Shattered: A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery, Book 4 — so close …

Shattered: Pre-Order NOW

The two quotes below embody the revision of Shattered and outlining the final De‑Extinct Zoo book in Milly’s story, Hunted, book 5:

On the surface, they contradict each other. Shakespeare gives us a world that’s too big for any single philosophy, too strange for tidy explanations. The second quote shrugs and says, “Relax. We’ve seen all this before.” Those two ideas sit right at the heart of the De-Extinct Zoo series.

SHATTERED Pre-Order NOW

I—ahem—borrowed the “bones” from a lot of other stories when I built the Pleistocene BioPark world, some you might recognize, some you might not. I’ve already written about that scene in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) I echoed in Ambushed, Book 3. Hunted will parallel another scene from the movie. What I still need to expand on is the ethical unease of The Boys from Brazil (1978), with its cloned boys and questions about nature versus nurture (all books in the De-Extinct series). There’s also a huge nod to the devastating deaths and desperation in Dean Koontz’s Nameless series—they were the model for this “shorter” interconnected series. In “real life,” Koko the gorilla and great ape sign language played a huge role in Signs, Book 2, as did Douglas Preston’s Jennie (1994), itself inspired by Meshie the chimp—that’s a difficult read, believe me.

None of these ideas is “new under the sun.” They’ve all been done, examined, and reviewed, and they all had a huge impact on me in weaving my stories.

But then you add something our grandparents absolutely did not see coming. Companies like Colossal Biosciences are actively working on de‑extinction—editing genomes, resurrecting traits from dire wolves, mammoths, dodos, and thylacines, and talking openly about rewilding ecosystems with animals that have been gone for thousands of years. That’s Horatio territory. His philosophy didn’t have CRISPR or venture‑funded startups pitching resurrected megafauna as climate tools.

Put all of that into a near‑future New Mexico Pleistocene BioPark, add resurrected mammoths and woolly rhinos, fold in oligarchs and succession games, and old tropes start behaving differently. Disaster set‑pieces, weaponized animals, engineered children and androids (Blade Runner, 1982 anyone?), plus transferred consciousness—classic story parts—wake up in a new “ecosystem” where de‑extinction science isn’t just speculative, it’s on the front page. The questions twist, too. Are we responsible for the animals we drag back from extinction because we can? (Hello, Jurassic Park, 1993). Are we responsible for the people we design because we chose their DNA? How much of ourselves is nature, nurture, or somebody else’s experiment?

So yes, there’s nothing new under the sun. I’m building Shattered and its siblings (heh) out of scavenged parts: classic disaster movies, ethical thrillers, ape-language research, and old myths about clones and monsters. At the same time, there are more things in Heaven and Earth than any one of those source stories could imagine. De‑extinction startups, AI, oligarch funding, re-wilded wilderness—our current reality gives my fictional BioPark teeth—and fur and scaled and claws ...

The De‑Extinct Zoo series lives where those two quotes overlap. I wanted these books to emerge from a place where the characters keep doing the same human things—grief, ambition, cruelty, love—inside worlds and inhabiting bodies that earlier stories never thought possible. And all the while, real scientists quietly work on giving my mammoths and rhinos a plausible path out of extinction and into our very messy future.

Shattered: Pre-Order NOW

Publishing September 1, 2026

WORD of MOUTH: Camber

I love ancient history and prehistory and read whatever I can get my hands on. That’s how Eilmer of Malmesbury flew into Word of Mouth. This guy—with his own Wikipedia page, no less—was a medieval monk who strapped wings to himself, climbed the tower at Malmesbury Abbey around the year 1005 A.D. or so, and jumped.

William of Malmesbury wrote about Eilmer’s flight 100 years after the event:

‘In his early youth had hazarded an attempt of singular temerity: he had by some contrivance fastened to his hands and feet in order that he might fly as Daedalus … but agitated by the violence of the wind and a current of air, as well as the consciousness of his rash attempt’ …

… Eilmer “flew” about a furlong—roughly 200 meters—before crashing, breaking both legs, and blaming his failure on forgetting one crucial element: he forgot a tail.

But a word came up that I’d heard only in passing and never really thought about: camber. In aerodynamics, camber is the curvature or asymmetry between the upper and lower surfaces of a wing. A positively cambered wing has a more convex upper surface than lower—that means it “flies”.

This curve is one reason a properly shaped wing generates lift instead of just slicing the air. Who knows if Eilmer accidentally built any camber into his wings—probably not, since he didn’t exactly take off so much as glide until the ground, uh, intruded.

We can start thinking about human flight with the Greek myth of Icarus and Daedalus, but there’s also Archytas’s mechanical ‘pigeon’ in 4th‑century BCE Greece, which was said to fly 200 meters on steam. And there was Abbas ibn Firnas’s 9th‑century glider attempt in al-Andalus, and Leonardo’s 15th‑century wing sketches.

I myself once used a small Mary Poppins umbrella and a four-foot bank to try to fly. I was about 5 years old.

Yeah … It didn’t work.

Dump the next boring bestseller

Try a New Author

THE ALIBI CLUB by A.R. Northam

When a powerbroker is murdered in his penthouse, every suspect has a flawless alibi—and the proof to back it up. Detective Nora Flynn knows one thing: perfect alibis don’t exist. Someone at The Alibi Club is lying, and she’s going to tear their world apart to prove it.

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MYSTERY AT MONROVIA CASTLE by Valerie Brandy

Dumped, fired, and rescued by a dream job in a storybook kingdom, Rebecca Orange thinks Monrovia—and its brooding duke—might be her fresh start. Then the castle’s architect turns up dead, and her best new friend is suspect number one. Fairy-tale life? Meet murder, secrets, and one very determined heroine.

Mystery at Monrovia Castle FREE

PATINA AND POISON by Riley Hayes

Grand opening, new life … and a dead developer on the floor of her antique shop. Penny Goodwyn can read the emotional echoes on objects—and what she sees on a silver tray screams murder. In a town full of eccentrics and secrets, she’ll have to catch a killer before they catch her.

Patina and Poison FREE

ECHOES THROUGH ETERNITY: THE LIVING BLOOD by Daniel Eroom

On the very spot where the last Templar Grand Master burned, a Vatican diplomat is found murdered—staged like a medieval execution, a Latin curse pinned to his body. Historian Gabriel Voss discovers the killings are tied to his own family and a secret Templar brotherhood that’s waited 700 years to collect a blood debt.

Echoes Through Eternity FREE

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SHATTERED up for Pre-Order!

Shattered: A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery, book 4, is up for Pre-order on Amazon. I will continue with other digital platforms in the coming days. Publication release date is September 1, 2026. Check it out by clicking below.

Pre-Order SHATTERED

It will be available in eBook (initially) and paperback format (eventually).

Here is the blurb I finally settled on with all the Amazon metadata algorithm bells and whistles. I’d love your feedback.

Shattered (A De‑Extinct Zoo Mystery Book 4)

An opening‑night spectacle. A vanished woolly rhino. A demand to trade one life for two.

Word of Mouth: Ad hoc

We use Latin inserted in our English all the time, like verbal birdseed thrown at a wedding. Most of us (like me) only half-know what we’re saying. When we get it right, we sound relatively smart (IMO). When we get it wrong, we sound totally cringe.

Here’s a quick, ad hoc refresher.

Ad hoc was the original word-of-mouth for this post. I found it used in Operation Pineapple Express by Lt. Col. Scott Mann. I read it for the next Nicky Matthews mystery, Sacred Ghosts—remember, Franco Martinez is an Army vet, who’d been deployed to Afghanistan. In Operation Pineapple Express, they created ad hoc committees targeting the extraction of former comrades and their families targeted by the Taliban. This non-fiction story is both heartbreaking and uplifting.

But what does ad hoc actually mean?

“Ad hoc” translates to “for this.” It’s “something” created for a single, specific purpose—like that committee thrown together to deal with this crisis or this problem and its specifics. It’s not permanent. It’s the “duct tape” of Latin, the bandage that you eventually rip off. It’s not something that is usually meant to last.

So the next time you see this Latin phrase, you’ll know exactly what it’s doing. And if you want to be extra fancy, you can always create an ad hoc excuse to use it.

Op. cit. Books and the Taos Mystery Book Club

I traveled up to Taos, New Mexico, for the Taos Mystery Book Club and a lively chat about The Third Warrior: A Nicky Matthews Mystery, book 2.

They bought me lunch (Blue corn chicken enchiladas, Christmas—red and green chile) at the Martyr’s Steakhouse, and in exchange, I answered great questions about the book, the story, and some of the elements, like the Native American Pueblo (fictional) and the language (Keres—non-fictional).

If you are interested in the languages spoken by Native Americans in New Mexico—including Keres—here’s a great place to start: The El Morro Vocabulary.

Thank you, Betty and op. cit. Books, for the invitation.

Speaking of Latin: op. cit. is the abbreviation for opere citato or in the work cited.

Books in Santa Fe: Just a Reminder …

May 30th (12-4 pm): Books in Santa Fe. I will be signing/selling my books beside 40+ authors with an excellent mix of genres. Admission is FREE, so come and say hello at the Drury Plaza Hotel.

Have you wanted to read one of my books but worried about Feeding the Beast 🧌 (Amazon)?

Buy from Bookshop.org

I’m going to paste in their mission because I can’t say what they do for local bookstores any better.

Bookshop.org has raised over $40 million for independent bookstores

Our Mission
‍(and where our profits go)

Dump the next boring 😴 bestseller

Try a New Author! 😄

THE BILLIONAIRE AND THE EX: THE MAGUIRE BROTHERS, Book 2 by Cindy Ireland

The Billionaire and the Ex

THE PILGRIM by Thomas A. Burns

The Pilgrim

DEATH ROLL by Robert Blain

Death Roll

FRONTIER OUTLAWS: A COOGAN MYSTERY (Frontier Series Book 2) by Michael Cardwell

FREE Frontier Outlaws

Thank you for getting this far!

Word of Mouth: Nocebo

I immediately thought of ‘noseeums’, which is an incredibly tiny biting midge/fly (Ceratopogonidae), and if you’ve ever visited Gulf Shores, Alabama, in the summer and stayed for a week in a beach house of stilts, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about.

Nocebo actually has to do with medicine, science, and patient experience. It’s considered the opposite of placebo, which is a sham treatment given to a patient that causes a beneficial health improvement based only on patient expectations—like the old sugar pills my granddaddy’s fishing buddy, Dr. Shipp, used to give out. Placebo = I will please.

The nocebo effect occurs when the patient takes the sham treatment and experiences negative health effects and worsening symptoms—the Evil Twin of placebo. Nocebo = I will harm.

Both placebo and nocebo effects are real and influenced by expectations and previous experience, and both are all about the brain’s anticipation of a particular result.

In fact, up to 25% of patients in clinical trials receiving the control treatment will drop out of the study due to the nocebo effect.

Voodoo Death

In researching nocebo, another fascinating term came up: Voodoo death.

It’s also called psychogenic death, and it’s a person who essentially wills themselves to die. Voodoo death occurs when someone believes they are cursed to die … and they do.

BTW, I use the Evil Twin Trope in the De-Extinct Zoo series—you’ll meet the villain who triggered it in Shattered, A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery book 4.

In the meantime, I’m going to watch the voodoo doll I bought in New Orleans very closely …

Writing Updates

Calendar

May 20th: I’m heading to a Mystery Bookclub at op. cit. books in Taos, New Mexico, to discuss The Third Warrior, A Nicky Matthews Mystery.

May 30th: Books in Santa Fe. I will be signing/selling my books beside 40+ authors with an excellent mix of genres. Admission is FREE.

It’s TIC Season

I’m deep in edits on Shattered, and my writing tics are stinging me like noseeums at the beach.

I had an awful AP review of Hearts of the Missing when it was published that focused on my penchant for using the word “heart” in various and sundry ways. “Heart” (apparently) acted like a bat to the head, and the reviewer wrote a book review almost as snarky as this post.

It still smarts, so I do extensive editing passes on tics (overused words) and what I think of as “franchised phrasing”—those familiar, prefab lines that go down easy but don’t actually “feed” the story. They’re fine as small bites, but too many and the reader starts craving something with real substance.

A non-exhaustive list (which is sad in itself) of offenders I screen for includes:

1. The “quick hit” emotional shows:

   1. hearts stuttering/thudding/pounding

   2. stomachs dipping/clenching/flipping

   3. breaths catching/hitching/stalling

2. The gaze parade:

   1. eyes locking/meeting/flicking/cutting

3. The physical flinches:

   1. shoulders tightening

   2. jaws clenching

   3. hands curling into fists

   4. lips thinning

4. And the ever-popular sentence tic:

   1. “For a heartbeat…”

   2. “Something in her chest…”

   3. “A flicker of something raw…”

Individually, none of these is terrible. But pile them up, and they turn into a kind of emotional wallpaper—same colors, same pattern, in every. single. room. They don’t break the plot, but they absolutely add sand to the gears of cadence and flow. Once you start reading the same five actions/reactions on repeat, they turn into potholes that can break the fictive dream.

So right now my life is:

1. Tic hunt

   1. Run a search on a suspect word or phrase.

   2. Stare in horror at the number of hits—I used “something” 62 times(!)

   3. Decide which ones earn their keep and which ones get the axe or a more specific, character‑true replacement.

2. Cadence triage

   1. After the tic purge, I have to make sure I haven’t flattened the rhythm—or my voice—by over-sanitizing.

   2. That’s where the read‑aloud pass comes in.

Enter Speechify

I load the chapter, hit play, and sit there while a disembodied voice reads my book back to me. Every repeated tic, clunky cadence, and word echo stands out like an unmowed blade of grass. It is tedious. It is backbreaking. I sit in a chair for hours, pausing, tweaking, replaying—over and over. It always takes longer than I think it will.

And it’s absolutely worth it—because all that obsessing over tics and rhythm is in service of one thing: a smooth, immersive read for you.

You’re welcome 😜

Have you wanted to read one of my books but worried about costs?

Libraries

Do you know that a lot of authors are available in online libraries for free or a fraction of the cost of books on online booksellers? With the rising price of both ebooks and hold-in-your-hand paper and hardbacks, libraries become a very cost-effective option for readers.

For example: Sting of Lies is available at Hoopla and Palace Marketplace, two online libraries, or go to your local library and request it.

Click the button below, then go to one of the online libraries that carry SoL. Check it out.

Get Sting of Lies

Dump the next boring bestseller. Try a New Author.

FRONTIER JUSTICE by Michael Cardwell

Wounded in a Montana blizzard by a friend’s bullet, rookie game warden and Afghanistan vet Danny Coogan is dragged into a lethal tangle of cartel gunrunners, tribal politics, and frontier justice—where the only way to stop the killing on the Dead Horse Reservation may break every law he swore to uphold.

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I KNOW WHEN YOU’RE ASLEEP by Jessica Blade

When anonymous “pranks” at her high school start killing her friends, Mandy Wright receives a note naming her as the next target. To survive, she must untangle the killer’s twisted game, uncover who’s behind the rigged “accidents,” and outsmart a murderer who keeps changing the rules.

GET I Know When You're Asleep

THE NIGHT YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT by Elara Voss

Private driver Morris Hale thinks he’s the one observing—until enigmatic heiress Elara Quinn turns the tables. In a world of underground chess games and unspoken rules, one misread silence becomes a sentence. The Night You Should Have Left reveals how a man learns he was never the player, only the piece.

GET The Night You Should Have Left

We are all inundated with “content,” and it can become overwhelming. Thank you for choosing to open my newsletter, read it, and my books.

Word of Mouth: Lazarus animals

I actually had a different definition in my mind when I started looking into Lazarus animals. I thought they were any animal revived from extinction, like in the De-Extinct Zoo Mystery series.

Not quite. They are animals found in the fossil record, then go extinct from the fossil record (sometimes after an extinction crisis, like the Eocene-Oligocene 34 ma), only to reappear later in the fossil record.

The most famous Lazarus animal is the coelacanth, an ancient fish that lived during the age of the dinosaurs but was discovered alive in 1938 off the coast of South Africa.

The fanciful image of the frog is actually inspired by the Lazarus Project that revived the Southern Gastric-Brooding Frog (Rheobatrachus silus), a frog that went extinct in 1983. But scientists had frozen samples and were able to extract DNA containing nuclei and inject them into another frog egg using somatic cell nuclear transplantation or cloning. It almost worked. FYI, Dolly the sheep was cloned using the same method.

Lazarus animals are named after Lazarus of Bethany, brother to Mary and Martha, and a close friend of Jesus, best known in the Bible for being miraculously raised from the dead by Jesus after being buried for four days.

One more FYI, and this is hilarious. Not only are there Lazarus animals, but there are also Elvis taxa: animals thought to have gone extinct and re-emerge in the fossil record, but aren’t the actual descendants of the extinct animal. Just a look-a-like or impersonator from convergent evolution!

Rather than continue the biblical tradition favored by Jablonski (for Lazarus taxa), we prefer a more topical approach and suggest that such taxa should be known as Elvis taxa, in recognition of the many Elvis impersonators who have appeared since the death of The King.

Thank you very much.

Writing updates

Sacred Ghosts, book 4 in the Nicky Matthews Mystery series

I polished and spit-shined (remember when your mom used to lick her thumb to smooth your eyebrows? Gross) the first 50 pages (Ch 1-6+) of SG and submitted it to the Killer Nashville Claymore contest this August for unpublished manuscripts. I’m going to the conference with an author friend and will present a workshop on structuring your novel, the latest hot topic in fiction writing.

Since I’m sharing it with the KN judges, I’d like to share the opening of Sacred Ghosts with you.

Yep. That’s Nicky, and she’s put herself in a sticky situation on top of a narrow sandstone fin bridging two mesas (one forbidden) in a sandstorm with a thousand-foot drop to the canyon floor.

Having fun with this one, and the action doesn’t stop. More to come!

Shattered, a De-Extinct Zoo Mystery, book 4

I promised you the cover, so …

I have the greatest cover artist of all time! She took the Woolly Rhino image (that’s Balder) I sent her and really delivered. She changed the eye to make it more intense. She added a “cut” to the face using red light. She added the glowing, flowing red fabric along the left side and the glass slipper hanging on the E (Yes, there is a gala ball, but remember the book title!)

As you can guess, things don’t run smoothly because rhinos like to throw their weight around—very dangerous—although Milly does get to waltz with Luther.

Unmasked: Book 1 — Signs: Book 2 — Ambushed: Book 3 — Shattered: Book 4

Woolly rhinos, mammoths, and Ice Age predators are back from extinction—but someone is weaponizing them for murder.

Please de-extinct this little guy …

The first time I visited my husband’s family in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he took me for a walk in the foothills, and a jackrabbit, Lepus callotis, exploded from some sage and bounded off.

In my excitement, I blurted, “Is that a jackalope?”

He’s never let that go 😑 and we’ve been married for decades. He’ll probably have it inscribed on my tombstone.

The little guy above is not a “jackalope”, but a Ceratogaulus rhinoceros. Those are real, permanent horns protruding from its skull (not antlers—antlers are shed annually and grow back). It went extinct 5 million years ago.

I wrote them into a scene in the De-Extinct Zoo Mystery, Signs. Milly Smith, my protagonist, gives everyone she meets a de-extinct animal designation:

I wish we could Lazarus-find this animal …

Dump the next boring bestseller. Try a New Author.

Quick note from the Author Universe

A big traditional publisher recently bought a self-published hit, hoping to skim some of the sweet indie cash after a repackage and republish. Then readers accused the book of being AI slop—not because it was conclusively proven, but because the writing, to say the least, was rough. After the backlash, the publisher cancelled the release. Boo.

Moral? Traditional publishers don’t always vet for quality, and indie authors aren’t automatically “less than.” Some of the best, most original books out there are independently published.

So give more indie books a shot. Your next lifelong favorite author might be one of them.

History kills

The Stockholm Secret: In a city of a thousand islands, journalist Luna Moreno investigates a brutal murder that mirrors a 300‑year‑old legend of five powerful families and vanished rivals. As she digs into buried secrets and billion‑krona interests, she discovers the old story isn’t just history—it kills.

Kindle Unlimited

The Western is back

Frontier Justice: New Montana game warden and Afghanistan vet Danny Coogan is shot and left for dead by a Native friend, then dragged into an FBI tangle of weapons dealers, tribal politics, and revenge. To stop more murders on the Dead Horse Reservation, he may have to choose frontier justice over the law.

Preview Sample FREE

A sweet tooth fix …

Black Forest Cake Murder: When a famous food critic is murdered after visiting Sinclair’s Sweets, the small-town bakery lands in the hot seat, and the owner becomes suspect number one. Now the three Sinclair sisters must unmask a killer amid rival bakers, buried grudges, and a simmering romance—before someone serves up a second helping of murder.

Kindle Unlimited

Thank you for reading and making it down this far! More updates on Sacred Ghosts and Shattered to come, as well as a new project I have in mind …

Echo of Lies: The Lies series Book 2

Echo of Lies is available from all online book providers ($6.99) and on Amazon and IngramSpark as a paperback (Azm $13.99; IS $14.99 because of printing costs).

For those of you reading and reviewing the Echo of Lies ARC, THANK YOU, and I hope you enjoy it. Please leave yours on any or all of the following online platforms: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Goodreads, Bookbub, etc.

For those of you worried it’s a “kissing book,” it has the same amount of kisses as The Princess Bride (1987), plus action and adventure, and a Western-style shootout. Yes, its genre is post-WWII historical sci-fi western mystery with romantic elements, but its theme is something I think we’ve all encountered and overcome: Doubts about our abilities and clashes with traditional cultures.

READ NOW

Reviews matter a lot in this publishing business. The button below the cover is a universal link for a number of these platforms.

Shattered: A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery Book 4

Shattered—First/rough draft done on 2/20/2026, and starting revisions. The book’s focus de-extincts are a pair of Coelodonta antiquitatis or woolly rhinoceros, Balder and Freya, and the kidnapping of Freya.

I had no idea how kidnapping a rhino would work at all, so I asked Perplexity, my AI engine of choice. I was slapped down hard.

Apparently, kidnapping large megafauna from a zoo is totally verboten. Go figure.

If you are interested in what I came up with, it’ll be a few months before release, but I’ll make sure anyone who’d like to read and review an ARC of Shattered will have that opportunity when the time comes.

First, I need to commission my cover. I have a great image for Balder. Check back in next month’s Mystery Dispatch for details…

Sacred Ghosts: A Nicky Matthews Mystery Book 4

Sacred Ghosts—I sent the first 50 pages to a trusted critique partner, and she advised me to cut the first 2 chapters.

Ugh.

She said the book started in the wrong place, and she was right. It happens more than you think, and that’s why writers/authors need a little help from their friends.

But don’t despair! I'm finishing this book this year. And to prove it, here’s a screenshot of the NEW first chapter, which finds Nicky and her horse, Trooper, in a precarious place—both in the immediate setting and in Nicky’s personal life.

Word of Mouth

In high school, I took a lot of English courses as electives, including ones where all we did during class was read. We either brought our own books or chose from a large selection the teachers kept on shelves—I read Charles Portis’s True Grit (1968) that way.

Every week, you had to create your own vocabulary test—a list of words and definitions from your books — and turn it in on Friday. On Monday, you’d get the words back without the definitions and, well, have to write out the definitions and use the word in a sentence as the quiz.

I still find words I don’t know and look them up immediately, like this one":

Fillip: a person or thing that causes an improvement by adding excitement, interest, or encouragement.

I’m reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), by Betty Smith, and this particular word was used because, during the week, Francie Nolan’s family only had stale bread to eat.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is generally considered the first bestseller after traditional publishing moved into the world of trade paperbacks.

I’m only on chapter eight, but I already know it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Book Bliss Author Signing: Santa Fe May 30th

I’ve never done one of these events before, but since it’s in New Mexico and a bunch of my friends/authors are attending, I thought I’d give it a shot.

Book Bliss Author Signing Events is excited to bring another fantastic event to the West - This time in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Join us on May 30th, 2026, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for an exciting day filled with signed books, fantastic authors, giveaways, and more!

VIP tickets are $20 and include: Early admission at 11 am, swag bag, and more.

General Admission is FREE at noon!

Drury Plaza Hotel in Santa Fe, NM

Saturday, May 30, from 12 pm to 4 pm MDT

Join the Facebook Group- https://www.facebook.com/groups/1252571603294458

If you’ve never been to Santa Fe, it’s worth the trip. Take some tours of the area - Taos, Rio Grande Gorge, Ghost Ranch. I recommend a Santa Fe Ghost tours … 👻

Mystery Authors looking for New Readers … 📚

Check these authors out. Who knows. Maybe you’ll find a new favorite.

The Queen of Cups Murder is the first book in the Atkins and Palmer Psychic Mystery series.

He’s determined to draw a better future. But his morning reading didn’t warn him about the muddy ditch of corpses…

South Wales. Detective Sergeant Madoc Palmer struggles to fit in. Committed to his job, the tarot reader hopes his transfer away from a sabotaging superior is a fresh start. Though he downplays his psychic ability as good instincts, the ploy is tested when two murders trigger strange visions.

Palmer navigates the tricky task of guiding the sharp-eyed, evidence-following Detective Inspector Ruth Atkins to the identity of the decayed remains. With his suspicious new DI watching every move, he fears any slip of the tongue could get him laughed off the force.

Can Madoc reveal his truth without destroying his life or letting a killer slip from their grasp?

READ NOW!

Now that the mask has slipped, it’s not so easy to put it back on.

A friend. A deadly situation. A choice between life and death. What would you do to survive?

Jessica has spent her life flying under the radar. She works an unassuming job at a grocery store, smiles when she’s supposed to, and does enough to pass as normal. Beneath the surface, though, something isn’t right. She’s learned to keep it buried ….

Until the day everything unravels.

Caught in the chaos of an active shooter situation, Jessica is forced to make a choice: run and die or let the darkness inside her free. She chooses the latter, and when it’s over, she’s hailed as a hero.

But Jessica knows better. What she did wasn’t bravery. It was instinct. Something primal. And now that the mask has slipped, it’s not so easy to put it back on.

READ NOW!

On the Frontier, Every Secret Has a Body Count.

Danny is now a US Marshal and that only puts a bigger target on his back.

Danny Coogan is now working as a US Marshal, and he is within weeks of becoming a father for the first time. During a takedown of a fugitive, he makes a grisly discovery: a body, and it's the son of someone he knows and works with.

Thus begins an off-the-books investigation that leads him to millions of dollars in stolen money, an entire collection of dead bodies, and an ultimate showdown with an adversary determined not to be taken alive.

READ NOW!

Thrills, chills, and unforgettable mysteries.

Accompanied by evocative artwork, each story invites you to step into a world of suspense and intrigue.

This beautifully illustrated collection brings four more gripping tales to life, immersing readers in the chilling atmospheres and dark enigmas that define the series.

Uncover the haunting truth behind The Devil’s Footprints, an unexplained phenomenon that has baffled investigators for generations. Then journey to a remote German farmstead with The Haunting of Hinterkaifeck, where eerie whispers and tragic events blur the line between the seen and the unseen. Sail the treacherous seas with The Ghost Ship as the Mary Celeste drifts abandoned, its secrets lost to the waves. Finally, unravel the sinister tales surrounding The Mystery of Overtoun Bridge, where tragedy and superstition collide.

Accompanied by evocative artwork, each story invites you to step into a world of suspense and intrigue. Prepare for more thrills, chills, and unforgettable mysteries.

READ NOW!

Thanks for getting all the way to the bottom!

And if you haven’t, check out SubStack. Whatever your passions are, someone there writes about them. And if they don’t, you do it.

Give SubStack a try—this is the easiest social media I’ve EVER used.

Echo of Lies is edited, proofed, and ready for publication at the beginning of February! This is your last opportunity to receive a free Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review on any online platform. Just click the button below.

Shadowed by post‑war New Mexico and the Roswell mystery, a young woman fights to reclaim her future.

Francie Cortez is smart, determined, and wants more from life than dust under her boots. But in a world ruled by ingrained customs and deep-rooted tradition, she’s pushed out of college and away from the physics* career her talent should have made possible.

When her father vanishes, it’s too much to outrun, and Francie retreats to the family ranch, a refuge where she tends wounds she’s no longer sure will ever fully heal.

Her isolation shatters when an alien object crashes on her land. The impact sparks a chain of events that pulls Francie into a web of lies, unexpected allies, and unseen enemies. As she digs into the object’s origins, she realizes it’s tied to her missing father—and to a secret some people will do anything, even kill, to protect.

Francie races to uncover her family’s hidden truths and the role she might play in a future still unfolding. Caught between a menacing spaceman and a charming, enigmatic soldier, she must choose—risk everything to rewrite her story, or retreat into a smaller, safer life.

For fans of richly layered historical fiction with thrilling speculative twists and burgeoning romance, Echo of Lies draws you into a world where the unknown is always closer than it seems, and love, loyalty, and sacrifice quietly shape a tomorrow worth living.

Echo of Lies ARC

*Yes, there is math/physics in the book, but there won’t be a quiz.

De-Extinct Zoo Mysteries

The Pleistocene epoch lasted from about ~2.5 million years ago until ~ 11,700 years ago and was defined by huge sheets of ice that ebbed, formed, melted, and reformed over large areas of the continents.

It was also defined by the rise of megafauna—mammoths, giant sloths, enormous bears, great cats, and apes twelve feet tall—and some megafauna are extant today—elephants, rhinoceros, bison.

But it’s the extinct animals that populate the De-Extinct Zoo Mystery series, in a futuristic zoo and re-wilded New Mexico and Colorado that I write about in this series.

Each story spotlights a de-extinct, while the senior veterinarian at the Pleistocene BioPark Zoo is my amateur sleuth*. These books are linked in a series, and the first one, Unmasked, is free on most online platforms.

Shattered is the fourth book in the series, starring a pair of woolly rhinos (Coelodonta antiquitatis). Look for it in late Spring or early Summer.

Read Unmasked

*BTW, these books are NOT cozies. You’ve been warned … 🦣

Ice Age Tragedy turned into Genetic Gold

Fourteen thousand years ago, a ~two-month-old wolf pup near what’s now Tumat, Siberia, swallowed a chunk of woolly rhinoceros for dinner, then died when his den collapsed and froze solid in permafrost (poor puppy).

When scientists opened the pup’s stomach, they realized the meat was so well preserved they could sequence the entire genome of that rhino—one of the last of its kind before the species vanished—and only the third full woolly rhino sequence analyzed.

So, we got our best look yet at a woolly rhino’s DNA from half-digested flesh inside a mummified predator, a little Ice Age tragedy that turned into a gold mine for understanding how and how fast the species went extinct.

Mystery Authors looking for New Readers … 📚

SHELBY GRIFFIN MYSTERY THRILLERS

The streets of L.A. are safe under her watch … but at what cost?

Detective Shelby Griffin’s stubbornness is legendary. Its honestly why she’s survived the streets of Los Angeles as long as she has. She patrols the streets vowing to rid the city of the vermin that take advantage of the weak and innocent.

But this threat is unlike any she’s ever seen before.

Brace yourself for a roller coaster ride of emotions as Shelby fights to keep the city safe, all while questioning whether it’s worth the sacrifice.

Kindle Unlimited

DANNY COOGAN MYSTERY (Frontier series book 4)

Danny Coogan is now working as a US Marshal, and he is within weeks of becoming a father for the first time.

During a takedown of a fugitive, he makes a grisly discovery: a body, and it's the son of someone he knows and works with.

Thus begins an off-the-books investigation that leads him to millions of dollars in stolen money, an entire collection of dead bodies, and an ultimate showdown with an adversary determined not to be taken alive.

Kindle Unlimited

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