Sweet Penny Cove puzzle!

Hm...the only puzzles I've created have been autumn themed. Could it be that this is my favorite time of year? 🤔 It definitely is! 

This is pretty near what the town looks like that inspired Sweet Penny Cove. What do you think? Would you like to visit? The Matinee Classics Cozy Mystery Series will take you there!

Click here to do the puzzle!

Because the cover is so pretty!

 

Isn't this cover adorable? There's Rocky the Newfie riding in the back. He's my favorite part, but I also just love the pink Studebaker.

Hopelessly Dead to You is now available for purchase as an ebook, but don't buy it! 🫣

Yep, I said don't buy it. Unless you want to of course, but I want to give it to you for free!

A free ecopy of Hopelessly Dead to You is available when you sign up for my newsletter. You can unsubscribe again right away if you wish (there's an easy button), but the ebook is a gift you get to keep.

Here's where you sign up:

Della Pearl Newsletter Signup

If the book is free, why did I put it up for sale on Amazon?

Mostly because the cover is so pretty! I love seeing it with the other books.

Here's the link to that (Hopelessly Dead to You is at the bottom, listed as "related to" the series):

Matinee Classics Cozy Mystery Series

What to know about the book?

It's a NOVELLA. That is the first thing to know. It's about a quarter of the size of the regular books in my Matinee Classics Cozy Mystery Series.

Also, just as all the books in the series include classic movie spotlights, this novella focuses on a single movie title: the 1978 film version of Grease starring Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta.

Grease meant a lot to me as a pre-teen. Dancing, singing, teen angst...so much fun energy. I still can't stop myself from hopping and jiving and cutting a rug when the music starts. It was a joy including it in my murder mystery story.

If you haven't started the series yet, this is a great place to start!

Happy reading 🔎

And the second reason is...

 

Una O'Connor and Claude Rains in The Invisible Man (1933)

While the first reason I love writing the Matinee Classics Cozy Mystery Series is because I love vicarious snooping, the other is:

2. I love classic Hollywood trivia!

With every book in the series I choose a few old movies to spotlight. One of those lucky films gets a nod in the title. This time, it's the 1933 classic The Invisible Man starring Claude Rains. It's a terrific excuse to read up on the actors' lives, learn the details about how the film was made, and make connections. For instance, young and beautiful Gloria Stuart, who plays the Invisible Man's former fiancé, is well-known for her portrayal as the elderly Rose in Titanic. That kind of trivia makes me giddy.

And don't get me started on Claude Rains's life story. It's fascinating.

While only a few paragraphs about the movies appear in each book, my research always turns up so much more. I will stop and watch the Hollywood greats every time. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, and so many more.

Una O'Connor
By DVD (Selznick Studio - United Artists) - Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936 film), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=159012208

I'll write more next time, but here's a quick note on Una O'Connor, who played the part of Jenny Hall the innkeeper in The Invisible Man. You may recognize the actress as she appeared in nearly a hundred supporting roles in her career, which ranged from 1929-1957. A Belfast, Ireland native, O'Connor played mostly humorous characters, such as the hysterical townsperson in Bride of Frankenstein, and a string of servants, crones, spinster chaperones, and nagging wives.

A Wikipedia article quotes a 1959 post humorous description of O'Connor:

... a frail little woman, with enormous eyes that reminded one of a hunted animal. She could move one to tears with the greatest of ease, and just as easily reduce an audience to helpless laughter in comedies of situation. She was mistress of the art of making bricks without straw. She could take a very small part, but out of the paltry lines at her disposal, create a real flesh-and-blood creature, with a complete and credible life of its own. (Eric Johns)

O'Connor never married or had children, but her legacy continues in her memorable screen presence. I think she steals the show in every scene she's in.

A new book in the Matinee Classics Cozy Mystery Series!

I'm delighted to share that The Invisible Corpse is out in the world!

This book is 2nd in the series. The mystery is a complete standalone, though Stevie, Melanie, Roddy, and the crew have their own lives going on, so I recommend starting the series with book 1, Here's Looking at Murder, Kid.

I have two favorite things about writing this series:

1. I love being with Stevie as she tiptoes somewhere she isn't supposed to go. I remember as a kid wanting to be like Nancy Drew, and sometimes venturing to those forbidden places.

We had a neighbor across the street who lived down a long driveway that disappeared into the trees. We couldn't even see his house, and we never saw him. (Why am I assuming it's a him? Hm.) The only sign of life there was every night around midnight, he backed down his driveway, the headlights shining up into my bedroom window. When he left again was a mystery.

One night around ten o'clock, we knew he wouldn't be home for a few hours and decided to venture down his driveway. We even had a reason in case we got caught, something to do with a school fundraiser. I didn't think to come up with an answer to the obvious question, why we were fundraising that late at night.

I also can't remember who I'd talked into taking this adventure with me, but considering how it ended, I can guess. It wasn't my try-anything friend, and it wasn't my rule-following little sister. It might have been my brother who for some reason trusted me, or my if-you-think-it's-a-good-idea friend. Because once we crossed the street and took a few steps toward that gaping black hole where the trees swallowed the driveway, I knew in my bones that it was a terrible idea to go down there. I told whoever was with me--I'm thinking it was my brother--and we decided to go home.

Nancy Drew would have been so disappointed in me, but we lived to tell the tale.

With Stevie's story, I find that she has no such qualms. She doesn't purposely put herself in danger, but she does venture to places where I never would. Stevie is Nancy Drew in her forties.

2. The second reason I love this series? I'll write about that next time.

Happy reading!

Della

The Body and Mr. Chicken puzzle

I took an hour off from writing to clean the house and accidentally made a puzzle instead. Whoops.

If you like digital puzzles, click on over and have some fun!

The Body and Mr. Chicken puzzle

 

Matinee Classics Cozy Mystery Series so far

Okay, friends, I just had to see all of these cute covers together. Aren't they fun? Rocky is the best part of them, of course. I especially like the HOPELESSLY DEAD TO YOU cover where he's in the classic car. 

If you're book shopping and thinking, huh, I can't find HOPELESSLY DEAD anywhere, that's because it's not for sale right now. It's only available for FREE.

If you look to the right (or I think it might be above if you're on your phone) and click on Newsletter and a free novella, you can get a copy. You'll have to sign up for my newsletter, but if you want to unsubscribe once you have claimed your free book, no worries! Sometimes my email box gets too full as well, so I get it.

I'll write more another day about how this series came to be. Meanwhile, happy reading, sleuth friends!

~Della

 

And another new release!

 

Autumn is my favorite season, and I know it's silly and no I'm not into the occult but I absolutely love Halloween. Kids in costumes, jack-o-lanterns, cool evenings and crisp leaves and a moonlit night... and chocolate! What's not to love?

Which is why, when I was supposed to be writing book 2 in my Matinee Classics Cozy Mystery Series, I held the presses and slipped in a Halloween story.

In The Body and Mr. Chicken, Stevie and best friend Melanie are assigned to do a community service project cleaning off and documenting graves at the aging Sweet Penny Cemetery. It's an enormous cemetery, with iron gates and odd little hills and tree roots knocking crumbling tombstones wonky. And crows, and creepy crawlies. Not their activity of choice, especially when their work is interrupted by Stevie stumbling on another body.

To buy now or read for free in Kindle Unlimited, click here.

And just to wet your whistle, here's an excerpt from The Body and Mr. Chicken:

We had passed through enough fog to see that we had reached the cemetery gates.

As if things weren’t eerie enough, we discovered that we were not the only ones there. A group of people stood near the cemetery gate, watching as we approached. Goose bumps rose under my sweater sleeves.

Not the friendliest-looking folks. We stopped a few yards away from them—a distance that I judged we could still make a quick getaway from, especially if we dropped our tools in their path to slow them down. They didn’t look like great jumpers, at least not the ones in front.

“Good morning,” I said, smiling. Smiling was my favorite disarming tool. It usually broke through uncomfortable barriers. It didn’t this time.

“Gate’s locked,” a middle-aged man spoke up. He held a large potted plant. A couple of others in the group had plants as well, and a few shovel handles poked up in their midst.

A faded cemetery sign hanging on the gate posted visiting hours.

“Locked?” I repeated. “It should have been open by now.”

“No kidding,” a woman next to the man said. She didn’t look like smiling was her favorite.

Mel nudged me and leaned close as she spoke. “If it’s not open, maybe we can leave.”

“Judith definitely said we were to be here today,” I whispered to Mel, though I looked around. Without someone to let us in, maybe we could get out of this assignment, at least temporarily. “Let’s give it ten minutes—”

“Five,” Mel said with feeling.

“—five minutes, and if no one comes—”

Before I could finish the thought, a grating noise scraped through the air, loud enough to wake the dead. And don’t think I didn’t look through the bars to check if it had woken any dead, as adrenaline shot to each and every one of my nerve endings. We all stepped back, Melanie and I and the plant-bearing mourners. Somehow, as if by invisible hands, the massive iron gate creaked open a foot.

Melanie said something that would have made my mother scowl—may she rest in peace—and internally I gave an amen.

I hadn’t realized I’d lifted my shovel in self-defense until I noticed Melanie had her pickaxe up too.

“Do we run?” I asked, not sure what spooky cemetery protocol called for. The other folks seemed unsure as well.

Just as I was ready to turn tail, a sparsely haired head appeared in the gate opening. My stomach sank. The head was grey, skeletal, and probably freshly risen from the tomb, if my overactive imagination was right.

But the head, which I could now see was attached to a sinewy neck and work shirt matching the grey color of the man’s skin, and hair, and eyes—so unnerving—spoke to us. In the menacing kind of voice you’d reserve for Scooby-Doo monsters, the grey man demanded, “What do you want?”

As the mourners had arrived first, we waited for them to state their case. Plus, I couldn’t speak for Melanie, but I was wishing hard that I’d used the bathroom one more time before coming.

“We’re just here to tend our family graves,” the same woman said.

“Like I told you last time, you have to wait for visiting hours!” The grey man’s voice rose with each word. The group grumbled, but the head at the gate swiveled our way. I hadn’t realized how menacing a monochrome face could be. “What do you want?”

I found my voice, though my bravado seemed to have run off somewhere. I could only speak in questions. “Judith Christiansen sent us? We were assigned to come as part of the town historical documentation project? But if it isn’t a good time—”

I let my words die when a bony hand loomed into sight, motioning us to come forward. I swallowed a whimper.

“I don’t want to,” Melanie whispered. She’d moved close enough to me that our arms pressed together. Or maybe it was me that had moved.

“Let’s just get this over with,” I told her, though my jelly legs wanted to go the other way. “Otherwise Judith will just send us back again.”

“Or shame us in front of the chamber of commerce,” Melanie said, which I knew was scarier to her than a foggy cemetery and its creepy caretaker. “Again.”

Taking baby steps and carrying all the equipment on the very precise list Judith had given us, we made our way to the gate. I took one last look at the mourners, who seemed as jealous of us as we probably looked of them.

Every ounce of self-preservation in my body told me not to go through the gate, and it wasn’t hard to picture myself clinging to the black bars like a child to a parent. But we were grown-ups. We had a job to do, an assignment to fulfill, and I wasn’t one to cop out on a responsibility.

Even one in an ancient, spooky graveyard in October.

Click here to read the whole story!