Voice recognition mistake of the day: This came from writing up alternative text for a book cover: "This guy is purpleish with falling snow."

(I don't know about the guy, but the sky was purpleish with falling snow.)

Unlucky Lava? There’s a peculiar legend about Hawaiian lava rocks causing bad luck if tourists take them home, as explained in this article: Hawaii national park wants visitors to stop mailing it rocks... The origin of the myth is a mystery. There are no records, documentation or cultural history that supports the idea that taking a lava rock will bring bad luck. Read the article here.

In “Leave No Stone Unturned,” a Reluctantly Psychic short mystery, Petra and Haven are in Santa Fe to sell rocks and minerals at an arts market. When a woman approaches them with a strange story (about, you guessed it, an "unlucky" lava rock brought back from a vacation), Petra uses her psychic power to sense that this stranger is truly in trouble, and they must figure out how to stop a murder. Get the free story here.

In the Reluctantly 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. This short story provides a glimpse into the series world. 

Speaking of rocks, I walked through Petroglyph National Monument recently. Here are some of the over 400 petroglyphs on this trail.

Audible Holiday Promotion: $0.99/month for 3 months. Auto-renews at $14.95 a month after 3 months. Cancel anytime. Choose one audiobook every month from thousands of titles, plus get exclusive deals and discounts. You can listen to the first 3 Accidental Detective humorous mystery novels: A smart midlife woman starts over, catches crooks & laughs with intergenerational friends. Get Something Shady at Sunshine Haven from Audible here, or start your Audible deal here. (They are also available at other audiobook retailers!)

Sweet Treats: With the holidays coming, do you need some recipes for cookies and cupcakes? Get 22 of the recipes mentioned in my Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series.

If you crave sweet, no-heat small town romance about kind people doing their best, check out these perfect cozy reads for winter (including a Christmas story!). Find them at all retailers.

Speaking of holidays, here's a photo from the Day of the Dead celebration in Albuquerque's Old Town. She's made out of papier-mâché!

Find More New Books and Authors!

Rune: My exclusive paranormal mystery giveaway this month is from author Kirsten Weiss. "Rune is a captivating Doyle Witch prequel novella. In the shadowed Sierra town of Doyle, Lenore hides from a world she distrusts, seeking solace in books to escape the visions she denies. But when she finds a man’s body in Doyle Creek and her beloved aunt becomes a target of suspicion, Lenore is drawn into a web of small-town secrets and old grudges. Pursuing a killer, she risks unraveling Doyle’s enchanted core. Can Lenore, long wary of her shamanic gifts, embrace her magic to save herself? Get cozy with this witch mystery now, and uncover the mysteries of Lenore’s mystical past.” Download your copy here.

Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense: 🔎LOOKING FOR A TWISTY WHODUNNIT???🔍 Check out these fun mysteries (mainly traditional mysteries and thrillers) and you might find your next favorite series!

Clean Autumn Stories: Are you ready for Christmas, football season, or the beach? Would you like to step into the past or travel to the future? You’ll find something to suit your mood in this collection of romance novels! (For football fans –or simply romantic comedy fans – don’t miss Felony Melanie and the Prank War, with the characters from the movie Sweet Home Alabama as teens! Get the Felony Melanie: Sweet Home Alabama romantic comedy novels at all major retailers.)

 Rigby smiles for the camera.

  A Stone Cold Murder excerpt Chapter 4 part 1

  [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 was cleaning her new office at the Banditt Museum in a small New Mexico town. She’s been talking to her new boss, museum founder Peyton Banditt.] Photos are from the Hammel Museum.

  We went back into the museum. Peyton said goodbye absently, frowning over whatever was in his thoughts, and left me. Buoyed by Peyton’s enthusiasm, I was getting excited about updating the geology wing. It sounded like he wanted the museum to be everything to everyone, which was impossible, but that made things interesting.

  I avoided looking at the fluorite as I grabbed my backpack. This job could be fun, if I could get past that horrible vision and all the questions surrounding it. Faint tremors seemed to ripple over my skin. I stretched out my hand to see if it was trembling, but any shivers must’ve been internal.

  I’d worry about the fluorite and its message later. At the moment I felt queasy and headachy, exhausted from the long drive to New Mexico, anxious from trying to make a halfway decent impression on new people, and off-balance from the unexpected psychic vision. I needed to escape for an hour.

  I locked my office door and scooted out the back. The gate in the fence had a chain with a padlock. Let’s see, Billy the Kid’s birth year. That would definitely start with eighteen. Then it was fifty-something? I tried a couple of numbers until I got it.

  That wasn’t great security, but an intruder could get through the chain with a bolt cutter anyway. The chain-link fence was about six feet high, with loops of razor wire on top. Get a ladder, throw a thick blanket over the top, and you could scale that easily enough. I glanced back at the building. I didn’t spot any cameras, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.

  My commute now meant walking down the main drag for a couple of blocks and then turning onto the long street that led to my rental. It was such a small town. Two thousand people. My high school had that many students. I headed around the building to the main street.

  The museum had a lot of antiques, but nothing small, portable, and extremely valuable, like rare gems or paintings by famous masters. The most valuable artifacts there would be hard to sell. You couldn’t just offer Kit Carson’s rifle on eBay without evidence that it had really belonged to him. The rusting farm equipment and dented cars in the yard weren’t even important enough to put under shelter. The security was probably designed to keep bored teenagers from causing trouble.

  It seemed unlikely an attack had happened during open hours, even in the quiet geology wing. The killer would have to hide the body right away, with the constant risk of somebody coming into the room. Had the person who wielded the crystal cluster as a weapon broken in after closing? Had they come into the museum as a visitor, paying their five dollars like the other tourists, and hidden until after hours?

  Was it someone who worked in the museum?

  I shivered despite the pleasant weather. How had I stumbled across violence here? Not that small towns were crime-free, but I’d expect drunk drivers and the occasional bar brawl. Maybe a rare murder due to a fight or domestic violence. As far as I could tell, the violence I’d sensed hadn’t even been reported yet—but I should look at the news for the last few weeks. Did this town have a newspaper? They were dying off even in bigger cities. Maybe an online community bulletin board?

  My landlady’s house was right next door to mine, which might turn out convenient or annoying. She was trimming some bushes in her yard. “Hello! How was your first morning?” She stuck the hedge trimmers in a holster around her waist, wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, and grabbed her cane from where it leaned against the white picket fence around her yard.

  I stopped across the fence from her. “Fine.”

  I’d fully exhausted my limited reservoir of sociability and desperately wanted to get inside under a pile of sweet fuzzballs, but I didn’t want to start my residency by annoying the person who owned my rental. Plus she might know things about Reggie. Shelley was somewhere past seventy, with a limp that required her to use the cane. She seemed nice enough, and she had a Saint Bernard. Anyone who loves animals gains a few points with me. Toby got up from his spot in the shade and padded slowly toward me, long strands of drool dripping from his jowls.

  “It’s a little strange, cleaning up the office of someone who died.” I gestured toward my place next door. “By the way, was that Reggie’s house?”

***

Now Mercury is awake!

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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.