I am so excited to have Rose Kerr on the blog this month! She is the author of The Brenna Flynn Mystery series. Death on the Set is her debut cozy mystery and is such a fun read. If you love reality cooking shows, then this is for you!

Since it’s September now I thought it would be the perfect time to talk about fall! I don’t know about you, but I love all things pumpkin spice. There is nothing better than that first crisp morning when you can put on your sweater and grab a steaming mug of pumpkin spice something and settle down with a cozy mystery.

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Hi Everyone, 

Thank you, Christina, for inviting me to stop by.  

I’m so happy to be here chatting with you about my favorite season of the year… fall! Honestly, I like all the seasons, but fall has a special place in my heart. To me, it’s the season of fresh starts. 

The start of a new school year.  

Crisp fall mornings with just a hint of frost in the air. 

And pies baking in the oven… 

A new school year meant new school supplies. Fresh notebooks, pens, pencils, markers, and colored pencils were always a hit in our house. Our kids are adults now, but I’m still picking up some supplies. And I use them all as a writer. When I’m starting a new book, I break out a notebook and start writing the characters, plot, setting, and twists that I may want to include. I take a few minutes at the end of each writing session to journal about what is going to happen next. 

Picture of journal and pens 

The crisp fall evenings and mornings mean that Mother Nature is changing her colors. We live in Ontario, Canada and we’ll drive to Algonquin Park and Muskoka to take in the stunning scenery. I love spending a day walking the trails and seeing what nature has to offer. Settling in by the fire with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate is a relaxing way to end the day.

Photo of Muskoka 

It’s a great time of the year to get back into baking. Pies are a favorite in our house, especially apple and pecan pies. And with the cooler weather, we don’t have to worry about heating the house too much. My husband’s favorite pie is pecan.  

What do you like most about fall? 

The first book in my series, Death on the Set, A Brenna Flynn Mystery, takes place in September.  

Death on the Set, A Brenna Flynn Mystery 

Former high school guidance counselor, Brenna Flynn, returns home to Bayview City after the sudden death of her husband. Unable to find work in her field, she signs up with a temp agency to find employment. Sent on an interview for a cooking reality show, she aces it and gets the job of a production assistant. 

On her second day at work, Brenna discovers a body in the studio. She soon learns she’s the police’s primary suspect. Determined to clear her name, she uses some skills she’s honed as a guidance counselor to learn more about the victim. Drawing people out comes naturally to Brenna, and she becomes a confidante to the cast and crew on the show. 

The stakes are raised with threatening notes, poisonings, and blackmail. Can Brenna uncover who the killer is before someone else dies? 

Book 2 is scheduled for release in 2023. 

Purchase links: 

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3zVa7Nv 

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3pkGeRT 

Barnes & Noble: https://bit.ly/3dxhSBU 

Author Bio 

Rose Kerr lived most of her adult life in small towns. She and her husband raised their family in a small town in Northern Ontario. The town was on the shores of Lake Superior. Currently, they live in Southern Ontario with their dog, Jake. Rose is a member of Sisters in Crime, the Guppy Online Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and Crime Writers of Canada. For more info visit www.rosekerr.com 

Author contact links: 

Website: www.rosekerr.com 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RoseKerrAuthor 

Instagram: @r.m.kerr 

Twitter: @rkerrwriter 

Pinterest: @rosekerrauthor 

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/rosekerr 

I am thrilled to have Leah Dobrinska on the blog this month! Her small town romance books are the perfect read for a summer day! And she’s got a Christmas romance coming out!!! Since I’ve been celebrating Christmas in July, I thought that would be the perfect time to talk about small towns. There is nothing cozier than a mystery or a romance set in a small town. Especially at Christmas. After you read about Leah’s Mapleton you’re going to want to move there!

Small Town LOVE by Leah Dobrinska

Hi everyone! I’m Leah Dobrinska, and I’m thrilled to be here today to chat about books and writing with you and to tell you a little bit about what inspires me when I’m creating worlds and stories. Big thanks to Christina for inviting me to her blog. 

I love the whole process of writing a book, from dreaming to drafting to editing to publishing, but one of my very favorite things, specifically, about writing is inventing worlds and creating the people who fill them. So today, I want to talk a little bit about setting and what makes the setting of a book so special to me.

I have to admit, I am a huge small town girl. I grew up in a village of six thousand. I went to a big city for university and then my husband and I lived in several other big cities before happily settling back in my small town—right in the neighborhood where I grew up, actually.

Have you heard the old adage: write what you know? 

Well, I know small town living. I’ve lived it. I love it. And I try to infuse each and every one of my books with the details that make readers love it, too.

Some context: I’m a small town romance and cozy mystery author. I’ve currently published two books in my romance series, Love at On Deck Café and Good To Be Home, with a third (Together With You) slated to release on September 6, 2022. My debut cozy mystery novel, Death Checked Out, the first in the Larkspur Library mystery series, is set to be published by Level Best Books on December 6, 2022.

I started drafting Love at On Deck Café when we were living out of the area. I was homesick and craving some of the simple comforts of small town living, so I figured I’m going to write this into a book.

And I did. Then I just kept doing it. 

So many readers have told me they want to pick up and move to Mapleton, the fictional town where my romance novels are set. I take this as the highest compliment. My goal is to write places that feel like home and craft characters readers want to spend time with. And then I hope they do spend time there, with those people, by reading!

In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m living in Mapleton, because I take a lot of my small town ideas for my books from things that actually happen(ed) in my hometown and the surrounding communities.

For example, my town grew up around a paper mill, and in the early 2000s, that mill shut down. It rocked our community, and I wanted to honor that and those feelings and how people here have adapted and grown. So, in Love at On Deck Café, Julia, our heroine, butts heads with Samson, our hero, when he shows up in town to develop the grounds of the shuttered paper mill.

Likewise, we experienced a tornado here a couple years back, and I immediately knew the story I was drafting needed a scene about the way the community banded together in the aftermath. Neighbors helping neighbors, dragging trees out of the road, sharing generators, checking in on each other. It was so good and pure and the perfect sort of realistic fodder for a fictional small town setting.

Recently, I’ve seen our volunteer firefighters out and about, making the day of people around town, and now I’m itching to write that into a book. And in December, we do a huge town holiday light-up night, and it’s a magical kick-off to the holiday season, so I was definitely channeling those real life scenes as I was putting the finishing touches on Together With You, which is a Christmas romance.

There’s just so much goodness to be found all around, and I try to capture it and fill my books with it!

Of course, the beauty of fiction is that I can embellish, and that’s always fun, too! 

The setting in my cozy mystery, Death Checked Out, is an example of me doing just that. 

As a kid, my whole extended family would spend one week “up north” in cabins set on a lake in an unincorporated town in northern Wisconsin. This town has one road, no restaurants, no school, no library. Really, it just has a lake. 

I took my love for that little spot and completely built up a world around it. The sensory memories I have of my time thereworked their way into these pages, and even though the real town doesn’t even have its own police department, knowing what I know about how it looks in that part of the state and how people act and treat each other made it more seamless to create my own northern Wisconsin small town world. I can’t wait forreaders to visit Larkspur this December!

In a lot of ways, the setting of my books becomes like another character. It’s something that people recognize, and I hope it resonates with them. I hope they’re invested in what happens there. I know I am!

What about you? Do you prefer small towns, big cities, or a bit of both when you’re reading? What about travel destinations? Exotic locales or middle of nowhere towns? Share with us in the comments below or tell us your favorite fictional town. I, for one, cannot wait to take a trip to the Rocky Mountains of Montana in Christina’s debut, A Christmas Candy Killing. Be sure to preorder your copy today!

AUTHOR BIO

Leah Dobrinska is the author of the Larkspur Library Mysteries, a cozy mystery series set in the Wisconsin Northwoods, and the Mapleton novels, a series of standalone small town romances. She earned her degree in English Literature from UW-Madison and has since worked as a freelance writer, editor, and content marketer. Leah lives in Wisconsin with her husband and their gaggle of kids. When she’s not writing, handing out snacks, or visiting local parks, Leah enjoys reading and running. Find out more about Leah, join her newsletter community, and connect with her through her website, leahdobrinska.com.

LINKS

Website: https://leahdobrinska.com/

Newsletter: https://leahdobrinska.com/newsletter

The Mapleton Series (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BFXFBS3

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whatleahwrote

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatleahwrote/

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/leah-dobrinska

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/leahdobrinska

I love the pictures Jackie Layton posts on her social media of her beautiful South Carolina community. She graciously agreed to share a bit about that beautiful area and her Low Country Dog Walker Mystery Series set in an area suspiciously like the one where she lives.

This series is for lovers of small town cozies, dog sidekicks, coastal living, and a great mystery! If you haven’t read this series yet, get your copy today.

Life on the Coast By Jackie Layton

For as long as I can remember I’ve dreamed of living on the coast. I won’t go into the reasons we never acted on this desire, but in 2016 our lives changed.

My husband was offered a job in South Carolina. It wasn’t easy to leave our family, but after much prayer and consideration, we felt like it was the right thing to do.

We don’t live on the actual beach, but we can get there in less than five minutes. We never dreamed we’d be so blessed. We’ve also fallen in love with marsh life, or as many call it, life on the creek. When the beaches closed because of COVID, we walked on the road by the creek. We really began to focus on creek life instead of just riding past it on our way to the beach.

We expected to see pelicans and seagulls, but we discovered much more. There’s an eagle we’ve been lucky enough to see a few times. At my house we’ve seen humming birds, woodpeckers, cardinals and blue jays. In the marsh, we’ve seen osprey, ibis, red-tailed hawks, egrets, herons, and many other birds.

The tide and moon can affect your activities. A full moon at high tide can flood the streets on the island. The saltwater will ruin your car if you don’t wash it off soon.

About twice a year there’s a king tide. King tides occur when the orbits and alignment of the Earth, moon, and sun come together and create great tidal effects. Sometimes the police close the streets to protect us.

In A Low Country Dog Walker Mystery Series, the amateur sleuth, enjoys walking on the beach. In the fictional town of Heyward Beach, she runs into people she knows. We often see our neighbors and friends when we go for walks on the beach. For a few years, there was a red fox on the island. It usually came out in the evening or early morning. You could see it hiding in dunes or seagrass. A couple of weeks ago, we had a coyote appear on our beach. It pretty much minds it’s business, but people have taken pictures of the coyote. I’m already thinking out he might fit in a future story.

I know beach life isn’t for everyone, but we enjoy spending time outside with nature. There’s always something new to see, and it never gets dull. It’s one of the reasons I chose a beach setting for my series.

Bite the Dust, Dog-Gone Dead, Bag of Bones and Caught and Collared are the first four books in the series. Book 5 will release in 2023. I’ve enjoyed writing this series, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it.

Caught and Collared is available at the following places:

Google Play: https://bit.ly/3tHIWo8

Apple iBooks: https://apple.co/3qH04Iz

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3GIaJZe

Barnes & Noble: https://bit.ly/3FHrceW

Smashwords: https://bit.ly/3FHqWN0

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3KAP3AC

Places you can find Jackie Layton:

https:jackielaytoncozyauthour.com https://twitter.com/joyfuljel https://www.facebook.com/jackielaytonauthor https://www.instagram.com/jackielaytonauthor

Author Bio: Former Kentuckian Jackie Layton loves her new life in the Low Country. Jackie enjoys time on the beach despite one trip that ended with cracked ribs from riding her boogie board with the kids and another trip that ended up with a hook in her foot and a trip to the emergency room. There’s nothing like a trip to the beach, although she tends to be a bit more cautious these days. Jackie is the author of Low Country Dog Walker Mystery series. Bite the Dust, Dog-Gone Dead, Bag of Bones, and Caught and Collared.