The Story Behind The Story: “The Mysterious Case of the Missing Motive”

January 21, 2025

Alternative title: The Mysterious Origin of The Redemption Detective Agency Well, okay, it’s not THAT mysterious (even though the titles of the books are all “The Mysterious Case of …”). The Redemption Detective Agency is a spin-off from the Charlie Kingsley Mysteries (cozy mysteries) which is a spin-off from the Secrets of Redemption series (psychological […]

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The Story Behind The Story: “A Room for Murder”

January 10, 2025

A few years ago, one of my author friends reached out to ask me if I’d like to be in an anthology that was geared around female sleuths. At the time, I was writing a standalone psychological thriller (The Third Nanny), and I wasn’t sure where I was going to with my Secrets of Redemption

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The Story Behind the Story: “Red Hot Murder”

April 21, 2023

I love a good “impossible” mystery setup. Whether it’s a locked-door mystery (i.e., the mystery takes place in a locked room or house), a framing of an innocent person, or some other setup that seems impossible to overcome, they’re some of my favorite types of mysteries. In the case of Red Hot Murder, it’s the

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The Story Behind the Story: “The Girl Who Wasn’t There”

March 10, 2023

Hands down, the Secrets of Redemption series has been the most challenging of all my writing. It has also provided me with the most breakthroughs. (Isn’t that the way it always goes? We learn more from our challenges and failures than from our successes or what’s easy.) In March 2015, roughly six months after the

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The Story Behind the Story: “The Murder of Sleepy Hollow”

October 21, 2022

Growing up, watching mystery and detective television shows, like Murder She Wrote and Matlock, was a staple in my house. And this time of year was always my favorite because they would usually incorporate some sort of ghost story or unexplained supernatural element to the mystery. (Of course, all the loose ends would also be

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The Story Behind the Story: “Murder Among Friends” book 4

August 19, 2022

Murder Among Friends, book 4 Five friends go into the woods. Only four return. I’ve always had a soft spot for “locked door” mysteries or mysteries with a limited cast of suspects. (A locked door mystery is one that takes place in a limited location, like a house or a single room, with a limited

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Murder Among Friends the story behind the story

The Story Behind the Story: “The Taking”

July 8, 2022

All my life, I had loved reading fairy tales and myths. As a child, some relative (likely one of my grandmothers but I can’t remember now) had bought me the original Grimm’s fairy tales, which I devoured. (I’m not sure if whoever bought it realized how dark some of them were, but quite honestly, it

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The Story Behind the Story: “Loch Ness Murder”

June 21, 2022

A few years back, I discovered that if a lake is cold enough, and deep enough, it doesn’t give up its dead. In other words, if someone drowns in that cold, deep lake, their bodies will rarely surface. Needless to day, the mystery author in me was delighted to learn such a morbid fact, especially

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