Donna Andrews: Probable Caws Friday, Aug 14 2026 

amateur sleuth and Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and humorous crime and mystery to die for and reviews , , , , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 1:27 pm

How does a multi-award-winning author keep a series interesting through 39 books?

By developing varied, quirky, and interesting characters, then placing them in a charming rural setting, and filling her stories with tidbits about nature, all wrapped up in a mystery that is not so much needing to be solved as proving what lead protagonist Meg Langslow suspects all along.

The blackmsith is hoping for some forge time when her family’s good friend Ragnar Ragnarsen calls with an urgent plea: can she and her family help with the many volunteers needed to care for fifty horses suddenly displaced from their equine rescue?

All of Meg’s family become involved, including her twin teen boys, her zookeeper father, her doctor dad, and her theatre director husband. Ragnar’s estate closely resembles a moated castle, complete with many of Meg’s gothic iron decorative and useful items on display. The huge fields surrounding the estate are soon broken into staging areas for the horses, many who have just been rescued from auctions and need to be triaged, while others need room to roam.

The rescue farm’s owner recently died without leaving a will, forcing Hoof and Hearth to temporarily rehome the horses as his two sons argue the legalities. While older son Abel is in favor of the rescue on the land, the younger, George, wants to sell the land for development, and isn’t above using threats and shady characters to reinforce his position.

Meg’s family camp out to keep watch over the horses after George’s thugs appear—until one of them is found murdered, and suspicion falls squarely on Abel.

Now Meg must juggle watching her family and the horses, while she helps to unmask a killer, and learns how to care and cajole horses of all personalities, including one due to deliver any minute.

The research Andrew’s brings into every aspect of a horse’s life make this story, along with its humorous bent, an entertaining read with this satisfying entry.

 

Joyce Tremel: Tangled Up in Brew Sunday, Oct 2 2016 

Uncategorized , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:08 am

Please welcome Joyce Tremel, who will describe how she came to be writing cozy mysteries~

tangled_up_in_brew

If someone had told me even ten years ago that I’d be writing cozies, I’m not sure I would have believed them. Back then, I was the part-time secretary for my local police department. The book I was writing was more of a police procedural, and my main character was an ex-cop who taught martial arts.

It was definitely NOT a cozy in any way, shape, or form. It made sense to me to “write what you know.” I knew cops and I knew martial arts—I had a second degree blackbelt in Taekwondo.

Then in 2008, I was let go from that job and I wondered what to do next. Did I find another part-time job? Or should I take the opportunity to write full time and see what happened?

Fortunately we didn’t need the tiny bit of income I’d had so I chose the latter and started a new book. The new story featured a police secretary named Irma Jean. She was a bit of a smart aleck. I let myself write without putting a label of “procedural” or “cozy” or anything else on the book. I just wrote the story.

When it was finished I sent out queries and an agent liked it enough to work on revising it with me. She had me restructure the book and soon it was ready to submit to publishers.

Except . . . she dropped a bombshell on me. She was leaving to take her dream job with a publishing company. Eventually I found another agent who started submitting the book. Then she left agenting to go back to school, but the good news was another agent at the same agency took me on. Whew.

To make this long story a little shorter, In Spite of Murder ended up on the desk of an editor at Berkley. She liked the story but the book wasn’t cozy enough for their line. She liked my voice and wanted to know if I’d be interested in writing a cozy.

Well, YES.

I’d been reading a lot of cozies and I realized deep down that was what I wanted to write. That was the genre I had the voice for. I just had to figure out what my book would be about.

I didn’t do crafts. I did help hubby with some home improvement type things, but there were already cozies that covered that topic. I tried to think up unusual occupations, but it seemed like most had been done. It finally dawned on me ( I may have been drinking a beer at the time) that there were no cozies with a craft brew theme.

Max O’Hara, my protagonist, would be a female brewmaster and I’d set it in my hometown of Pittsburgh. She’d have five older brothers and her dad would be a homicide detective. Her romantic interest would be her childhood crush—the best friend of one of her brothers.

I wrote a proposal for what I was calling the Brewing Trouble Series. The proposal included a synopsis of the first book, To Brew Or Not To Brew, plus ideas for following books. I sent the proposal along with the first three chapters to my agent. The rest, as they say, is history.

And now I’m launching the second book in the series, Tangled Up in Brew. I really hope yinz guys (as we say in Pittsburgh) will give Max O’Hara and her friends a try. You won’t be disappointed!

Joyce Tremel was a police secretary for ten years and more than once envisioned the demise of certain co-workers, but settled on writing as a way to keep herself out of jail.

Her flash fiction has appeared in Mysterical-e, and her non-fiction has been published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police magazine. Her debut novel, TO BREW OR NOT TO BREW (December 2015) was nominated for a 2015 Reviewers’ Choice Award for best amateur sleuth by RT Book Reviews. The second book in the series TANGLED UP IN BREW (October 2016) has been chosen as a Top Pick by RT Book Reviews. The third book, A ROOM WITH A BREW, is tentatively scheduled for release in October 2017.