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Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Happy Homicides 5: The Purr-fect Crime by 11 Authors - Book Tour - Book Sale - FREE Gift - Guest Post - Giveaway - Enter Daily!


Hey lovelies! It gives me great pleasure today to host all these fabulous authors and their new book, “Happy Homicides 5: The Purr-fect Crime”!  For other stops on their Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in this post.

Be sure to make it to the end of this post to enter to win a $50 Etsy Gift Card!!  Also, come back daily to interact with these wonderful authors and to increase your chances of winning!

This book is on SALE during the tour for ONLY $0.99!!!  See below for more details.

The authors are sending readers a special gift when you email them.  See below for more details.

Thanks for stopping by!  Wishing you lots of luck in this fabulous giveaway!


Happy Homicides 5: The Purr-fect Crime
by Joanna Campbell Slan, Linda Gordon Hengerer, LouLou Harrington, Neil Plakcy, Teresa Trent, Terry Ambrose, Amy Vansant, Randy Rawls, Christina Freeburn, Wendy Sand Eckel, and Karen Cantwell

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GENRE: Cozy Mystery Anthology

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BLURB:

The purr-fect way to meet your new favorite author! This collection of traditional mysteries will be like catnip for feline-friendly readers. It’s paw-sitively the best Mother’s Day gift ever. Plus, you can email us to get a FREE Bonus File with recipes and holiday craft ideas. You’ll enjoy stories by these bestselling and award-winning authors: Joanna Campbell Slan, Linda Gordon Hengerer, David Bishop, LouLou Harrington, Neil Plakcy, Teresa Trent, Terry Ambrose, Amy Vansant, Randy Rawls, Christina Freeburn, Wendy Sand Eckel, and Karen Cantwell. For more information, go to www.HappyHomicides.com.

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EXCERPT ONE:

THE NAMING OF CATS: A Rosalie Hart Mystery

Wendy Sand Eckel

Editor’s Note: The quaint little town of Cardigan on Maryland’s Eastern Shore seemed like the perfect spot for Rosalie Hart to open the Day Lily Café. A flat stretch of land between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, the Eastern Shore is home to crusty watermen, dug-in farmers, and people who are fiercely proud to call it home. Rosalie has enough on her plate running the restaurant. But when her Maine Coon uncovers a mystery, the cat has been let out of the bag.

Chapter 1

“Your cat is up to something,” Tyler said as he walked into my kitchen. I set a steaming cup of coffee next to him and watched as he scrubbed his hands under the faucet.

“I think Sweeney Todd is happy to be outside.” I lifted my coffee mug and blew over the surface to cool it. “This is the first day it hasn’t rained in over a week.”

He dried his hands and turned to face me. “Thanks for the joe.”

Tyler Wells leased the farmland of my new home, Barclay Meadow. It wasn’t really my choice to move here. Three years ago, when my dear Aunt Charlotte bequeathed me this two-hundred-year-old house and the vast land surrounding it, I was happily immersed in my married life in Chevy Chase. But all that changed when my husband of over twenty years pronounced his love for a much younger and blonder version of me.

The sun streamed through the windows, warming the honey wood floors. Tyler and I had fallen into the habit of sharing a cup of coffee every morning before we started our days. I checked the clock. I would be leaving soon to go to the restaurant I recently opened, the Day Lily Café, currently serving breakfast and lunch five days a week in the sleepy little town of Cardigan.

Tyler brushed his sandy blond hair off his forehead. “Sweeney is digging pretty close to the vegetable gardens. You might want to stop him.”

“I’m on it.” I set my coffee down and headed outside.

My shoes squeaked on the grass as I rounded the house. A dense mist rose from the Cardigan River at the end of the sloping lawn. It was a beautiful spring morning on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

I spotted Sweeney by an old Sycamore tree. Its trunk was gnarled and twisted looking like something out of Sleepy Hollow. He was digging furiously at the ground with his front paws.

My adopted Maine Coon cat was originally named Sweetie Pie. But on the first day I brought him home, he slaughtered four goldfinches in under an hour. That’s when Tyler suggested the name change. At the precise moment I started to disagree, Sweeney dropped a fifth lifeless bird on my peep-toe pump.

I knelt down next to him. He had dug so deep almost all nineteen pounds of him were immersed in the hole.

“Hey, what are you . . .” He swiped one paw with a particularly vigorous motion and a clump of dirt launched onto my black skirt. “Sweeney, for goodness sake.” He stopped digging and let out a long, guttural mmrrrow. He pushed back out of the hole and eyed me intently. My stomach tightened with dread. “What have you found, baby?”

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GUEST POST:

5 Reasons People Will Want to Read "Happy Homicides 5: The Purr-fect Crime" – and a Little Background on the Series

By Joanna Campbell Slan

The Happy Homicides Cozy Mystery Series was designed to help folks discover a new favorite author.

1.     In each Happy Homicides book, you’ll “meet” a variety of authors. For example, Happy Homicides 5 features the work of eleven writers.
2.     All the mysteries in our books are “clean” traditional mysteries with no graphic sex, graphic violence, or offensive language.
3.     These books are reasonably priced. The pre-order price for Happy Homicides 5: The Purr-fect Crime is only 99 cents.
4.     Every Happy Homicides book comes with a free gift. There’s a super-secret email address inside so you can send away for a bonus file full of recipes and craft ideas.
5.     Each book has a particular theme. Cat lovers will rejoice because this anthology raises kitty litter-ature to a whole new level. All the stories in HH5 feature feline frolics. Whether it’s a hissing fit between two friends or a crafty catnapper conspiring to con money, our sleuths don’t pussyfoot around. A crime is a cat-astrophe, pure and simple. Our crime solvers aren’t about to let a hairball or two stand between them and justice.

Background:

The Happy Homicides anthology series grew out of a discussion I had with my friend, Linda Gordon Hengerer. With a new book being published on Amazon every five minutes, it has gotten harder and harder to rise above the crowd and get noticed. In writers’ speak, this problem is called “discoverability,” and the big question is this: Given the vast number of books being published every day, How does any author get discovered?

Our solution was to create the Happy Homicides Cozy Mystery Series, a series of short story collections by a variety of authors. Editing and publishing these anthologies has been an education, a challenge, and a joy. We’ve made new friends, learned new skills, cracked the Amazon bestseller list, and best of all…we’ve expanded our readership.

This year we’ll produce two new books in the Happy Homicides series: Happy Homicides 5: The Purr-fect Crime and Happy Homicides 6: Cooking Up Crime (Fall 2017). We hope you’ll give us a try!

Pre-order your copy of Happy Homicides 5: The Purr-fect Crime (Release date May 12, 2017) for only 99 cents.  Go to http://amzn.to/2qUyGVZ.

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AUTHOR BIOS & LINKS:

Happy Homicides 5: The Purr-fect Crime authors include Joanna Campbell Slan, Linda Gordon Hengerer, David Bishop, LouLou Harrington, Neil Plakcy, Teresa Trent, Terry Ambrose, Amy Vansant, Randy Rawls, Christina Freeburn, Wendy Sand Eckel, and Karen Cantwell.  For more information, go to www.HappyHomicides.com or visit us at http://www.facebook.com/happyhomicides. To read a FREE sample, get your copy of Happy Homicides 2: Crimes of the Heart here: http://bit.ly/2HHCrime.

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Joanna Campbell Slan:

RT Reviews has called Joanna Campbell Slan “one of mystery’s rising stars,” and it’s easy to see why. She’s the award-winning and national bestselling author of three mystery series. Her first series, the Kiki Lowenstein Mystery series, was an Agatha Award Finalist, and features ace scrapbooker Kiki Lowenstein. Previous to writing fiction, Joanna penned seven scrapbooking technique books and wrote for Creating Keepsakes, Memory Makers, and PaperKuts. She has taught scrapbooking online, on cruises, and in Europe, as well as here in the US.


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 Linda Gordon Hengerer:

Linda was a football widow during her first marriage, and she wrote American Football Basics (original title Football Basics) because she thought more women would enjoy football if they understood it. She is also interested in food and wine, and has written an easy guide to food and wine pairings.

New Jersey native turned Florida resident, Linda moved to Vero Beach in 1996. She writes the Beach Tea Shop Mysteries, a cozy mystery series set in an area suspiciously like Vero Beach.


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LouLou Harrington:

Writer, traveler, and nature enthusiast Loulou Harrington is the author of the Myrtle Grove Garden Club mystery series. Originally a native of northwest Arkansas, Loulou now resides in the Tulsa area and spends frequent weekends wandering among the lakes and foothills of northeastern Oklahoma, the setting of her cozy series and an area she hopes her readers will enjoy as much as she does.

Beginning her career as a romance novelist, she published nine contemporary romances with Harlequin, writing as Ada Steward, before succumbing to the lure of her first love: the mystery novel.

First discovering Nancy Drew as a child and continuing with Miss Marple and Travis McGee as an adult, Loulou learned to appreciate the puzzle and suspense of the mystery combined with the familiar characters and settings of the recurring series. So while she still believes that into each life a little romance should fall, she has come to the opinion that it should trip over at least one dead body along the way.


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Neil Plakcy:

Neil Plakcy is the author of the Mahu Investigations, mysteries which take place in Hawaii. They are: Mahu, Mahu Surfer, Mahu Fire, Mahu Vice, Mahu Blood, Mahu Men, Zero Break, Natural Predators and Children of Noah.

His M/M romance novels are GayLife.com, Mi Amor, Love on Site, Love on the Web, Love on Stage, Love on the Pitch, and the Have Body, Will Guard series: Three Wrong Turns in the Desert, Dancing with the Tide, Teach Me Tonight, Olives for the Stranger, The Noblest Vengeance and Finding Freddie Venus.

He has also written the golden retriever mysteries In Dog We Trust, The Kingdom of Dog, Dog Helps Those, Dog Bless You, Whom Dog Hath Joined and Dog Have Mercy.

He is co-editor of Paws & Reflect: A Special Bond Between Man and Dog (Alyson Books, 2006) and editor of many gay erotica anthologies. A journalist, book reviewer and college professor, he is also a frequent contributor to gay anthologies.


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Teresa Trent:

Teresa Trent writes cozy mysteries that take place in small towns in Texas. She was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee but with her father in the military, didn't stay for long. She's lived all over, but likes to call three states her favorite homes. Colorado, Illinois and of course, Texas.  Being a fan of the Andy Griffith Show and Murder She Wrote she loves creating quirky small towns and colorful characters. She decided to feature a character with Down syndrome in the Pecan Bayou series because after giving birth to her own son with DS, she discovered there were very few people like him in the world of cozy mysteries. If you're wondering which book to start with in the Pecan Bayou Series, start with #1 A Dash of Murder. Many of Teresa's mysteries occur before or during a holiday and A Dash of Murder is her Halloween book.


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Terry Ambrose:

Terry Ambrose started out skip tracing and collecting money from deadbeats and quickly learned that liars come from all walks of life. He never actually stole a car, but sometimes hired big guys with tow trucks and a penchant for working in the dark when “negotiations” failed.

A resident of Southern California, he loves spending time in Hawaii, especially on the Garden Island of Kauai, where he invents lies for others to read. His years of chasing deadbeats taught him many valuable life lessons including—always keep your car in the garage.


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Amy Vansant:

Amy specializes in fun, comedic reads about accident prone, easily distracted women with questionable taste in men. So, autobiographies, mostly.

Amy is the former East Coast Editor of SURFER Magazine but the urge to drive up and down the coast interviewing surfers has long since left her. Currently, she is a nerd and Labradoodle mommy who works at home with her goofy husband.

She loves interacting with fans when the dog isn't laying on top of her, so stop by her blog or Twitter and say hi!


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Randy Rawls:

I'm Randy Rawls, author of mysteries and thrillers. I grew up in northeastern North Carolina, then did a career in the Army. I've been an avid reader all my life and have tried to incorporate what I learned from the best into my writing. While I live in South Florida, my heart resides in Texas. I'd love to hear from you at RandyRawls@att.net.


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Christina Freeburn:

Reading has been a part of Christina's life since she can remember and soon developed into a love of writing.

Read about her writing process, her hobbies, and the heroines she believes are a self-rescue princess at her blog The Self-Rescue Princess.


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Wendy Sand Eckel:

Degrees in criminology and social work, followed by years of clinical practice, helped WENDY SAND ECKEL explore her fascination with how relationships impact motivation, desire, and inhibition. Combined with her passion for words and meaning, writing mystery is a dream realized. She lives in Maryland where she enjoys family and friends, two cats, and living near the Chesapeake Bay.


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Karen Cantwell:

Karen's novel, Take the Monkeys and Run was a semi-finalist in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest (under the original title of Monkeys in My Trees) and has gone on to be a Kindle bestseller on Amazon. She has written three more books in the Barbara Marr Murder Mystery Series: Citizen Insane, Silenced by the Yams, and Saturday Night Cleaver.

When she's not writing, Karen loves gardening and spending time with her family. She is currently working on the release of Keep Me Ghosted, the first book in the new Sophie Rhodes Ghostly Romance Series, as well as beginning the draft of Kiss Me, Tate, part of the upcoming Barbara Marr spin-off, Love in Rustic Woods Series.


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BOOK BUY LINKS & BOOK SALE INFO:

** Happy Homicides 5: The Purr-fect Crime is on SALE during the book tour for ONLY $0.99!!!**

Amazon Kindle:

Goodreads:

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FREE GIFT:


The authors are supplying a bonus gift for readers.  They can receive it by sending an email to HH4Bonus@joannaslan.com.

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GIVEAWAY INFO:

The authors will be awarding a $50 Etsy GC to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.


**This post contains affiliate links and if clicked and a purchase made I may receive a small commission to help support this blog.  This does not cost you anything, it just helps pay for all those awesome giveaways on here.**

This contest is sponsored by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish Promotions.  Prizes are given away by the sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.

14 comments:

  1. Hi Fabulous Authors ~ It is great to have you all here! Congrats on your new book and good luck on the book tour! :)

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  2. Congrats on the tour and thanks for the chance to win :)

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  3. Great post--love the excerpt. Thanks so much for hosting.

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  4. Thanks, Ally! This looks fabulous. Love your site! Thanks for hosting us.

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  5. Just read the excerpt THE NAMING OF CATS: A Rosalie Hart Mystery by Wendy Sand Eckel. I can't wait to see what Sweeney Todd is digging up!

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    1. Just Mary, I can tell you ... it's a mystery. And you're going to love what happens next.

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  6. Thanks for the chance to win!

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  7. Hey, Ally, you are obviously fabulous and brunette! Thanks so much for having us on your blog.

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  8. Thanks for sharing and for the great giveaway :)

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  9. What is the best book that you read in 2016? Thanks for the giveaway. I hope that I win. Bernie W BWallace1980(at)hotmail(d0t)com

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  10. Congrats to the authors on the release of their new book and on the book tour. Thanks so much for posting!

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