In the Reluctant Psychic Mystery series, a quirky loner who can read the history of any object with her touch gets drawn into mysteries at the museum of oddities where she works.In book 1, A Stone Cold Murder, Petra Cloch started a new job as the rocks and minerals curator at a quirky private museum in small town New Mexico.
In book 2, Death at Rock Bottom, the mystery involves a man who died, supposedly of natural causes, while rockhounding alone in the desert. But when his young second wife starts asking about something special Frank claimed he found, a mysterious, valuable rock that seems to have disappeared, Petra and her friends wonder if Frank’s death was natural after all. As her book club becomes a crime-fighting club, Petra must use her psychic gift and her brains to fight through the clues along with her newfound family.
Rockhounding is the hobby of searching for (and typically collecting) rocks, minerals, and
fossils. Some people look for valuable specimens, such as gemstones or dinosaur bones. Others simply enjoy getting outside, exploring new places, and learning about geology.
The Southwest is a great place for rockhounding. We still have a lot of public land, such as BLM land and National Forests, that allow rockhounding for noncommercial purposes. Also, the desert typically has less vegetation, which means you can spot promising areas more quickly and actually find items without digging!
I’m married to a geologist, which means when we go hiking I hear about the geologic forces
that shaped the land around us when we hike in central New Mexico. We also have a lot of
rocks in our yard. We’d have more if the large ones weren’t so heavy.
These pictures are from a ridge with dozens of rocks covered in petroglyphs. (One would never collect rocks with petroglyphs, so in this case, we were rockhounds only in the sense of searching for rocks, not collecting them.)
This isn’t a tourist site. It isn’t even marked on maps. A retired scientist I know, a man who
spends a lot of time hiking, found a reference in a century-old book and located the area. I was passing by his house when he was outside, and I stopped to chat. He drew me a map in the dirt of his driveway. I tried to remember the directions long enough to get home, where I drew a rough map on paper, which I gave to a friend who likes exploring. He identified the right area on Google maps and went out to locate the petroglyphs. Such is life in small town New Mexico!
Learn more or order The Reluctant Psychic Mystery series, available in ebook and print at all major retailers.
About the Author
Kris Bock writes romance, mystery, and suspense. Learn more about Kris and her books at the Kris Bock website. Get a free cat café novella, mystery stories, recipes, and more when you sign up for the Kris Bock newsletter.
In Kris’s mystery series, the Accidental Detective, a witty journalist solves mysteries in Arizona and tackles the challenges of turning fifty. This humorous series starts with Something Shady at Sunshine Haven. Her romantic suspense novels include stories of treasure hunting, archaeology, and intrigue. Readers have called these novels “Smart romance with an Indiana Jones feel.”
As for romance, in the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series, a Texas ranching family wins a fortune in the lottery, which causes as many problems as it solves. Kris’s Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the employees and customers at a cat café falling in love with each other and shelter cats. Kris also writes a series with her brother, scriptwriter Douglas J Eboch, who wrote the original screenplay for the movie Sweet Home Alabama. The Felony Melanie series follows the crazy antics of Melanie, Jake, and their friends a decade before the events of the movie. Sign up for the romantic comedy newsletter to get a short story preview.
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