Thank you all for hosting me today. This week my book, Cold Case Discovery released. This is the 6th book in my Harlequin Intrigue Hudson Siblings Solutions series. As you can tell by the title, and all the titles in this series, all 7 books involve a group of siblings who work cold cases together. There is also one cold case that is in the background of the first five books, and takes center stage here in book six—the mysterious disappearance of the Hudson siblings parents some fifteen years ago.
When I first started the series, I didn’t quite know for sure what had happened to the parents myself. I like to let the story guide me towards answers that both make sense and surprise me as I write, but sometime when I was writing the first books, I was on a vacation to South Dakota and we went to Wind Cave National Park. There, I saw a map of all the cave systems in the United States and got a lot of information about caves. It started lots of potential ideas percolating, especially since, years ago, I worked at a state park, and while we didn’t have caves, it was at this job where I learned that Missouri (where I live), believe it or not, is known as the cave state. And I did some work at a different park dedicated to one such cave. So I had some basic knowledge of caves as dangerous places and delicate ecosystems. The perfect place for not just a mystery, but a murder!
Wyoming—where my Intrigues are set—doesn’t have nearly as many caves as Missouri, but there are enough that I knew it could be the backdrop of this mystery (and then the final book in the series as well.)
What better place to hide than somewhere underground and undiscovered? Caves are mysterious and easy to get lost in. They make a great hiding place if you know how to survive. A good thing to know for heroes and villains alike!
For both Cold Case Discovery and the following book, Cold Case Murder Mystery—releasing next month, I had to do some more research on caves—what would it take to hide in one for any period of time? What kind of effect would the ecosystem of a cave have on human remains? I also looked into old stories about bodies found in caves, just to spark some potential ideas.
In the end, the fictional cave system I created was the perfect backdrop for an old crime that turned into a new crime. It also gave me the idea for the heroine in Cold Case Murder Mystery’s job (forensic anthropologist). In the end, that trip to Wind Cave, a combination of my previous knowledge and new research, led me to interesting and surprising places in both Cold Case Discover and Cold Case Murder Mystery.
Have you visited any state or national park caves? Did you think they were interesting…or maybe a little creepy? One random commenter will be entered to win a digital copy of the entire Hudson Sibling Solutions series.
A surprise homecoming…
Jolene, a seventh-generation Texan, knows, as much as the world changes, people stay the same. Good and evil. Vow-keepers and heart breakers. Jolene married a vow-keeper who showed her that dancing in the rain never gets old.
Thank you for inviting me back to Pistols and Petticoats. Seems like it was just yesterday when I visited to promote my first contemporary Love Inspired book, 
Inspired by the little ranch where my late sister retired, I set my story beside the Rio Grande in New Mexico Territory and created the Mattson family of five brothers, each of whom deserved his own story. In the end, each brother found his happily-ever-after with the perfect heroine for his personality. I’m honored to say 
My newest release, 
Did you ever keep a journal or diary as a kid? Maybe you still keep one as an adult. Perhaps as a child you recorded events like a grade you received on a test, interactions with siblings, or the weather. Perhaps you wrote about a secret crush you had on someone.
first time departing from books set in the west, I spent a lot of time researching. I asked questions in FB groups to find out as much as possible about the local history. In the process, I came across a woman who used to work at the historical society where my new series takes place. Through conversations and questions, we developed a friendship founded on the love of history. As we came to know each other more, she helped to discover obscure information about the names of local businesses, names of people living in the area, and who owned properties nearby. I would have relied on searching through newspapers from the town, but unfortunately a fire destroyed the records for the years in which I was searching.
I had planned on setting the first book in the early 1870s. Even though I live in an area steeped in Civil War history, I never desired to write a book set during that time until…. My local historian shared two journals written in 1864 by two local farmers. Each one chronicled daily what the weather was, what was happening around town, as well as their activities. Each of these two farmers only wrote a short paragraph each day, but these journals are full of history with names, businesses, etc. They shared about Rebel sightings, how much they were paid to provide meals/housing when Rebel soldiers passed through the area, as well as what they saw when a local town was burned. Here’s a sample of the entries:
Abigail Stewart, with the Civil War raging, is on the verge of losing everything. The man who is responsible for her brother’s death comes to Shippensburg offering to help. How can she work with her enemy? What’s to stop him from betraying her?
The tradition of Baby New Year has been around since ancient Greece. During New Years’ celebrations for Dionysus, a baby was paraded through the streets as a symbol of the rebirth of the year. In more recent times the New Years Baby has been paired with Father Time as a companion.
“Aude Lang Syne” is the traditional song of New Years’. It was written in 1788 by the poet Robert Burns. The name means roughly “times long past” and the poem is about old friends meeting again.
