#SuspenseSunday

"It's always a dark and stormy night somewhere...." And for award-winning author and PI, Pam Beason, writing mysteries has her thinking that all the time!

          The Only Witness                    

                                                                           
KIDNAPPING...OR MURDER?

A MISSING BABY
Seventeen-year-old Brittany Morgan dashed into the store for just a minute, leaving her sleeping baby in the car. Now Ivy's gone and half the town believes Brittany murdered her daughter.

A HAUNTED DETECTIVE
Detective Matthew Finn, a big-city fish out of water in small-town Evansburg, Washington, struggles with his wife's betrayal as he investigates Ivy Morgan's disappearance. The clock is ticking and he can't find any witnesses.

AN UNUSUAL RESEARCH SUBJECT
Imaginative, manipulative, and volatile, with the intelligence of a five-year-old child, Neema cannot speak, but she knows enough sign language to invent jokes and insults. She can also hurl a grown man across the room. Neema is a gorilla.

A DISTRESSED SCIENTIST
After a psycho murdered one of her "talking" gorillas in Seattle, Dr. Grace McKenna relocated to the Evansburg area. Now with the economy on the rocks and her funding cut, her beloved gorillas Neema and Gumu are in jeopardy. When Neema repeats a story of a crying baby, a cucumber car, and a snake, Grace realizes her gorilla is the only witness to whatever happened to baby Ivy.

Does Grace dare go public with Neema's sketchy clues? Can she afford not to?

#SuspenseSunday

In today's installment of #SuspenseSunday, we feature Lina Gardiner's fabulous novel, What She Doesn't know.

Raven Gale can't put the past behind her. A year ago, her husband tried to kill her in a car accident and killed himself instead. And, as if that wasn't bad enough; she finds out someone is pretending to be him on an isolated island in the Bay of Fundy. What if it's really her husband? What if he's still alive? She'd been in hospital when the funeral was held. For the first time in her life, she finds the strength to track down the imposter to find out what's going on.

Now stranded on an island with no way back to the mainland, she's in the worst trouble she could ever imagine. The imposter claims to want to help her and keep her safe from the other visitors on the island, a group of men who want her dead. And she has no idea why. She quickly learns everyone wants the same thing her husband wanted. Her family's secrets. Secrets that she doesn't know, or can't remember.

Everyone wants secrets she either doesn't know or can't remember, and they're willing to kill for them.

And at only $2.99 I'd say it's a great deal!

My First Conference! Blog 3 of 5

CAUTION! Pictures of many romance-loving ladies ahead. All men should be prepared to be overwhelmed.




I’d registered, slipped the conference lanyard around my neck, and toured the Goodie Room, a place where promo items are given away. A gal can’t have too many bookmarks, right? My conference tote was designed by Harlequin, and featured an old Harlequin, back when men wrote the adventure stories of that time. The cover featured boasted a scintillating title. “You never know with women.”
How true. And this being my first conference, well, I didn’t know. Women of all shape and size were there, all styles, and all talent. And I learned you can fit 2500 romance writers in a basement loading area of the Marriott.



I did learn something else pretty quick. The more famous you are, the thinner you are. Nora Roberts is a size double zero, I figure. If she sells another book, she’ll disappear. Me? I’m a size fourteen, so I have a lot more books to sell, I see.
I wanted to go to the Newbie’s meeting, (or Newb’s meeting, as my teen son would have called it) but was told I wasn’t a newbie, that I knew the ropes, so I took their word for it. And, surprisingly, I did know more than I thought. Not being a shy person, I simply walked up, sat down beside and met many people just by shoving out my hand and introducing myself.
And I discovered that many people know me. Mostly editors, which begs the question on how they know me. Hmm. My brilliant, clear, concise prose?
Or my obsessive nervousness that pretty much seeps into my emails and phone calls? I guess I’ll never know.
My roomies were impressed, saying it was my writing. As I was up for a Daphne award, we went to the Death by Chocolate party. Okay, everyone. I like chocolate as much as the next person, but to be frank, am I supposed to eat that much? I am a little out of practice, here. But the stalwart soldier that I am, I gave it the old college try. I didn’t win a Daphne, but met an agent to whom I had spoke years ago. I joked about a bomb back then, and she remembered me. (Remember my roomie poking me when I shoved my foot into my mouth? She was at another table.)
Well, I didn’t win the award for which I had been nominated. But I eat a ton of fresh fruit, including black raspberries the size of large strawberries, and little cheesecakes drizzled in chocolate. I couldn’t leave without smothering my sorrows in sugar. Okay, there wasn’t any sorrow, but I gave it the old college try, remember?
The next day there was a breakfast, and I learned that you have to get to the food before all the other starving artists got there. Coffee is exceptionally valuable. I’d brought my own meal replacement bars, but with a complimentary continental breakfast, which included cheese and those giant raspberries again, those bars got shoved into my suitcase.
And I was discovering something else. My tummy isn’t used to rich food. It better adjust quickly, though. I’d paid for three more rich meals.
Well, it didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it to…

Tune in tomorrow for the next installment!