Please welcome guest Tracy Weber, yoga teacher and author of of the debut mystery Murder Strikes A Pose.

Leave a comment for a chance to win an autographed copy of Tracy’s book.

                                                                                              How in the World did I Get Here?

I never intended to be a writer. But then again, I never intended to be a yoga teacher. If you’d asked me in my early thirties, I’d have told you that yoga was for woo woo Gumby wannabes, and writing was for people who had more talent in their left pinky toe than I possessed in my entire five-foot-two-inch body. a_003

I blame a fender-bender for my yoga career. In the early 1990s I was in a car accident that left me in severe chronic pain for over seven years. That pain was eventually mitigated—if not completely cured—by consistent yoga practice. My life was so transformed by yoga that I quit my corporate job and opened Whole Life Yoga http://www.wholelifeyoga.com/ in order to share the ancient practice with others.

My writing career has more complex origins. For that, I blame a grueling workout, my temperamental German shepherd Tasha, and Susan Conant. http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-author=Susan%20Conant&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ASusan%20Conant

The ingredients were already inside me, I just didn’t know it. I love dogs. So much so that my husband has nicknamed me the “creepy puppy lady.” I adore my own dog to a fault, even though she’s no Rin Tin Tin. I’ve read cozies since long before I knew there was a genre by that name. And my lifework is yoga. My mystery series was like a stew that had been slow cooking inside of me for years.

The one day, while trying to distract myself from a grueling workout, a passage in Susan Conant’s Black Ribbon made me burst into laughter. I knew I’d found my author soul mate. I jumped off the exercise bike, ran home, got online, and proceeded to buy every book she had ever written. While I was at it, I stumbled across a site about cozy mysteries. http://cozy-mystery.com/

That’s all it took.

I began to wonder, what would happen if a yoga teacher with a crazy dog like mine got mixed up in murder? And if she did, could I write about it? The whole idea seemed crazy. After all, I hadn’t written fiction since I was eighteen—which was way too long ago for me to admit—and I had no writing training. I laughed the whole idea off until a feisty yoga teacher named Kate Davidson popped into my head a few days later.

0_002She insisted that I tell the story of how she found the love of her life—a German shepherd named Bella—while solving the murder of her homeless friend, George. She promised me that her story was both entertaining and important. Kate is one stubborn woman. She refused to leave, no matter how much I begged her to.

Two years later, I gave in and write wrote down her story. The first draft poured out of my fingers in three weeks, though I spent over a year perfecting it. Before I even typed “the end,” Kate had gone and found another body. I’ve not yet finished the second book, but Kate tells me that she’s already involved in a third murder. I have a feeling that she, Bella, and their quirky counterparts will be with me, solving crimes, for many years. At least I hope so.

I hope you will be entertained by their escapades and grow to love them as much as I do.

Please join us, and let me know what you think!

Check out MURDER STRIKES A POSE, the first in the Downward Dog Yoga Mysteries. Available at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Strikes-Pose-Downward-Mystery/dp/0738739685/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385096350&sr=8-1&keywords=murder+strikes+a+pose and bookstores everywhere!

Tracy Weber is a certified yoga teacher and the founder of Whole Life Yoga, an award-winning yoga studio in Seattle, where she current­ly lives with her husband, Marc, and German shepherd, Tasha. She loves sharing her passion for yoga and animals in any form possible. When she’s not writing, she spends her time teaching yoga, walking Tasha, and sip­ping Blackthorn cider at her favorite ale house. Murder Strikes a Pose is her debut novel. Connect with Tracy at her author page http://tracyweberauthor.com/ or on Facebook http://www.bing.com/search?q=facebook&src=IE-TopResult&FORM=IE10TR

About MURDER STRIKES A POSE

Seattle Yoga instructor Kate Davidson tries to live up to yoga’s Zen-like expectations, but it’s not easy while struggling to keep her small business afloat or dodging her best friend’s matchmaking efforts. When George, a homeless alcoholic, and his loud, horse-sized German shepherd, Bella, start hawking newspapers outside her studio, Kate attempts to convince them to leave. Instead, the three strike up an unlikely friendship. Then Kate finds George’s body. The police dismiss it as a drug-related street crime, but Kate knows he was no drug dealer. Now she must solve George’s murder and find someone willing to adopt his intimidating companion before Bella is sent to the big dog park in the sky. With the murderer on her trail, Kate has to work fast or her next Corpse Pose may be for real.