FEATURED AUTHOR: BARBARA BARRETT

ABOUT THE BOOK

Essential oils distributor Dorcas Wiley is the boss everyone loves to hate. So when she turns up dead, killed by her own trophy, disgruntled saleswoman Cathy Broderick is the obvious suspect in her murder. Despite opportunity, motive and incriminating evidence, Cathy declares her innocence and enlists her mah jongg pals—Sydney Bonner and her cronies Marianne, Micki and Kat—to help save her from the death penalty.

Hot off a recent and nearly deadly investigation, the women are cautious about putting themselves in peril again. Syd’s spouse isn’t thrilled about another mystery in their lives, either, but he can’t resist the plea of Cathy’s husband. Soon, Syd is leading the way as they tangle with grumpy salespeople, the victim’s estranged husband and boyfriend, a mysterious housekeeper, a litigious customer, an annoyed sheriff and Cathy’s own arrogant lawyer.

The women have their own issues to deal with in their central Florida town of Serendipity Springs. Kat faces a health challenge, Micki fields a mysterious inquiry from her ex, Marianne has a chaotic anniversary and Syd wrestles with her husband over who’s really in charge. But nothing puts everyday life into perspective like the moment when their investigation brings them face to face with danger.

Book Details:

Title: Bamboozled

Author: Barbara Barrett       

Genre: Cozy Mystery


Series: Mah Jongg Mystery, book 2
Publisher: self-published (April 3, 2018)

Page count: 268

On tour with: Great Escapes Book Tours

INTERVIEW WITH BARBARA BARRETT

Barbara, what’s the story behind the title of your book?
The Mah Jongg Mystery series features four retired female sleuths who play mah jongg. There are three suits of tiles in mah jongg: craks, dots, and bamboos. Each title of this series will feature a different mah jongg term, in this case, the bamboos. I started with the title and then found a plot that centered on someone who was “bamboozled.”

Tell us about your series. Is this book a standalone, or do readers need to read the series in order?
This is a standalone with background information about the four main characters in each book. 

Where’s home for you?
I currently reside in central Florida seven months of the year and central Iowa the other five. This mah jongg series is set in central Florida.

Where did you grow up?
I grew up in southeast Iowa in the Mississippi River town of Burlington. It serves as the locale for my first contemporary romance series, The Matchmaking Motor Coach, about three brothers who customize luxury coaches. 

What do you love about where you live?
I love the sense of community. My husband and I decided to live in an intergenerational town rather than a gated, over-55 establishment so that we could be near families and enjoy a wide variety of things to do. When I first moved there, I knew no one except our real estate agent; I joined a mah jongg group to be more social and it has served as one of my favorite pastimes since. 



What is the most daring thing you've done?
More about the community in which I live in central Florida. My husband continued to work for five more years after I retired and was only able to visit me in Florida every few weeks. Since I didn’t know anyone, I had to push myself out of my sometimes introvert self and meet new people. I did this by joining several community activities. I already mentioned mah jongg. I also took part in forming a book club, a knitting group, and participated in numerous events and excursions. 


What’s one thing you wish your younger writer self knew?
To eat better and take better care of my body.

What is your most embarrassing moment?
When I was in high school, I played the violin and served as the orchestra’s concertmistress. My director pushed me to play a solo in the state contest. I wasn’t very good at memorizing music but attempted it just the same. A friend of mine accompanied me on the piano. I was so nervous, I had to stop and start three times. Finally, I was able to proceed by looking over her shoulder at her music. Although it was humiliating, the experience also taught me how to survive in the midst of adversity and terrible embarrassment.


What makes you scared?
The unknown. Deep down, I have enough confidence in my intelligence and ability to react to unexpected situations that I could probably survive and maybe even thrive responding to unknown situations, but I still worry. It’s probably my writer’s brain that imagines so many different possibilities that makes me uneasy.

How did you meet your spouse?
My spouse and I met during floor counselor training our senior year of college. Back then, “sensitivity” training was very popular. One of the exercises in which all the new counselors participated was non-verbal communication. Everyone was tasked with circulating through the room and letting others know who they were without saying anything. My husband stood out to me because he was freaking at the idea of not talking and wound up making goofy faces and hand gestures. Love at first sight? Not exactly. Shortly thereafter, our two residence hall floors had a mixer and we were chaperones. On the sidelines, since neither of us was into dancing, we got to talking and that led to his taking me home and asking for a date the next week. That was in the fall; not quite eleven months later, he proposed. 

What brings you sheer delight?
Hugs from my grandchildren.

What’s one of your favorite quotes?
Romans 12:6 “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.” I like to believe that every one of us has a special talent; the challenge is to discover it and then not be afraid to use it.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where in the world would it be?
I live in Paradise (central Florida) the way it is and Iowa to stay grounded. But if I could live anywhere else, it would be Paris. I’ve been there three times and still haven’t seen enough. But living in and visiting are two different things. I have visited England, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and soon, Canada, and all have been amazing experiences. I have also enjoyed seeing different parts of the United States, especially the Grand Canyon and Pacific Coast.

What’s your favorite line from a book?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...” Why does this appeal to me? I guess because it sort of says it all.

Are you like any of your characters?
I like to think there is a little bit of me in each of my four senior sleuths. I gave Sydney my leadership skills, Marianne, my analytical ability, Kat, my optimism and Micki, my inquisitiveness.

What book are you currently reading and in what format?
Kristen Hannah’s The Great Alone on my iPad. Trying to finish it before our Alaskan cruise.


What are you working on now?
Book 3 in this series, Connect the Dots. This time, the main protagonist is Micki Demetrius, and her attempt to help a fellow mah jongg player fight the developer that left so many items unfinished in her new condo and discover how her son really died.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Barbara Barrett started reading mysteries when she was pregnant with her first child to keep her mind off things like her changing body and food cravings. When she’d devoured as many Agatha Christies as she could find, she branched out to English village cozies and Ellery Queen.

Later, to avoid a midlife crisis, she began writing fiction at night when she wasn’t at her day job as a human resources analyst for Iowa State Government. After releasing eleven full-length romance novels and one novella, she returned to the cozy mystery genre, using one of her retirement pastimes, the game of mah jongg, as her inspiration. Not only has it been a great social outlet, it has also helped keep her mind active when not writing.

Bamboozled, the second book in her “Mah Jongg Mystery” series, features four friends who play mah jongg together and share otherwise in each other’s lives. None of the four is based on an actual person. Each is an amalgamation of several mah jongg friends with a lot of Barbara’s imagination thrown in for good measure. The four will continue to appear in future books in the series.

Anticipating the day when she would write her first mystery, she has been a member of the Mystery/Romantic Suspense chapter of Romance Writers of America for over a decade. She credits them with helping her hone her craft. 

Barbara is married to the man she met her senior year of college. They have two grown children and eight grandchildren.




Connect with Barbara:
Website  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Goodreads  |  Newsletter

Buy the book:
Amazon

FEATURED AUTHORS: JOYCE & JIM LAVENE

ABOUT THE BOOK

Give ‘em Pumpkin to Talk About
A Pumpkin Patch Mystery
First in a New Series

Richmond attorney Sarah Tucker returns to sell her family’s abandoned farm in Misty River, Virginia despite unanswered questions about her grandparents’ disappearance sixteen years earlier. Sarah was only twelve when she went to visit and found her grandparents had vanished. No amount of searching has brought answers.

Now Sarah is faced with other issues when a man is killed who claimed to have information about what happened to her grandparents. She learns of a Confederate chest of gold that is said to be buried on the property, and treasure hunters who are willing to do anything to get their hands on it.

Were her grandparents murdered for the gold? Sarah can’t sell the land and go back to her life until she has answers. But the cost of the answers may be her life.
Includes farm-fresh recipes!

INTERVIEW WITH JOYCE & JIM LAVENE

Joyce and Jim, you co-author your books. How did you get started writing and when did you consider yourselves “authors?”
We had our first book published in 1999. It was a Silhouette Romance titled A Family for the Sheriff. We started writing together in the early 90s.

What's your favorite thing about the writing process?
Rough draft – the chance to tell the story from beginning to end.

How long is your to-be-read list?
Too long.

Can you share some of your marketing strategies with us?
We take every opportunity to talk to our readers and interact with them on as many levels as we can in person and online.

If you could only watch one television station for a year, what would it be?
BBC.

How often do you tweet?
Every day. It is part of our marketing strategy.

How do you feel about Facebook?
Love it! There is no better way to connect with readers.

What five things would you never want to live without?
Words. My family. Trees. Back roads. Water.

Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
A complex mix of both.

What choices in life would you like to have a redo on?
None. I am happy with my life and the choices I have made.

What’s one of your favorite quotes? 
Not to the swift the race;
Not to the strong the fight;
Not to the righteous, perfect grace:
Not to the wise, the light.
But often faltering feet
Come surest to the goal;
And they who walk in darkness meet
The sunrise of the soul.
- Henry Van Dyke

What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to write?
The Everything Guide to Writing a Novel. I never realized how difficult it is to write about yourself.

Where is your favorite library, and what do you love about it?
Cannon Library in Kannapolis, NC. They are very charming and hospitable to everyone.

You can be any fictional character for one day. Who would you be?
Tinkerbell.

What's your relationship with your cell phone?
Love it.

How many hours of sleep do you get a night?
3 or 4.

What is your favorite movie?
Right now – Jupiter Ascending. Every morning I get up and say, “Yupiter, get the coffee.”

Do you have a favorite book?
Right now – Dresden #3
Do you sweat the small stuff?
Always – the small stuff is important.

What are you working on now?
The first Canterville Bookshop Mystery – A Dickens of a Murder, November 2015

Lightning round:
Cake or frosting? Both.
Laptop or desktop? Laptop.
Chevy Chase or Bill Murray? Eww!
Emailing or texting? Texting.
Indoors or outdoors? Bugs or not bugs?
Tea: sweet or unsweet? Unsweet with lemon.
Plane, train, or automobile? Auto

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Joyce and Jim Lavene write award-winning, bestselling mystery and urban fantasy fiction as themselves, J.J. Cook, and Ellie Grant. Their first mystery novel, Last Dance, won the Master’s Choice Award for best first mystery novel in 1999. Their romance, Flowers in the Night, was nominated for the Frankfurt Book Award in 2000. They have written and published more than 70 novels that are sold worldwide for Harlequin, Penguin, Amazon, and Simon and Schuster. They have also published hundreds of non-fiction articles for national and regional publications. They live in Midland, North Carolina with their family and their rescue pets—Rudi, Stan Lee, and Quincy.

Connect with Joyce & Jim:
Website  |  Facebook  | Twitter  |  Amazon 

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Guest Post by Carolyn Haines

About the book

Sarah Booth Delaney is heartbroken: her fiancé Graf Milieu has decided to move to Hollywood permanently, leaving their relationship in shambles. Sarah Booth has a perfect distraction, however, in the form of the Black and Orange Halloween ball her best friends are throwing in New Orleans. Sarah Booth plans to dance the night away to the swinging tunes of her old flame Scott Hampton's blues band. But just as the party gets going, Scott receives a mysterious message that threatens his life and the lives of his bandmates. Sarah Booth knows that a new case is just what she needs to take her mind off her failed relationship with Graf, and she's ready to help Scott investigate. And then the message turns from threat to reality when the bartender from Scott's club is gunned down in a drive-by. Enlisting Sheriff Coleman Peters and the rest of her friends from Zinnia, Mississippi, Sarah Booth is caught in a race against the clock as she tries to stop a killer from striking again.

With a twist around every corner, Carolyn Haines will delight readers with Sarah Booth Delaney's latest zany adventure in Bone to be Wild.

Form Versus Formula

    I teach fiction writing at a university, both graduate and undergraduate students. Part of my duties includes working with students on thesis projects. One thing about teaching — if I intend to answer the hard questions serious students ask, I have to learn and keep learning every week.

    After publishing 70 books, I’ve learned some lessons the hard way, and perhaps the students will benefit from my journey. The first thing I tell them is this: The two most important things a writer decides is whose story she’s writing and which POV the writer will use to tell the story. These are crucial. Most books can be only one person’s story. (There are exceptions to everything, so these are general rules.)

    So many young writers want to tell everyone’s story. It’s difficult to learn how to cut out that one story from the herd of great stories and focus on that. It is crucial, though.

    Point of view, whether first or third. (I’m not a huge fan of second person POV for a novel. Short stories, fine. Novels, very difficult.) This decision impacts the structure of your book. In my opinion, most failed novels either have structural flaws or the plot is faulty. The smartest thing to do is focus on the structure before you begin writing. This will save a whole lot of rewriting down the road. And perhaps keep more hair on your head than torn out on the floor!

    Here is where we get to the issue of form versus formula. Many young writers, especially in graduate programs, have disdain for what they consider to be formula fiction. Many genres fall into this student created dump. But what young writers fail to understand is that all artistic endeavors must follow form. Symphonies have movements. Paintings have a flow the eye naturally follows. Songs have verses and a chorus, and poetry has a dozen forms that test the ability of any writer.

    Fiction—or story, if you prefer—also has form. From the first drawings on cave walls, those wishing to impart a story or information had to create a pattern, or form, in which to convey their story. We in America read left to right, top to bottom. It’s the formula of the page. Story must have form or else it is incomprehensible. If a writer just threw scenes in random order into a book, the reader would be lost.

    But some types of books do have a more regimented form than others. Because they meet reader expectation in a particular way. In romance, for instance, happy endings are often part of the story. Readers expect this, and they get very upset if this is tampered with. But what’s wrong with meeting reader expectation? If a happy ending isn’t in the card for your characters, steer clear of the romance market and sell to an audience with different expectations.

    The three-act screenplay for movies has been taught for decades, and the most successful movies ever made bow to this form (or formula, if you insist). I seldom hear screenwriters debating the merits of ‘formula.’ They know to finance the cost of a film, they must meet the expectations of an audience. Only in fiction do I hear disdain for formula. And formula is only a box or prison if a writer doesn’t truly understand how it works.

    Readers love the rise and fall of action, the forward movement of the plot, the growth of the protagonist’s character. Whether it is general fiction, women’s fiction, thriller, mystery, or romance, story is what matters. It is how the writer executes her story that determines whether a book will gather an audience or not. Story trumps everything else.

    Whether you physically write an outline or merely think the story through, relying on character motivations (this should be what drives any story), you will save a lot of time if you study structure. After all, you wouldn’t build a house hurly-burly throwing up walls wherever. You need support for the roof and flow from room to room. Writing a book requires exactly the same thing.

    There’s plenty of freedom here. This isn’t a rigid box. The way you execute story is where you shine as a writer, but a nod to form and structure will make your story tighter and the journey of writing it a lot more pleasant.

About the author

Carolyn Haines has published over 70 books in a number of genres from general fiction to crime novel and cozy mystery. She was awarded the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence. She lives on a farm with 22 dogs, cats, and horses and is the sole labor force for Good Fortune Farm Refuge, a 501c3 rescue. She teaches fiction writing at an Alabama university. You can learn more about Carolyn, her rescue, or her crazy life at www.carolynhaines.com. Or you can join her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.