Tag: Mystery

Moonlight and Misadventure now available!

Moonlight and Misadventure now available!

My short story, ‘Chicken Coops and Bread Pudding’ is now available in Moonlight and Misadventure.

Whether it’s vintage Hollywood, the Florida everglades, the Atlantic City boardwalk, or a farmhouse in Western Canada, the twenty authors represented in this collection of mystery and suspense interpret the overarching theme of “moonlight and misadventure” in their own inimitable style where only one thing is assured: Waxing, waning, gibbous, or full, the moon is always there, illuminating things better left in the dark.

Featuring stories by K.L. Abrahamson, Sharon Hart Addy, C.W. Blackwell, Clark Boyd, M.H. Callway, Michael A. Clark, Susan Daly, Buzz Dixon, Jeanne DuBois, Elizabeth Elwood, Tracy Falenwolfe, Kate Fellowes, John M. Floyd, Billy Houston, Bethany Maines, Judy Penz Sheluk, KM Rockwood, Joseph S. Walker, Robert Weibezahl, and Susan Jane Wright.

Available on:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

GooglePlay

Apple Books

Moonlight and Misadventure Now Available for Preorder

Moonlight and Misadventure Now Available for Preorder

I’m thrilled to be one of the authors included in the anthology, Moonlight and Misadventure, from Superior Shores Press. My story is called Chicken Coops and Bread Pudding. The anthology will be released June 18th 2021, but is available for preorder now.

Whether it’s vintage Hollywood, the Florida everglades, the Atlantic City boardwalk, or a farmhouse in Western Canada, the twenty authors represented in this collection of mystery and suspense interpret the overarching theme of “moonlight and misadventure” in their own inimitable style where only one thing is assured: Waxing, waning, gibbous, or full, the moon is always there, illuminating things better left in the dark.

I hope you enjoy the wonderful stories!

Available at:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

 

GooglePlay

Apple Books

 

 

Limited Time Offer: After Yekaterina Now Free

Limited Time Offer: After Yekaterina Now Free

Click Here to get your free copy of AFTER YEKATERINA

In celebration of the publication of Ivan’s Wolf, book four in the Detektiv Kazakov Mysteries, the ebook of  After Yekaterina, book one of the series, is now free at all major online retailers. Click HERE for the link to all major on line retailers.

The Detektiv Kazakov Mystery Series

Set in an alternate history Russia, the series is introduces Detektiv Alexander Kazakov, a loner detective committed to finding the truth for the dead and murdered. The series takes place in a world where Catherine the Great’s conquest of the Crimea woke the slumbering Ottoman Empire and brought the great Khans down upon Moscow. Two hundred years later the remains of the Russian population dream of Russia’s past glories, while their new country of Fergana lays like the gristle in a joint between the rumblings of the Ottoman and Chinese Empires. The death of a young Russian girl sets Kazakov on a series of investigations that have implications for the entire world.

 

Other books in the series:

Mareson’s Arrow

The Tsarina’s Mask

After Yekaterina Pre Orders on Sale at Reduced Price

After Yekaterina Pre Orders on Sale at Reduced Price

Until March 31, After Yekaterina is available at a pre-release price of $1.99. After release the book will return to the regular price of $4.99.

What if Catherine the Great never fulfilled her destiny and the Ottoman Empire destroyed Holy Mother Russia?

In an alternate modern Russia surrounded by the still-powerful Ottoman Empire and the Chinese Empire of the Sun, a dead girl in a pink sweater draws disillusioned Detektiv Alexander Kazakov into an investigation that even the girl’s mother wants him to abandon.

Driven by the truth and a slowly rising body count, Kazakov must traverse a landscape of snow and brothels, and a civilization frozen by history to catch a killer no one suspects.

After Yekaterina is the first in the Yekaterina Alternate History series set in the fictional Central Asian Country of Fergana.

Interested?

Click HERE

Writing in the Past and Future

Writing in the Past and Future

It has been an interesting week for me in terms of my writing. I’ve implemented a progress tracking bar on my website to help readers follow along with how the next book is coming in a new mystery series. This is the third book in the Russian alternate history mysteries, the first of which is After Yekaterina. That book is finished and has come back from my advance readers, so I’m doing some final tweaks and then it will be ready for publication. Watch for it soon. I’ll do an announcement. The second book in the series is called Mareson’s Arrow. That book is written and is about to undergo editing before asking first readers to take a look. The third book in the series is tentatively titled The Tsarina’s Mask. We’ll see whether that title sticks, but that’s what I’m calling it for now. I think I’m about three quarters of the way through Mask which means that the first draft should be done before the end of the month and then I can do first draft edits and get it to my first reader. Yay!

But here’s the problem and I need your help.

I don’t know what to write next.

Usually I just pluck the next project from the sky, but I have a number of projects that I would like to get to. I’d love to hear from you what you’d like me to work on. I won’t promise to write the book you suggest right away, but it will be higher up the pile with your input than it might otherwise be. Here’s what I’m thinking of in no particular order:

  1. Another magical creature romance in a similar vein to Surviving Safe Harbor.
  2. A Cartographer/American Geological Survey novel starring Vallon Drake’s best friend, Fi Murdoch.
  3. A new Phoebe Clay Mystery (most likely set in Myanmar.)
  4. Another installment of the Aung and Yamin mysteries.

So what do you think? Any preference of order of how I get to these? Please help me pick my next project!

Thanks,

Karen

A Great Deal for Mystery Readers

A Great Deal for Mystery Readers

Gumshoes Redux
For those of you who like to stay warm by the fire with a good mystery to hand here is a great bundle of books that will keep you trying to puzzle out whodunit! Gumshoes Redux provides a bundle of mysteries by a band of intrepid mystery authors, including yours truly.

Welcome to the Redux version of Gumshoes with two new exciting novels added.

In the world of mystery fiction there are different types of detectives. Amateur sleuths, women and men, willing to put themselves on the line to solve a crime or even a murder, police detectives working the case following the clues seeking justice for the victim, private investigators hired to solve a crime. Whether they be amateurs or professionals they all seek the same result, to make the world right once again and bring to justice those who threaten us all. These 14 writers invite you along for the ride to mystery and adventure. We hope you enjoy these stories and seek more books by these talented authors.

Click Here for the Sales Page.

Winter is Coming

Winter is Coming

Okay, I know that line has been taken, but it seems that winter is a theme running through my writing these days. I recently finished a new alternative history mystery novel, (as yet unpublished—still at first reader stage) that arose out of a writing workshop I attended on the Oregon Coast. It is set in what is Kyrgyzstan in our world. Okay, okay. I can hear you now. KYRGYZSTAN? Where the heck is Kyrgyzstan?

Think north of Afghanistan in and around the Tian Shan and Allay mountains.

It’s a small, ex-Soviet Union country—one of the ‘stans’.

My story grew out of an exercise at a Historical, Time Travel, and Alternate History workshop presided over by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, author of such wonderful time travel novels as Snipers. She asked us to take an event out of the wonderful non-fiction book The Great Upheaval, and use that as a jumping off point for an alternate history story. The short story that arose presumes that history diverged way back in the late-1700s at the time of Catherine the Great, or Yekaterina as I call her. It was around the same time as the American and French revolutions when Catherine was the great Tsarina of the Russian people. She was an interesting lady who wasn’t even Russian by birth, but she married the Tsar and then usurped his throne. Like I said, interesting lady.

In her younger years Catherine was tempted by the influence of the great statesmen and philosophers of her day to consider democracy for her people, but eventually decided that it wouldn’t work—for Russian peasants. Instead she went to war against the Ottoman Empire. In our world she won her battles because the Ottoman Empire was waning.

But what if Catherine’s depredations (and they were vicious) woke the Ottomans up? What if the Ottomans found their strength again and took the battle to Catherine and the Russians? The Russians were stretched by conflicts on their northern and southern borders and with Poland.

Because the Ottomans won (in my version of history), it led to a world very unlike this one. It led much sooner to the end of the French Revolution so that Napoleon never became emperor and never ruled. As a result, the French government never supported the fledgling United States in their great democratic experiment, and that led to Great Britain taking over most of North America.

At least in my made-up world.

In the novel that grew out of the short story, a rag-tag group of Russian refugees escaped the Ottoman juggernaut and now live in a small country called Fergana. Fergana lies caught like the gristle in a joint between the two behemoths of the Chinese and Ottoman Empires. In the late fall of a modern day New Moscow a young girl is found dead in a city park. Thus begins my new novel, After Yekaterina. It’s late October and the first snow is threatening as Detektiv Alexander Kazakov stands over her body.

That is how I came up with my latest mystery series. And now, as I start the second novel in the series, the autumn ocean storms are settling in over my home, but in Fergana it is deepest January and the long winter has arrived.

My goodness I like this writing thing.

Back to Burma (Myanmar)

Back to Burma (Myanmar)

I traveled to Myanmar (Burma) in 1997 while I was living and working in Thailand. At the time, the country was still mostly closed to foreigners. Only select parts of the country were open. During my month ‘in-country’ (the maximum the visa allowed) I conducted research on the Burmese puppet troupes and stayed at small guesthouses for a better chance of meeting local people. Unfailingly, everyone I met was giving of their time, knowledge and their kindness.

That began my love affair with Burma. (You can read more about my travels here.)

Since then I’ve written a number of novels set in Burma, including the modern, paranormal romance Shades of Moonlight.

In April 2017 Guardbridge Books published Death By Effigy, the first in my historical Aung and Yamin Fantasy Mystery series, in which an aging puppet singer and a mischievous puppet, must solve the murder of the king of the puppets or risk the destruction of the entire troupe.

I’m pleased to announce that the second in the series, A Death In Passing, has just been released, continuing the trials and tribulations of Aung, the puppet singer, with his troublesome assistant, Yamin, as they try to solve the murder of Burma’s most powerful spirit dancer.

In all of these books I’ve attempted to be true to the country’s culture and to accurately present the wonderful nature-magic systems (with a few embellishments). Burma seems to be in my blood and I envision more novels set in this wonderful and varied country. Whether historical or modern novels, I hope to capture the country’s magic for readers.

If you’ve traveled in Burma, I’d love to hear how I did.

Recent Fantasy

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Recent Mystery

 

 

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Recent Romance

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