Around the year 2000, I was sending out query letters by the dozen to agents who I hoped would be interested in the first Gillian Jones novel. There were a couple of nibbles, but no bites. I rewrote the book, but still couldn’t get anyone to represent it. “Change your name,” suggested a fellow writer. “It’s too long.”

“Maybe to something like Evanovich?” I joked.

I never used a pen name, and I didn’t find an agent, either. In 2006, I self-published the first in the series, followed by a second in 2009. Sometime after that, when I still had a land line, I received a call from a woman to tell me how much she enjoyed the books. I was elated until the conversation turned to Florida, where (according to her) we both lived.

“No,” I said. “I live in Nebraska.”

“Your series is set in Nebraska,” she agreed. “But we’re practically neighbors here in Florida.”

“I’ve never even been to Florida,” I replied.

I don’t remember exactly how the conversation ended, but I think we hung up, stared at the phone, and said, “huh.”

The internet soon solved the Nebraska/Florida mystery: there is another Lois Lewandowski with a mystery series. She writes under L.A. Lewandowski, but her first name is Lois. Her cyber presence indicated a nice, well-rounded person. She also photographed well and appeared to be sane, both excellent qualities for a writer.

“It’s sort of like The Big Lebowski,” I told my husband.

“Did someone pee on the rug?” he asked. (Note: The Big Lebowski is a profanity-laced movie about two individuals with the name of Jeffrey Lebowski. One is a wealthy older man with a young porn star wife, the other is a stoner on a bowling league. When the young wife racks up bills, thugs try to get the money from the wrong Lebowski and pee on his rug.)

“I wasn’t referring to the rug,” I informed my husband. “I was referencing the fact that we both have the same name, it begins with “L” and ends with s-k-i. That’s what ties everything together.”

Well, without a compromised rug, he didn’t think we qualified for a Big Lebowski comparison. I advised him that he was out of his element.

Now, I’m going to go a bit out of my element: I’m working on two stand-alone novels and neither qualifies as a mystery. That isn’t to say I’ll never write a mystery again. I’ve primed Newt, the Sheriff in the Gillian Jones books, to be the main character in a series of his own. I have some plot ideas for Newt, but sometimes an idea will grow the wings of a novel and other times it doesn’t. Time will tell. I do hope to have another book out by the end of 2018.

In the meantime, thanks for reading the Gillian Jones series, and if you Google me (us), I’m the Nebraska Lois Lewandowski.