Gina is a writing machine!  Due to the shear number of amazing books she, I chose to focus on just one, but I highly recommend you take a look at her Amazon Page! 

​Welcome to The Isle...

Lily Locke has never believed in witches and wizards, ghosts and magic, shifters and vampires—especially cute blonde vamps with blood-intolerance issues. A rising star at a hotshot marketing agency in Minneapolis, Minnesota, all Lily knows is that she’s a PowerPoint guru, an Excel ninja, and a coffee-maker extraordinaire. Not to mention she’s next in line for a huge promotion.

All that changes when Lily’s assistant delivers a strange quiz to her, one titled A Magical Assessment for Normal Folks. With it comes the promise of a land she's never known existed. A land where Lily not only discovers her biological family for the first time, but a place where she can make a difference, change lives, and step into the role she’s destined to fulfill. 

But first, Lily must admit she’s a witch. Then, she has to acknowledge that the tall, dark, and mysterious man who offers his help is strictly focused on business...at least, for now. When a body turns up dead and the next target is Lily, she must trust her powers and accept the help of her newfound friends. Otherwise, she'll never survive the trials of the magical island tucked far, far away in the frigid waters of Lake Superior.

Welcome to The Isle.

** **

This novel is a full-length, humorous cozy mystery featuring a splash of magic, a handful of witches, and a dash of romance. It's rated PG-13 due to mild language and some romance.

​USA Today Bestselling Author Sam Cheever writes mystery and suspense, creating stories that draw you in and keep you eagerly turning pages. Known for writing great characters, snappy dialogue, and unique and exhilarating stories, Sam is the
​award-winning author of 80+ books. ​

​When a film crew comes to Mackinac Island, the last thing fudge shop owner Allie McMurphy expects to find is a murder victim . . . 
 
SHOT ON LOCATION
 
It's Labor Day weekend, the official end of tourist season, and the beginning of a whole batch of trouble. First, the island is invaded by a TV crew filming a murder mystery pilot, and handsome Hollywood heartthrob Dirk Benjamin needs Allie’s help to prep for his role as local cop Rex Manning. Then, Allie’s bichonpoo Mal sniffs out a real murder in the alley behind the Historic McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shop, a man shot in the head—with a note challenging amateur sleuth Allie to catch the culprit. Like it or not, the fudge maker has to square off against a crazy killer—but this time she may have bitten off more than she can chew . . .

This one is on my kindle waiting to be devoured!

​Three weeks before the wedding, your fiancé becomes a person of interest in a murder investigation. What would you do?

In TRUST, 36-year-old, high school teacher Lauren seems to have it all. She moved back to Waverly, a small seaside town, just north of Boston, MA several years ago. She has a great career, and has finally found true love. Lauren's wedding is just a few weeks away, when one of her students goes missing and when his body is found a few days later, she suddenly becomes a person of interest. 

Her fiancé, David, is a former minor-league pitcher turned stockbroker, who is excited to settle down with Lauren. But when the missing student is found dead, and the media turns its attention even more closely on Lauren, David is surprised to discover that Lauren hadn't told him everything about her past.
 
With the help of his 91-year-old grandfather, who is a retired town sheriff, and his best friend Jake, the current assistant sheriff, David sets out to find the truth

As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
A cat. My Bella is curled up in my lap as I write this.

What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters?
I don’t really base my characters on real people. Though bits and pieces of people sometimes work into the books. Usually it’s funny situations.
 
How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
At least 5 or 6. I used to always get stuck around 100 pages and would set the book aside and start something else. But a more experienced writer friend told me not to do that, that everyone hits a wall at a certain point and you have to keep going and finish.

Do you view writing as a kind of spiritual practice?
Sometimes maybe. I know I sort of go to my happy place when I’m writing and when I have a week where I’m writing every day and the writing is going well, everything else seems to go well too and I sleep like a baby!

What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?
Wondering if I’m getting it right.

Leighann Dobbs is the fantastic author of a cozy mystery series called the Blackmoore Sisters Mystery.  Dead Wrong is the first book in the series and my intro to Dobbs.  I cannot wait to dive into more!  Here is my review:

4/5 Stars
Such a fun, quick read. I can already tell this is going to be a fab new series for me. The characters are well developed and the author dropped hints to their backstories and possible future books. I adore the Blackmoore sisters. Fiona is so fiesty! I look forward to getting to know Morgan, Celeste and Jolene too.

​There’s more than one secret in the old Blackmoore house. Some have been buried for a long time and some are sitting closer to the surface. Morgan and Fiona Blackmoore enjoy their simple life in the sleepy ocean-side town of Noquitt Maine where they offer herbal remedies and crystal healing for locals and tourists alike.... Until Morgan is accused of killing the town shrew, Prudence Littlefield

​USA Today bestselling author, Leighann Dobbs, discovered her passion for writing after a twenty year career as a software engineer. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband Bruce, their trusty Chihuahua mix Mojo and beautiful rescue cat, Kitty. 

Her book "Dead Wrong" won the "Best Mystery Romance" award at the 2014 Indie Romance Convention.

Her book "Ghostly Paws" was the 2015 Chanticleer Mystery & Mayhem First Place category winner in the Animal Mystery category.

Stalk her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/leighanndobbsbooks/​

I adore these interviews as I meet these amazing authors right along with you guys.  Be sure to check out Nichole's answer to what is your writing kryptonite.

Nichole Christoff is a writer, former broadcaster and military spouse who swears she owes Jane Austen, James Thurber, and Raymond Chandler for her taste in fiction. Nichole is also the award-winning author of THE KILL LIST, THE KILL SHOT, THE KILL BOX, THE KILL SIGN, and THE KILL WIRE starring army brat and private-eye-turned-security-specialist, Jamie Sinclair. When Nic isn't at her desk working on her latest novel, she's out in the woods with her ornery English Pointer.

Find Nichole online at www.nicholechristoff.com where you can sign-up for her free seasonal newsletter, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NicholeChristoff, on Twitter at @NicChristoff, or drop her a note at nic@nicholechristoff.com


​What is the first book that made you cry?
When I was ten years old, I read BLACK BEAUTY by Anna Sewell. Beauty’s journey through adversity brought me to tears.

Does writing energize or exhaust you?
For me, a good writing day is energizing until the end, and then I’m exhausted, especially if I’ve poured everything in me onto the page.

What is your writing Kryptonite?
I’ve got an English Pointer who’s recently realized he can retrieve, too. The second I sit down at my desk, he begins to bring me things. He’ll start with his favorite objects to carry: socks. He’ll pluck them from the laundry basket or search for them under the bed. He’ll then bring dish towels, junk mail, rain boots, the TV remote control, and one time, even a roll of toilet paper. He gets a treat if he brings me his own toys. I write like a maniac between offerings, but his arrival usually means I must stop to accept what he’s laid at my feet. As a result, I often have a ring of abandoned objects circling my desk chair.

Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
They’re not exactly secrets, but I will sometimes depict a favorite place or thing and let readers in on the scoop later. On my website, www.nicholechristoff.com, I have a page called “Facts to Fiction” where I reveal that some details in the Jamie Sinclair series are based on real-life experiences. For instance, in THE KILL SIGN, Jamie travels to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and through the back gate of the army post she visits, in town, there are seedy little shops with flashing neon lights promising “live lingerie models.” And in one military town down south, I can attest, those shops not only exist, they deliver!

What was your hardest scene to write?
The scene in THE KILL SIGN where Jamie Sinclair visits her mentor in the hospital was particularly tough to write because my father had just been killed in a heavy equipment accident. He and I didn’t get a scene like that one.

i am having so much fun meeting all these amazing women.  I  hope you are too. ~ Lynn
​

Hi everyone, my name is Ritter Ames and my husband and I are empty nesters raising our blonde Lab, Honey. I have two mystery series, the Bodies of Art Mysteries and the Organized Mysteries, and I will be releasing the first of a new cozy series later this year. We live in the country, love interacting with my neighbors and exploring on walks with Honey, and just watching the lovely seasons change around us. I love to travel, and being able to also do that in my books is one of my favorite things about writing. For more information about my books check out my website at www.ritterames.com ​

What types of books do you enjoy in your downtime?
Probably sixty percent of my reading is mystery, with the other forty made up of whatever catches my attention—and imagination—at the moment. I don’t count nonfiction in that tally because I do a tremendous amount of research for my books, so there’s a lot of nonfiction reading. A lot of it is for my books, even more is just because I love reading on so many topics and don’t stop right away when I’ve already discovered the key to whatever I was researching.

What sort of research did you do to write this book?
My Bodies of Art Mysteries take a lot—from setting details, to art angles like art history, art forgeries, and artistic masters, to technical stuff my characters need in the story, and finally to the criminal elements like forgeries and heists. For the Organized Mysteries, it’s more regional research, to make sure I have my characters placed where they need to be for whatever job they do that ends up with them stumbling onto another crime or murder.

How did you come up with the idea for your book?
Ideas come from everywhere. I have a file I jot down ideas, add newspaper clippings, print out ads—whatever—then I just let the ideas percolate. Once I know I’m going to write a book about one of the ideas, I create a folder on my computer and start putting relevant information inside. It can still be many months, even a year before I start writing a book on that idea.

What does a typical workday look like for you?
Writing first thing in the morning. Stop about noon to connect with people on Facebook. Post to all my tweet teams and RT everyone, then do any marketing I need to do for the coming months. I usually start working up a book launch four to six months before the book is due to be released, so there’s always marketing work to do. The afternoon to early evening is also when I do my office bookkeeping work, write and schedule blogs and newsletters, and go back into email and social media to make sure I don’t have any messages I need to answer.

What is the main thing you want readers to take away from your book?
While they’re reading, I want them to escape into my mystery. I write the kind of books I love to read—to get away from whatever is bogging me down in my life. If readers come out of reading my books with a little better understanding of others, or want to know more about a subject in the story, that makes me even more thrilled, as it’s a double-win.

If your novel were being made into a movie, whom would you pick to play the lead roles?
For the Organized Mysteries, I asked my street team about this and they came up with Gillian Jacobs or Sarah Michelle Gellar for Kate McKenzie and Jennifer Garner for Meg Berman, then Michael Trucco for Kate’s husband Keith.
As far as the Bodies of Art Mysteries go, I’ve always written this series thinking about old Cary Grant movies where he was always working just a little left of the social norms, the women and men were equally smart and good at their jobs, where the dialogue was fast and witty, and a plot twist could happen at a second’s notice. So, in my mind Laurel has always been modeled after a mix of a young Grace Kelly/Kate Hepburn/Rosalind Russell and Jack based on a thirtyish Cary Grant.

Do you outline books ahead of time or are you more of a by-the-seat-of-your-pants writer?
A little of both. I write very messy outlines for my cozy mysteries—which I know sounds weird since the protagonist is an organizational expert—that has everything laid down quickly and arrows drawn if I want to move things around later. And for the Bodies of Art Mysteries, because it is more interconnected, and has A Lot More Moving Parts, I have a multi-book story arc created for it, with the books blocked out to show when I’m revealing specific plot details, and what has to happen in particular places, so I can stay on track. Then I use index cards to write all the scenes, characters, bits & pieces for each of those titles, so I stay on-track as I write. In both series, even with their different outlining methods, I still leave a lot of room for extemporizing. The outlines are just to keep me on-track with all the plot points and reveals—not to straitjacket me as I write.

What do you do in your free time when you aren’t writing?
Did I mention how much I love to read? Oh, a few times. Right. I also love to take walks with my husband and my blonde Labrador retriever, Honey—she seems to enjoy them, too. I love photography and have been composing shots since high school. And we live in an area with a lot of interesting places to go, so I like to wander around a bit when I have time, too. But my very favorite thing when I’m not writing is to travel. My belief is that every vacation should be like one of my Bodies of Art Mysteries—start out in London, then spiral off in some great new direction from there.

Carolyn Ridder Apenson is the woman behind Sleuthing Women.  Writer, editor, and Sleuthing Women creator, Aspenson has created a group dedicated to all thing mystery.  Whether it's a cozy mystery, a suspenseful crime thriller, or a paranormal conundrum; you can find them all in one place - Sleuthing Women.  40+ authors in one group!  The collective officially kicks off June 12th with a huge Facebook party.  Click HERE to join the fun.

​Carolyn Ridder Aspenson currently calls the Atlanta suburbs home, but can't rule out her other two homes, Indianapolis and somewhere in the Chicago suburbs. 

She is old enough to share her empty nest with her husband, two dogs and two cats, all of which she strongly obsesses over repeatedly noted on her Facebook and Instagram accounts, and is working on forgiving her kids for growing up and leaving the nest. When she is not writing, editing, playing with her animals or contemplating forgiving her kids, she is sitting at Starbucks listening in on people's conversations and taking notes, because that stuff is great for book ideas. (You have officially been warned!) 

On a more professional note, she is the bestselling author of the Angela Panther cozy mystery series featuring Unfinished Business An Angela Panther Mystery, Unbreakable Bonds An Angela Panther Mystery and Uncharted Territory An Angela Panther Mystery, The Christmas Elf, An Angela Panther Holiday Short, The Ghosts, An Angela Panther Holiday Short, The Inn At Laurel Creek, a contemporary romance novella, Santa's Gift, a Cumming Christmas Novella and 8 To Lose The Weight, a lifestyle eating program. Carolyn is also a freelance writer and editor with Literati Editing. For more information, visit http://carolynridderaspenson.com www.facebook.com/carolynridderaspensonauthor 
Carolyn Ridder Aspenson Author on Pinterest
Carolynridderaspenson on Instagram
Twitter: @awritingwoman 
Email: carolyn@carolynridderaspenson.com

I have read EVERYTHING this chick publishes.  I highly recommend The Angela Panther Series.
It's funny, suspenseful, and the character, Fran, is based on Aspenson's own mom.   Check out these Franisms!

Today I am introducing you guys to Lori Hudson.  I have had the pleasure of meeting Lori and she is an absolute peach.  If you love a cozy mystery with a big ol lazy dog, check out her book.  I hear there will be  a new cozy mystery later this year. Stay tuned for more info on that.

Loraine Hudson lives and writes in a small town in Michigan. Her cozy mystery, The House on Beale Street, was released in June of 2017, and she plans to turn it into a series. She also enjoys creating “tween” and middle grades chapter books under her pen name, Judith Wade, especially stories with a little bit of fantasy or adventure--whatever her imagination uncovers. Her latest work, The Winter Royal, was released in April, 2018. She has contributed to all four of the Writing at the Ledges published anthologies, has written a variety of short stories, and has even dabbled in poetry. She loves oldies rock, stained glass, digging in her garden, playing with her dogs, horseback riding and, of course, writing. The next fun project is always just around the corner! She is often at her most creative when taking her ex-racehorse out for an amble through the woods.

Follow me @ https://www.facebook.com/authorlorainehudson/​

​A dream house in a small town.
A cup of coffee on her porch.
Her dog at her feet.
What could possibly go wrong? 
Plenty.
Bumps in the night, unwelcome visitors, an angry friend, and a lingering threat from a local robbery leave Marianne Reed wondering if her new home might become a nightmare. The question is, is it new house jitters, or is danger just around the corner?
The House on Beale Street is the debut novel by Loraine J Hudson, who lives and writes in a small town in Michigan. She loves oldies rock music, stained glass, playing in her garden, snuggling with her dogs, riding her off-track thoroughbred horse, and – of course – writing. She has also published a series of middle grades fantasy chapter books under her pen name, Judith Wade.

I am having so much fun discovering these amazing authors!  Join the fun in our FACEBOOK GROUP. 

​
I love a good murder mystery and Patti Larsen's first book in the Fiona Fleming Series is FREE! 

I'm a multiple award-winning writer with a passion for the voices in my head. With many (many!) titles across many (many!) genres, all in happy publication, there's no end in sight...

That being said, I'm short (permanent), slightly round (changeable) and blonde (for ever and ever). I love to talk one on one about the deepest topics and can't seem to stop seeing the big picture. I happily live on Prince Edward Island, Canada, home to Anne of Green Gables and the most beautiful red beaches in the world, with my multiple cats, pug overlord and lady and Gypsy Vanner gelding, Fynn.


​What sort of research did you do to write this book?
The Fiona Fleming Cozy Mysteries unfold in a small town in Vermont named Reading. Not to be mistaken for the real Reading (pronounced Red-ing), it’s based on my childhood travels with my family to that part of the world, camping and exploring the mountains. As for the bed and breakfast my main character owns, that experience is taken from my oldest sister’s time running an inn and the hardships and often hilarious interactions she faced. And, Fiona’s adopted pug, Petunia, is an amalgam of my two bratty, funny and lovable fawns.

How did you come up with the idea for your book?
 wanted to write a mystery and literally asked the universe for an idea. Yes, that’s how my brain works. Trust me, you don’t want to be in here with me. It’s spooky.

What does a typical workday look like for you?
I like to sleep in because the pugs are so restless, so I’m usually up at 8am. If I’m riding that day, I’m off to the barn for a couple of hours to visit with my handsome Gyspy Vanner gelding, Fynn. If not, I’m answering emails, drinking copious amounts of coffee and getting caught up on things I didn’t get to the day before. Afternoons I typically get at least an hour of writing in, hopefully more. And evenings are for me!

What is the main thing you want readers to take away from your book?
Go pick up book two ;)

If your novel were being made into a movie, whom would you pick to play the lead roles?
Fiona is a redhead, so I’d love to have Emma Stone. As for her love interest, I’m a massive Matt Bomer fan (who isn’t? He’s yumtastic).

What do you do in your free time when you aren’t writing?
I ride my horse, create whatever we’re into currently with my sister (my BFF), have long coffee dates with new writers and share what knowledge I’ve accumulated, and perform as a professional smarty pants in an all-female improv troupe.

Do you put yourself in your books/characters at all?
I do not. At least, I try hard not to. They aren’t about me. That’s actually my biggest concern, that I’m not doing the voices justice, that my skills are holding them back from telling the stories they want to tell. But so far, so good.

What has been one of your most rewarding experiences as an author?
Receiving thank yous from readers who tell me my books have gotten them through the hardest parts of their lives. We have a huge impact on those who choose our books to entertain them and take them away from their troubles. It’s powerful and I take that responsibility seriously.

Out of all the books you’ve written, do you have a favorite?
I’ll always have a soft spot for Family Magic, book one of the Hayle Coven Novels, and the lead character, Sydlynn Hayle. She’s been with me for nine years now and though she’s been quiet lately, I know she’s not done with me.