You need to write, I told the newbie writers at the writer's conference. Unused gifts turn to poison.
What I didn't tell them was that I was currently drinking that poison myself.
Liz Hicks is a mystery writer whose husband, Jack, died a year ago during a motorcycle accident on a rainy, winding mountain road.
One of the first things she did after the funeral was investigate his death.
She already had a working knowledge of how to kill people: poisons, sniper rifles, drug overdoses, locked rooms, improvised weapons, and, most importantly, how to get away with it.
Flashy deaths, interesting methods, exotic motivations.
Jack's death, on the other hand, hadn't been the least bit suspicious. Just an ordinary accident.
But still. She has to know.
Why does Jack's death feel like it wasn't an accident?
Six months past Liz's latest book deadline, grief still owns her, body and soul. Then one night after a writer's conference in the rain, Liz returns home to find that someone has trashed her entire house but has stolen only one thing...
...her dead husband's favorite possession.
Then the phone rings. It's Liz's elderly friend Maddy, reminding her about a card party at Maddy's house. Everyone on their whole mountain road promised to be there, making it the perfect place to ask everyone in the neighborhood a few discreet questions.
Seriously, though. Who wants to annoy someone whose profession involves researching murder and getting away with it?
Join Liz for a dark and cozy mystery on a dark and stormy night!
Autorentext
Every summer as kids, we would host one group of cousins or another and jump off hay bales, create mazes by crawling the patterns through the tall grass, and steal green apples out of the garden. We also branded calves, killed chickens, and stole steak knives to threaten skunks with. But that's growing up on a farm for you.
Now I write fantasy, science fiction, and horror--and most of it comes from the worlds that I created as a farm kid, one way or another.
My first novel, Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocalypse, was published by Doom Press in 2010 and can be purchased through Meta Geek.
"This is how I like my zombies: fast and funny. Choose this book, and you won't be choosing your doom. You'll be choosing hours of gooey, gory hilarity."
- Steve Hockensmith, New York Times best-selling author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls
My short story, "The End of the World," about fairies on the Great Plains, received an honorable mention in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 3.
I also write murder-mystery party games for Freeform Games in the UK.
See my website and blog at deannaknippling.com.