like a shoe pushing up through the ground 👠🌱?

I’m going to try something new for the next year. I’ll include excerpts of A Stone Cold Murder (the Reluctantly Psychic Mystery series book 1), a chapter (or half a chapter) at a time, until we get through the whole book. I hope you enjoy it! I’ll put the excerpts at the end of each newsletter, right before the unsubscribe and “Kris’s other books” info.

Voice recognition mistake of the day: “I felt like something inside me was breaking, or thawing, or maybe just starting to grow, like a shoe pushing up through the ground.” 👠🌱? (Or a shoot. That was from a draft of A Stone Cold Murder.)

Book 2 book tour: I had a great virtual book tour and got some nice reviews from the participating bloggers!

“Death at Rock Bottom takes us to the New Mexico desert, with an interesting protagonist that I really like, and a very intriguing mystery.” ~Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book

“I am really enjoying this series, with its quirky characters, wonderful community, setting, and intriguing plotlines.” ~Carla Loves to Read

“Rocks, aliens, and a death in the desert combine to make Death at Rock Bottom a unique and engaging mystery. The more I'm around these characters the more I love them and I can't wait to see what happens next!” ~Cozy Up With Kathy

“Death at Rock Bottom is the perfect read for lovers of supernatural murder mysteries with a cozy hometown flavor.” ~Novels Alive

See the tour wrap-up here.

Some days I worry about my new coworkers. This does not seem like appropriate office behavior.

Find More New Books and Authors!

Grown-Up Second Chance by Casey Dawes: “Diane O’Sullivan and her two sisters have hit the road in their 43-foot motorhome. With her ex far in the rearview mirror and only a few accounting clients left, Diane’s looking forward to exploring the country. Then Joe Kelly, who was her secret teenage crush, shows up at their RV campsite outside Yellowstone. More than once he rescues her from the dangers of the park and the tourists who visit it. After dumping her dull-as-dishwater ex, she’s not ready to take on another project. And, isn’t a man always a project? Grown-Up Second Chance is a later-in-life romantic comedy.”

Jump Into A Summer Romance: Check out these contemporary romance freebies! Each is free with newsletter signups (unsubscribe any time). The group includes romances that are spicy, sweet, and in-between.

Bonus pic of the ferrets, looking innocent, which they are not.

A Stone Cold Murder: Chapter 1 excerpt

  It’s no fun sorting through the belongings of a dead man. I assume that’s true for most people, except maybe antique dealers or historians. But I think it’s worse for me.

  That’s not because I’m a narcissist. (As far as I know. I admit I’ve never been tested.) It’s because of my psychometry. It might sound cool to pick up vibrations left behind on objects, giving me glimpses of the items’ histories. But I didn’t want to know more about the man who’d had my job before me. Everything so far suggested Reggie Heap was an ordinary man who had more chest pains and heart palpitations than he let on. I might have warned him to get that checked out, if he hadn’t already died of a massive heart attack that killed him even before his car ran off a mountain road.

  It was my office now, and I needed to scrub away all traces of the former occupant. Does that sound harsh? I’ve lived with this gift, or curse, for thirty years, and I had to control it or it would drive me insane. I mean that literally, and not in the My head literally exploded actually figurative sense. Think about it like this: It might sound cool to have telepathy, if you assume you could choose when and where to use it. But imagine if you had to hear every thought of every person nearby.

  Yeah, you’d probably just stay home.

  Otherwise you might, oh, see a vision of your dad kissing someone who is not your mom, and accidentally destroy your parents’ marriage at age five, just as an example. Or have your junior high friends pressure you to psychically spy on the boys they like to see if their feelings are returned. How about having word of your ability spread around high school, so everyone either thinks you’re a liar or is afraid to let you touch them or anything they’ve touched?

  I had to work my way through eight years of part-time college doing landscaping, because waiting tables or working retail would bring me into too much contact with strangers’ items, and the constant barrage of information is exhausting, even when the information is tedious and unimportant. Psychometry has done very little good in my life so far.

  Not being independently wealthy, or even aloofly middle class, I couldn’t just stay home. I was about as far from a people person as one could be, so I needed a job that paid well enough that I could live alone, just me and my pets (ten at the current count). Ideally, the job wouldn’t bring me into contact with a lot of other people or their stuff. I hoped I had that job now, working in a small museum in a tiny town in a state with something like twenty people per square mile.

  Being a museum curator gave me a nice excuse to wear white cotton gloves, although it might seem strange to do so while clearing the desk of family photos and stray pens. Fortunately, no one was around to ask. I didn’t like wearing gloves though. I didn’t want any information from my touch, but I felt oddly clumsy, like trying to clean a dimly lit room while wearing dark glasses.

  I’d boxed up all the personal items, so it seemed safe to take off the gloves. I glanced at the four tall filing cabinets, which had decades of records of purchases and donations. Sorting through them would give me a good idea of what the collection held as well as a chance to make sure everything was properly filed. That would take days though, and it could wait. I started rubbing the desk down with a cleaning wipe.

  Someone appeared in the doorway and said, “Knock, knock.”

  “Hello.” I straightened, keeping the wipe in my right hand. I try to keep my hands full when I meet new people to discourage handshaking, but it doesn’t always work. I dislike shaking hands, but not because of the psychometry. It’s because I’ve read the statistics on how many people don’t wash their hands after using the restroom.

  He strode in and thrust out his hand. “I’m Kit Carson.” He looked about midthirties, with brown hair and a thick brown beard that hung halfway down his chest.

  I dropped the wipe and offered my hand a bit warily. I was confident I wasn’t meeting the nineteenth-century frontiersman, but did he know that?

  His handshake was firm, and he wore no rings that might give me an unwanted jolt of insight. He had a nice smile and long-lashed brown eyes that seemed ready to laugh. “Kit Carson Banditt, that is.”

  “Oh. You must be Peyton’s . . .” Son or grandson? The museum’s founder and owner was well into his seventies, so it could go either way.

  “Grandson. I give tours, work in the office, and cover the front counter sometimes. Welcome to the Banditt Museum.”

  He gave my hand another squeeze. He’d held it for a weirdly long time, and believe me, I know all about weird. As far as the psychometry, I don’t get that much information from touching someone’s skin. Maybe a sense of their mood, but no more than you could get from studying facial expressions. But sometimes handshaking brings me into contact with a ring, watch, or sleeve. Emotions and memories seem to cling to inanimate objects longer, for some reason. Then I might learn that the boss at my temp job had not been on an important phone call for the last hour but rather having video sex with his boyfriend.

  Okay, maybe my dislike of shaking hands did have to do with the psychometry. I really don’t care what other people do, but I don’t want to know about it. Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, please wash your hands.

  I withdrew my hand and tried to make my smile politely impersonal. “Thank you. I’m looking forward to getting settled in.”

  “If you get lost, just holler and someone will come find you.” He chuckled, but the museum was a maze. Peyton had escorted me to my office, but I gave it about a twenty percent chance that I could find my way back to the entrance without at least three wrong turns. “Dad said you’re an expert on rocks, but you ought to learn about all the other stuff we have here too. I’d be happy to show you around.”

  My nerves pulsed. “Peyton said I’d only have to work with the rocks and minerals, not the other artifacts.”

  I studied geology because rocks are quiet. They tell stories, in the layers of sand and pebbles deposited by seasonal floods, the crystal size that identifies plutonic versus other volcanic rocks, the clamshells and crinoids that prove some mountains were once underwater. But they don’t shout with grief or anger or fear, the way human artifacts can. I’d taken the curator job with the understanding that I’d only have to work in my wing.

  Kit shrugged. “If that’s what interests you. But you might get questions from visitors, so it’s good to know what else is here and how to find it. I have to tell you, the mineral wing isn’t that popular. Most people only plan to stop at the museum for an hour or two, so by the time they get all the way back here, they’ve already spent more time than they planned and they’re anxious to hit the road.”

  That sounded fine to me, but if I wanted to keep this job, I probably shouldn’t tell the owner’s grandson that I’d be happy to be left alone in the least popular section. I doubted I’d had much competition for the position, since the job didn’t pay well, and most people wouldn’t want to move to a town of 2000 people in New Mexico. But rent was cheap, I didn’t care about access to the cafés and clubs you’d find in big cities, and there weren’t a lot of job openings for geologists with bachelor’s degrees who didn’t want to go into oil, gas, or mining or substitute teach high school science.

  “I’ll try to update the collection to make it more appealing,” I said. “I can’t promise it will be the first stop for passing tourists, but maybe we’ll give them a reason to make a longer stop on the way back.”

  “I wish you well, but I imagine the outlaws and lawmen will always be most popular.” He smiled with the smug satisfaction of someone with job security. “If you’re not a fan now, you will be once you hear the stories. All true!”

  “Well, maybe I’ll pick up a book from the gift shop.”

  He gave a derisive huff. “No need. I know everything there is to know, and I’m happy to share. We could talk over lunch sometime.” He winked. “I like to think I’m more entertaining than a book written by some scholar.”

  “I’m sure,” I said neutrally.

  I wasn’t sure if Kit was flirting, trying to relieve his boredom, or just aggressively friendly. If he led tours, he probably had to be outgoing and cheerful with strangers. The museum’s survival depended on tourists, so they’d want to give people a great experience. Peyton had told me that most of the Banditt Museum’s customers were people driving across country on Route 60. They looked for interesting places to stop for an hour or so in order to break up the drive, and the museum had good reviews. Visitors came for the stories and artifacts relating to the Wild West and, according to Peyton, often stayed for hours to explore all the little treasures in the sprawling, mazelike building and still left wishing they’d allowed more time for the visit.

  I hoped Kit was this friendly with everyone. I had zero interest in dating, especially a coworker. It’s too awkward with the psychometry. I don’t want to tell someone I just met about it, because they’ll think I’m crazy or lying. Or if they believe me, they back off because my ability is creepy. But if I wait until we get closer to tell them, it’s like I’m invading their privacy up to that point. People don’t like thinking you know things about them they haven’t told you.

  I glanced around the tiny office. “Well, I have lots to do here. Thanks for stopping by.”

  “Sure thing.” He left with a cheerful wave.

  I relaxed a little. He didn’t seem offended by the brushoff, and he could take a hint. Or else he hadn’t noticed the hint and would be persistently pesty.

  I looked around the office. Besides the desk and file cabinets, it had wooden shelves along one wall. They held some rather nice geologic samples, though presumably not quite nice enough to make the main collection. I picked up a piece of smoky quartz. A prism, longer than my hand, thrust up like an obelisk from a cluster of smaller crystals at the base. A little label on the bottom confirmed my identification, while a clean spot on the shelf showed how much dust had piled up around the samples.

  I might as well clean the shelf and its displays. While I was at it, I could check all the labels so if anyone asked about the specimens, I’d sound like I knew what I was talking about. The easiest way to clean rocks is to run them under gently flowing water, as long as they’re not made up of minerals that dissolve easily. The museum might have an outside hose. It would take a few trips, but I could carry several specimens in a box at once.

  Peyton had given me boxes for packing up Reggie Heap’s stuff. I grabbed an empty one and started loading rocks and minerals into it. I’d definitely keep the frothy, seafoam-green Smithsonite. Maybe not the stringy bit of copper, which was interesting but not all that pretty.

  A sample as big as two fists together was made up of cubic crystals in a lovely shade of lilac. Some marks showed where small pieces had broken off, which might be why it was in the office instead of on display. Fluorite, with some impurities to give it the purple shade? Tests could confirm that, but I wouldn’t need them if it was properly labeled.

  I picked it up with both hands.

  Rage. The desire to hurt.

  Fear. An explosion of pain. Panic dissolving into darkness.

  I staggered and dropped the mineral. When my vision cleared, I was leaning against the desk with both hands pressing down on it. Fortunately, I’d dropped the crystal cluster on the desk and not my foot. It would have been hard to explain breaking my foot in that manner.

  But not as difficult as explaining why I thought these crystals had been used as a weapon.

***

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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.