Spring in Savannah, Georgia

Happy first day of Spring!  One of my favorite things to do this time of year is to go on home and garden tours, especially the ones in the American South.

My husband and I have been lucky to do a lot of traveling in the United States and Europe through the years, but we both agree that our favorite city in the United States is Savannah, Georgia (with New Orleans coming in as a close second).  What is it about this Southern city that has captivated us so much that we've traveled from our home in California four times to visit it?  

What we love is its beauty; its people; and its history.  It is that quintessential southern town that reminds me of where Scarlett O'Hara might have gone to visit her elderly aunt. It's the old South, with its beautiful moss-draped trees, sweet smelling tea olive bushes, red azaleas, and creepy yet beautiful cemeteries.  It's so different from Atlanta, which was mostly burned to the ground in the Civil War.  When Sherman marched to the sea to plunder and burn everything in sight towards the end of the war, he was met at the gates in Savannah and told that the city would surrender, as long as Sherman's army left the city unspoiled.  Thank goodness it was spared.

Here is a list of some of my favorite things to see and do, starting with our favorite hotel there, The Ballastone Inn.  For fans of the wonderful book: "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," this is the hotel where Kevin Spacey stayed when he was starring in the film version. If you'd like to see "where the scene of the crime" took place, be sure to visit  the Mercer Williams House. There are guided tours of the interior.   For a tour of the places mentioned in the book, try "All About Savannah Tours".

If you'd like to see one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world (outside of Pere Lachaise in Paris) be sure to visit Bonaventure Cemetery.  It's more like a park than a cemetery.  If you'd like to eat at someplace besides Paula Deen's, try Elizabeth's at 37th.  It's our favorite.  Definitely see a Home and Garden Tour during the Spring when the kind residents of Savannah open their doors and allow us to peek inside their homes and get a taste of what we're missing. 

If you'd like some reading material to bring along, please take a look at our mystery, "Honeymoon in Savannah: A Detective Santy Mystery."  It costs only $2.99 and is available at Amazon, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Kobo, and Smashwords.  Paperback versions are available at Amazon.

On December 1st and 2nd, 2018 this eBook is on sale at Amazon for 99 cents.

Here are the links to buy Honeymoon in Savannah:

Purchase at Amazon

Purchase at iTunes

Purchase at Google Play

Purchase at Barnes and Noble

Purchase at Smashwords

Purchase at Kobo Books

A Mystery Writer's Field Trip to the Coroner's Office

My husband and I have been writing mysteries together since 2011 and many of them feature a scene or two of our detectives going to the coroner's office to look at the crime victim. We've never been to one ourselves, so we figured that it was about time to go see one instead of relying on the way it's featured in crime shows or books. My husband called our county's office and asked if they give tours.  We was pleasantly surprised when they said that tours are given once a month.  

We went on a tour a few days ago and the following is what we discovered.  Contrary to what’s portrayed on the NCIS shows, the Coroner’s office is a pretty dull place.  There isn’t a wall full of vaults containing dead bodies that can be pulled out for viewing whenever the detective comes by.  Instead, the deceased are housed in a body cooler, which is a large, smelly, ice-cold room where they unceremoniously lie on gurneys wrapped in heavy white plastic.  Their toes peek out and their belongings rest in a plastic black bag placed on their stomachs.  It is a sobering sight; one that sticks in your memory.  I was surprised to hear that some of the deceased in the room were there because they died in a car accident.  Because insurance companies want to find out if the deceased died because of the crash or for an underlying health issues such as a heart attack, the coroner is responsible for keeping them until the victims are autopsied.  Bodies are stored there for 365 days and if nobody in the family claims them, they are sent to funeral homes to be cremated.  All at the tax payers expense.

When an investigating detective wants to see a body, the coroner doesn’t pull aside a white sheet to reveal the face, as if he’s a magician saying, “Ta Da”.  In fact, the investigating detective isn’t in the same room. He watches from above in a special room where he can look down and watch as the coroner weighs various organs and catalogs them.  For a close up view, the detective can watch a TV monitor focused on the autopsy table which he can zoom in and out.  If he has any questions, he can speak into a microphone lodged in the middle of a low shelf.

My favorite part of the tour were the scenario rooms.  The coroner's office uses mock ups of crime scenes where students come in and try to figure out how the victim died.   We saw three rooms made out to look like a front room and two bedrooms.  One I particularly liked had a very realistically looking naked fat man lying on a sofa, whose his eyes bugged out and whose scrotum have ballooned up to be the size of a cantaloupe.   The room was littered with a pizza box, a bottle of whiskey, empty bottles of medication made out to different people.  The tour guide told us, "You all watch crime shows on television.  What do you think happened here?"  We all agreed that something was fishy about his death and an autopsy and further investigation was required.

Free Murder Mystery

Good news! I'm now offering for FREE the first book in the popular, four-volume Detective Santy Mysteries. These murder mysteries are about the life and career of Clarissa Santy, a female homicide detective from Orange County, California. The series begins with the murder of her father. When she turns 18, she looks into the court records of the murder trial, and realizes that the wrong man had been arrested. When she contacts him, she finds out more about her family and learns the hard way that there are some questions best left unanswered. This series has earned many 4 and 5 Star ratings. All of the books in the series can be enjoyed as standalone stories.

To get your free copy, go to this link:

Smashwords Link to The Tustin Chronicles  

On the right hand side where it says "Buy" click on it and you will be taken to a page where you can enter coupon code "QL97E" This deal expires on Jan. 2nd, 2017.

(If you don't have an account, you will be prompted to create one. It's perfectly free.)

These books are also available at Amazon, iTunes, Barnes and Noble,

 Google Play, and Kobo  at the regular price of $1.99.

Is There A Ghost at Oak Alley Plantation?

Some say that no antebellum plantation house is without at least one ghost.  All sorts of strange sightings have been reported by the docents who work at Oak Alley Plantation. They have reported hearing the clip-clopping of a horse-drawn carriage driving on the plantation’s gravel roads leading up to the house and when they looked out the upstairs window, they saw neither hide nor hair of any carriage.  They've seen chairs rock in unison and candlesticks fly across the room.

One tour guide said, "There’s a lot of voodoo in these here parts. Go to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and visit the grave of Marie Laveau.  She had special powers and still does today. There are many things in this world that can’t be explained by logic.”

"The Ghost in the Plantation: A Nancy Keene Mystery" is a fictional cozy mystery about a teenage sleuth, modeled after Nancy Drew, who goes to New Orleans on vacation and becomes part of the investigation when a docent at Oak Alley Plantation is found dead inside the antebellum mansion.  Be an armchair traveler and take a trip to Louisiana to explore favorite tourist spots in New Orleans with Nancy and her "chums".

The eBook is available for $2.99 at Amazon, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play and Smashwords.  The paperback is available at Amazon and Createspace.

October is Indie Writers' Month on Amazon

Our Book Is in the Library!

Throughout October, Amazon is celebrating indie writers published via Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace; and that includes our  books.  They've asked authors to share their paths as independent writers and here's the story behind how we got our books published on Amazon.

For years, I'd been trying to get published on my own. I have a M.A. in English and spent my twenties at the post office mailing my short stories to various publishers with no success.  It was always my dream to make money off my writing.   About five years ago, I read an article about how indie writers could get published on Amazon for free!  I couldn't believe it.   I began writing a murder/mystery about a group of librarians and what would happen if someone accidentally got crushed when the electronic compact shelving mechanism malfunctioned. How would my imaginary librarians react if they found the body? Would they accuse each other? I wrote about six pages and showed it to my husband. He liked it and I asked, "How would you like to write the rest of this book with me?" He kindly agreed and that's how we started writing books together.  Since then, I've gone on to write thirty-four books and have sold around 1600 copies. It really has been a dream come true for this English Major. Thank you Amazon: we couldn't have done it without you.

Check out Amazon's #PoweredbyIndie Page at the Following Link:

Amazon's Powered by Indie Page

Autumn is Here

This is my favorite season of the year.  It's a time when I long for fall leaves in Lake Placid, white, steepled churches in Vermont, and covered bridges in New England. So many images come to mind: pumpkin people on the porches of old-fashioned general stores, maple syrup, caramel apples on a stick, cinnamon scented candles from Bath and Body Works, Pumpkin Spice Lattes, and cozying up to the fire with a good book.

When it comes to autumn, this California girl lives on the wrong coast.  The temperatures here are still in the 80s and some days, even the 90s.  It's our season of fires and Santa Ana winds.  I'll never forget the time my husband and I planned a Halloween party that was supposed to take place in our back yard, but had to be moved indoors because ashes from a nearby fire were raining down on us and our decorations.  Forget about small paper lanterns lining the patio; we didn't want to burn our house down.

Autumn also reminds me of the radio show "A Prairie Home Companion" which my husband and I have religiously listened to for over thirty years. The Fall is the time when the sun is getting low enough for us to light our candles and turn on our space heater that looks like an old-fashioned coal fireplace.  We lose ourselves in the stories that Garrison Keillor's low, mesmerizing voice weaves.  I love his world of bachelor farmers, Pastor Liz, Dorothy's caramel rolls, The Sidetrack Tap, and the Chatterbox Cafe.  Maybe there really are some places like the Chatterbox Café? Wouldn’t it be fun to go find out?

So after all the years of talking about this town where "the women and strong, the men are good looking, and the children are always above-average," my husband and I finally went to Minnesota on a pilgrimage to find the real Lake Wobegon.  This book is the result. I hope you will enjoy this story about a precocious teenager who talks her father into taking her to Minnesota on just such a quest. Her father  wants to go on a Bob Dylan pilgrimage while there, but she has other plans when a "bachelor farmer" (who was last seen at the "Chatterbox Cafe") goes missing and they join the search party. Part travelogue, this book also contains pictures.  It's only $1.99 and available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Google Play, Kobo, Smashwords, and Scribd.  Also available in paperback at Amazon.

The Missing Bachelor Farmer:

A Nancy Keene Mystery

by Louise Hathaway

Lady Chablis

I was so sad when a friend of mine told me this morning that the Lady Chablis had passed away. For those who don't know her, she was the scene-stealing star of the book and movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. My husband and I saw her perform in Savannah at Club One and she was hilarious. RIP Empress of Savannah.