of you who are still reading through the Maggie May and Miss Fancypants series (or who found your way here and haven’t yet started it but have heard such wonderful things you just want to dive right in), just a heads up that the first six books are now available in two three-book collections in both ebook and regular paperback versions.

(No large print on these ones because each one is about an inch-and-a-half thick in regular print.)

The second book does also include the short story, Halloween at the Baker Valley Barkery & Cafe.

And for those who have already read all the books, I do expect there to be more, but this has been a year and I may have a big move up ahead, so unfortunately no timeline to provide yet.

I assume for anyone following this blog that you’ve already read A Dead Man and Doggie Delights, but just in case…It’s available for free in ebook for the month of February.

And if you have already read it, PD Workman has a list of additional free mysteries available right now up on their blog. Not sure how long the titles will be free and haven’t personally read any of them, but worth checking out. From the covers I’d say they’re mostly more mystery than cozy mystery with perhaps a shade of thriller for some of them.

In other news…I do expect there to be at least two more Maggie May and Miss Fancypants mysteries. (I’m too much of a feminist to end with the next book I have in mind.)

I had hoped to have at least a short story out for New Year’s but, well, yeah. Let’s just say writers are not immune to what is happening in the world these days and it can be a challenge sometimes to write funny mystery in the face of life and what-not.

I had a draft and could’ve pushed it through but I think it would’ve suffered if I’d done so. And now I think I might expand that to a novel with a mystery involved as well which takes more time.

Unfortunately, I do have a few things to tie up before that next title will be out. I have some non-fiction titles that needed updating and since non-fiction is what pays the bills at the moment, that has to take priority.

Hopefully someday writing about my lovable dog and quirky people will take the place of the non-fiction, but I’m not there yet.

Sorry I don’t have better news on the new book front but hope you’re all doing well in these crazy times and love to your adorable pups for those of you lucky enough to have one.

For those of you in the United States or Canada who buy print versions, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve added another option for you, Aer.io. You can find the store here.

Ignore the “from” prices it’s showing. It seems to show the latest published book price as the from price which means the hard cover large print version prices are showing. But if you click on any of those books you’ll see that you have a choice to purchase the regular paperback, large print paperback, and large print hard cover versions at a discount of somewhere from 8-17%.

This is a new-to-me site but it lets me discount the print versions a bit for you and is run by the folks who actually print the print versions of my books and I’ve always had good experiences with them. (Knock wood.) There is a shipping charge, so it may not be a cheaper option even with the discount than Amazon or Barnes & Noble or any other large retailer, but wanted to let you know about it just in case it was a better option.

Just wanted to drop a quick note and let you know that the paperback version of A Poisoned Past and Puppermints is now available on B&N. AND, as they do with new releases, it’s on sale, so for however long this lasts you can order it for $5.85 instead of $7.99.

As I mentioned before, Amazon is delaying shipments of books right now, so for you print folks this will probably be the faster option.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-poisoned-past-and-puppermints-aleksa-baxter/1136739509?ean=9781950902668

My mom likes to buy my paperbacks on Barnes & Noble. And usually that isn’t an issue because the book is up within about two days of my publishing it and since she buys her books every Tuesday (new release day for most trade publishers), it’s always there when she’s ready to buy.

But not this time. Almost two weeks after I’d published the book it still wasn’t showing on their website. So I published it direct with them. And they said it was published, but it still wasn’t showing on their website. So I emailed them.

And they sent me a link as if it had been there all along and I was just missing something obvious.

So I don’t know if you can find it via search now or not, but here you go. A direct link to the product page: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-sabotaged-celebration-and-salmon-snaps-aleksa-baxter/1135985083?ean=9781078766548

If you buy in print from Barnes & Noble the latest release is finally available. Sorry for the delay.