Happy Holidays!

As we celebrate the season, I rejoice in the completion of my fourth novel, THE EXECUTRIX. I had a blast writing this book about three baby boomer sisters who must come together after the death of their mother. Of course, they stir up all kinds of trouble. While there's no hocus pocus in this one, the magic of familial relationships provides many laughs and a few tears. And like the Stitches Trilogy, it does have one very naughty dog who steals the show.

Before I dove into my next trilogy series, I was compelled to tell this stand-alone story. Like all fiction, inside the words are hints at real life. I chose to celebrate my two sisters and my mother (who is still very much alive) with tragedy, laughs, and a little mystery. Mom was such a good sport and gave me full permission to have her stuffed in an urn for most of this book. She, too, has a quirky sense of humor.

Here's a taste of what's ahead . . .

Portland, Oregon’s own best-selling romance author, Olivia Novak, should have been entering life’s third act with a sparkling clean storybook Tudor, and a real-life romance with her husband of thirty-two years. Instead, her husband was killed in a hit-and-run the police have shelved, and she’s too worn out from her own obsessive three-year hunt for the culprit to write. Now, her mother has died.

As the executrix of the estate, which doesn’t amount to much, Olivia prefers managing the paperwork to keeping a lid on the combustible brew that is her two sisters, Lauren and Danielle. At sixty, Lauren is Mom’s mouthy memory defender as she waits for the daily chime of wine o’clock. Danielle, the pampered baby of the family at forty-five, suddenly has nowhere to go, having lived with Mom since walking out on her fiancé, Ryan, a Portland cop. ​Olivia thinks the final straw is her elderly neighbor, R. D. Griffin, asking her to dog-sit Pogo, his unruly standard poodle. But she’s wrong.

When R. D. goes missing, the three sisters and Pogo stick their noses into the case . . . and the dog senses something fishy. Can Pogo unite the sisters, help Ryan solve both cases, and inspire Olivia to deliver her next book? Olivia needs a lifeline from Mom from beyond the crematory urn, and she finds one in the safe -- in the form of an old manuscript. Olivia’s in for the story of her life, all right -- but it’s beyond anything she could have dreamed up in her own novels.