Duffy Brown's Blog: New Cozy Series - Posts Tagged "mystery"

A title like Pearls and Poison doesn’t leave much to the imagination on the murder weapon of choice but the question is how to get the job done.

With a gun you pull the trigger and bam it’s over. With a knife it’s slash and dash, but with poison the possibilities are endless. Where do you get it? You just don’t walk into Walgreens and ask which aisle has the cyanide. How much do you need? Which ones work the best? What do you mix it in?

So, like I always do when I have a question, I hit the Google and there it was…plants! With Pearls and Poison set in Savannah there are lots and lots of plants year round. All I had to do was pick one…decisions, decisions.

Everyone knows Poinsettia berries are a big no-no but I bet you didn’t know those lovely spring daffodils you adore can cause big problems. You may not die; you’ll just be so sick you wish you were dead.
I have a whole hedge of oleander in my back yard and one plant could probably wipe out my neighborhood. Good thing we never used the sticks to roast marshmallows!

Rhododendron, jasmine azaleas and wisteria, foxglove is so beautiful, they are the focal point of spring and toxic to extreme. The victim gets deathly ill then a coma and then he kisses his butt goodbye. ( I used one of these in Pearls and Poison)
Yew is fatal and has no symptoms you just keel right over. Up minute dead the next.

And then there’s Lantana, buttercups, foxglove, periwinkle Vinci rose. These are in every summer garden and pot and totally lethal. How can thing be so lovely and so deadly?
Never feed your dogs onions. Chokecherry is death to horses.

I did a ton of research for Pearls and Poison to get the right poison and figure out how to get the victim…who deserves to die…to drink it.
When doing this research I was invited to a dinner party and asked to bring ice cream instead of the salad. Wonder why?

I had a cleaning lady. All my poisonous plant books along with Deadly Doses, Armed and Dangerous and Intent to Kill were on my desk. She never came back. Life is not easy for a mystery writer.

Have a wonderful summer...if it ever gets here, enjoy your flowers...just don’t eat them.
Hugs,
Duffy Brown

Bruce Wills here. The other Bruce Willis with ears, wagging tail and daily yard-waterer in Iced Chiffon.
Have you ever noticed all the pets running around in cozies mysteries? And most of them are cats! What the heck? How did that happen? Does a cat greet you at the door, get your slippers, clean the kitchen floor after you spill the bacon and eggs? No! Cats sniff, turn up their nose and prance off. Dogs have owners, Cats have staff!

Once upon a time I didn’t have such a great life so I ran away and took up living under Reagan Summerside’s front porch. Don’t know why I chose her. Maybe because at the time Reagan’s life in Savannah sucked almost as much as mine.
But she’s an okay gal, even shared her McNuggets and fries with me but kept the martinis all to herself. I mean to tell you I could do with a martini or two on these hot summer nights.

Reagan has a consignment shop on the first floor of her half-restored Victorian. She and her Auntie KiKi who lives next door were going to name me Calvin Klein to fit in with the upscale clothes she takes in. One look at my mangled left ear, crooked tail and scared snout not to mention my questionable linage and they knew I was much better suited as Bruce Willis.

Life is good right now. Reagan says I’m the worse watchdog on the planet but I sure do make a lot of friends. If I fake a limp I can usually finesse a cookie or two from the customers and if I sit in front of the fridge long enough I get my daily dog…hot dog that is. The warm fall days here in Savannah are just made for me snoozing on the porch and one day I can get a slurp of Reagan’s peach martini.

So what is your opinion on pets in mysteries? Paw up or down? Do they distract too much from the mystery? Do you like it when they have a point of view? Do you like cats or dogs best in a book? (That’s spelled d-o-g)

All my life I thought launch was what those really smart rocket science people do to get something into space and never in all those years did I expect to be involved. Yet here I am dong a launch of my very own. Not that I’m putting a rocket in space...though right now that seems like a snap...but I’m launching a book.

What do you mean launch, I asked my publisher. The book comes out on a specific day, booksellers, B&N and Amazon put it up for sale, end of story. Done.

Right, like anything is ever that easy. To launch my first cozy mystery, Iced Chiffon, I though it would be fun to do something different. I’ll have a mystery party at my house, I decided! I have the house, I like parties. A match made in heaven.

Sixty is a nice number and I can just buy one of those inter-active mystery party things online. Piece of cake.

You can see where this is going, can’t you. Murphy’s Law on steroids.

First off there are no mystery parties online for sixty that has everyone involved all the time. That means I have to write the mystery. And if people are coming to my house I have to feed them and drink them.

Thirty years ago I decided I wanted kids and my husband went along with it. That gave me four waiters and barkeeps for my party. It took me a week to write the party with characters and clues.

A few things I discovered along the way. The most important is the more alcohol, the better the party...and my ability to write the mystery. The second is that your friends are there for fun more than finding out who-done-it. And did I mention the alcohol?

Each year Lori Foster and I host the Reader Writer Get-together and many of my friends and readers would be in town for the event, a perfect launch time for my new mystery series. The theme was Roaring 20’s and Duffy’s Speakeasy. I cheated and bought one of those online ready-made mystery parties for twelve to see how they laid out the characters, clues, who knew what, who killed who.

I divided the guests into families...Manicotti family, Ravioli family, Linguini family...you get the picture. I think I did this at night when hungry.

The family members were Bunny the Blade Biscotti, Larry the Lip-man Linguini, Rick the Rum-runner Ravioli, Tess the teetotaler, Suzie Suffragette, Sister Mary Holy Water and other crazy names that came to me at 2 AM. Working in families made everyone pool info and try and figure out the killer. It was a great icebreaker as the group didn’t know each other and had to start talking and laughing and drinking right off the bat. And speaking of drinking... We had bathtub gin, Al Capones, Machine Gun Fiz, Dillinger Delights and the Bloodier Mary.

Each guest was notified before the party as to their character, if they were packing heat, poison, a blade, rosary beads or a Votes for Women sign. Everyone had a back-story with lots of family rivalries, enemies, affairs, double-crosses and lies. It was pretty much HBO with martins.

Dinner was delivered in an ambulance complete with sirens and hunky paramedics. The costumes were amazing, the murder scenes Oscar quality. I even hired three thugs to raid the party and steal everyone’s jewels and take my daughter hostage. (When they found out how much her college tuition was they gave her back.)

Many launch parties are about selling the book at the event. I wanted this party to be about introducing the world to Duffy Brown, my new pen name for the mystery genre, in an entertaining way. And it worked! The whole night my guests kept their friends on Face Book and Twitter entertained with the shenanigans going on at Duffy Brown’s Speakeasy. And of course these pictures were shared and retweeted. There is no better promo than word of mouth.

I’ve had three parties now and each time it gets better. Readers talk about Duffy’s mystery party for months before and after. If you’re a mystery author it’s a great gig...do it. If you’re a mystery reader get invited to one...it’s a blast. If I do party four I’ll let you know. I’d love to have one at the Cincinnati conservatory with a Clue theme. You know, Miss Scarlett in the conservatory with the candlestick. That’s my dream. I’ll let you know when the invites go out.

Duffy Brown
Consignment Shop Mystery Series
set in Savannah
Berkley Prime Crime
-Iced Chiffon
-Killer in Crinolines
-Pearls and Poison

In Geared for the Grave Evie Bloomfield wants to boost her chances for a promotion so she agrees to leave Chicago and head off to Mackinac Island to help her boss’ dad with his cycle shop.

Mackinac is a real island, an eight-mile chunk of land where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron. It’s truly beautiful, no cars with horses and bikes a twenty-minute ferry ride from the mainland. When the lakes freeze...or as the islanders call it “the ice makes...there is no ferry, very limited plane service and if the ice is think enough snowmobiles are the way off the place.

So want do you think, could you live there year-round?

Without cars it’s so quiet and the whole island is a throwback to the 1800s with vintage baseball, parades for every occasion, the town gazebo, dressing for dinner at the Grand Hotel, high tea, horse drawn carriages with men in top hats and formal attire and did I mention no cars.

It’s waking up to the clip clop of horses’ hooves on cobblestone and often the whole island cocooned in dense fog with the foghorns moaning out in the harbor. You’ll be in the best shape of you life with having to walk everywhere and the sunset over the Mackinaw Bridge will always take your breath away.

This sound amazing to many of us like a and death sentence to others. There is no mall! There is no Walmart, big box store of any sort, no free wifi except at Horn’s bar and the library. Often your cell phone won’t work and you’ll be hanging over the end of the pier to get reception for the so important phone call. There are only 500 permanent residents so things get a bit confining in the winter when the way to get around is your snowmobile. Your kids go to a school with sixty other kids, there is no Dollar Store and it’s reeeeeally cold.

So what do you think? Are you a island person or a big city? Personally I think I’d fit in perfectly on Mackinc Island. It’s a writer’s heaven and I’ve always wanted my own snowmobile.

Hugs,
Duffy Brown

Geared for the Grave
First book in Cycle Path Mysteries
Berkley Prime Crime
December 2, 2014

PS If you’d like to be part of my Street Team just email DuffyBrown@DuffyBrown.com for info or here’s the link for the info.

http://www.duffybrown.com/my-street-team.

The next mailing of promo for Geared for the Grave and Thank You tote and a special bicycle keyfob that I’ve made goes out Nov 25th.

Mackinac Island consists of two main directions...up and down and with no cars and anything horse-drawn being kind of pricey that means if you live on the island for any stretch of time you’ll be in the best shape of your life from walking the hills or riding your bike because these are some hills!

And this is a really good thing so you can walk off all that fudge you can eat!

The town is mainly two streets, Main Street and Market Street. Main faces the water and the one street back is Market. There are the usual tourist shops of t-shirt etc but the one thing that will capture your attention right away is that there are 18...yes 18!...fudge shops in town. Ryba’s, JoAnn’s, Murdocks, Mackinac Fudge...you get the picture
Inhale the mouthwatering aromas.

Partake in the deliriously delicious confectioneries. Revel in the experience – your palate will think it won the lottery!

The Island doesn’t claim to have created fudge. But after one taste, you’ll agree that it was perfected here. The flavors are unworldly the taste to die for.
The tourist center says…Born in the years following the Civil War, the tradition of fudge making is stronger than ever and fudge remains the Island’s most popular and tastiest souvenir.

I think they sell TEN tons of the stuff a year. That is a LOT of fudge. And of course there are a bazillion kinds of fudge…

A typical story of fudge on the island is Sara Murdick. The gal sure knew her way around a kitchen, there’s no doubt about that. After arriving to the United States from Germany in the 1800s, Sara and her family eventually opened a confectionery in southeast Michigan.

In addition to a perfect recipe, the art of fudge making also plays an important role on the island besides eating it...you can watch it being made and there is actually a Fudge Festival every year. Holy cow! Nothing better than a fudge festival!

All the fudge shops have big windows where you can watch men…usually it is the guys doing the this ‘cuse tossing fudge is hefty work. They throw big kettles of fudge onto big marble tables then use a thing that looks like a canoe paddle to flip the fudge up onto itself creating a loaf of fudge as they toss in nuts and chocolate bits and bits of maple and toffee and cookie and peppermint etc…you get the picture on to the loaf as they flip it over and over and over as it cools.

Sooooo, after all this talk about fudge, what is your favorite? Chocolate-chocolate, maple, Oreo, lavender (yep, it really tastes like lavender) peanut butter, pumpkin pie, turtle, raspberry, blueberry (it’s really blue!)

anyone responding to this post and wanting A Geared for the Grave tote email DuffyBrown@DuffyBrown.com with your mailing address and I’ll send a tote off to you.

Hugs Duffy

Geared for the Grave
cozy mystery
first book in Cycle Path mysteries set on Mackinac Island
Berkley Prime Crime

Mackinac Island consists of two main directions...up and down and with no cars and anything horse-drawn being kind of pricey that means if you live on the island for any stretch of time you’ll be in the best shape of your life from walking the hills or riding your bike because these are some hills!

And this is a really good thing so you can walk off all that fudge you can eat!

The town is mainly two streets, Main Street and Market Street. Main faces the water and the one street back is Market. There are the usual tourist shops of t-shirt etc but the one thing that will capture your attention right away is that there are 18...yes 18!...fudge shops in town. Ryba’s, JoAnn’s, Murdocks, Mackinac Fudge...you get the picture
Inhale the mouthwatering aromas.

Partake in the deliriously delicious confectioneries. Revel in the experience – your palate will think it won the lottery!

The Island doesn’t claim to have created fudge. But after one taste, you’ll agree that it was perfected here. The flavors are unworldly the taste to die for.
The tourist center says…Born in the years following the Civil War, the tradition of fudge making is stronger than ever and fudge remains the Island’s most popular and tastiest souvenir.

I think they sell TEN tons of the stuff a year. That is a LOT of fudge. And of course there are a bazillion kinds of fudge…

A typical story of fudge on the island is Sara Murdick. The gal sure knew her way around a kitchen, there’s no doubt about that. After arriving to the United States from Germany in the 1800s, Sara and her family eventually opened a confectionery in southeast Michigan.

In addition to a perfect recipe, the art of fudge making also plays an important role on the island besides eating it...you can watch it being made and there is actually a Fudge Festival every year. Holy cow! Nothing better than a fudge festival!

All the fudge shops have big windows where you can watch men…usually it is the guys doing the this ‘cuse tossing fudge is hefty work. They throw big kettles of fudge onto big marble tables then use a thing that looks like a canoe paddle to flip the fudge up onto itself creating a loaf of fudge as they toss in nuts and chocolate bits and bits of maple and toffee and cookie and peppermint etc…you get the picture on to the loaf as they flip it over and over and over as it cools.

Sooooo, after all this talk about fudge, what is your favorite? Chocolate-chocolate, maple, Oreo, lavender (yep, it really tastes like lavender) peanut butter, pumpkin pie, turtle, raspberry, blueberry (it’s really blue!)

anyone responding to this post and wanting A Geared for the Grave tote email DuffyBrown@DuffyBrown.com with your mailing address and I’ll send a tote off to you.

Hugs Duffy

Geared for the Grave
cozy mystery
first book in Cycle Path mysteries set on Mackinac Island
Berkley Prime Crime

It’s a new year and everyone is making resolutions. I suck at resolutions. I mean well but things just never seem to work out. So, I was looking on Pinterest and they have this board called New Thing to Try in 2015.
Somehow that made more sense or maybe it’s the wording. It just sounds more adventuresome and a lot more fun than You’re fat, Duffy, resolve to lose weight!

The first thing I’m going to try that’s new in 2015 is learning Italian! I’m off to Italy to discover my Italian Roots as grandpa Angelo was from Bisaccia, a tiny town just southeast of Naples. To try and not offend my relatives I thought it would be nice to try and speak the language. (though with my ability to learn foreign languages it might not work out that way) But at least I’ll try.

I’m also going to start doing Zumba more before this poor old body of mine completely falls apart. And the new thing for me is to start lifting weights! Picture me as Hercules by December. See, an adventure!
I’m going to try the fish oil routine as my eyes are failing and I guess fish have much better eyes. And I’m going to write three pages a day come hell or high-water. I need to get organized. Trust me, this is indeed a new and adventuresome path for Duffy Brown.

So there you have it, my new things to try in 2015. Do you have any adventures you’re taking on? Hopefully something fun and exciting and that will not make you look like Hercules.

Hugs and Happy 2015!
Duffy Brown

Walker Boone here from the lovely city of Savannah, Georgia. The azaleas are in bloom, the magnolias are big as dinner plates and I’m on the run.
In Dead Man Walker coming out Feb 3, I’ve got my very own story to tell. It’s from my point of view and that’s the good news. The bad news is that I’ve kind of gotten myself into one big huge mess and it looks like Reagan Summerside and Auntie KiKi are the only ones trying to get me out of it.
You see there was this dead guy in a bathtub. Not my bathtub but his own and my housekeeper happened to stumble across the body. If I remember right it went something like…

“See, there he is, Mr. Boone,” Mercedes
said to me. “Just like I told you on the
phone, Conway Adkins dead as a fence post
in his very own claw-foot bathtub and
naked as the day he was born.”
“I take you added the washcloth?” I
said to Mercedes, both of us standing
in the doorway and staring at the corpse.
“Couldn’t be having the man laying
there with his shrivelness all exposed to
the world now could I. Not proper for a
man his age.”
“Or for the rest of us,” I added.

At first Mercedes was the number one suspect. That was bad enough because she’s a friend and she can’t be beat as a housekeeper. On both accounts--and with my dust-bunnies threatening to mutiny—I went after the rear killer.
I didn’t have a lot of luck, in fact I almost got killed a few times and then...somehow...I wound up the number one suspect.

“This is circumstantial evidence,”
I said to Reagan as we stood on the
sidewalk outside my house. “The police
have to see that someone’s setting me
up to cover their own butt.”
“It’s your butt that needs covering,
Walker Boone,” Reagan offered. “The police
found your .38 and it matches the bullet
that killed Conway. The cops are on their
way. You got to get out of here right now.”
I looked at my red ‘57 Chevy
convertible parked at the curb. “Might
as well put a target on my back driving
this thing.”
Reagan shoved her helmet at me.
“Take Princess.”
“A scooter? You want me to ride
a pink scooter named Princess?”
“Better than that being your
nickname in the big house.”

So there you have it...Dead Man Walker and that’s just what I feel like, a dead man. How in the world am I ever going to get out of this one?

I’ve been trying to get the forever shoebox of pictures in some kind of order. These are from back in the day when I actually had physical pictures to put in shoeboxes.

There are the usual pictures of the kids born, growing up, first day of school etc and then there are the pictures I inherited, stuff that happened before my time. Pictures are great, reminds us of what was but nothing beats actually being there.

There’s this picture of my parents wedding. I wish I could have been at the wedding. They look so young and happy and full of life.

And there’s a picture of grandpa Angelo’s store on Canal Street when we had canals in Cincy. Wish I could have shopped there...and ridden on a canal boat.

There’s a picture of my uncle coming home from WWII. I would have loved to been in NYC for that parade and been a part of the end of WWII. Maybe stand beside that sailor kissing the girl. Heck I would have love to be that girl!

There’s a clipping of the first moon landing. I sure would have been neat to be standing on the moon too. Then there’s that newspaper clipping of the Titanic. I’m glad I wasn’t there for that one!

I would have like to have been in the shop or whatever when Gutenberg printed his first something on the printing press. I bet they all held hands and did the Snoopy dance ‘cause they had to know they were really on to something.

I know I would have liked to witness firsthand the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Talk about some brave dudes. High treason is dangerous business.

So what about you? Is there something you would have liked to witness up-close and personal? Something you wish you’d been a part of? Be with Adam and Eve in the Garden? Watch Babe Ruth slam a homer? Be there when Mr. Hershey made his first kiss!

Pets are the best! They are our constant companions, love us when we’re bitchy and in our sloppy PJs with no hair combed and when we have the flu. And they train us really well.
And here I thought we were supposed to train them! Ha!

Pet joke: What side of the door does the cat like to be on? The other side. That’s why I jump up and down the whole blasted night while trying to watch TV to let my cat in and out of the porch. Am I a well trained owner or what!

And then there’s the food issue. Every three days I bake my cat chicken thighs. Not breasts or legs or wings...but thighs. Then cut into small pieces and served room temp. Not cold and not hot.

And then we have the water glass issue. Know that snotty white cat on TV who eats his kibble out of a crystal glass...that’s my cat’s water bowl. Good grief.

I have two cats, Spooky and Dr. Watson. Dr. Watson was supposed to be for my son, a gift from my daughter. Yeah, right. We all know how the pet for the kid thing works...parents get the pet! And I got Spooky out of the grocery store parking lot. He was living in the cart area. I herd this pitiful meow and suddenly had a new cat in my life.

If I didn’t have cats I’d have a dog. I know they are more work but they are always happy. Something about a wagging tail will cure any depression, a gift from the pet gods.

In the Consignment Shop Mysteries I have Bruce Willis...the canine Bruce Willis. In Demise in Denim out in April BW and Reagan have an anniversary. Here’s an excerpt to give you a feel of how they feel about each other.

“I have a prezzie for you,” I sing-songed to BW now wagging his tail as we crossed KiKi’s front yard that butted up to mine. I opened the backdoor of Cherry House, went to the fridge and pulled out a little white box and headed for the front porch, BW’s nail tapping across the hardwood floor as he followed me. We sat together on the top step and I opened the box.
“Do you remember what today is?” I took a chicken McNugget from the box and split it in two. I popped half in my mouth and fed the other to BW.
“One year ago you and I became BFFs. I was in a bad way and you weren’t any better. We’d both been abandoned. You were hiding under this very porch though then there wasn’t a hole the roof. I shared my McNuggets with you.”
I broke another one in half. “I’d just opened the Prissy Fox. I needed money to keep the house going and I had a closet full of designer clothes I didn’t need since my ex kicked me to the curb.”
BW only seemed marginally interested in my sentimental walk down memory lane. I kissed him on the snout and he gobbled a McNugget right from the box. “So here we are, just the two of us, one year later. Any chance you’ll start doing the laundry any time soon?”
I got an eye roll I swear I really did.
“Vacuum maybe?”
BW chomped two nuggets.
“Are you happy?”
This time I got a burp and doggy head in my lap. I took that as a yes.

In Geared for the Grave there are two cats, Bambino and Cleveland who help me figure out who-done-it on a regular basis. Cats have amazing instincts...or maybe they’re just good listeners.

Tell me about your pet and I’ll give away two Demise in Denim lunch totes from the answers.

Have a barking-good day.
Duffy