Julie Mulhern Interview

How many books have you published?
With the publication of Cold as Ice, my mystery total is six. Book seven

will make an appearance next June.

How did you become interested in writing?
My seventh grade English teacher told me I should be a writer. I can
remember everything about that moment--where I stood in her classroom,
the writing on the chalkboard, and a feeling of elation. Truth is, my
teacher scared me a bit and praise from Dottie McCord was something to
be cherished.

It took me a while, but I did it. I became a published author. I like to
think Mrs. McCord is smiling down on me.

What is a day in the life of an author like? Do you write a certain
number of words, do you write in the morning or evening, etc?
My writing day begins early. I stumble downstairs, start coffee, and let
the dog out. He requires watching. With his business complete, we come
back inside and I add a healthy (or unhealthy) dollop of cream to my
coffee, spend a few minutes posting 70s pictures on Facebook, then
write.

Maybe.

Sometimes words flow like a river in springtime. My fingers can hardly
keep up.

Other days words are scarce. Those days, I set a timer and see how many
words (even rotten-destined-to-be-deleted-words) I can write in 20
minutes.

At a quarter till seven, Monday through Friday, I hear my daughter thump
out of bed. Water runs. A toilet flushes. A few minutes later she
arrives downstairs.

Our exchange usually goes something like this:

Me: “Good morning.”
Her: Grunt. She opens the refrigerator. “We don’t have anything to eat.”
Me: “Of course, we do. There’s cereal (don’t judge), toast (don’t
judge), fruit, and eggs.”
Her: “It takes too long to make eggs.”
I don’t argue.
Her: “We don’t have any good cereal. We never have any good cereal.”
Me: “I buy what you ask for.”
It’s true. I do. It’s not my fault if she leaves four flakes in a box
and puts it back on the pantry shelf.
Her: “I want to make my lunch. We don’t have any food.”
Me: (looking up from a gnarly sentence with gritted teeth) “We have ham,
turkey, and Swiss cheese, two kinds of bread, carrots, apples, sweet
potato chips, and those little containers of hummus.”
Her: “None of that sounds good.” She shakes her head at my abysmal
failure as a mother.

The difficult sentence wins. I save whatever words have been added and
get ready for my day job.

Do you plot the entire book first, then write or plot as you go?
May I answer both? I know the major plot points before I begin. What
happens between those points is always an unplanned surprise.

Do you use real people and places as models for your books?
That daughter I mentioned...Is it any wonder I felt the need to give
Ellison a sometimes-problematic teenage daughter?

Who is your favorite author?
THAT is a hard question. One of the wonderful thing about being an
author is becoming friends with other other authors. It's too hard to
pick just one.

How do you promote your books?
My books are set in the 1970s--an era of questionable taste in food,
clothes, and even wine. I post 70s pictures on Facebook every morning.
Some are funny. Some are cringe-worthy. Some (I'm looking at you Jello
molds) are icky. Everyone seems to enjoy the pictures and its a great
way for me to interact with readers. As for other promotions - blog
tours, interviews, and book clubs (I LOVE book clubs).

And the Winner is . . .

Congratulations to Anna Loomis Russell. She is the winner of the MapYourMystery.com raffle for Death on Tap by Ellie Alexander. Thanks to Ellie Alexander and Minotaur Books for the book.

  

Watch for another giveaway in November!

Much Ado About Murder

Operating a small theater in the Catskills has its ups and down. When the Catskill Shakespeare Theater Company begins its latest season, there are issues with the director. In Much Ado About Murder by Elizabeth J. Duncan costume designer Charlotte Fairfax not only has a new lead actress, but a new director.

Audrey Ashley, visiting British actress, decides she doesn't think she can work with the current director and wants to replace him with Edmund Albright. Albright is hired and he immediately decides to stage the play in a Civil Wat setting. The cast is reluctant at first, but then after Albright presents the case, they grudgingly agree it might be an interesting approach.

In the back of Charlotte's mind is how can she turn the Shakespearean costumes into Civil War era costumes. But when Albright is found dead, an apparent suicide, Charlotte has her hands full trying to find another director and solving the crime.

Charlotte has to ask the previous director to please come back to the theater company, and he comes

back grudgingly. Wade Radcliffe is also smitten with the Civil War theme so he smoothly takes over.When it appears Albright might not have been a suicide, Charlotte plunges into the investigation.

This news makes Audrey Ashley extremely paranoid and she begins making 911 calls to the police to report prowlers, asking especially Charlotte's boyfriend Ray. Trying to settle the actress down, keep her away from Ray and calm the remainder of the cast almost gives Charlotte another full time job.

When other odd events begin to happen, Charlotte is puzzled as to who could have killed Albright and why someone is terrorizing Ashley.

Shakespeare in the Catskills would be such a fun event. That's why I enjoy this series so much.

An Invitation to Murder

Being a matchmaker for a mild mannered, bug collecting young woman is not what Lady Katherine Irvine had in mind for herself. In Leighann Dobbs' An Invitation to Murder, Lady Katherine uses the matchmaking opportunity to investigate the murders of two young women, called the Pink-Ribbon Murders.

Both women were murdered at recent house parties and many hostesses have stopped holding parties. Lord Northbrook's mother decides she will buck concerns and hold a house party to find a wife for her son. Knowing this is the only way she will be invited to a party, Lady Katherine accepts the matchmaking job for Annie Pickering.

Spurring Lady Katherine's desire to solve the murders is her father's promise that he will turn over her dowry to her if she solves the case. Of course Lady Katherine wants to be a detective, but an earl's daughter isn't usually employed in that field.

The house party draws several young women looking for husbands and many men looking for wives

or just looking for a good time. There's much competition among the matchmakers and the young women. Although Katherine tries her best in the matchmaking arena, her heart is interested in solving the case.

When Katherine's arch enemy Dorian Wayland turns up at the event, she is sure he is trying to solve the case before her. She has never trusted him and even though he is charming and handsome, she wants no part of him or his desire to collaborate.

The plot weaves in and out and Katherine begins to despair that nothing will happen at this party when a young women is injured in an assault. This focuses Katherine and she sets out to solve the case.

The customs and habits of the aristocracy are a fascinating study and Leighann Dobbs portrays them well.  Life for women in this era was definitely interesting, but limiting. Katherine's spunk and intelligence sets her apart.

GIveaway Ends Tuesday

The MapYourMystery Giveaway ends on Tuesday. Enter today!

Check out this giveaway thanks to Ellie Alexander and Minotaur Books! We will be giving away one copy of Ellie's newest book, Death on Tap. Be sure to read my review about the book.

Can't wait for the giveaway to end on Tuesday 10/24 to get a copy? You can find Ellie's books on Minotaur Books'' website.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Secrets and Pies

Once again Callie is up to her neck in work. In Secrets and Pies by Jenny Kales, Callie, thanks to her father George, is baking enormous amounts of Greek food for the Greek church festival. 

Her ex-husband Hugh asks her to meet him at one of the Gilded Age homes he is renovating to pick up their daughter Olivia. While she waits Callie decides to browse around the house and stumbles across the body of Olivia's teacher, Holly Tennyson. Holly was a grad student working on an F.Scott Fitzgerald thesis.

Thrust as usual into the crime, she promises her daughter she will find the murderer, but her boyfriend Detective Ian Sands discourages her involvement. And life at Callie's Kitchen is crazy. Besides the church festival, she is roped into Beats at the Bay, a musical evening, by her grandmother, and baking for the every day tourists who are visiting the area is almost overwhelming.

When her right hand man Max tells her he has to quit to work at his father's farm, Callie panics.

There is still so much prep work for the festival and she wants to continue her investigation. Without Max in the kitchen Callie has to ask her father for help. Two Greeks in a kitchen. What could go wrong!

When another grad student is attacked, Callie is sure the solution has something to do with the graduate work and the Fitzgerald connection. Putting herself in jeopardy, she finds the killer.

The Callie Costas books take me back to my days in the kitchen learning how to cook with my Greek-American mother. We made almost all of the goodies Callie makes and to this day, I still make most of them. Still working on my pie crust, but I'm getting better.

Don't forget to enter the MapYourMystery.com giveaway. 

Song of the Lion

The last thing one might expect to find in the Shiprock High School parking lot on the Navajo Reservation is a bomb in a car. In Song of the Lion by Anne Hillerman, Navajo Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito is off duty and enjoying an Alumni basketball game when the building shakes. The sound she soon realizes is coming from the parking lot.

She rushes outside to find a car in flames and twisted metal all around. Managing to keep everyone inside the building while she waits for reinforcements to arrive, Bernie wonders if it was a bomb. When a seriously injured young man is found adjacent to the car, Bernie fears there might be another bomb in the gym.

The owner of the BMW turns out to be Aza Palmer, a lawyer. He the mediator at the large meeting to determine whether a huge resort on Navajo land at the edge of the Grand Canyon should be built. He's positive someone is out to kill him.

Jim Chee, Bernie's husband, is assigned as a bodyguard for Palmer while the mediating meetings are

going on in Tuba City. There are a wide range of groups at the meeting - some pro, some con. Most believe Palmer is not going to be a fair mediator. There are acts of sabotage at the Navajo Justic Building where the meeting is being held. First the electricity goes out throughout the building, then someone tampers with the heating system. 

When the dead man is identified as Richard Horseman, the name rings a bell with Lt. Joe Leaphorn. Aza Palmer also remembers him as a young man he knew as a child. As more is learned about young Horseman, Aza's son Robert and two businessmen involved in the development come under suspicion.

Song of a Lion beautifully loops Bernie, Jim and Lt Leaphorn together in true Hillerman form. When I met Anne Hillerman, I commented on how much her books have the voice of her late father, Tony Hillerman. She laughed and said she heard his voice all her life! Naturally she can continue his series in the same voice.

I look forward to more in this series, especially as Bernadette Manuelito is front and center in the books.

Cold as Ice

It's really not Ellison's fault that she keeps finding bodies, despite what her mother says. In Cold As Ice by Julie Mulhern, Ellison finds Laurie Michaels dead in the freezer of the country club. Her husband, naturally, is suspected. For Ellison there is more at stake here as Tom owes her late husband's bank one million dollars. 

Ellison tries to keep her promise to Detective Anarchy Jones to stay out of it, but that doesn't happen.When she arrives home one evening and finds a full-fledged teen party raging in her home, she confronts her daughter Grace and discovers Trip Michaels, son of Laurie, was the instigator of the party. 

Try as much as she can, Ellison cannot convince Grace that Trip is not to be trusted. Grace, though, finds out for herself how fickled he is when she encounters a weeping girl who claims to be his girlfriend. 

More worried about the bank's solvency not that Laurie is dead and Tom could possibly be arrested

for murder, Ellison confronts the bank manager Sherman Westcott. He tries to condescend to her and brush off the issue, but Ellison is not satisfied. When someone else is murdered, Ellison searches harder to find the connection.

As always her mother keeps trying to push lawyer Hunter Tafft at Ellison, telling her she needs a man to take care of her. I always find these books so funny for their early 1970s point of view. It's hard to remember the days when all women despite their age were called "girls" and women needed their husband's approval for most everything. 

Ellison's mother is the keeper of this mentality and it drives her crazy, especially as she tries to save her daughter's inheritance.  The other little 70s tidbits make these books so fun to read. 

Don't forget to enter the MapYourMystery.com giveaway.  

New Giveaway Ends Tuesday!

Don't forget the MapYourMystery Giveaway ends on Tuesday. Enter Today!

 

Check out this giveaway thanks to Ellie Alexander and Minotaur Books! We will be giving away one copy of Ellie's newest book, Death on Tap. Be sure to read my review about the book.

Can't wait for the giveaway to end on Tuesday 10/24 to get a copy? You can find Ellie's books on Minotaur Books'' website.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Case of the Fallen Hero

The death of the bridegroom on the morning after his wedding has Inspector David Graham and his small team investigating the crime in Orgueil Castle on the island of Jersey. In The Case of the Fallen Hero by Alison Golden, What he finds is a fleeing bride, reluctant parents of the bride and an ex-wife. 

Inspector David Graham left big-city policing behind to come to the Channel Islands. His days are now filled with minor offenses, but on a Sunday visit to the Castle, he hears a woman screaming and finds her kneeling over the body of a man. As he approaches the man, he realizes he is beyond help, and then surprisingly enough, the woman flees.

Complicating the investigation is the disappearance of the musical quartet who had been hired to play at the wedding. Having to split his four-person force to handle both issues is difficult, but Graham and Sergeant Harding take the lead on the death.

George Ross, the bridegroom, appears to have fallen or jumped from the battlements of the Castle.  During the investigation, Graham learns the bridal suite was not used and the champagne was still chilling in the ice bucket. There had to be some unusual reason for this.

Further into the investigation he finds an uncooperative mother and father of the bride and a mentally ill sister who turns out to me the ex-wife of the groom. Delving deeper into their past, he learns the bride's family were neighbors of George Ross' family when he was a child. A long-ago murder-suicide factors into the investigation.

As he delves deeper he learns the secret that has been kept for so long and this points the way to a stunning conclusion. Meanwhile the musical quartet has managed to lose its way deeper into the Castle, and their rescue reveals another stunning event.   

An excellent, well plotted mystery.