Guest Post: Deadly Traditions

Welcome to the Great Escapes Book Tour for Deadly Traditions!
Read on for a special Guest Post from Author Sam Cheever!

About the Authors

About Gayle Leeson

Gayle Leeson is a pseudonym for Gayle Trent. Gayle has also written as Amanda Lee. She is currently writing the Kinsey Falls chick-lit/women’s fiction series, the Down South Cafe cozy mystery series, and the Ghostly Fashionista cozy mystery series. Her book KILLER WEDDING CAKE won the Bronze Medal in the 20th Anniversary IPPY Awards. Gayle lives in Southwest Virginia with her family and enjoys hearing from readers.

About Mollie Cox Bryan

Mollie Cox Bryan writes cozy mysteries with edge. She’s the author of several bestselling mystery series, also writing under the pen name Maggie Blackburn. Her books have been selected as finalists for an Agatha Award and a Daphne du Maurier Award and as a Top 10 Beach Reads by Woman’s World. She has also been short-listed for the Virginia Library People’s Choice Award. She’s also penned a historical fiction: MEMORY OF LIGHT: AN AFTERMATH OF GETTYSBURG. She’s the mother of two nearly perfect daughters, each pursuing careers in music.

About Erin Scoggins

USA Today Bestselling Author Erin Scoggins is a long-time Southerner with a fondness for offbeat humor and fresh fried chicken. After fifteen years in marketing with a Fortune 500 company, she traded her MBA for fictional crime scenes and feisty small-town families. She writes fun, flirty mysteries that are celebrations of food, family, and the killer South.

Visit her at www.erinscoggins.com for book news and shenanigans.

About Estelle Richards

Estelle Richards lives in the beautiful American Southwest and writes cozy mysteries. Connect with Estelle at estellerichards.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/estellerichardswriter/.

About Justine Maxwell

Justine Maxwell writes cozy mysteries with brave heroines, strong family bonds, and a touch of romance. She has degrees in psychology from Northern Arizona University and Grand Canyon University. She hopes to one day become a reclusive author in a mountain cabin near Flagstaff, AZ. Until then, she’ll be a busy mom of four small children and one (allegedly) hypoallergenic pup, writing in the midst of chaos.

About Wendy H. Jones

International Award Winning Author Wendy H. Jones lives in Scotland, and her police procedural series featuring DI Shona McKenzie are set.Wendy has led a varied and adventurous life. Her love for adventure led to her joining the Royal Navy to undertake nurse training. After six years in the Navy she joined the Army where she served as an Officer for a further 17 years. Killer’s Countdown was her first novel and the first book in the Shona McKenzie Mysteries. Killer’s Crew won the Books Go Social Book of the Year 2017. The seventh book in the series. Killer’s Curse will be released early august 2020. The Dagger’s Curse, the first book in The Fergus and Flora Mysteries, was a finalist in the Woman Alive Magazine Readers Choice Award Book of the Year. Turning to humorous crime the Cass Claymore Investigates series was born. She is also a highly successful marketer and is currently in the process of rereleasing her completely updated marketing book Marketing Matters. This will be part of the Writing Matters Series following the release of Motivation Matters. She is also the author of the Bertie the Buffalo picture book and associated soft toy and colouring book. Wendy is delighted to be one of the authors in two anthologies aimed at empowering women – The Power of Why, and Women Win Against All Odds. She is proud to be the President of the Scottish Association of Writers and is the host of The Writing and Marketing Show podcast, a writing and marketing coach. and CEO of Writing Matters online writing school, Authorpreneur Accelerator Academy.

About Dianne Ascroft

Dianne Ascroft is a Canadian writer living in Britain. Since moving to Britain in 1990 she has lived in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Online she can be found at http://www.dianneascroft.com.

She writes cozy mystery, historical and contemporary fiction, often with an Irish connection. Her non-fiction articles and short stories have been printed in Canadian and Irish magazines and regional newspapers including the Toronto Star, Ireland’s Own, Senior Times, Celtic Connection and Irish Connections Canada.

She was co-editor of The Fermanagh Miscellany, the Fermanagh Authors’ Association’s yearly anthology for several years and she also contributes material to other local history and writers’ anthologies.

Dianne is a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors, Sisters in Crime, Historical Novel Society, Writers Abroad, Fermanagh Authors’ Association and Fermanagh Writers.

Dianne started life in a quiet residential neighbourhood in the buzzing city of Toronto and has progressively moved to smaller places through the years. She now lives on a small farm in Northern Ireland with her husband and an assortment of strong willed animals. If she ever decides to write her autobiography the working title will be ‘Downsizing’.

About Sam Cheever

USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author Sam Cheever writes mystery and suspense, creating stories that draw you in and keep you eagerly turning pages. Known for writing great characters, snappy dialogue, and unique and exhilarating stories, Sam is the award-winning author of 80+ books.

NEWSLETTER: Join Sam’s Monthly newsletter and get a FREE book! You can also keep up with her appearances, enjoy special content, and get previews of her upcoming work! https://www.samcheever.com/newsletter.html

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ONLINE HOT SPOTS: To find out more about Sam and her work, please pay her a visit: Her website: https://www.samcheever.com; Her blog: https://www.samcheever.com/blog; and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SamCheeverAuthor. She looks forward to chatting with you!

Guest Post From Sam Cheever

Sam Cheever – Deadly Traditions Christmas anthology – Story: Killing the Carol

My name is MayBell Ferth, and the cute little ball of fluff and attitude sitting on my lap is Shakespeare… Shakes for short. Shakes is a Pomeranian, a.k.a. the Pomeranian Devil. He’s also my best friend and my accomplice in crime-fighting and other things.

I come from a family of cops. My dad, the Lieutenant, is a fearsome creature with a soft spot for Shakes that he tries to hide. My brother Argh is a detective. Argh got his nickname as a kid when he had to wear an eyepatch due to reoccurring eye infections. Argh and I have an older brother and sister who are also cops.

I’m pretty sure that the very first Ferth to step off a ship onto terra firma in the New World was a cop of some sort. The Ferths have worn the impetus for protecting and serving as a badge of honor through countless generations. 

Until me. 

I’m not a cop. And, I’ll bet you an entire box of caramel-filled chocolates that you’ve never heard of my job before. 

I started out as a Community Theatre actor. I gave that gig up because I couldn’t take the diva drama. I know, irony. But in my current career I’m a Professional Mourner. Yep, that’s a real thing. I actually get paid to cry at funerals and play whatever role the client wishes me to play. Bereaved girlfriend, gloating college rival, conniving ex-partner. I’ve played them all.

I love my job, even though it’s gotten me into a few “situations” since I started. One time, I was targeted by a killer while playing a grieving girlfriend and nearly got myself gacked before my PI boyfriend and I managed to stop the murderer. 

Another time, an old rival of mine was killed and I was blamed for her death. It took some tricky maneuvering casket-side to suss that one out. 

But the situation I’m currently in isn’t due to my Professional Mourning job. I signed up for Caroling in the Square, an event my theatre group holds every year around the holidays to entertain and promote our productions. From my perspective, there was only one way that was going to end.

Badly. Very badly.

Full disclosure, my singing voice sounds like a cross between a preschool brass band and cats mating in an alley. I didn’t want to join the event, but I succumbed to pressure from the group. Although I was pretty sure my singing would be the thing that ruined everybody’s Christmas, I hadn’t counted on the corpse in the alley. 

Carol Ling wasn’t just the unlucky owner of a terrible name. She’d apparently also done something to annoy a killer. She’d met a terrible end in a stinky, garbage-infused alleyway. Long story short, it would be up to me, my dog, and my PI boyfriend to find her killer. 

Admittedly, my police detective brother, Argh, was on the case. But I won’t lie. I plan to stick my nose into his investigation. I just can’t seem to help myself. 

I’ll take my licks from my bossy older brother. We’ll all need to work together to figure out who killed the woman named after a fun Christmas activity. With the help of a certain adorable Pom, potential assistance from my monosyllabic dread-headed neighbor who lives in a medically-approved cannabis cloud, and the invaluable expertise of my PI boyfriend, Eddie, I fully intend to catch a killer. 

I might not be a cop like the rest of my family, but I’ve got more detective than diva coursing through my veins. 

Detective DNA wins out every time.

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