At the Pinecone Theater, it's tradition to introduce each movie with interesting facts. The first film Stevie shows is Casablanca. I challenged AI to put together some pictures. For some reason, it usually gets Humphrey Bogart right, but poor Ingrid Bergman! Either it doesn't resemble her, or it's not even a woman 🤦
"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful
friendship."
"Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'."
"Round up the usual suspects."
"We'll always have Paris."
"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the
world, she walks into mine."
"Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take
much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of
beans in this crazy world."
I've been having fun with puzzles lately. For this one I asked AI for a theater with people watching a movie.
Why a movie theater? Because many scenes in my Matinee Classics Cozy Mysteries are set in Sweet Penny Cove's Pinecone Theater. Amateur sleuth Stevie Jewel has a passion for classic movies, and each week runs several in the movie theater she owns with best friend, Melanie.
At the beginning of every movie, Stevie gives a spiel with facts and stories that surround the making of the films. Then she sits down to enjoy the movie with her customers...unless she has to run off and interview a murder suspect to help catch a killer.
For this puzzle I specifically asked AI for a picture of four older ladies in the front row, since there are four such ladies in the book I'm currently working on. I asked that the four women all looked different from each other.
So what did I get? Three women instead of four, and if you squint, they are slightly different😏Gee, thanks, AI! Nailed it.
Enjoy!
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!
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| 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.
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| 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:
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.
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If you like digital puzzles, click on over and have some fun!
The Body and Mr. Chicken puzzle
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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
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!
Like most times
when I went to see a movie, the others in the theater got up to leave before I
did. I always waited until the last credit had rolled. So deep in thought was I
that it startled me when a gruff but slightly friendly voice said, “That was good.
Are you going to do it again?”
Was I going to
choose the greater good after a moral struggle in Casablanca again? Every time!
Or did they mean watch the movie again?
I looked up to
find the senior couple sort of smiling down on me. It was the woman who had
spoken, but now the man said in a kind voice, “Good movies really take you
someplace, don’t they.”
I blinked. That’s
right … Pinecone Theater, matinee classics. I was supposed to be working. I
jumped up.
“Am I going to do
this again?” I finally managed. “Yes, definitely. For now, once a week, but I
may do more depending on demand.”
“Do you do
requests?” the man asked.
My heart fluttered
like he’d asked if I wanted to wrap my arms around all my favorite classic
films and live with them close to me. “I can try. What were you thinking?”
The woman asked,
“Do you know Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House? We love that one.”
Okay, my heart was
straight-up singing at this point. “I love Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.
It was on my list, actually. How about next Thursday at eleven?”
They looked at
each other, that kind of look people have when they’ve been married forever and
live their lives in each other’s pockets. Ken and I never had that kind of
relationship. I supposed we never would now, though I wasn’t sure how I was
supposed to feel about it.
“Could we do
Wednesday?” the woman asked. “We have doctor appointments next Thursday.”
Small-town living
at its finest.
“Absolutely. I’ll
put it on the schedule.” I walked out with them. “And if you have any other
requests, let me know. I’ll do my best.”
They left the
lobby, smiling, but not as brightly as I must have been.
“Well, you
look like you enjoyed that,” Melanie said when they’d gone.
“I did! And they
did too. They’re coming back next Wednesday for Mr. Blandings Builds His
Dream House.”
“Excellent,”
Melanie said, tapping the countertop with her pencil eraser. “Maybe with the
advance notice we can get more people in. Are you going to do it more than one
day a week, then?”
I was getting
lightheaded. This was all too good to be true. “Can I?”
Melanie shrugged.
“You run it, you can do it.”
I demurred, not
wanting to look desperate. “I’ll work up a schedule, then. Thanks, Melanie. I
have a good feeling about this.”
“Clearly people
are interested, and hey, you’re already bringing in concessions money,” she
said. “And I’m never going to say no to that.”
Then she winked at
me. Winked … Hm. That businessman had winked at me too. Two in one day, when I
was sure I hadn’t been winked at in years.
Funny I hadn’t noticed
him leave the theater, but then I’d been pretty engrossed in the movie.
What if he’d left
early and I hadn’t noticed? Shoot. I’d have to work on my proprietor
observation skills. I mean, what if he’d wanted more popcorn and I hadn’t
served him? Unhappy customer, fewer sales, less likely Melanie would let me
keep this up.
“Did you already
shut things down in the projection room?” she asked.
“Oh, nope. I’ll go
do that now.” Actually, I hadn’t even remembered to turn on the lights. Lucky
no one tripped coming out.
Each theater, I
learned, had two light switches: one you could reach when you first entered,
and one upstairs just outside the projection room. I flipped on the one by the
door, and the empty red-purple seats came into dim view. On the screen, the
movie credits had ended, and it had reverted to its starting place. The picture
of Rick and Elsa cheek-to-cheek already made me wistful to watch the movie
again, and that Arabianesque musical score rang through the theater. Such
a good movie. I started up the stairs, this time slower, thinking again of the
beautiful, complicated world created so long ago that could still touch me so
deeply.
Something niggled
at my brain. Something wasn’t right.
I looked up and realized
that in that top corner row, still shadowed in the limited theater lighting,
the businessman remained in his seat. I could see the reflection on his
glasses. A chill ran through me.
He hadn’t left.
Click here to read the whole story!
Happy reading!
~ Della
Hi all,
The first book in my new series is ready for preorder! What do you think of the cover? I love it. The trees and the dog make me happy, and I just think my designer is amazing.
A small-town movie theater running classic Hollywood titles?
Nice and cozy, until someone dies before the final credits roll.
Sweet Penny Cove hasn’t changed much since Stevie Jewel grew up there, though the dead body she finds in the movie theater is new. Not surprisingly, the death casts a shadow on her best friend’s cinema house where Stevie is a silent partner.
While Stevie settles into her new life, the ferry comings and goings bring a steady rhythm to the little town. Family and old friends are nearby, plus her favorite burger joint is right across the street. Best of all, she gets to share her beloved old movies on the big screen.
If it weren’t for the baffling murder, life would be almost perfect.
Searching for clues to help clear the theater’s name, Stevie discovers mysterious roads and places she never knew existed in her hometown, including murder in a killer’s heart.
What will it take for Stevie to outwit a killer?
If you'd like to preorder a copy to be delivered July 1st, here is the link:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4N37SRR
Also, it occurs to me that my first blog post was May 18th. If you're from Washington State you might know that May 18, 1980 was the day Mt St Helen's blew. Yes, I was very much alive and remember the day well. I was at my cousin's house and we felt the BOOM. My aunt was sleeping in that Sunday morning and we thought she had fallen out of bed. Nope!
~Della
Welcome!
I'm Della Pearl and I write cozy mysteries set in the Pacific Northwest. I love rain, dogs, chocolate, and reading mysteries.
I've been writing for a long time in different genres but always thought that when I grew up I would write my first love: mysteries. Well I'm apparently grown up now because the first books in my new series are getting polished by the editor as we speak. I can't wait to share them with you!
Watch for my next post!
~Della
At the Pinecone Theater, it's tradition to introduce each movie with interesting facts. The first film Stevie shows is Casablanca . I ...
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