Let me start off with the book news. “The Accidental Gumshoe – A Sandi Webster Mystery” is free to download on Amazon from 7/23/22 through 7/25/22. I’m offering this book so that if you buy the new release, “One Night in May – An Accidental Gumshoe Mystery,” you’ll know how the Sioux Simms story began. By the way, the stories take place in 1920, and the second story involves seven murders, and interestingly, they span about seventy years and the crimes aren’t all related to each other.

                           

I’ve been off the grid, in a manner of speaking, for a while now. Between covid and the lockdowns, health and family issues, and moving across the country, things haven’t been normal. It’s time for things to settle down and get back to normal (whatever that is), for all of us.

My daughter and I have moved to Mississippi and I’ve found that I love it here! I don’t think I’ll ever regret the move. Sometimes we have to make a change in our lives when led to do it. And who knows? Maybe life in this beautiful, wonderful, slower-paced life might lead to another story.

In the meantime, I’ve had time to think about some of the other stories I’ve written. For instance, my husband and I visited a ghost town. There were plenty of visitors, and I found myself wondering what it would be like if we were the only two in the town and for some reason we couldn’t leave. And further, what if we discovered a mystery. Hmm. This led to “Old Murders Never Die,” where Sandi Webster and her partner, Pete Goldberg, are stuck in a ghost town with not much to do but try to solve a vintage murder.

The imagination can be such a fun way to fill time.

I’m a Humphrey Bogart fan and my imagination took off again. What if Sandi met a Bogey look-alike? “The Bogey Man” was born and came to life when he tried to learn the biz from Sandi. Of course, that’s the private detective business. This also led to a five-book series starring the look-alike who – surprise, surprise – I call The Bogey Man. Chris Cross, his wife and their young son always seem to be right there when someone needs a mystery solved.

Back to Sandi, she enjoys her work as a Private Eye and wouldn’t want to change professions for any other line of work. Among other cases, the first one she solved was “A Well-Kept Family Secret,” involving a relative who was accused of a murder in the late 1800s.

She also ran into trouble when her mother and stepfather bought a house in the desert in Arizona that hadn’t been lived in for years. The interesting thing about this story, “What Are the Odds?” is that everything about the house really happened, including the fact that a murder was actually committed in the real life house. The story itself is fiction, but the things about the house are real. In real life, a pile of boxes fell and knocked a hole in the garage wall. Behind that hole was a… Well, you’d want to read the book to find out what was behind that wall. There was even a tarantula migration on the property, both in the book and in reality. The house provided so much material for a fertile imagination.

Sandi solves current day cases, but she has the most fun and the biggest challenges when someone approaches her with a vintage case that’s just begging to be solved.

The characters I write about are fun to work with and they seem to evolve into whoever and whatever they want to be, without much help from me.

Now I’ve got to get back to work on a new Sandi Webster story.

Thank you for joining me today and for letting me reminisce about a few of the storylines. I’ll be back as often as possible. Life is good here in Mississippi and getting better every day!

Until next time, I wish you good health and joy in your day to day lives.

The Sandi Webster Mysteries, The Bogey Man Mysteries, and The Accidental Gumshoe Mysteries are available from Amazon.com. I hope you’ll check out some entertaining mysteries.

Click here to take a trip to Amazon.com