Mother Possum

I’m so excited to tell you that Choosing One Moment – A Time Travel Mystery has been released. It’s available in both ebook and paperback format on Amazon.com. After the series I wrote about self-publishing, I’m happy to say I had a minimum of problems putting the book up. I only had to reload the manuscript about five times. I’m laughing as I say that. Once again, the issues I faced were created by me. (I have such a difficult time with Headers and Footers.)

What’s this book about?

“Mystery writer Carrie McFerrin has inherited an old family house and all of its contents from her Great Aunt Genny.

While taking inventory of the attic contents, she comes across an old wooden crank telephone. Thinking the old telephone would look perfect in her vintage kitchen, she hangs it on the wall by the back door, and an old, yellowed piece of paper asking for help falls to the floor.

The impossible happens when the disconnected old phone rings – three rings, a pause, and three more rings.

Carrie picks up the receiver, wondering what’s going on, and her life suddenly changes – forever.

Nothing will ever be the same.”

Carrie has to figure out a lot of things about life in general, and her place in the grand scheme of things, while visiting a time period she knows nothing about.

Now I’m sure you’re wondering about Mother Possum after reading my description. Her name is an unusual title for a post. Well, I needed an unusual character for this story, and my childhood provided her.

When I was young, an elderly woman lived down the street from my grandmother. When I say elderly, I mean in her nineties – maybe a hundred. I’m not sure. I often spent weekends with my grandparents, and Grandma walked down a hill to visit this elderly woman every day to see how she was doing. She’d take her snacks or a meal and straighten her bedroom and bed. The woman was bedridden for the most part. Yes, her name really was Mother Possum.

I’d go with my grandmother unless my grandfather and I were up to something.

I needed a character in the book, an elderly woman, who would sit out on her porch every day and watch the world go by. Mother Possum immediately came to mind, and in the book she smoked a pipe. She also knew a lot about the rest of the characters in the book. She was a great source of information, and let’s face it, her name is memorable.

A side note to this story is that my grandmother was in an industrial accident around 1915 and she lost her arm just below the elbow. She helped the elderly woman down the street, cleaned houses to earn a little extra money, and did everything that was humanly possible with only one arm. I grew up around an extraordinary woman.

Back to the book, I took a step away from my usual mysteries and tried my hand at a time travel mystery. Carrie McFerrin lives in the present, but something happens and she travels back to 1909 to solve a mystery. Interestingly, she’s a mystery writer and someone wants to use her expertise. Unfortunately for her, there’s a huge difference between putting a story on paper and actually living it.

I don’t know if I’ll ever write another time travel mystery or not, but this one was fun and I enjoyed bringing Mother Possum back to life, even though I didn’t truly know her. Her name stuck in my mind for all of these years and wouldn’t let go. I figured there was a reason, even if I wasn’t sure what it was. Now I know. She made a great character and she made me smile.

Doesn’t the title, Choosing One Moment, give you a feeling of time? Barring childbirth and the day you married, do you have an exciting moment in time that you’d choose to relive?

I do.

Until next time, I hope you have a week of special moments that will live on in your memory.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website

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Note: If anyone is interested, my website will be completely rebuilt over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully I'll come up with something new and different.