Tag Archives: New Release

ROOM FOR SUSPICION – Release Day Blog Post Featuring Carol Light

June 27, 2023 · Posted by Tule Publishing

Room for Suspicion book cover featuring black and white house image with Carol Light's name.

Who doesn’t love a good mystery? As human beings we’re naturally curious and want to know what happened, when it happened, who did it, and why. In crime fiction, we refer to the three M’s: motive (why), means (how), and moment (opportunity, or when). Putting the pieces
together to reveal the whole picture and solve the crime can be very satisfying (especially if you guess whodunnit!). So is the sense of justice when the culprit is caught. Order is restored.

My main character in Room for Suspicion, the first of my Cluttered Crime Mysteries, loves creating order out of chaos. Crystal (Crys) Ward is a professional organizer, which means she helps people declutter their spaces, whether it’s a basement, garage, entire house, or office.
Clearing a drawer, closet, or room and then organizing it to meet her client’s current needs is more satisfying to Crys than a cheese Danish from Milow’s Bakery. As with a good mystery, order is restored when she’s finished, allowing her clients’ lives to move forward.

I’ve always been drawn to self-help books and love organizing hacks. When I was thinking of a career for Crys, I knew I had to choose a profession that would bring her into people’s homes and even allow her to uncover their secrets. Sometimes just seeing how people live tells a lot about them. In this novel, Crys’s client Farrah is a neat person with minimal clutter who just wants professional help reorganizing her home office for greater efficiency. She’s expecting a promotion and preparing to move forward in her career. That’s all great, but doesn’t the lack of
mementos, photos, and other personal items also say something about this character? Maybe she’s all business—a workaholic with no hobbies or social life. Then again, she might just be a minimalist who believes less is more. But what if she’s put her past behind her and doesn’t
want reminders of the not-so-good old days? Her office may also offer to clues to her personality (unsentimental, no nonsense) by what’s NOT there as well as what is. As a writer, I have to consider what message or mood my setting will communicate to the reader. It’s another piece of the puzzle.

Now you might assume that Crys would be super organized at home, with uncluttered rooms and drawers that look like Marie Kondo just paid a visit. Alas, that’s not the case. Did I mention that Crys has two children, ages twelve and fourteen? Or that she lives in an older bungalow in
Chicago that had to be modified five years ago to accommodate her husband’s wheelchair and special needs? Or that the parlor they converted into their new master bedroom doesn’t have a closet? Crys does the best she can. Her secret failure to practice what she preaches is an unexpected twist that makes her human and hopefully more relatable. She’s not perfect, but she is ambitious. As soon as she can afford more renovations, she’ll fix her home’s problems and restore order. Unfortunately, discovering a dead man at Farrah’s house may end her career, especially if her client is arrested for murder.

Writing a mystery is like putting a 5000-piece jigsaw together, or piecing a quilt, which I also enjoy doing. I have to make sure all of the clues, red herrings, and suspects appear when they need to but not too soon. I have to have multiple characters who could have committed the crime. The three M’s apply to suspects as well as the killer. Perhaps they were at or near the murder scene when it happened. Or maybe they had compelling reasons to harm the deceased. They could have had access to the cause of death—the smoking gun, a deadly poison, or the nylon stocking used to strangle the victim. Nothing can be too obvious, or a dead giveaway (no pun intended). Few people have nylon stockings these days, so it would be too obvious for the eighty-year-old former Rockette with a drawer full of nylons from the 1960s to have done it.
She had to have been framed! Yes, there are always twists in a good mystery, too. I won’t make it easy for you, but I promise the pieces (or clues) will finally fit together providing you with the full picture.

I hope you enjoy Room for Suspicion. The second book in the series, Deadlier Than Fiction, will be published by Tule on September 7. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear about your favorite organizing hacks. What tricks do you have for staying on top of clutter?

About the Author

Headshot of Author Carol Light Carol Light is an avid reader and writer of mysteries. She loves creating amateur sleuths and complicating their normal lives with a crime that they must use their talents and wits to solve. She’s traveled worldwide and lived in Australia for eight years, teaching high school English and learning to speak “Strine”. Florida is now her home. If she’s not at the beach or writing, you can find her tackling quilting in much the same way that she figures out her mysteries—piece by piece, clue by clue.

A COWBOY’S PROMISE: Release Day Blog Post featuring Anne McAllister! (and Giveaway!)

June 8, 2023 · Posted by Tule Publishing

Piecing Together Stories and Visions

Writers are often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?”  It’s a fair question because most people who have not struggled through writing a book beginning to end (never just once, but countless times) logically seem to expect that a book comes from a single particular idea, and then the next book comes from another one.

The truth, for me,  is that a book cobbles itself together from lots of ideas the same way dreams do. I snatch one bit from this location, another from that memory, a third from something my dad said, or my cousins told me, or from watching a film or sitting in a hospital waiting room.  And then there’s research – the bits I don’t know yet, but someone else does and has kindly written about or is willing to talk about, that will help me vicariously live in the fictional world that is gradually taking shape.  Finally, then, it coalesces (not without revisions!) into a book.  

That was certainly true of A Cowboy’s Promise.  

The hero, Charlie Seeks Elk, was born in an earlier book of mine called Gifts of the Spirit where he was a troubled teenager. I have known several of those.  Once upon a time when we were in grad school, my husband and I house-dog-and-teenager-sat for a semester. Plenty of things we experienced then were grist for the mill of Charlie’s teenage years. 

He needed a role model then, and the hero of that earlier book, Chase Whitelaw, reluctantly stepped up. Chase’s experience bridging life between his own urban Los Angeles and his father’s Navajo reservation owe more than a nod to my dad’s and his uncle’s experiences.  They gained opportunities. They lost connections.  They sought a future. They lost a past.

There were a lot of other ‘ideas’ that meshed when Charlie Seeks Elk came face-to-face with what eternity was all about after he was shot in a crossfire halfway round the world (I give thanks that I have no firsthand experience with that).  And when those things came together, I finally had a focus – what Charlie didn’t have was the one person he needed most – Cait.  And what Cait meant to Charlie was home.

She was the one who touched his heart, who made him whole.  She was the one who mattered — too much — more than he dared let her.  He knew how to be rootless.  He didn’t know how to connect.  It was safer not to. But facing eternity, Charlie had second thoughts.  

Cait Blasingame was the embodiment of home.  She might have seen lots of the world. She might have fallen in love with the wrong man.  But when she goes back to Montana after years abroad as a nurse, she knows who she is, what she values, where she belongs. She isn’t prepared for Charlie reappearing in her life.  

When my editor and I were looking for a series title for A Cowboy’s Promise and the other books that will follow it this year, home was a theme that underpinned all of them, so “Cowboy, Come Home” seemed a perfect choice. 

In a way, it turns the iconic American image of the cowboy riding off alone into the sunset on its head.  That cowboy doesn’t go home. He doesn’t have a home. Charlie wants nothing less.

The other two books coming later this year, The Great Montana Cowboy Auction and A Cowboy’s Christmas Miracle, also look at home, each in a different way.  If you would like to win a copy of one of my earlier Tule releases, please tell me what is most important to you when you think about “home.” One or two commenters will be chosen randomly by the Tule staff and will receive a copy of the book they choose.

About the Author

Years ago someone told Anne McAllister that the recipe for happiness was a good man, a big old house, a bunch of kids and dogs, and a job you loved that allows you to read.  And write.  She totally agrees.
Now, one good man, one big old house (since traded for a slightly smaller house. Look, no attic!) a bunch of kids (and even more grandkids) and dogs (and one bionic cat) and seventy books, she’s still reading.  And writing.  And happier than ever.
Over thirty plus years Anne has written long and short contemporary romances, single titles and series, novellas and a time-travel for Harlequin Mills & Boon and for Tule Publishing. She’s had two RITA winning books and nine more RITA finalists as well as awards from Romantic Times and Midwest Fiction Writers. One of the joys of writing is that sometimes, when she can’t go back in person, she can go back in her mind and her heart and her books.