FEATURED AUTHOR: HEATHER HAVEN

ABOUT THE BOOK

When chefs Charly and Cliff Harding divorce, she gets custody of their upscale restaurant and its namesake, Felix, the cat. He gets custody of their dog, Oscar. What they both still have custody of, though, is each other’s heart, but they’re the only two people in the small ski resort town of Snow Lake, Nevada, who don’t seem to know it. Cliff opens his own restaurant in direct competition with Charly and bad things begin to happen. Death threats, accidents, and murder are now on the menu. Their ‘if-you-can’t-take-the-heat-then-get-out-of-the-kitchen’ battles are backfiring on them. But can they find their way back to each other? Or will they spend the rest of their lives in prison unjustly accused of murder?

Book Details:

Title: Christmas Trifle

Author: Heather Haven

Genre: Romantic suspense


Series: Snow Lake Romantic Suspense Novels, book 1


Publisher: Wives of Bath Press (September 1, 2019)


Print length: 349 pages

On tour with: Great Escapes Book Tours


IFs ANDs OR WHATs INTERVIEW WITH HEATHER HAVEN

Ifs


Q: If you could talk to someone (living), who would it be and what would you ask them?
A: Queen Elizabeth. How do you do it? Why do you do it? You’re in your mid-nineties and yet you perform your queenly duties every day. Don’t you want to just play with your dogs? Don’t you want to sit around and schmooze with your husband, with no makeup, no hats, no formality? How outstanding it is to still hear the call of all that pomp and circumstance and for so many decades.

Q: If you could talk to someone (dead), who would it be and what would you ask them?
A: William Shakespeare. Did you really write all those plays and sonnets by yourself? Did you really invent all these phrases (and more) that we still use today? Such as: All that glitters isn't gold; All's well that ends well; Bated breath; To be-all and the end-all; To beggar description Break the ice; We have seen better days; A blinking idiot; Brave new world; Brevity is the soul of wit; The clothes make the man; Cruel to be kind; A dish fit for the Gods; It's Greek to me; He hath eaten me out of house and home; Foregone conclusion; In my heart of hearts; Jealousy is the green-eyed monster; Laid on with a trowel; Melted into thin air; Neither rhyme nor reason; Not slept one wink; Own flesh and blood; Short shrift; Something wicked this way comes; Star-crossed lovers; Sterner stuff; Too much of a good thing; A tower of strength; Wear my heart upon my sleeve; Wild-goose chase; What's done is done; The world is my oyster. Like most of us, I’ve used these phrases countless times.

Q: If you could step back into a moment or day in time, where would you go?
A: I would like to be there and listen to the Sermon on the Mount. I don’t consider myself a deeply religious person, but I would really like to experience that.

Q: If you had to do community service, what would you choose?
A: I like to help rescue animals and endangered species. I am deeply committed to saving rhinos. I can’t go to Africa or Asian, but I try to give as much $$$ as I can when I can.

Q: If you could meet any author for coffee, who would you like to meet and what would you talk about?
A: Stephen King. I would like to discuss his prolific writing abilities and his imagination. And I suspect he is a very nice man.


Ands


5 things you need in order to write:
    •    ideas
    •    time
    •    solitude
    •    inspiration
and
    •    a computer

5 things you love about writing:
    •    freedom
    •    far-ranging imagination
    •    endlessness
    •    control
and
    •    purpose

5 things you never want to run out of: 
    •    time
    •    good health
    •    people to love
    •    sense of fun
and 
    •    a positive outlook

5 favorite places you’ve been:
    •    San Miguel de Allende
    •    Kauai
    •    Florence
    •    Positano
and
    •    Prague

5 favorite things to do: 
    •    play with my cats
    •    watch old movies
    •    chat with friends
    •    work in my garden
and
    •    snuggle with my husband

Whats

Q: What’s your all-time favorite library?
A: 5th Avenue Library in New York City.


Q: What’s your favorite meal?
A: Tuscan Chicken with saffron rice and asparagus. I make it myself!

Q: What’s your favorite vacation spot?
A: I still dream about the time we were in Bermuda and I sat on the pale pink sands and played in the aqua waters all day. It was unbelievably beautiful.

Q: What’s your all-time favorite picture of yourself? 

A: Me, in my thirties. I really never looked this good. Freak shot.



Q: What’s your favorite dessert?
A: Fresh cut strawberries with fat-free whipped cream. No guilt whatsoever!

Q: What’s your favorite beverage?
A: Chardonnay.

Q: What’s your favorite ice cream?
A: It’s a tie! Halo’s Salted Caramel and Peaches and Cream.

Q: What’s your favorite thing to do when there’s nothing to do?
A: So rare! But watch old movies.


Q: What’s your favorite quote?
A: There are more thing in heaven and earth, Horacio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.


Q: What is the wallpaper on your computer’s desktop?
A: A gorgeous shot I took of the Na Pali Coastline from a boat. Blue skies, turquoise waters, green mountains, rainbow arced in the sky.

Q: What’s your all-time favorite place you’ve visited?

A: Here’s la parrocchia In San Miguel de Allende. I took the shot myself.


Q: What do you know now that you wish you knew then?
A: How really, really short life is.



Q: What author would you most like to review one of your books?
A: Agatha Christie. While I’m daydreaming, that’s the person.



Q: What book are you currently working on?
A: Casting Call For a Corpse, Book Seven of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries

.

Q: What’s your all-time favorite place in your town? 

A: The orange tree woven through by a grape vine on my back patio. Small, but much loved.

What’s your latest recommendation for:
Food: Fresh salmon covered with dill, butter, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and a touch of white wine. Bake at 350. Never tire of it.
Music: Score from Hamilton the Musical.
Movie: Howard’s End
Book: Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. One of the most spectacular books ever written.
Audiobook: What the hey, let’s throw in my audiobook for Murder is a Family Business, Book one of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries. It turned out well!
Netflix/Amazon Prime: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Miscellaneous: Support the International Rhino Foundation. These nearly extinct creatures need our help.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Heather Haven has won awards for her short stories, novels, comedy acts, television treatments, and ad copy. While in New York, her one-act plays were mounted at Manhattan’s famed Playwrights Horizon. She ghostwrote a book on how to run an employment agency, followed by a stint at No Soap Radio where she delivered humorous advertising. Since moving to the west coast, she has penned four mystery series: the Alvarez Family, Persephone Cole Vintage, Love Can Be Murder, and the Snow Lake Romantic Suspense Novels, of which Christmas Trifle, Book one, debuted September 2019. Her docu-fiction, Murder under the Big Top, and anthology, Corliss and Other Award-Winning Stories, round out her work. Heather and her husband are allowed to live in the foothills of San Jose with their two precocious cats.



Connect with Heather:
Website  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Amazon Page

Buy the book:
Amazon

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INTERVIEW WITH HEATHER HAVEN'S LEE ALVAREZ

ABOUT THE BOOK

Lee’s Uncle Tío is smitten with the guest chef at a Silicon Valley culinary arts institute. When the woman is arrested for the murder of a fellow chef, a reluctant Lee agrees to help prove Tío’s lady love innocent. But Lee suspects the ambitious, southern belle of a cook might just be guilty. Undercover work at the institute proves to have more pitfalls than whipping up a chocolate soufflé. The killer isn’t done and tries to get Lee out of the way permanently. But just who is the murderer? The accused? One of her two sons? Another inmate from a cooking school with more to hide than dirty dishes? With secrets as plentiful  as sauces, the nagging question remains, if Lee proves the lady chef guilty, will Tío ever forgive her for sending his new love to jail?

ABOUT LEE ALVAREZ

Lee Alvarez grew up wanting to be a ballerina. Unfortunately, fate had other plans. At 5’8” she was considered tall for the profession, but more than that, she was a mediocre dancer, at best. She knew if she pursued a career in ballet, she would be relegated to the back line of the chorus. What she was, however, was a crackerjack ferret. She can find anything or anybody just by putting together the facts, no matter how long ago they took place. As the family-run business is Discretionary Inquiries, Inc. an agency specializing in cybercrimes, it was a natural fit. And she loves her job. But solving cybercrimes isn’t all she does. Lee tends to fall over dead bodies when she’s not looking. She hates that.

INTERVIEW WITH HEATHER HAVEN'S LEE ALVAREZ

Lee, how did you first meet your Heather? 
I was minding my own business, thinking about something or other – probably a shoe sale – when I felt this ‘pull.’ I looked up from my mocha macchiato and this woman, we—know—who,  was staring at me over her latte. You never know who you’re going to see in Starbucks these days.

How true is that. Want to dish about her?
Nah, Heather’s okay. Besides, she’d probably pay me back by putting me on a sinking boat. Even though I can swim, I have this shark thing.

Why do you think that your life has ended up being in a book?
Just my luck. Actually, I’m pretty lucky. Maybe I ended up in this book because the author wanted to show a family of immigrants who made good, who may not get each other all the time, but work their darndest at it, and love each other no matter what happens. She thinks we’re one of the American success stories. You can’t beat that type of good fortune.

Did you have a hard time convincing Heather to write any particular scenes for you?
I spend a lot of my time trying to convince her NOT to write particular scenes for me. I mean thank you very much, but she’s not the one who has to dance in a lizard lounge act in Vegas or shinny over a sailboat’s boom in the middle of the Pacific or as in this book, disguise herself as a dishwasher in a cooking school for eight-hours a day wearing a stupid wig and buckteeth.

What do you like to do when you are not being actively read somewhere?
I like to play with my cats and my husband, Gurn. Not necessarily in that order.

If you could rewrite anything in your book, what would it be?
Honestly? Not a thing. I suspect it has the right amount of humor, drama, plot, suspense, and action. Anyway, that’s what Heather told me.

Tell the truth. What do you think of your fellow characters?
As most of the continuing characters are my family, thank gawd I like them. My brother, Richard, is the head of IT. He’s a brainiac, but in that techy, nerdy sort of way. And he’s a good guy. Besides, he married Vicki, who gives the Alvarez family a lot of heart. They recently had a baby, my niece, Stephanie. Then there’s Tío, my uncle, retired executive chef of San Jose’s famed Las Mañanitas Restaurant. Everyone should have a Tío in their lives. He gives unconditional love while serving up the best chimichangas ever. My mother, Lila Hamilton Alvarez, believes what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to accessorize. She’s also the CEO of the family business, Discretionary Inquires. Everyone else calls it D. I. Not Mom. She would rather eat broken glass than use initials or nicknames. And do not even think about wearing navy blue with black at any time. You will live to regret it. Behind her back, I call her She Who Must Be Obeyed. We may be poles apart on nearly everything in the world, but we are quite fond of one another. I guess it’s that mother/daughter thing.

Do you have any secret aspirations that your author doesn’t know about?
I would like to play the ukulele. But don’t let that get around the neighborhood.

Understandable. Tell us about your best friend.
My best friend is my husband, Gurn Hanson. Maybe that’s why I married him. Yes, he’s got green-grey eyes, a lop-sided smile that just sends shivers through me, but he’s also an ex-navy SEAL, one of the good guys. And he gets me. He brings out the best in me. I tell him everything. He says I bring out the best in him, too. Pretty win-win.

What are you most afraid of?
Sometimes I’m afraid it all might go away. I work really hard to see that it doesn’t, but there are no guarantees in life. Just do your best and hold on tight.



What’s the best trait of another character in the book?
Best: Lila Hamilton Alvarez, my mother, is probably the most perfect woman in the world. She is smart, beautiful, savvy, and never has a bad hair day.
Least: See above.

How do you feel about your life right now? What, if anything, would you like to change?
I wouldn’t change a thing! Not that I have it all, I don’t. But I do have a great job, except when Heather has me chasing the bad guy over rooftops. I have a wonderful, loving family, and I’ve been married for four months to a guy who thinks I’m about as great as I know he is. I even lost two pounds. I mean it doesn’t get much better than that.

Will you encourage Heather to write a sequel?
Could I stop her? Heather’s got a few things going now,  Curtain Call For A Corpse (working title), Book Seven of the Alvarez Family Mystery Series. Then there’s the spin-off Lee Alvarez Novellas based on just Gurn and me. The one out now is called Honeymoons Can Be Murder. She’s working on Marriage Can Be Murder. Let’s face it, she keeps me hopping!



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Multi-award winning author, Heather Haven, writes humorous, noir, historical, and romantic mysteries, short stories, and plays. The San Francisco Book Review writes of her Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries set in today’s Silicon Valley, “I found the strongest part . . . is Lee Alvarez herself: strong, competent, and witty, in a growing tradition of tough female detectives . . . All in all, this is a strong work in the genre of the mystery/thriller.” Heather and her husband of thirty-five years are allowed to live in the foothills of San Jose with their two adorable but demanding cats.


Connect with Heather:
Website  |  Blog  |  Facebook  |  Twitter 

Buy the book:

Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Kobo 

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GUEST POST BY HEATHER HAVEN

ABOUT THE BOOK

Lee Alvarez takes a job ferreting out the saboteur of a start-up company’s Initial Public Offering in the heart of Silicon Valley. Little does she know early one morning she will find the CEO hanging by the neck in the boardroom wearing nothing but his baby blue boxers. Was it suicide? Or was it one of the many people who loathed the man on sight, including his famous rock singer ex? Enter the world’s scariest drug, Devil’s Breath, and the bodies start piling up all the while she’s planning her very own Christmas wedding. Ho, ho, ho.

GUEST POST BY HEATHER HAVEN

The first book I remember reading was Uncle Remus, when I was six or seven. When I turned nine, I hop scotched to the public library and checked out Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Old Clock.

My life was changed forever. I not only fell in love with reading, big time, I fell in love with mysteries and writing. It’s a love affair that has never waned. I went to college on a costume scholarship, studied drama then went to NYC to become an actress. I hated it. I hated the life of an actor. It wasn’t for me. All that traveling! Living out of a suitcase! Who needs it?

However, I discovered I loved writing. I could sit in a room and write for hours, send characters to the far corners of the earth, and not have to leave my chair. To make money, I worked in advertising for a while, wrote short stories, one-act plays, ad copy, and nightclub acts for performers. I loved it.

I didn’t tackle writing a novel until I came to California, wine country. Chardonnay helped tamp down any jitters I had about taking on 75 thousand words and hoping somebody would read them. Now I write 85 thousand words and still hope somebody reads them.
Essentially, I love the written word. For example, there’s nothing I admire more than someone who writes beautiful imagery that stirs the heart. Remember Don McLean’s "Vincent" (Starry, Starry Night)? The lyrics are absolutely gorgeous. Add that beautiful, haunting music and you have something memorable. If Vincent Van Gogh looks down from time to time, I believe he knows he did something right to evoke such a wondrous song.

My favorite author may surprise you, me being a mystery writer. It’s P.G. Wodehouse. No matter how many times I read Right Ho, Jeeves! it makes me laugh. I have read every book of his I can get my hands on and he wrote over 90. He’s most famous for the Jeeves and Bertie Wooster collection of short stories and books, but he was a prolific writer of screenplays, plays, novels, short stories, pretty much anything. I’m a big fan.

Of course, there’s Agatha Christie, the queen of the mystery, the plot maker. She’s the one who made crime writing all warm and fuzzy. Let’s not forget Janet Evanovitz, who turned it all into a wonderfully, funny game.

I developed the protagonist of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, Lee Alvarez, because I wanted to have a central character that was identifiable but different, off-kilter, and likable. Lee’s not your typical protagonist. She’s smart, talented, and loves dancing, shoes, handbags, and a good joke. She knows her own worth but, like all of us, has her moments of self-doubts. They seem to hit her when least expected. It makes for some funny moments in the books.

The Alvarez Family owns Discretionary Inquiries, a Silicon Valley investigative agency dealing in the theft of software, hardware, and Intellectual Property. Dead bodies are not in Lee’s job description, but they seem to crop up, especially when she isn’t looking. But as she chases down a new suspect, she strives to be a better person, knowing nobody’s perfect. Except maybe her mother, Lila-Never-Had-A-Bad-Hair-Day Hamilton Alvarez, she who can chill a glass of chardonnay at a single glance. Try living in that woman’s designer-clad shadow all your life.

I’ve tried to create a real, California-honed, reluctant PI in Lee, who wears Vera Wang clothes, while cheering on Humphrey Bogart. She reads Dashiell Hammett detective stories or watches old black and white movies on TV, while searching the web or her iPhone. She loves peanuts and a good, classic martini—gin, vermouth, orange bitters, and 3 olives. And served icy cold, please, straight up!

The humor is sparkly, the characters real but slightly larger than life. Most importantly, I try to keep it positive. I wanted The Alvarez Family to like each other, even if they don’t always ‘get’ each other.

On a personal note, I read so many books where protagonists are antagonistic and nasty to the people they profess to love. How can the reader like them or root for people that dysfunctional? I can’t. I try to write a world I’d like to live in, a family I’d like to live with. Or should I say, with whom I’d like to live. Better grammar.

The latest book of the series, Book Five, is The CEO Came DOA. The subject matter forced me to do a lot of research about the world of startups in Silicon Valley. And I thought writers were crazy!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After studying drama at the University of Miami in Florida, Heather went to Manhattan to pursue a career. There she wrote short stories, comedy acts, television treatments, ad copy, commercials, and two one-act plays, which were produced, among other places, at the famed Playwrights Horizon. Once, she even ghostwrote a book on how to run an employment agency. She was unemployed at the time.

Her first novel started the Silicon Valley based Alvarez Family Murder Mystery Series. Murder is a Family Business, Book One, won the Single Titles Reviewers’ Choice Award 2011, followed by the second, A Wedding to Die For, 2012 Global and EPIC finalist for Best eBook Mystery of the Year. Death Runs in the Family won the coveted Global Gold for Best Mystery Novel, 2013. DEAD . . . If Only won the Global Silver for Best Mystery Novel, 2015. Her fifth novel of the series, The CEO Came DOA, debuts September, 2016. She loves writing this series mainly because she gets to play all of the characters, including the cat!

Heather’s other series, The Persephone Cole Vintage Mystery Series, is set in Manhattan circa 1942, during our country’s entrance into WWII. The Dagger Before Me, Book One, was voted best historical and mystery novel by Amazon readers in October, 2013.  It was followed by Iced Diamonds. Book Three, The Chocolate Kiss-Off, is a 2016 Lefty Award Finalist Best Historical Mystery.

On a personal note, her proudest award is the Silver IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Awards) Best Mystery/thriller 2014 for Death of a Clown. The stand-alone noir mystery is steeped in Heather’s family history. Daughter of real-life Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus folk, her mother was a trapeze artist/performer and father, an elephant trainer. Heather likes to say she brings the daily existence of the Big Top to life during World War II, embellished by her own murderous imagination.

Heather gives lectures, speaks at book clubs, and moderates author panels in the Bay Area, as well as teaching the art of writing. She believes everyone should write something, be it a poem, short story or letter. Then go out and plant a tree. The world will be a better place for it.

Connect with Heather:
Website   |  Facebook   |  Twitter  |  Amazon  

Buy the book:
Amazon 

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