A Book Inspired by Nancy Drew

The Buried Treasure on Route 66 is a humorous and PG-rated coming-of-age book about young love, rekindled old love, and a father who must learn to let his beloved daughter go. Its main character, Nancy Keene, a teenage sleuth, receives a brand new Prius from her father at her 18th birthday party and goes on a road trip on Route 66 to help a little old lady find a missing will. Along for the ride are her boyfriend and overprotective father.    

This eBook is available for only $1.99 at most online bookstores. 

 Also available in paperback at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.com

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Do You Believe in Ghosts?

Do you like Nancy Drew?  Do you like New Orleans? This humorous, PG-rated mystery about a teenager sleuth who's very similar to Nancy Drew is written especially for women baby boomers who grew up reading and loving the Nancy Drew series. Nancy Keene, the teenage sleuth in our story, goes on vacation with her father and friends to New Orleans.  What starts out as a sight-seeing trip, changes into a murder mystery when a docent at Oak Alley Plantation in murdered while they are there.  Part travelogue, part ghost story, this book mixes voodoo, ghosts, and bayous into a spicy gumbo of a whodunit. 

eBook available at all of your favorite online bookstores for only $2.99

Available in paperback at Amazon and Barnes and Noble

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Kobo   Google

Father/Daughter Relationships

Now that Mother's Day is over, it's time to think about your Dads.  I wrote this book after I inherited some Nancy Drew books and reread them as an adult. I was really touched by the close relationship between our favorite teenage sleuth and her Dad; a relationship made even stronger by the death of Nancy's mother.  So I created my own teenage sleuth, Nancy Keene, and wrote this PG-Rated humorous story about her relationship with her Dad, who has been worrying about her ever since started dating and talking about moving away to college.  He doesn't want to let her go and she worries about what he'll be like when she's gone.  How will he handle letting her go?  Find out as Nancy, her father, and boyfriend take a trip on Route 66, visiting several of its landmarks along the way, in search of a missing will.  Not only is “The Buried Treasure on Route 66” a tip of the hat to the Nancy Drew books, it’s also a romance novel about both young love and rekindled old love.

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In Search of Lake Wobegon

My husband and I went on a pilgrimage to "Lake Wobegon" and visited many of the real places that inspired Garrison Keillor's make-believe town.  We even got a chance to meet him when he was coming out of a bookstore.  Here's a book, with pictures, of our experience.  It is told from the point of view of our teenage sleuth Nancy Keene.  A bachelor farmer goes missing and Nancy and her Dad are hot on the trail.

It just came out in paperback at Amazon.com and is also available as an eBook



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Who is your audience? Pay Attention, You Writers Out There

A book publisher gave me one of the best pieces of advice I ever was asked, "Who is your audience?" My husband and I had just written a book about a teenager sleuth, modeled after Nancy Drew, but geared towards women babyboomers, not teenagers.  We almost got a book deal based upon a misunderstanding of how we were marketing it.  Our book, "The Ghost in the Plantation," is about a precocious 16 year old who gets involved in trying to track down the murder of a docent at Oak Alley Plantation.  The PG-rated scenes and jokes would never go over well with teenagers.  The opening scene of our book has Nancy and her girlfriends talking about, not Justin Beiber or One Direction, but about Don Draper from Mad Men and Vampire Bill from True Blood--men who women might find attractive, not my teenage nieces.

Our teenage sleuth has a very permissive aunt and father who both give her a lot of freedom as she goes about her search for the killer.  They are the opposite of "helicopter parents" and she gets in all sorts of dangerous situations. My husband and I have our Nancy running through Bourbon Street while being chased by a guy in a hoodie, and dodging into a gay bar, only to be rescued and brought home by The Lady Chablis from "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." Our humor is PG-rated--this is not your Grandmother's Nancy Drew.  We have Nancy trying to bond with her aunt by mixing up Hurricanes and serving them to her and her girlfriend.  Construction workers admire how well Nancy looks in her shorts and ask her aunt, "Who's the little cupcake?" "The Ghost in the Plantation" is a gumbo of a whodunit, not for the fathers of teenage daughters nor for teenage girls.  It's for the ladies--gentlemen, step aside.  We wrote this book with a deep love of the city of New Orleans and all of the wonderful experiences we've had there. I'm grateful to that publisher for teaching me a very valuable marketing lesson:  who is your audience?  Never forget to make that foremost in your mind when marketing your books--you writers out there.  The last thing we want is for our readers to be disappointed after they've bought our book, hoping for something entirely different.

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Nancy Keene Mysteries

Hello dear readers,

Our publisher, Smashwords, has been encouraging its writers to take advantage of a tool called "Series Manager".  We've been a little hesitant to use this feature; mainly because of our fear that, by organizing our books in this fashion, it may turn off potential readers who don't want to "make the commitment" to buy 3 or 4 books in a series and read them in chronological order.  We've written each of our books in the "Nancy Keene Mysteries" and "Detective Santy Mysteries" as being contained unto themselves; but they do follow a chronological order.  So we're going to do a little experiment with our "Nancy Keene Mysteries" and label them Book 1, 2, and 3 and see if it results in "more discoverability" and therefore increased sales, as Smashwords predicts.  We'll let you know how it goes.  All of these titles are available at your favorite online bookstores.

Here is the Chronological Order of our Nancy Keene Mysteries:

Book 1: The Missing Bachelor Farmer (Nancy is 15)

Book 2: The Ghost in the Plantation (Nancy is 16)

Book 3: The Buried Treasure on Route 66 (Nancy is 18) 

Mardi Gras

Hey Ya'll:

Tomorrow is Mardi Gras in the beautiful American city, New Orleans.  Who, besides me, is wishing they could be in Louisiana right now?

If you can't make the trip, you can settle for the next best thing: you could be an arm chair traveler and read our book: "The Ghost in the Plantation: A Nancy Keene Mystery."

Written for women baby boomers who grew up loving Nancy Drew, this somewhat racy story has our teenage sleuth traveling to the Crescent City with her "chums" and her father, and investigating the murder of a docent at Oak Alley Plantation that happens while she's there on a tour.

Laissez les bon temps roulez!

The Ghost in the Plantation

Nancy goes to New Orleans, Lake Wobegon, and Takes A Road Trip On Route 66

If you're anything like me, now is the time of year when I start thinking about where I'd like to go on vacation in the upcoming year.  My husband and I have been fortunate enough to do a lot of traveling over the years.  Many of our favorite places show up in our books.
Our teenage sleuth, Nancy Keene, loves to travel, too.  Our three Nancy Keene' books have her trying to solve mysteries in New Orleans, Lake Wobegon, and on a road trip on Route 66.
  Our favorite U.S. city is New Orleans and we've been there many, many times.  Our mystery, "The Ghost in the Plantation" takes place there and we've tried incorporating as many of the locales of the Crescent City and Louisiana as possible.
We love the lore of Route 66, and after we went to Disney's California Adventure and saw the movie "Cars", we decided to write a story about the famous highway in "The Buried Treasure on Route 66".
  We've just come back from a pilgrimage to Minnesota where we searched for the fictional Lake Wobegon, and wrote a book called "The Missing Bachelor Farmer".   Check out our books at your favorite bookstores and we'll take you on a wonderful journey with our teenage sleuth, Nancy Keene.