Tag Archives: hilltowns

Isabel Long Mystery Series

Meet the Old Farts

I call them the Old Farts. Actually, that’s what Isabel Long, the protagonist of my mystery series, calls them — with a capital O and a capital F. And they are an amusing source of intel for her.

The Old Farts are a group of six gossipy old men who hang out early mornings in the back of the Conwell General Store. They appear to know everybody’s business for miles around, including Isabel’s.

For that reason, she finds the Old Farts useful when she takes her first case — in Chasing the Case — trying to find out what happened to a woman who went missing 28 years earlier in that town of a thousand people. They know all the players.

That’s true of the next cases she investigates — Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps, which now have a home with Bloodhound Books, had a Nov. 15 release date on Amazon. Just clink on the titles below and you’re there.

Actually, Isabel takes this relationship one step further and gives the men secret nicknames. Here they are: the Fattest Old Fart, Serious Old Fart, Bald Old Fart, Silent Old Fart, Skinniest Old Fart, and the Old Fart with Glasses. You can guess how she came up with those names.

The Old Farts, of course, don’t know a thing about it. It’s likely the only one they don’t.

And once in a while, there are Visiting Old Farts, but they aren’t regulars.

Isabel started visiting the Old Farts in the back room on a regular basis after she lost her job running a newspaper and decided to be an amateur P.I. She always sits on a bench besides the Fattest Old Fart, who could rightfully be called the Loudest Old Fart, because nobody else does. He always announces her arrival.

The Serious Old Fart always offers Isabel a cup of the store’s crappy coffee along with a joke that the expresso machine is broke — yes, he mispronounces espresso.

The conversation is lively although the Silent Old Fart lives up to his reputation and rarely speaks. (When he does, it’s significant.) They like to tease Isabel about her personal life. But they do give useful tips or at least some history because unlike Isabel, they are all natives of Conwell. They’ve known each other forever. And they have no better way to start the day than to drink coffee, eat a donut, and shoot the shit, so they love it when Isabel shows up and groan when she leaves too early.

Perhaps you have a group of Old Farts who meet in your town. They might meet regularly at a coffee shop or like mine, in the back room of a general store.

So many readers say they get a kick out of the Old Farts. You can meet them in the first three books in the series. Here are the links: Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

When One Mystery Inspires Another

Sometimes I love the characters I create too much for them to have only one book. That’s the case of Isabel Long and many of the characters in the mystery series named for her.

I started with Chasing the Case. Then came Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

Currently I am working on the eighth in the Isabel Long Mystery Series. But those three books now have a home with Bloodhound Books, which re-released them Nov. 15. So I’m going to focus on them.

Each book features a cold case Isabel Long tries to solve in the fictional hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. In the first, she’s coming off a bad year — the untimely death of her husband and the loss of her job as editor-in-chief of a newspaper. She decides to put her free time and skills she learned as a journalist to good use solving a 28-year-old mystery in which a woman walked home from her family’s general store and was never seen again. It was also Isabel’s first big story as a rookie reporter. 

Since the disappearance happened in the hilltown where she lives, Isabel knows the people connected to the case and they know her. Besides, she has an unusual sidekick, her 92-year-old mother who has come to live with her. Maria may be up there in years but she as a keen fan of mysteries, she helps to bring insights. 

Other helpful sources include the men who gossip in the store’s backroom — she calls them the Old Farts. Isabel also takes a part-time job tending bar at the Rooster, the only watering hole in town, which is a great place to get people to blab.

Isabel does solve the case, but I’m not telling you anything more. 

With that case under her belt, Isabel is ready for another. Her next client is Annette Waters, who deservedly is nicknamed the Tough Cookie because she runs a junkyard and garage, and doesn’t take crap from anyone. (She is one of my favorite characters.) Annette hires her to investigate the death of her father, who allegedly was too drunk to get out of his shack of a house when it caught fire. I introduce new characters, such as Gary and Larry Beaumont, two feral brothers who are also drug dealers and it turns out, suspects. Plus, I keep many from the first. 

Oh, state law requirements for being a private investigator means Isabel has to work for a licensed one for three years. So Lin Pierce, who runs a seedy little P.I. biz, comes into her life. He pays her a buck a day for the arrangement and she shares what she makes with him.

Then Isabel and I moved onto our third case. Interesting that a drug-dealing suspect from the second case, Gary Beaumont, hires her to probe the death of his half-brother, who supposedly jumped off a bridge known for suicides. What convinces Isabel to take this case is that the victim was a highway worker who wrote poetry good enough for a well-known poet to steal. (It also meant I had to write poetry for this book.) Cyrus Nilsson aka the Big Shot Poet becomes a regular in the series as does Gary and Larry. 

From my experience of reading, watching or listening to a series, the trick is to give continuity but not drag down the story with too much from the previous one. No flashbacks. Just enough info so each book in the series is standalone. But if you read the ones before it, you can smile because you know a whole lot more than what I revealed.

Here are the links to Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Meet Isabel Long P.I. — Star of My Mystery Series

Books start with an idea. In my case, I wanted to write a mystery with a female protagonist that’s set in a rural area. She wasn’t going to be a sweet, young thing, but a woman with some good miles on her — what the French call une femme d’un certain âge. Thus, Isabel Long was created. And once I wrote the first book, I kept going with others because I so enjoy solving crimes with her.

By the way, the first three books, Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps, have been re-released Nov. 15 by their new publisher Bloodhound Books.

First, Isabel Long had a long career as a journalist — starting as a reporter covering the fictional hilltown in Western Massachusetts where she lives, population 1,000, and then clawed her way up to being the editor in chief of a newspaper until it went corporate. When the new owner said the staff had to reapply for their jobs, Isabel said, “To hell with that.”

Yeah, Isabel is a bit on the sassy side. She doesn’t take crap from anybody. She’s also savvy. The skills she learned as a journalist come in handy as a private investigator. Other transferable skills: Keeping an open mind and being able to talk with anybody. Oh, yeah, being relentless until she gets her story — or the culprit.

Losing her job was part of Isabel’s bad year. Her husband died of a heart attack. But after a year of properly grieving for him, she was ready to reinvent herself — as a private investigator and as a single woman. She also takes a part-time job tending bar at the Rooster, the town’s only watering hole, which is a great place to find clues for her cases. She also develops a relationship with its owner, Jack, which has its ups and a big down. But I’m not going to spoil what happens for readers.

I wrote Chasing the Case during the winter of 2017, when I lived in Taos, New Mexico, and finished it in the spring. Her first case turns out to be also her first big story as a rookie reporter — the disappearance of a woman 28 years earlier.

By the way, Isabel has an interesting sidekick — her 92-year-old mother who came to live with her. Maria is one sharp woman who loves reading mysteries and smutty romances.

I enjoyed writing Chasing the Case so much, I wrote a sequel — Redneck’s Revenge — while moving back to rural Western Massachusetts, where this mystery series is set. Many of the same characters make it into the second book along with new ones.

I was having too good of a time solving crimes with Isabel, so I kept going with Checking the Traps. (By the way, she and I are working on the eighth case.)

So, how much of me is in Isabel? I’d like to say the sassy and savvy part, especially since I wrote these books in first person. I, too, was a journalist who started in the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts, where I’ve lived twice. Like Isabel, I moved there from Boston to enjoy rural life. But unlike Isabel, I didn’t become a P.I. Instead I write about one, and that’s fine with me. I wouldn’t want the danger she attracts.

Here are the links to Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

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Northern Comfort, Uncategorized

Free Book: Northern Comfort

I’ve decided my book Northern Comfort needed more readers. So it is free for Kindle readers on Nov. 9 and 10. Here’s the link.

Northern Comfort is one of my Hilltown Books. It’s not a mystery, like my Isabel Long Series, but it is set in the familiar fictional hilltowns of Western Massachusetts.

This books is about the harsh realities of rural life — the haves and have nots in a small town. It begins with a tragedy and ends with reconciliation and hope. Let me tell you more.

Willi Miller is a single mother trying to raise her young son, who was brain-damaged at birth. They live in a cabin left to them by the loving grandfather who took them in after Junior Miller, the boy’s father, abandoned them. Willi’s situation is a desperate one. But she’s doing the best she can.

In the opening scene, Willi is home from her job cutting hair at a country beauty shop and hanging clothes on a line in her backyard. It’s the worst of winter, cold and dark, but the job has to get done. She doesn’t have a drier because she can’t afford one.

Willi tries to keep Cody close to her as she works. But then tragedy happens when the boy’s sled quickly takes him into the path of a truck driven by Miles Potter. Willi and Miles have known each other since they were kids, but until the moment her son dies, they were separated by their families’ places in town.

How Willi handles this situation demonstrates her resilience and the kindness of those living in her small town, including Miles. Then, there is Junior, who eventually faces his failings as a father.

That’s what Northern Comfort is about. It’s not the stuff for pretty postcards although I do include a lot of the hilltowns’ traditions like maple sugaring and making old-time music.

Here’s how the book starts. 

Willi Miller pinned her best blouse to the rope line, shaking her bare hands to keep the blood moving, as she reached into the broken plastic basket for something else. She should have done this miserable chore before she went to work this morning, but she didn’t have the time. Short and thin-boned like her mother, but yellow-haired like her father, Willi spun around for her boy, who stood a half foot away, staring at the dog whimpering and jerking its chain. “There you are, Cody. Stay near me,” she said.

Her boy, dressed in a one-piece red snowsuit, his mittens packed tightly on his hands, didn’t say a word. He only made noises that sounded like words, and he was seven. His ‘Ma,’ Willi had decided, was exactly as an animal would say it.

Earlier this afternoon, she got Cody at the babysitter’s house, where the van took him after school. Willi was a hairdresser at the Lucky Lady Beauty Shop in nearby Tyler although the running joke among the gals who worked there was it should be called the Unlucky Lady because of the stories the customers told about their men. Cheaters, drunks, and bums, the whole lot of them, it seemed, by their complaints.

The Lucky Lady was busy today with high school girls who wanted their hair curled and piled high for the semi-formal tonight. They were fun customers, so excited about their dates and the big Friday night ahead, she didn’t mind their lousy tips. Willi remembered not that long ago she did the same.

She fed Cody cereal after they got home just to hold him until she made dinner. He ate a few spoonfuls before he began playing with it, making a mess as usual, so she dressed him in his snowsuit and took him outside after she lowered the damper on the wood stove.

Now he walked beneath the hanging laundry toward the dog, named Foxy by her grandfather, who used to own the brown,short-haired, pointy-eared mutt. Willi called to her boy, who moved step by step across the snow, breaking through its icycrust until he sank to the top of his boots. He turned toward his mother. His green eyes peered from beneath the brim of his cap. Yellow snot bubbled from one nostril.

“Yeah, I’m watchin’ you,” Willi said, bending for a towel.

Snow seeped through a crack in her right boot. Cold numbed her toes. She should put duct tape over the brown rubber, but it was her only pair, and it’d look like hell.

“Hey, Cody, where’re you goin’?”

Her boy marched with fast little feet past the junked truck to the back of their house, where his sled, a cheap thing she bought, was propped against the wall. “This is a red sled,” she told Cody in the hardware store.

Her boy uttered a sound that might have been “red” but only she would know. She understood his ways most of the time. He wanted things tick-tock regular when he ate, what he wore.

Her eyes followed her boy, dragging his sled, grunting, toward her. He dropped it at her feet and sat inside. The heels of his boots kicked up and down. “Maaaaa,” he called.

Willi sighed. Cody wouldn’t let up until she gave him a ride. Her boy liked it when she towed him in his sled along the driveway to get the mail. He made happy chirps and flapped his mittens. She wiped her hands on her black jacket, a man’s, too big and open in the front because the zipper was broken. Its bottom swayed against her legs as she walked.

“All right, Cody, but just a little ride.”

She reached for the towrope and pulled Cody in a large circle. His mouth formed a wide, sloppy smile, and he let outgleeful sounds as Willi went slowly, then gained speed. Her feet sank through the snow although the sled glided easily on its surface. She was careful to stay on the flat part of her land, away from the edge of its tabletop, where it plunged onto her neighbor’s property then to one of the town’s main roads below. When she squinted, she could see the Mercy River flowing through its snowy valley like a blue vein on a woman’s wrist.

Round and round Willi towed her son. She slipped on the packed ring of snow, and her straight, yellow hair dropped to her jaw when her knit cap fell. Cody’s head rocked back as he yelped in pleasure. After a while, she stopped, out of breath.

“I gotta finish hanging the clothes before it gets dark. Alright?” she told Cody although she did not expect his answer.

She picked her hat from the snow. The sun was low in the sky, and the dark smudge spreading from the west likely carried more snow. Willi frowned. It would be too much trouble to take the clothes down again. She hated this part of winter, mid-January. It snowed every day, not much, but enough to keep the road crews going with their plows and sanders. Winteralways has a week like this, unsettled weather, the worst of the season, of the year, as far as she was concerned. Often, it happened after the thaw, so that brief warm spell seemed like one cruel joke.

She bent for one of Cody’s shirts. She had to work faster because the clothes were stiffening inside the basket. After she hung them, they would freeze into thin slabs, like shale, and after a day or two, they’ll be dry. If she had any money, she would buy a dryer. She glanced toward her house and saw missing clapboards. She’d fix those, too.

When she was a girl, she used to keep a mental list of what she’d get if she were rich: stuff like pink high heels and a long white coat. None of them seemed practical for a town like Hayward, where half the roads were dirt and fancy things were in other people’s houses. Now she would buy a car that worked without worry and hire a lawyer to make her ex-husband,Junior, pay child support.

Her boy bucked his body while he lay on his belly inside the sled, wailing as if he were wounded. Willi shook her hands and grabbed a pair of jeans from the basket.

“Shit, I hate this life,” she said.

My other Hilltown Books? The Sweet Spot and The Sacred Dog.

Here’s the link again for Northern Comfort.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Your Next Mystery: Missing the Deadline Free Oct. 26-27

Yes, Isabel Long is hard at work trying to solve a case in the sticks of Western Massachusetts. Missing the Deadline, no. 7 in my series, can be all yours for free Oct. 26-27 if you’re a Kindle reader. I’m offering my book for free since I feel this book needs a little love and more readers. Here, I will make it easy. Here’s the link: Missing the Deadline.

As it has happened before, Isabel finds her next case in an unlikely place — at a poetry reading. Cyrus Nilsson, aka the Big Shot Poet, is trying to make amends to the late Cary Moore, who you might remember was a highway worker who wrote poetry good enough for him to steal. He was even a suspect in that case, Isabel’s third. But the reading is to promote Cary’s book, Country Boy, which Cyrus worked hard to get published.

Cyrus asks Isabel about taking on a case after the event, which was SRO at Penfield Town Hall. So, what’s this one about? Cyrus’s first literary agent, Gerald Danielson, was found shot in the head and near death outside his home three years ago. Gerald survived but is not the same hotshot literary agent who moved from New York City to the village of Meadows Falls. Police ruled a failed attempt at suicide. But Cyrus has serious doubts. 

And as Isabel pursues this case, she quickly accumulates a list of possible suspects, such as a vindictive ex-wife, a jilted local writer, and even an apparently devoted sister who lives with him. 

Isabel also delves into the often frustrating world of publishing, which includes a trip to a literary conference in Vermont. By the way, Gerald takes an instant liking to Isabel, who he calls “Izzie,” the only one allowed.

(By the way, Maria, Isabel’s mother and “Watson,” is glad to have a case once again. She says it’s boring without one.)

Here’s the link again to Missing the Deadline. Read it for free and hopefully you will give it a rating and maybe even a review on Amazon. It sure helps, something Gerald Danielson would certainly understand.

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