Voice recognition mistake of the day: “Who doesn’t love a remote, Gothic setting with footsteps echoing in empty corridors and looming bugs for servants?”🐛🪲🐜

That would be interesting, but I meant “thugs for servants.”

Buried in Betrayal: Reluctantly Psychic Murder Mystery Book 3 is out and the reviews are coming in!

“Very well written, holds you on the edge of your chair. Storyline is fantastic ... keeps you guessing who done it... strongly recommend."

“I’m loving this series! Buried in Betrayal is full of intrigue and suspense, keeping the story gripping from the very beginning. The characters are well developed, and the plot unfolds in a way that keeps readers thoroughly engaged and guessing. Kris Bock does a great job blending mystery with paranormal elements, making this installment just as compelling as the others. I highly recommend this book, especially for fans of cozy mysteries with a psychic twist.”

FYI, the publisher is planning to rebrand this series with new covers and titles, so if you’re a paperback reader, you might want to wait for that – unless you already have the first ones, in which case get number three now if you want the set to match!

Also, the ebook for A Stone Cold Murder is on sale for 99c this month! A loner who can read an object’s history with a touch finds mysteries at a quirky museum. Find the links to all retailers here.

All ferrets are weird in their own particular ways. One way that Rigby is weird: he likes to smell my tea and will sometimes lick the mug if I let him. Here he decided to skip the middleman and try to lick the tea directly from my lips.

Things are pretty quiet here as we head into the new year. I’m working on a new project inspired by the cozy magical realism genre that’s come out of Japan recently, with books such as Before the Coffee Gets Cold, The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen, and What You Are Looking For Is in the Library. Have you read or heard of any of these?

Romance Series Starters: Voracious readers know the delight of finding a great new series with lots of books to keep you entertained. Check out fifty-some romance series starters and you might find your next favorite binge reads.

New Year, New Romance: These are all free in Kindle Unlimited—and also for sale, usually under $5 and some as little as 99 cents. Browse sweet contemporary romance reads set in small towns, at beaches, lakes, and cabins, plus my romantic suspense in the Southwest!

Rigby and Mercury are good at putting on a sweet and innocent look. Don’t believe them. (Okay, they ARE sweet. But they are also trouble. Yes, we love it.)

  A Stone Cold Murder excerpt Chapter 5 part 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. Petra has returned home for lunch in this scene, where she chats with her cats and finds a clue.] 

  The kitchen had a table and two chairs, but I ate my sandwich while standing. Moving was the worst. At least my old furniture should arrive soon. Sleeping on the floor was even less comfortable than sleeping in my van on the way here, but I refused to sleep in someone else’s bed. Given what I was learning about Reggie, I was glad I hadn’t risked it.

  I washed stray peanut butter off my hands. Fortunately I’d kept a hand towel so I could wash my hands after packing. Unfortunately, I hadn’t remembered to keep a bath towel for myself, so I’d had to borrow one of the old towels I’d packed in the ferrets’ cage for my shower that morning. If I smelled a little like ferret musk, no one had mentioned it.

  I grabbed an apple. Even with walking home, chatting with Shelley, and checking on my pack, I had ten minutes before I needed to head back to the museum. And that was assuming anyone cared or noticed how long I took for lunch. I’d play it safe until I got the rhythm of things.

  Amber wound around my ankles, purring. Jet crouched by the food dishes and stared at me.

  “Where’s Onyx?” I asked.

  No, I don’t expect the cats to speak to me, either in words or telepathically. They’re pretty good at letting me know when they want food (now, always). I knew the signs for Pet me, love me, I’m your sweet little baby and for That’s enough; I will bite if you touch me again. They know how to communicate when they want to. But I don’t get answers when I ask a question, such as, Who dragged toilet paper all over the hallway, and how did you get the roll off the holder in the first place? I’m sure they could answer, but they choose not to.

  Amber put a paw on my knee and meowed. I scooped her up and held her in one arm, her head and front paws on my shoulder, while I resumed eating. She sniffed at the apple but didn’t consider it food.

  “I’m sure he’s found a good hiding place,” I said.

  In my old apartment, Onyx had three or four favorite places to hide in case a stranger passed by in the hall, the doorbell rang, I accidentally made a loud noise, or a pigeon landed on the windowsill and freaked him out. He is not one of the feline world’s tough guys. But I didn’t know where he’d found to hide in this house. I’d searched the place well before releasing the animals and found no escape routes. Therefore, I was reasonably sure Onyx was still in the house somewhere, but I’d feel better if I found him.

  “If you were Onyx, where would you hide?” I asked Jet.

  He continued staring, probably trying to use mind control on me. He’d been rescued from the streets at about six months old. He was now five, but he hadn’t given up on his dream of finding a memory-challenged human who would feed him a dozen times a day.

  Amber crawled up on my shoulder.

  “Ouch, watch the claws!”

  She jumped to the top of the refrigerator. A hiss and a slight scuffling sound followed.

  The top of the fridge was above my line of sight, so I stood on a chair. Onyx was hiding in the eight inches of space above the fridge and below a cabinet I would never use because it was too hard to reach. He was black with a white bib, which made him almost invisible in the shadowy space, but he stood out against fluffy, orange Amber next to him. It was probably my imagination that she looked smug as she started grooming Onyx’s ear.

  “Hi, baby,” I said softly. “It’s okay. You keep right on hiding if that makes you feel safe.”

  While I was up there, I might as well check the cabinet for anything a prior resident had left behind, like ancient to-go containers or instructions for long-gone appliances. When I’d explored the house, I’d peered around the fridge to make sure the cats couldn’t get stuck back there or find a wormhole to another dimension, but I didn’t actually check the cabinet.

  I opened the door. Inside was a silver laptop computer.

  Well, that was a surprise. Could it be Reggie’s? It looked kind of chunky by today’s standards, but it couldn’t be too many decades old. Besides, surely no one would store a laptop up there and forget about it when they moved. But Shelley might have missed it when she cleared out Reggie’s things.

  If it was Reggie’s, why was it in such an awkward place? Maybe he’d gotten a newer one and stuck the old one out of the way. Shelley had mentioned his computer, which I hadn’t seen, but she might have claimed it for herself or donated it.

  Or maybe this was his only computer, and he didn’t want anyone else to find it. But he lived alone and didn’t entertain, so who would see it? A thief looking for valuables? That seemed a bit paranoid—unless he really didn’t want anyone to see what was on it.

  What could be so secret?

  I didn’t want to touch the laptop. Something like that could have years of the user’s emotions seeping into it. But it might hold a valuable clue. I used the hand towel to pick up the laptop, set it on the counter, and got down.

  Jet had given up on trying to mind control me and was crunching on a stray piece of kibble on the floor. Wait a minute. He had been staring at me—and the top of the fridge, which would be behind me in his line of sight—when I’d asked about Onyx.

  I narrowed my gaze at him. “You can understand me, can’t you? You just choose to ignore my questions most of the time.”

  He ignored me, which seemed an appropriate answer.

  I had gloves in my pocket, so I put them on before I opened the laptop and turned it on. A screen came up asking for a password. I was disappointed, but not surprised. Someone who hid his laptop wouldn’t make it too easy to get into. It also showed a low battery. The power cord hadn’t been in the cupboard, and I hadn’t seen it in the house. I needed to charge the laptop before I spent time trying to figure out the password.

  (I’m not a hacker, but maybe I wouldn’t need to be. Geologists aren’t necessarily known for keeping on top of technology, given that we’re comfortable with the geologic timescale, where the modern era covers over 11,000 years. Maybe Reggie had used lousy passwords like password or his birthdate, regardless of how paranoid he might be. As I learned more about Reggie, I might get clues to words or numbers he could have used. And if all that failed, I could probably hire a fifteen-year-old on the internet to break into the laptop for me.)

  I powered down the laptop, wrapped it in the towel, and put it in my backpack. Reggie might have left the power cord in his office.

  I’d added even more items to my task list, but I’d also made progress. Surely Reggie’s computer would tell me something about him! (If it’s really his, a little voice whispered. Hush, little voice.) And if the computer worked, and Reggie didn’t have heirs to claim it, maybe finders keepers applied. Shelley thought it had with the TV. I’d gone through eight years of part-time college doing assignments on my phone or at the campus computer lab. Getting a free laptop might be worth the hassle of dealing with something used. I could get a separate keyboard to plug into it, so I didn’t have to touch the keys.

  But enough fantasizing about my bright future. My lunch break was over.

  “Thanks, guys,” I told the cats. “See you tonight.”

***

Thanks for reading, , and thanks for choosing to sign up for my newsletter. If you want to unsubscribe, the link is below. You can also follow me on Amazon or BookBub if you only want New Release Alerts. Or check out my books – available at all major retailers as ebooks or print!

Did you get your freebies? Find them all here: a cat café romance novella, an Accidental Detective short story, and 22 recipes from the cat Café. Plus get a Sweet Home Alabama short story and a preview of my brother’s comedy, Totally Rad Wormhole.

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.