I want to give a huge Thank You to everyone who stopped by my booth at the Lakeside-Marblehead Lighthouse Festival on Saturday, October 11th. I enjoyed chatting with so many of you who love the Tanner series and are eager for me to have the fifth book ready for purchase next year at the event. I’m thrilled to say that 20 people who love the Tanner series showed up just to get their copy of my first standalone title, WINDSWEPT. And I sold 17 copies of the first book in the Tanner series, In The Shadow Of The Lighthouse, to folks who had never read my books! I’m already signed up for next year!!!

Watch for a future blog where I will be posting the details for a special contest where you can win the chance to appear in book #5!!

I’m so excited!!! The Lakeside-Marblehead Lighthouse Festival is being held on Saturday, October 11th. Once again I will be there, in the Wesley Lodge, signing copies of the first 4 books in the Tanner series. I will also be debuting my first standalone title: WINDSWEPT.

This peninsula-wide celebration offers fun for all ages, featuring 100+ arts & crafts vendors, a pumpkin decorating contest, hayrides, a farmer’ market and children’s crafts. And of course, it wouldn’t be a lighthouse festival without tours of the Marblehead Lighthouse and the Wolcott Keeper’s House.

I look forward to talking with many of you from previous years and meeting those who are new to my books.

See you there!!

I approved the cover design for Windswept!  I love how the team was able to take the gates, that are bulletproof in the story and put them into a tropical background. Covers help set the theme and give the book energy and in my case mystery. I think the cover achieves that along with being eye-catching.

The editing process is finished and I am now waiting on the final approval for the book. Hopefully, it will come this week because I will need about fifty copies of the book to take to the Marblehead Lighthouse Festival on October 11^th.

Waiting is sooooo stressful.

Last year at this time I was fast tracking my manuscript, Bent Tree Cottage, through the editing and publishing phase. I needed finished copies ready for the Marblehead Lighthouse Festival held the second weekend in October. Fifty copies of the book were delivered two days before I was to leave for Marblehead! That was cutting it too close, and I vowed never to do it again!

This year on January 1^st I’d already gotten a good start on Windswept and had a very doable schedule mapped out. The first draft of the manuscript would be finished at the end of April. Revisions finished by June 1^st and then off to the editor and ready for formatting soon thereafter. I could easily have the copies in hand by the beginning of October. Unfortunately, by the end of April, I was loving the story and kept adding more scenes. I gave Big Pine Key a new history, dating back to 1560––actually the first settler didn’t appear until 1870. That took some time to create. But I was still convinced I could make the June deadline. All those new twists and turns in the plot meant more fact finding. And Spring meant the beginning of yard work. So, I gave myself a new deadline––July. I was finally happy and finished on August 1^st!

I’m on the fast track again!

WINDSWEPT

Still grieving over the loss of her family . . . Winifred Forrester learns she had another family she never knew existed. She is contacted by a private investigator to talk about her inheritance. Inheritance? From a notorious Detroit crime lord? It must be a joke. Follow Freddie through her journey of uncovering the family she didn’t know about, the forgotten island property she is to inherit and the lucrative history behind it, all while trying to figure out who wants her dead and why. This book takes you from Chicago and Detroit to the Florida Keys and its rich history going as far back as the fifteen hundreds. A suspenseful mystery full of intrigue, mob bosses, movie stars, pirates and history dating back to the Spanish Royalty of 1560. Hang on for another fast-paced mystery suspense full of twists and turns that you won’t want to end.

I let my long-standing membership in Romance Writers of American lapse during the COVID years and didn’t consider rejoining until this year. That is when I found out that the Northeast Ohio chapter had closed and many of the members moved into the Great Lakes Fiction Writers organization. So today I attended a membership event that was held at Bookhouse Brewing near Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood.

I look forward to attending many of the upcoming meetings and getting to know new authors, as well as getting reacquainted with authors that I haven’t seen in the last few years.

A great event on a beautiful day.

I had a wonderful time yesterday at the Books In The Woods event in Mentor, Ohio. It was great meeting and chatting with so many readers who are new to my books, as well as, the many authors. One new author, Bella who just turned 14 not only sold out of her books, but gave a reading as well! I’m sure she is off to a wonderful writing career.

Much of the third book in the Tanner family series, It Started With Besse takes place within a few miles of where the event took place. The people I talked to loved hearing how I took locations that they were familiar with and turned them into a mystery with lots of suspense.

I look forward to going back next year.

I can’t believe it’s just one week from now and I’ll be attending this great event in a historical old mansion––the perfect location for a murder mystery or romance novel. I will have all four of my books for sale.  Hope to see you there!!

February flew past in a writing frenzy with WINDSWEPT’s story now taking place on Big Pine Key. What is a key? Why not an Island? By definition, an island is a piece of land surrounded by water. A key is a small low-lying coral reef.

Over the past twenty-six years I spent many winters (and some summer months) at our house on Big Pine Key. I love the diversity the Keys offer to someone who has spent her whole life living in northern Ohio. Well, except for the six years that I lived in Toronto, Ontario, and the winters up there were even more brutal. Living in the Keys, you learn that there are major differences even between mainland Florida. Like not having dirt! If you want to plant something you first need to go to your local garden centers and buy the soil by the bag or have it delivered in a truck, if you are really ambitious. What about digging a hole for that bush, tree or flower––you can’t––you are living on a rock! When I first moved to Big Pine, I thought how wonderful it would be to live on an island surrounded by beaches. Right!! You must drive to Bahia Honda State Park for a sandy beach. Thousands of years ago the Florida Keys were nothing more than coral reefs.

My first year on Big Pine, and wanting to create a tropical oasis, I made my raised flower beds, filled my SUV with bags of soil and bought all the beautiful flowering plants that grow so well in South Florida. My piece of paradise was fenced in, so I didn’t need to worry about the marauding little deer, unless someone left the gate open––which did happen on more than one occasion.  I planted several Hibiscus in shades of pink, yellow and red in soil-filled rings of garden edging.

Bougainvillea bushes were planted in raised beds in the front corners of the fencing to add curb appeal. Over the next couple of weeks, the deer had eaten the Bougainvillea petals that they could reach, the Hibiscus flowers had all disappeared and I walked outside one morning to see a giant iguana sitting on top of the last bush eating the red flowers.

After twenty-six years I got pretty good at gardening on Big Pine, I now have very large and healthy cactus!

It seems like only yesterday when I finished decorating the Christmas tree for the holiday season. Fleeting glimpses into my next book, WINDSWEPT danced around in my head yet I wasn’t ready to commit them to paper, actually my laptop. Festivities with family and friends kept any serious writing at bay, along with the twenty inches of snow that dumped on us the days following Thanksgiving.

The snow continued into January, so did temperatures in the single digits. Four to six inches of snow is typical weather for northeastern Ohio, but that much in the deep south??? The kids looked like they were having a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. That snow and ice created a whole new adventure for the adults who had to figure out how to drive in that stuff. So, I huddled down and began writing.

My research so far has taken me from Mob Bosses of the 1960s to the present-day areas of Traverse City, Michigan and the Florida Keys. I must say that I’m so impressed with the diversity of the Traverse City region that I feel a road trip this summer is in order.

This bit of catch-up has been nice, but I must get back to Windswept. I’m about to throw  Winifred Forrester into another difficult situation.

Were you hoping to attend the Lakeside-Marblehead Lighthouse Festival for your autographed copy of BENT TREE COTTAGE and stuff got in the way? Well, you can still get your personalized copy by submitting your request on my CONTACT form. I will get back to you as quickly as possible.