26+ Ways to Kill: E is for Ectopia and Electrogenesis

Welcome to my blog! Since I write culinary mysteries, “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” deals with food topics and with mysteries. This month I am sharing ways to kill people—in your mysteries, of course—and some tips on getting away with it! To avoid the pronoun problem, I’ll use heesh (he or she), shis (his or hers), and shim (him and her) throughout the entries.

 

I considered eccoprotic for one of my E words today, but having just done dwale yesterday, I thought eccoprotic, a purgative or laxative, not unique enough. An eccoprotic is mildly cathartic so you’d have to use it over time. 

In Mission Impastable, my killer used a tea made from a plant. Over time, the body broke down and death resulted. Eccoprotic and dwale are different, but in the same family of methods.  Eccoprotics are a slower killing method. It might be too close and not different enough for you.

I thought of using an elsin as a murder weapon. An elsin is a shoemaker’s awl, but I thought that was too close to drail mentioned yesterday as well. Sigh! This is not an easy task, coming up with innovative killing methods!

I finally selected Ectopia and Electrogenesis for today. One is very bloody and the other bloodless. What fun!

Ectopia is the displacement of one’s internal organs. Now that could kill ya! Of course, a surer method is eviscerate (removal of an organ), but we are trying to conceal this, right? I can see you going at least two ways with ectopia. In a medical thriller, you have a fake doctor operating in an emergency situation. Heesh moves some internal matter and the patient dies. Lawsuit ensues. The fake doctor is unmasked, so to speak. Or, you could have the intentional displacement of organs by a butcher doctor who knows that the cause of death will be harder to determine and lets sepsis set in. Or perhaps the organs are displaced when the surgery is for some other purpose and they’re in the way and get moved around resulting in accidental death.

Ectopia would be a very painful death for the victim. Research the symptoms for liver or kidney displacement. What would it be like to have the intestines looped around the heart? You could have some fun with this one. Consider ectopia for your killing method.

E is also for Electrogenesis. Cells produce electricity to function. In an electrogenetic death, you would have deprived the cells of that ability, resulting in a breaking down of the cells and leading to death. Depriving cells of calcium and/or aluminum would have that effect.

In an autopsy, the coroner might find that the cells lacked the essential elements. But heesh would have to be looking for that, right? Seems to me this kind of death might be hard to track down in both the cause and the killer. Who’d be looking for cell death due to deprivation of elements? How do you deprive the body of those elements? Well, now there's a mystery for you to solve in your book.

And that could be a great plot point for you. Who is this ambitious forensic scientist who figures it out? And why won’t heesh let it go? Maybe the electrogenetic death is one close to home justifying the persistence.

Have you killed off characters with an E word?

If you take time to share this post on social media, I would be most grateful.

Twitter share:

#Mystery writer need ideas to kill? E is for Ectopia or Electrogenesis. Many killer tips this month #atozchallenge http://bit.ly/1REgdDj

Facebook share:

Blogging from A to Z Challenge offers a wide range of topics. If you want to kill someone (in books of course), check out killing with Ectopia or Electrogenesis on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” at http://bit.ly/1REgdDj

Please come back tomorrow to see how to kill with F words!

 

Check out Sharon Arthur Moore’s culinary mystery, Mission Impastable   

26+ Ways to Kill: D is for Duomachy and Dwale

Welcome to my blog! Since I write culinary mysteries, “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” deals with food topics and with mysteries. This month I am sharing ways to kill people—in your mysteries, of course—and some tips on getting away with it! To avoid the pronoun problem, I’ll use heesh (he or she), shis (his or hers), and shim (him and her) throughout the entries.

There are several D words tied to ways to kill. In your book, set at sea or in a seaside or farming community, the drail, a heavy fishhook or the iron bow of a plow, might be your perfect weapon. Using a tool associated with a specific occupation could throw off the investigators. The drail could be used to frame someone who’s a sailor to throw off the scent from the non-sailor killer. Or set the murder at a farm. Clever, eh. But I didn’t do drail.

I could have used drowning. But lots of books use drowning, right? The best scenario is to make the drowning look like an accident so the killer can escape detection.

I wanted to come up with some you might not have considered so Duomachy and Dwale are today’s killer D words.

Duomachy is a duel. Imagine the possibilities. Duels are considered an age-old honorable, though illegal, way to settle disputes. Especially if you are writing a period mystery, this method might work for you. Have your villain hinder shis opponent by tampering with the sword or by injuring the duelist, giving an advantage to the killer. Imagine spreading itching powder in the opponent’s glove so there is enough of an irritant to take shis attention away from shis strokes.

Or perhaps your killer could create a distraction with light or noise so heesh can go in for the kill. Duomachy (dueling) is imbued with all sorts of romantic notions. The reality of skewering someone while looking in shis eyes, however, could make for a great scene. You could sanitize it for a cozier version or draw out the blood and guts part to make it realistic for the reader. Also, the odds of escaping prosecution for murder goes up if the culture looks the other way.

D is also for Dwale, a stupefying drink, that goes back at least to the Middle Ages. It was used as an herbal anaethetic in pre-general anaethesia times. The drink consists of harmless ingredients (bile, lettuce, vinegar, and bryony root) mixed with the harmful ones (hemlock, opium, and henbane). Dangerous as this was, dwale was in common use in homes when a pain killer was needed.

Getting the ingredients together today would be a tad more difficult. Here’s a recipe for dwale that I found, in case you want to try this method. 

“How to make a drink that men call dwale to make a man sleep whilst men cut him: take three spoonfuls of the gall [bile] of a barrow swine [boar] for a man, and for a woman of a gilt [sow], three spoonfuls of hemlock juice, three spoonfuls of wild neep [bryony], three spoonfuls of lettuce, three spoonfuls of pape [opium], three spoonfuls of henbane, and three spoonfuls of eysyl [vinegar], and mix them all together and boil them a little and put them in a glass vessel well stopped and put thereof three spoonfuls into a potel of good wine and mix it well together.

“When it is needed, let him that shall be cut sit against a good fire and make him drink thereof until he fall asleep and then you may safely cut him, and when you have done your cure and will have him awake, take vinegar and salt and wash well his temples and his cheekbones and he shall awake immediately.”

In order to kill, you’d have to dose someone pretty heavily, but an alternative is to just stupefy the person and kill with something a bit more reliable. I mean, if the victim is vomiting up the dwale, you probably won’t be able to get enough down shim to kill with it. I would imagine though, that a dwale concoction could make for some interesting forensic discussions among your detectives!

What is your best D way to kill?

If you take time to share this post on social media, I would be most grateful.

Twitter share:

#Mystery writer need ideas to kill? D is for Duomachy or Dwale. Many killer tips this month #atozchallenge http://bit.ly/1REgdDj

Facebook share:

Blogging from A to Z Challenge offers a wide range of topics. If you want to kill someone (in books of course), check out killing with Duomachy or Dwale on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” at http://bit.ly/1REgdDj

Please come back tomorrow to see how to kill with E words!

Check out Sharon Arthur Moore’s culinary mystery, Mission Impastable 

26+ Ways to Kill: C is for Cannabalism and Crushing

Welcome! Since I write culinary mysteries, “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” deals with food topics and with mysteries. This month I am sharing ways to kill people—in your mysteries, of course—and some tips on getting away with it! To avoid the pronoun problem, I’ll use heesh (he or she), shis (his or hers), and shim (him and her) throughout the entries. Tune in murder and mayhem.

I chose cannibalism and crushing for my c words today. I could have used chemicals (but I do that later), carbon monoxide (also later), or a curse (psychological way to drive someone crazy and to suicide). But I finally lit on these two.

We’ve all seen the comic strips with missionaries in a pot of boiling water surrounded by hungry natives waiting for the people-flavored soup. In this case, cannabalism happens after death, not as the specific means of killing, only the reason for murder. One could boil victims, alive or dead, or chain saw them apart and eat the limbs, and so on. Cannabalism can be an efficient way of disposing of bodies, but not a means of death. Still, I had to use it here! One could eat a comatose body alive (so the victim doesn’t knock out your teeth while you are chewing), but if you don’t like sushi (or fava beans!), that might not appeal. If one were hungry enough, however, I guess you could eat the uncooked meat of person. Starvation or cannibalism. Not so hard a choice.

I have a story outlined with a chef who is trying to make ends meet, and finds meat prices out of his range. So, enter a new meat source. Vagrants are clearing off the streets and restaurant reviewers rave about his uniquely flavored roasts and burgers. Win-win, right?

Thinking of cooking a body? Either you need to have a lid or door so the person cannot escape, or you have to incapacitate someone until the heat of the boiling liquid or the oven heat kills. Of course, you can always grill, too. Human steaks would be prepared like any meat steak, I’d guess. Experiment with the spices and herbs in your pantry. Slow cooking in liquid will definitely result in tastier human stew. And you remember Silence of the Lambs, right?

Just as with other meats, the younger the human the more tender the meat. Also, one would want a bit of fat on the victim since that’s where a lot of any meat flavor originates. Fat people are more tender and juicy than triathalon athletes, so consider that when choosing the victim. This site is a specific and helpful set of guidelines for preparation plus recipes

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/HowTo:Cook_A_Human

Any method of killing violates the social contract, right, but crushing is one of the oldest death methods. Crushing deaths can be very different as illustrated by two recent books. In F.M. Meredith’s A Crushing Death Meredith’s character dies as one stone after another is heaped on his living body. Pretty awful way to go.

And Carlene O’Neil’s wine country series book, One Foot in the Grape uses a grape crusher to do in a character. Another yucky way to be crushed to death.

A crushing death, technically known as thlipsis, results from the compression of bones and organs in the body. Either the body is unconscious so it won’t resist or restrained while being crushed.

The most common crushing killing is from piling stones on the aware body one at a time until the body succumbs. This type death was often a penalty for an offense. There was one crushing death, Giles Corey, during the Salem witch trial era. This was an illegal death method, but then the whole episode was out of hand, wasn’t it? Oh, and let’s not forget the wood chipper in the "Fargo" killing while on the letter c.

Crushing has an added advantage of making it more difficult to pull off incriminating forensic evidence. Not impossible, but more difficult so you could have a great plot point going with that one.

How would you crush someone to death? Share your unique ideas below for all of us to, uh, enjoy!

If you take time to share this post on social media, I would be most grateful.

Twitter share:

#Mystery writer need ideas to kill? C is for Cannabalism or Crushing. Lots of killer tips this month #atozchallenge http://amzn.to/1StqSR2

Facebook share:

Blogging from A to Z Challenge offers a wide range of topics. If you want to kill someone (in books of course), check out killing with Cannabalism or Crushing on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” at http://amzn.to/1StqSR2

 

Please come back tomorrow to see how to kill with D words!

Check out Sharon Arthur Moore’s culinary mystery, Mission Impastable

26+ Ways to Kill: B is for Bludgeon and Boom

Welcome! Since I write culinary mysteries, “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” deals with food topics and with mysteries. This month I am sharing ways to kill people—in your mysteries, of course—and some tips on getting away with it! To avoid the pronoun problem, I’ll use heesh (he or she), shis (his or hers), and shim (him and her) throughout the entries. Tune in murder and mayhem.

While essentially death by bludgeon or boom might be the same--death by blunt object--they differ in propellant for the murder weapon. I could have done bullets or BBs shot through the mount into the brain, but that is so passe!

Blunt object deaths proliferate in literature. Blunt objects can stun, make the victim lapse into unconsciousness, cause traumatic brain injury, or concussion. They often are used to that effect to immobilize the victim so that heesh can be killed with another method. But with enough force, the blunt object can kill on its own.

To kill by blunt object, it helps if the force is enough to crush the skull or send bone fragments into the brain. The killer does not want the victim emerging from a coma and pointing a finger at shim. So pick your weapon: Bludgeon or Boom.

If you choose to kill by bludgeoning, know that you are either using a thick, heavy stick or some object that you use the blunt side of. A baseball bat fits the description perfectly, with the added advantage that you can swing it at the victim’s head, not necessarily bring it crashing down from overhead. You might have your killer pick up a heavy trophy as a bludgeon. Spoiler: That was the murder weapon in television’s season one of “How to Get Away with Murder”.

Learn some physics to make this method work for you. How much force does it take to crush a skull? What is the blood splatter pattern? How can you throw off the forensic scientists who can determine the height of the murderer from the angle of the blow?

Can’t you see the headline for your plot? Famous Slugger Killed with World Series Bat

Death by boom gives you three ways to go. And the boom itself is heavy, not lift-able to swing for murder, so this method relies on the weight of the object being swung toward the victim.

A boom has many uses. It is a long projecting arm used to move things, but the boom can be on a derrick, a stage set, or a ship. How versatile is that for killing options?

At a construction site, the derrick’s boom could be used to sweep the victim off the top floor of a building sending shim crashing to the concrete many floors below. Okay, so maybe actual death occurs by smashing into the concrete. True, but the boom on the derrick precipitated the fall. The killer can claim it was an accident. And accidents do happen on construction sites.

Or you could have a stage set boom holding lights or sound system fall onto the victim. This one can be tricky. How does your killer keep the tampered-with boom in place until the right moment? How do you get the victim to the right spot at the right time? Perhaps the killer knows the stage blocking well enough to plan for it. Or maybe the falling boom missing the victim (this time) is part of pattern of accidents that make the victim think heesh is cursed.

The boom on a ship pivots on the mast allowing the sailor to adjust the sail’s angle to take advantage of the wind for movement of the ship. If someone isn’t careful (Oops!), a passenger could get banged in the head and thrown into the drink. Being out to sea disposes of the body and the evidence (except for blood on the ship) rather easily. Ship accidents happen, too, so the murderer could claim accident and even bring the body back to shore where heesh confesses to the horrible accident because the victim didn’t follow instructions to duck.

If you take time to share this post on social media, I would be most grateful.

Twitter share:

#Mystery writer need ideas to kill? B is for Bludgeon or Boom. Lots of killer tips this month #atozchallenge. http://bit.ly/22WNioK

Facebook share:

Blogging from A to Z Challenge offers a wide range of topics. If you want to kill someone (in books of course), check out killing with Bludgeon or Boom on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” at http://bit.ly/22WNioK

Please come back on Monday (the A-Z Gods give us Sundays off) to see how I suggest you kill with C!

 

Check out Sharon Arthur Moore’s culinary mystery, Mission Impastable

26+ Ways to Kill: A is for Anaphylaxis or Antlers

Welcome! Since I write culinary mysteries, “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” deals with food topics and with mysteries. This month I am sharing ways to kill people—in your mysteries, of course—and some tips on getting away with it! To avoid the pronoun problem, I’ll use heesh (he or she), shis (his or hers), and shim (him and her) throughout the entries. Now tune in to murder and mayhem!

It’s amazing to me the number of ways you can kill people. The challenge for the writer, of course, is to make the method believable. Sometimes the mystery writer wants the method to be obscured and sometimes the method is very obvious. But I can’t think of a single instance in real life or in literature where the premeditated death is meant to be traced back to the murderer.

Murderers go to great lengths to conceal their guilt by removing the body, blaming another, having an alibi, or numerous other ruses. That makes for a good puzzle for the reader. Sometimes readers even know who the murderer is, but how will he/she be tied to the crime becomes the plot line.

This month, I have gathered together some unusual ways you can kill. I hope you enjoy the entries. Please comment below so we can add to our colleagues’ list of murderous options!

When considering what to share for A, I considered automobile or airplane. You know, tampering with them so they malfunction, and look like an accidental death (Ooh! There’s an A word!) until the clever investigator figures out the ploy.

But that’s been sooo done! So while anaphylaxis has been used a good bit, I think antlers is rarer.

Death by anaphylaxis is death by allergans. This method requires that the murderer know the victim well-enough to be aware of the victim’s allergies. To kill, an allergan has to be toxic enough to do the job.  Sometimes the murderer will increase the amount the victim is exposed to, but other times the victim has a deadly reaction to a small amount because the person’s reaction is more severe than normal. You or I might break out in hives with a peanut allergy when we eat too many. A person severely allergic, can experience anaphylactic shock when in close proximity to them.

One advantage to anaphylaxis is it can be made to appear accidental with the right set-up. It also can give the murderer the opportunity to be elsewhere and have an alibi as long as the murderer can insure that the victim cannot get help through an epipen or a 9-1-1 call.

If you use this method, be sure to investigate the anaphylactic reaction your allergan creates. For me, bee venom causes my throat to swell and go numb, cutting off my air supply. Untreated, I could die if the quantity were enough. You want to be able to accurately describe the death throes of your victim due to anaphylaxis. Peter Abresch’s Killing Thyme uses death by anaphylactic shock.

On a bloodier note, death by antlers requires some special “equipment”: antlers. They can be on the head of a moose, elk, or deer and the murderer can make it appear a goring by the beast. Or the antlers can be a trophy on the wall used to gash through a body as a sword might do.

This is a very tricky method of death, as you can imagine. The murderer must know where some vital organs are or rip the intestines so internal bleeding will lead to death. This is a slow one and requires the murderer be in attendance until death. The killer wouldn’t want the person to survive to tell the tale.

I couldn’t locate any mysteries using this method, but let’s consider how it could be done. This is more likely murder by a male, but it could be accomplished by an athletic woman. The average woman would find it difficult to heft around weighty antlers or human body.

In the case of a hunting "accident”, the murderer would have to know an antlered critter is available at the location for the death. The murderer would have made extensive plans and arrangements to accomplish the task. Perhaps the deer was killed in advance, transported whole to refrigeration, and then relocated at the site of the murder. This scenario allows for the solving of the crime to show that the animals death did not occur when the murderer claims it did since a clever forensic scientist will discover the animal was already dead at the time of the goring.

Another scenario could be someone expressing concern about mounted antlers falling to the floor of a cabin. Surprise, surprise. It happens and the host is killed by puncturing. In reality, the murderer takes down the antlers, makes it look like they have fallen, and then runs through the host with the pointy ends. Not as easy as I made it sound! You would have to have your victim pinioned to the floor. Could detectives solve the mystery with math? The trajectory of the falling antlers and the weight of the points hitting a prone body (and why was your victim prone anyway?) could prove that it was no accident. While unique, death by antlers is less effective than a good many other methods!

Have you had experience with either of these methods? Share the experience below!

Please take time to share this post on social media. I would be most grateful.

Twitter share:

#Mystery writer need ideas to kill? A is for Anaphylaxis & Antlers. Lots of killer tips this month #atozchallenge. http://bit.ly/1VZv8gB

Facebook share:

Blogging from A to Z Challenge offers a wide range of topics. If you want to kill someone (in books of course), check out killing with Anaphylaxis and Antlers on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” at http://bit.ly/1VZv8gB

Tomorrow, stop by to see what is coming up for two B ways to kill.

Sharon Arthur Moore is the author of Mission Impastable

April A-Z Blog Challenge: Theme Reveal

As you know, I am writing a culinary mystery series. The "Dinner is Served" series has one book out, Mission Impastable, and two more coming out in 2016. Maybe three if I can get it together. The next two in the series are Prime Rib and Punishment and Potluck. Try Mission Impastable if you like an entree of mystery with a side of recipes.

Writing mysteries challenges authors to come up with plausible ways to murder someone that has not been done to death, so to speak.

I mean, I know in real life, people die in pretty standard ways. But to get people to read our books, and not the newspaper, we have to go beyond the headlines. We have to come up with interesting murder methods.

To that end, I will be blogging, A-Z, 26+ ways to murder someone. Yep. This will be one-stop shopping for unusual ways to kill. Disclaimer: Do not really kill people this way. This is just an academic exercise.

Stop back by on April 1st, and no fooling, I'll give you the beginning of your murderous tool kit! Hmm! Wonder what A will be? Mwah ha ha!

Serving Up Murder: Culinary Mysteries

Well, now that the month of madness (called Month-of-Recipes) is over, we can move onto other things and get back to our usual once a week post. During the teeth of the Month-of-Eggs, I attended one of my favorite conferences, Left Coast Crime.

Left Coast Crime is a readers’ conference, but there are lots of authors there, too.  That’s so the readers can meet their favorite writers. The panels are geared toward a reader audience, not a writer one. As a result, as a writer, I listen to what is said and translate that into what I need to do in my books. Sometimes it is a convoluted transcription and other times it is very straight forward.

The panel I was on, “Serving Up Murder”, included five culinary mystery writers, one as moderator. I met some wonderful new-to-me authors and even featured a recipe from one during A Month-of-Eggs. I’m the one in the apron!

These are seriously good writers! If you are in the mood for some new culinary authors to read, check out:

Kathy Aarons

Ellie Alexander

Leslie Budewitz

Carlene O’Neil

Clearly Carlene and I didn’t get the memo about making your last name an early-in-the-alphabet one!

 Sorry for the poor picture quality of some. I didn't have jpegs, just the Amazon photos.

Kathy Aarons writes the chocolate shop series. She is friends with a master chocolatier who provides her recipes. Lavender truffles? Yummers!

You can find her at http://www.kathyaarons.com/

Her website says:

Kathy Aarons is the author of Death is Like a Box of Chocolates, the first in the CHOCOLATE COVERED MYSTERY series by Berkley Prime Crime.

Research for the series was such a hardship: sampling chocolate, making chocolate, sampling more chocolate, and hanging out in bookstores.

Kathy grew up in rural Pennsylvania, attended Carnegie Mellon University, and moved to New York City where she built her career in public relations and met her husband. They relocated to California where she became one of “those” moms: running the PTA, fundraising for school foundations, helping with a high school writers conference, creating costumes for youth theater, building puppets, and cheering on her daughters in hundreds of swim meets and soccer and basketball games.
She began writing when her youngest daughter attended school five days a week and pursued publishing more seriously when her oldest daughter went off to college.

She now lives in San Diego with her husband and two daughters where she wakes up far too early, and is currently obsessed with the Broadway Idiot documentary, finding the perfect cup of coffee, and Dallmann’s Sea Salt Caramels.
You can follow Kathy on Facebook or Twitter

Ellie Alexander writes the bakeshop mysteries and includes many passed down family favorite recipes in her books. Her small town locale, Ashland, Oregon, is a real place.

You can find her at http://www.bakeshopmystery.com/

Her Amazon author page says:

Ellie Alexander, author of the Bakeshop Mystery Series (St. Martin's Press), is a Pacific Northwest native who spends ample time testing pastry recipes in her home kitchen or at one of the many famed coffeehouses nearby. When she's not coated in flour, you'll find her outside exploring hiking trails and trying to burn off calories consumed in the name of research.

Find out more about Ellie and her books by visiting her here:
Blog: http://www.bakeshopmystery.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elliealexanderauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BakeshopMystery

Leslie Budewitz writes the spice shop mysteries set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market.

She says she has learned tons about herbs and spices while writing the series. Her recipes are for spice blends and recipes using spices. Also check out her other series’ books.

You can find her at http://www.lesliebudewitz.com/

Her Amazon author page says:

As the Spice Shop Mysteries continue with GUILTY AS CINNAMON (December 2015, Berkley Prime Crime/Penguin Random House), Pepper Reece knows that fiery flavors are the spice of life. But when a customer dies of a chili overdose, she finds herself in hot pursuit of a murderer...

Springtime in Seattle's Pike Place Market means tasty foods and wide-eyed tourists, and Pepper's Seattle Spice Shop is ready for the crowds. With flavorful combinations and a fresh approach, she's sure to win over the public. Even better, she's working with several local restaurants as their chief herb and spice supplier. Business is cooking, until one of Pepper's potential clients, a young chef named Tamara Langston, is found dead, her life extinguished by the dangerously hot ghost chili--a spice Pepper carries in her shop.

Now stuck in the middle of a heated police investigation, Pepper must use all her senses to find out who wanted to keep Tamara's new café from opening--before someone else gets burned...

I fell in love with Seattle's Pike Place Market as a college student, and still spends hours prowling its streets and alleys on every visit to the Emerald City. I'm also the author of the Food Lovers' Village Mysteries, set in Northwest Montana. DEATH A DENTE won the 2013 Agatha Award for Best First novel. That followed my 2011 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction for BOOKS, CROOKS & COUNSELORS: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure, drawing on my thirty years as a lawyer--and making me the first author to win Agatha Awards for both fiction and nonfiction.

I'm president of Sisters in Crime, and passionate about writers helping other writers. I love to cook, eat, hike, travel, garden, and paint--not necessarily in that order. I lives in northwest Montana with my husband Don Beans, a doctor of natural medicine, and our Burmese cat Ruff, a book cover model and an avid bird watcher.

For seasonal updates, please visit my website at http://www.LeslieBudewitz.com, to sign up for emails about new releases, launch parties and other fun goings-on, and book giveaways.

Find me on Facebook as Leslie Budewitz Author.

Drop by my blog, www.LeslieBudewitz.com/blog, for ways writers of all genres can use legal issues in their fiction--undue influence, wrongful conviction, and more.

Carlene O’Neil, our moderator, provided the beverage portion of our panel with her California wine country series. No recipes provided but food is mentioned—a lot! And the wines and wine-making are well described.

You can find her at carleneoneil.com

Her Amazon author page says:

National best selling author Carlene O'Neil is a former television writer, and is currently a commercial real estate broker in the Los Angeles market. She grew up in the heart of wine country in northern California, and is accredited by the Wine and Spirits Education Trust. Currently she lives in Valencia, California. The Cypress Cove Mystery Series is set along the central California coast, and the similarities between the fictional town of Cypress Cove and the stunning town of Carmel are no accident.

One Foot in the Grape is the first in the series published by Berkley Prime Crime. Her second novel, Ripe for Murder, is scheduled for release March 2016. You can reach Carlene at her website at carleneoneil.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/CarleneONeilAuthor