I’m including excerpts of A Stone Cold Murder (the Reluctantly Psychic Mystery series book 1) until we get through the whole book. That’s at the end of each newsletter, right before the unsubscribe and “Kris’s other books” info.

Voice recognition mistake of the day: “Using gluten-free flowers can make baked goods grainy or give them an odd taste.” 🌻 Yes, I'd think so. That was followed by: “To make the cookies mortuary …” ⚰️

For non-grainy, non-mortuary treats, “22 recipes from the cat café” includes cookies and cupcakes. It’s one of the freebies newsletter subscribers get (along with a cat café romance novella, an Accidental Detective short story, and a Reluctantly Psychic short mystery story). Find them all here.

The Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the workers and customers at a small-town cat café, and the adorable cats and kittens looking for their forever homes. Each book is a complete story with a happy ending for one couple (and maybe more than one rescued cat).

Things are pretty quiet here in New Mexico as many of us wait anxiously for the cooler weather of autumn. My ferret coworkers continue to be lazy and peculiar (but adorable).

Visit my personal Facebook page to see videos of ferret WrestleMania as well as a lightning storm. (If you don’t have Facebook, I think you can just close the window that asks you to login or sign up, and you can still see it.) 

Find More New Books and Authors!

Murder and Grits : The Complete Savory Mystery Series Collection by Karen McSpade: “When some dirty cops put a price on her head, Piper is forced to go undercover as a waitress at a café in Savory, Alabama. But when a dognapping and murder shake up the local community, Piper finds herself tangled in the mystery. Fortunately for Piper, a group of zany retired ladies dubbed the Dentures and Diamonds Crime Squad is on her side. Can they join forces to solve the mystery before another Savory resident lands in the morgue? A fun, action-packed whodunit with quirky characters for fans of The Golden Girls, Miss Congeniality, and Murder She Wrote.”

Don't Forget Me by Kristin MacQueen: “Skylar: Ten years ago, I turned my back on the town I grew up in and everyone who lived there. Now, I'm going back for a job I'm not sure I even want. Tucker: When my daughter is in the principal’s office on the first day of school, I don’t expect to find my ex sitting behind the desk, looking shocked to see me. I never expected to see her again, but it seems like we can’t get away from each other.” Readers say this “single dad romance” is sweet with “all the feels.”

Never Too Late: Seashells and Sunsets by Aleesha Brown: “How do you pick up your life and begin to heal? Emma Hayes is at a crossroads in life. After years of fighting and keeping it together, her marriage has finally ended, leaving her to take care of her 16-year-old kid alone. When help comes from an unlikely source, she grabs the chance to start over. Meeting Owen opens up possibilities, and her new city might have more in store for her than she expected. But new beginnings also come with fresh troubles.” Sweet women’s fiction/romance at Amazon and in KU.

The Stranger by Effrosyni Moschoudi: “Vera has been hiding outside the mansion of famous Greek actor Yannis Ksenos, watching his fans begging for a glimpse of him. But Vera is not just a fan... She and Yannis have a past together. Why does only she remember all that? Somehow, he doesn't even know she's alive. Vera plucks up the courage to ring his doorbell, to try to steal some moments alone with him, even as a stranger. Yannis invites her in for coffee... Does he remember her after all?” This author has many romances set in Greece.

Rigby (light) and Mercury are such snuggle buddies. 

 A Stone Cold Murder excerpt Chapter 2

  [In the Reluctant Psychic Mystery series, a quirky loner who can read the history of any object with her touch gets drawn into mysteries at the museum of oddities where she works. In chapter 1, Petra was cleaning her new office at the Banditt Museum in a small New Mexico town. When she picked up a cluster of fluorite crystals, she got a vision of rage, pain, and death.]

  I leaned on the desk and concentrated on breathing.

  What was I going to do? I’d gotten overwhelming emotions from the mineral—I was going to call it fluorite until shown otherwise—but the images were jumbled. I had a very strong impression that someone had used the fluorite to hit someone else, but I couldn’t identify the attacker or the victim. Nor could I see the outcome: injury, death, merely a headache?

  Energy residue fades over time, and that had been like a punch to the brain, so whatever happened must’ve happened fairly recently—in the last few weeks, if not days. I closed my eyes and tried to recreate the images without actually touching the crystals again. Had I seen a corner of the desk? And some mottled brown carpet . . . like the carpet in this office.

  “Are you all right?”

  I gasped and jumped.

  “Sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you.” Two women stood in the open doorway, the older one speaking. “You must be Petra. I’m Liberty and this is Haven. We stopped by to introduce ourselves, but you don’t look well.”

  I tried to shove the emotions out of my mind and gather my wits. Act normal. You can pretend to be normal. “I just got lightheaded for a moment. I’ve been cleaning and probably kicked up some dust.”

  Liberty wrinkled her nose. “I can imagine. It builds up so quickly. Must have something to do with that desert all around us.” She was probably in her early forties, with a lean, athletic build and a French braid the color of pale honey. She wore a white button-up shirt and longish denim shorts.

  The other woman looked to be a few years younger than I was, early to mid-twenties. She had tawny skin, dark hair curling to her shoulders, and eyes so dark they might have been black. Her shirt had a design of retro Western travel postcards against a map background, and her orange lipstick matched one of the colors. She also wore shorts. Apparently the dress code was casual, perhaps in response to the warm weather that felt like spring although it was late February. She was studying me with equal curiosity.

  “I’m sorry, I missed your name,” I said.

  She grinned. “It’s Haven, Haven Gillooly. I curate the more modern stuff, anything from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, with a focus on the Wild West and Route 66 eras. Liberty handles historical eras prior to that—prehistoric, indigenous people, Spanish settlers. Also aliens.”

  I shifted my gaze to Liberty. Her shoulders twitched in a tiny shrug. “That’s my hobby. And you can’t have a museum of weird New Mexico without including the myths around Roswell. Have you seen the dioramas? The aliens are one of our most popular photo ops.”

  “Um, no.” I was getting way too much info at once, including the fact that everyone working at this museum seemed to have an odd name. Was that a prerequisite for working there? My name wasn’t common in the US, but I didn’t think it was particularly odd.

  I dragged my thoughts back to the conversation, trying to ignore the fluorite sample that still throbbed at the edge of my awareness. “I’ve never been in the museum before today. We did the interview over video chat. I studied the website, of course.”

  “Right, you came from the northwest,” Liberty said. “I know Peyton wanted to hire someone quickly after Reggie passed.” She looked around the office, her gaze lingering on the boxes filled with Reggie’s stuff, and then on the fluorite cluster that, I now noticed, had scratched the wooden desk. “I hope you’re not uncomfortable taking over his office.”

  “Er, no.” It wasn’t like his ghost haunted the room. Not that I necessarily believed in ghosts, never having seen one myself, but I keep an open mind. But Reggie hadn’t even died in the office.

  Or had he? I’d been told he’d had a heart attack and his car ran off a winding mountain road. What if that wasn’t true? Something had happened in that office, something violent, fairly recently. And the man who’d used this office was dead, violently, in a way that would cover up any injuries he might have had prior to the car accident. What if someone had killed him there in his office, with a mineral sample from his shelves, and then staged the car accident to cover up the crime?

  My vision went gray around the edges. I propped a hip on the edge of the desk, but not close enough to risk brushing against the crystals, and focused on breathing.

  “I’m giving the office a thorough cleaning and doing some redecorating,” I said. “I admit it is strange taking over an office when the previous person didn’t have a chance to clear out his stuff.” I hesitated and then plunged forward. “What was Reggie like?”

  Was he the kind of person someone would want to kill?

  Obviously I couldn’t ask that. Maybe I could find out something though. Ideally something that would prove I was wrong about the feelings I’d sensed. Maybe they’d used the crystals in amateur theatrics. The people involved would have to be really good actors to get that much emotion imprinted into the fluorite. I still felt queasy in reaction to the violence. But if they’d performed a scene over and over, that could explain why the emotional residue was so strong. Maybe. I’d never actually tested theatrical props, but I might be able to convince myself it would work that way. Why anyone would be practicing in this office was another question. Could other businesses around town have the same carpet? It didn’t seem likely, but maybe if a supplier got a great deal on the ugly stuff . . . I was grasping at straws. Slippery, insubstantial ones.

  Liberty and Haven exchanged glances. Did the silence last too long? Or were they merely giving each other the chance to answer first?

  “He was an odd duck,” Liberty said at last. “I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but frankly, if you meet anyone in this town who isn’t odd, they probably won’t last long.” One corner of her mouth twitched up. “Present company not excepted. I’ve been here over ten years. Reggie was only here for, what, two or three years?”

  “He came right before I did,” Haven said. “I’ve been here almost two years.”

  “I gather he’d bounced around a lot,” Liberty said. “He was in his fifties—fairly young to die of a heart attack, but a bit old to start over at a museum like this. People usually work here at the start of their careers, when they can’t find anything better”—she nodded at Haven—“or when they run out of options. We’re tolerant of quirks.”

  That was good for me. I wondered what it said about Liberty.

  “It’s a fun place to work though.” Haven bounced slightly, like she was bopping to music only she could hear. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!”

  “I’m sure I will. So Reggie didn’t have a family?”

  “Not that he ever mentioned,” Liberty said. “He lived alone here. I don’t know if he had a spouse in the past, or children somewhere.” She was studying me curiously. Did my questions seem peculiar? I wasn’t sure I could even tell anymore.

  “I have a couple of boxes of his stuff,” I said by way of explanation. “I don’t know who should get it.”

  “Ah. Take it to the office and let the Banditts deal with it,” Liberty said.

  “Thanks, I’ll do that.” I should probably change the subject before they got suspicious, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Reggie. “You don’t think any of his friends will want a memento?”

  “I wouldn’t say he had any close friends,” Liberty said. “He kept to himself.”

  “That’s a little sad.” I wasn’t one to speak, since I did the same, but I was growing more determined to understand what had happened with the crystals, and to do that I might need to understand the man who’d had this office before me. “No family, no friends, and either no career ambitions or he’d failed to achieve them. Not much of a eulogy.”

  Liberty nodded. “I guess there’s a lesson there. Live as you want to be remembered? I really can’t say much about Reggie except he was harmless.”

  “He is now anyway.” Haven slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a giggle. “Sorry. Inappropriate.”

  “I told you we’re all a little weird around here,” Liberty said.

  “Honestly, that doesn’t even register on my weirdness scale.” That was, in fact, the truest thing I’d said yet.

  “Well, you’ll fit right in.” Liberty cocked her head. “You never met Reggie?”

  “I’d never heard of him until I applied for this job, and he was already dead. Why?”

  She shook her head. I raised my eyebrows. It seemed like a strange question, and anything unusual interested me at the moment. Of course, the problem with moving to a new town, starting a new job, and meeting new people is that pretty much everything is out of the ordinary.

  She shrugged. “You’re in the same field. You might have crossed paths before.”

  “I suppose, but geology isn’t that small a field.” Maybe you’d meet people around the country if you got to the PhD level and went to a lot of conferences, but I was a nobody. It sounded like Reggie was the same.

  Haven had been watching us, her gaze shifting back and forth as if watching a tennis match. Did she seem unnaturally tense? Or was I so thrown out of step by what I’d gotten from the fluorite that everything seemed odd and wrong?

  Liberty glanced over her shoulder, where distant voices murmured, presumably visitors to the museum. “I guess we should get to work. You’re welcome to join us for lunch.”

  Haven nodded. “We take lunch at one, Liberty and me, unless there’s a big tour group scheduled or it’s especially crowded and they need us to help with tours or the front counter.”

  Great. It sounded like everyone was expected to pitch in wherever needed, which made sense for such a small operation, but why had Peyton told me I’d only have to handle the rocks and minerals wing? Had he said that to get me out here, assuming once I’d moved he could change the rules and I’d be forced to give in? Now if I insisted on following our agreement, I’d look like a jerk and not a team player.

  Maybe I could compromise and agree to give tours—which was terrifying in its own way, because I didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with strangers or being friendly, but I wouldn’t have to actually touch any of the artifacts in the museum. Then I’d insist on not working the counter where I’d have to take people’s money and credit cards. Cash didn’t usually carry strong impressions, since it changed hands too often, but usually wasn’t never. And credit cards could pick up the energy of the person who carried them, sometimes with anxiety over how they were going to pay for the charges they were running up.

  “But that’s rare.” Liberty was studying my face. It’s possible I hadn’t kept my expression as blank as I’d intended. “Typically we have at most a couple dozen people in the museum at any given time, and Kit can handle the tours.”

  I swallowed and nodded.

  “Kit takes lunch at noon,” Haven said. “Reggie usually ate alone in this office. It’s nice to have another woman here. Girl power!” She grinned, sunny and enthusiastic. She made me feel like a dragon who only wanted to crawl into its dark cave and hide away with its treasures, at least one of which was covered in blood. “So, lunch?”

  For a moment, I was tempted. I could put aside my violent thoughts—or rather, my thoughts on what violence might have been done here. Walk away from the puzzle of the crystals. Forget about blood and pain.

  And female friendship? Of course I wanted that. But I couldn’t let people get too close. It was unfair to them if I kept my abilities secret, and dangerous to me if I revealed them.

  “Thanks for the invite, but I need to make sure my animals are settling in at my house.” I hadn’t realized I’d need an excuse for avoiding socialization this soon, but I was glad I had one.

  “Oh!” Haven bounced like an excited toddler. “What kind of animals?”

  “Mostly small critters.” I didn’t want to run down the list and find out that such and such was her favorite, and could she come meet them? “It was quite the trip across the country. Twenty-four hours of driving over two and half days. I still have to wait for most of my stuff to arrive and then unpack it. It will probably be weeks before I get everything sorted.”

  “I’ll bet,” Liberty said, looking over her shoulder. “Well, see you around.” She headed down the hall.

  Haven smiled again. “Bye! Welcome to the Banditt Museum.” She followed Liberty.

  Well. On the bright side, it seemed other people working at the museum were just as odd and awkward as I was, so I’d fit right in.

  On the extremely gloomy side, I had a mineral sample telling me it had been used to hurt, maybe even kill, someone. What was I supposed to do about that? I imagined taking my claim to the police. I could almost hear their laughter. In a town this size, anyone I told might spread the word, and I’d be an outcast before I got my first paycheck. They might tolerate quirks, but I didn’t want to out myself as a complete freak.

[The first two photos are from the New Mexico Mineral Museum. The third is from the Billy The Kid Museum ​in Fort Sumner, NM, the model for the Banditt Museum.]

***

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Learn more about the Accidental Detective humorous mystery series, the Reluctant Psychic Mystery series, the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys sweet romance series, the Felony Melanie: Sweet Home Alabama romantic comedy novels, and the Furrever Friends cat cafe sweet romance series.