Sew Very Good!

Bad pun! But I love puns, the "badder," the better. And the first three novels in Terri Thayer's Quilting Mystery series are all "sew" good! (You can read her blog at Killer Hobbies.)  I loved each and every one of them! Hated to see the last one end and can't wait for the next one to come out. I may just have to pay full price for it. That's high praise from Ms. Penny Pincher here. Normally I would wait until I could get the book via PaperBack Swap or at least from the library. But I don't think I can wait that long to read the next in the series. I'll have to, however, since it won't be released until after Christmas. The good news, though, is that I can pre-order Monkey Wrench from Amazon. I put it on my Christmas wish list there. Here's hoping Santa pays attention.

I had heard such good things about the Quilting Mystery series that I was willing to wait for a very long time to get them from PaperBack Swap. I put the first three books on my wish list and eventually my wishes were granted, although they didn't get to me in the order in which they were published. I put them in my towering TBR pile and only recently got around to reading them. I decided that since I finally had all three, I would just read them one after the other. I like reading series books in the proper order. Most of the time, the individual books stand alone, as these did, but reading them in order does make certain aspects of character development and back story make a bit more sense. And that was the case with these books, too, but reading them in order is more satisfying to me. And I liked being able to read one immediately after the other. That's not always possible when you read the books as they are published, obviously.  I frequently forget key elements in the back stories of the characters.

In Wild Goose Chase, Dewey Pellicano is attending her first quilt conference since inheriting her mother's quilt shop. Before her mother's sudden death, Dewey worked with computers. But when the economy went bust, Dewey found herself unemployed. Mom to the rescue with a job offer--work for Quilter Paradiso setting up a computerized accounting and inventory control program, something right up Dewey's alley. But her career plans are changed when her mom is killed by a hit and run drunk driver. Dewey inherits the shop and is trying her best to learn more than she had ever planned to about running her own small business and the art of quilting. To make matters more difficult, Terri's sister-in-law Kym does her best to undermine Dewey at every turn, starting with sabotaging the computerized sales program on the very first day of the quilt conference. Matters get more complicated when Dewey finds famous quilt artist Claire Armstrong dead, killed with one of those deadly rotary cutters. And more complicated when she falls in love with former childhood friend turned hunky cop, Buster Healy. Healy is helping investigate Armstrong's murder, a complication for their budding romance. When Dewey stumbles upon a second body, Dewey feels compelled to hurry and find the murderer before anyone else winds up dead.

I'm Ba-a-ack! For now.

It's been quite a while since I last wrote about a book I've read. And I've read quite a few in the intervening time. Too many to recall right off the top of my head right now. But I've been stewing over not writing in this blog and my writing prompts blog, not to mention working on my own cozy novel. Supposedly those are things that are most important to me. You wouldn't know it by the lack of writing, would you? But I've been doing other things and a whole lot of nothing.I'm fighting depression and poor health -- a deadly combo -- to boot, so I'm much slower than usual.

At any rate, I'm back and I decided that Dec. 1 was a good date to start my latest self-improvement project. I had read somewhere that some writers used a calendar to keep them motivated to meet their daily writing goals. Since I always liked the "gold star" method in school and Sunday school, I think this might work for me. It's a visual approach that serves as not only a daily reminder, but also a reminder during the day that will hopefully keep my mind on my goals. I'm feeling hopeful, so why not take advantage of the mood.

I'm going to post a large calendar on the wall behind my computer and each day that I meet a minimal writing goal, I'll put a big X in the square. I may even buy some colorful stars at the Dollar Store! The point is never to have a blank space on the calendar. I think that could work.

My minimal writing goal: write something, anything, fiction or prose, in any of my blogs or using my writing software to work on my mystery. I have yet to decide the minimal number of words. I want it to be low, but not ridiculously so. I usually go way overboard and promise to write 1500+ words a day. That pace is hard to keep up. So I'm thinking if I start with at least 250 words, I'll most likely go beyond on most days. I usually do. It's the getting started that's the problem most times. But at least 250 word means I worked at it a bit, put some effort into something productive. That's for those days when I'm either so depressed I have to look up to see the bottom, as the saying goes, or so busy I don't have time for anything more.

Today I'll just list some of the books sitting here on the computer desk or on my Kindle-PC app that I've read over the last few months. I know there are others, but these are a good place to start.

In no particular order:
Pushing Up Daisies, Rosemary Harris
Hanging by a Thread, Monica Ferris
Wild Goose Chase, Terri Thayer
Old Maid's Puzzle, Terri Thayer
Ocean Waves, Terri Thayer
Murder Past Due, Miranda James (aka Dean James)
Murder on the Mind, L. L. Bartlett
Dead in Red, L. L. Bartlett
Cheated by Death, L. L. Bartlett
Bound by Suggestion, L. L. Bartlett
Trouble in Mudbug, Jana DeLeon

Mischief in Mudbug, Jana DeLeon
Showdown in Mudbug, Jana DeLeon
Rumble on the Bayou, Jana DeLeon


That list is a bit overwhelming, but I enjoyed most of the books so much, I can actually hardly wait to write about them.

Cat Sitter

Of course I enjoyed Blaize Clement's Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof, Book 4 of the Dixie Hemingway series! I love this series. Blaize does such a wonderful job of looking into the human heart, especially exploring issues of pain, loss, grief, and most importantly, recovery from devastating loss and trauma. Dixie is one fictional person I'd love to know in reality. Her sensitivity and dedication to the needs of her animal charges makes her, in my opinion, a better sleuth. She instinctively knows when something is not quite right about both her animal clients as well as the humans who pay for her services. It's not one bit surprising to me to learn that Blaize Clement was a family therapist before she became a professional writer. I knew from the very first book in the Dixie Hemingway series that Blaize had to have at least majored in psychology once upon a time, if not had actual experience as a psychotherapist. I bet she was a cracker jack therapist and families were lucky to have found her.

In this novel, Dixie is presented as a bit lonely and in need of a friend, so much so that she jumps at the chance to claim as a friend a woman she literally runs into. Once they get past the unpleasantness of their abrupt encounter, Dixie finds that this newcomer to the Siesta Key seems to be a kindred spirit. After the devastating loss of her husband and child, Dixie has been hibernating, only gradually coming out of her hiding place and rejoining the world via her pet sitting services. We can see her growth and change through each novel in the series. She has been dealing with her feelings for a couple of good looking men in her life, but in this book, the opening pages show us how desperately she simply needs a friend, not a client or acquaintance. Just someone to kick around with, chat over silly things with, compare likes and dislikes, share your family history and stories, hopes and dreams. Despite being back out in the land of the living and dealing with clients each day, solving local murders, interacting with the police, Dixie has been lonely for simple friendship. Now that really touched a rather sensitive nerve in me and at times reading this book was difficult for that reason. But I kept reading because I knew that, as always, I would learn a good bit about myself through Clement's analysis of Dixie by Dixie. And I was right.

When Laura, the new friend, ends up brutally butchered after she and Dixie have a great girls' night in at Laura's home, Dixie naturally wants to investigate. But as she does her investigation, she finds out that much of what Laura told her was not true and then feels let down and foolish.  But as she unravels Laura's mysteries, she also begins to unravel as few of her own inner mysteries and questions about friendship. I love how the two are so gracefully and soundly intertwined. Wish I could write like that.

I suspected the particular family situation revealed at the end of the book, but not everybody would, and knowing whodunit pages before the police arrested the culprit did not spoil the reveal for me at all. The ending was quite satisfying. Particularly her friend Pete's creative use of a saxophone. Loved it!

There is so much to this book to love and much to think about once the covers have been closed.

Starting Over --- Again!

I've got a stack of books by the computer, as well as a stack or two in my bedroom, of books I've read and have been intending to write about. You know the old saying about the road to hell, pavement and good intentions? Well, my road is first class all the way! Well paved indeed. 

It is late tonight and my brain is dead, so I'm going to bed. But here's hoping that when I get up a little later today, I'll stop back by the Book Nook and jot down a few notes about some of the books I've read since the last entry. Some I've loved, some I've liked well enough and one or two I simply couldn't finish for various reasons.

Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter

Well, curiosity almost killed the cat sitter! I had to order this book if for no other reason than the title intrigued me. As a budding author who can't come up with any decent titles myself, I am always drawn to books with titles that attract my attention, make promises that I sincerely hope the books will deliver on and play with words and phrases. As a language student and teacher with a weird sense of humor, I love playing with words and phrases. Always have from as far back as I can remember. So I appreciate titles that play with words and phrases and I especially appreciate books that live up to the title's promises.

When Dixie shows up at a client's house to care for her spoiled Abyssinian, she discovers a corpse in the kitchen, his face in the cat's water bowl and his head taped down to the floor. She discovers that her now missing client has a shocking past that gave many people good reason to want her dead and now that Dixie is onto their trail, she's in danger herself. When she herself becomes a suspect, she has to find the real killer before the killer finds her.

Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter delivered quite nicely on its promises for the most part. I had thought, judging by the title, that there would be a bit more humor in the book than there actually was. But still, I was not in the least disappointed and I will definitely be adding more books by Blaize Clement to my TBR pile.  I like her writing style and I really enjoyed getting to know the main character, former Sheriff's deputy Dixie Hemingway who's been through life's emotional wringer and has emerged, scathed but healing and hopeful. And, as in the case of so many other walking wounded, Dixie uses her pain to help others heal, too. I wish I were more like her than I am. Maybe after another book or two, a smidgen of Dixie's strength of spirit will rub off on me!

Death of a Saint Maker by Allana Martin

I have to love an author who is skilled enough to make me actually want to visit once again a part of the US I always thought of as desolate, empty and boring! Allana Martin made the Big Bend region come alive, complete with all the intricacies and cultural differences of life on the Texas/Mexico border.

Texana Jones runs a trading post and her husband has a veterinary business not too far from the Mexican border in the Big Bend area of southwest Texas. When Texana crosses the border to attend the dedication of a statue in a small village church, she and the villagers find that the church is locked. Villagers force the door open only to find the brutally murdered body of the itinerant saint maker, the man who had carved the church's new statue, and a neighbor's pit bull standing over the bloody corpse. The dog escapes before the villagers can grasp what has happened and capture the dog. While the villagers want to believe the dog is the culprit since it would lessen likelihood of police intervention, Texana has her doubts. When someone breaks into her trading post and steals her own statue carved by the saint maker, Texana's suspicion that the roaming artist was involved in something more than carving statues and figurines grows. When she joins her husband at the home of a wealthy Mexican landowner who is rumored to be a gun runner, she discovers that this shady character also happens to own a number of the saint maker's wood carvings. She is convinced there is a connection and is determined to find the truth. Death of a Saint Maker was a very satisfying well told story. I may not make Big Bend my next vacation spot, but I will definitely see it in a much different light.

Artifacts by Mary Anna Evans

This was a very well plotted, well written, enjoyable mystery with strong female characters and colorful settings. Though the plot was quite complicated, Mary Anna Evans handled it so well that I almost never got confused - which isn't always the case when novels change point of view or slip back and forth between the past and the present. Evans handled the historical story of how Faye's mixed race foremothers acquired and managed to keep and pass Joyeuse planation through the generations down to Faye by means of a journal Faye founds hidden away in the plantation's cupola. I had a little trouble believing Faye didn't just sit down and read the journal all at once; I know I would have. But despite that quibble, the bits of history revealed in the journal entries gave some excellent insight into not only Faye's family history, but also the social history of Florida. The stories helped Faye understand herself as she discovered answers to many of the questions she had been asking for as long as she could remember about her foremothers' history. Evans didn't finch in the face of the realities of slavery and racial prejudice from the ante-bellum South to modern times.

Faye Longchamp lives in a run-down mansion named Joyeuse, a plantation belonging to a former slave owner who actually owned Faye's great-great-grandmother Cally. Somehow Cally got ownership of the plantation around the time of the end of the Civil War and it remained in the family ever since. At least until the property taxes got so high Faye worries she will lose Joyeuse. To save her inheritance Faye, an avid former student of archaelogy who had to quit her studies due to a lack of funds, decides she has no choice but to excavate her own property and the nearby national preserve to find items she can sell on the black market. She abhors pothunters and hates having to be one. But she can't accept the loss of Joyeuse. Her whole identity is wrapped up in the dilapidated plantation. What she finds, however, on her latest excavation is not pottery or arrow heads, but the skeleton of a girl who died a mere 40 years before. Faced with the prospect of anyone finding out about her illegal deeds and the sure loss of Joyeuse, Faye investigates on her own. On the heels of the discovery of the skeleton, Faye and her fellow student archaeologists doing a legitimate dig on an island nearby discover the bodies of two of their own. Faye is convinced the students were killed by the same person who killed the woman she found only the day before, even though the murders were separated by several decades.

I did not guess who the villain was until nearly the end of the book. I was so engrossed in the story I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to finish it.