How The Story Began - Murder and Mint Tea

An autographed copy of Murder and Mint Tea will be given away to someone leaving a way for me to reach them to let them know where to send the book

This story began many years ago and originally it was to be a single story called And So We Walk On Eggshells. The first draft of the story wasn't great because of the use of First Person. My heroine put in her every observation of life and went on for pages. I put it aside and let it steep for years and then decided to look at the story again. Having learned many things about writing in the meantime, I was able to come up with ways to keep the character, Katherine, and her cat Robespierre. Unlike many mysteries, this one starts with the premise of when is the "nasty tenant and neighbor going to be murdered. WHer impact on the neighborhood and those near and dear to Katherine are shown through her eyes. This has been one of my most successful books to date and there is even an audio version of the book.

Writing in first person was an interesting idea and while I enjoyed it, I also don't like it. There are times when I would like to show another person's view but when a series is started with this. In some ways this book is based on my neighborhood. The story takes place in a Hudson River village and some of the characters are loosely based on people I have known. Loosely is the way to describe how I radically changed things but kept the flavor of the neighborhood. I moved houses to where I wanted them to sit and created a neighborhood of people who were close to each other.

Robespierre, the Maine Coon cat was a real cat and he had many of the characteristics shown by the cat in the story. My children and friends used to call him my familiar and from the moment he was found in the wire rims of my car at the time he was mine. The small kittn fit in my hand and we fed him with a baby doll bottle. He used to perch on my shoulder while I typed my stories. That is until he got too large, say 25 pounds.

Murder and Mint Tea tells the story of Rachel and her troubled past and the way she troubles everyone who comes under her sphere of influence, including her young children. There are hints of child abuse and that of an unhappy woman who seems to enjoy making the lives of other people as unhappy as hers. Like me, Katherine is a retired nurse, but I have never been a church organist or have had anything to do with murders other than in a fictional way.