The Mystery 💼 Dispatch: Dark history, real science, and what’s really behind Carol’s stories.
If you love real science blended with true stories, dark history, and twisty fiction, you’re in the right place.
Writing Updates:
Shattered is at the proofreader! This is the final step before publication. Remember, September 1st is release day.
An excerpt: Mistaken identity and a Cinderella entrance at the Woolly Rhino Exhibit’s opening gala …
Heads turned as Milly reached the landing. Light snapped through her dress, cascading from her shoulders in a curtain of silver‑blue, glistening like rain caught in a spotlight. Sparks blazed gold, orange, red, licking upward from hem to waist—flames that weren’t flame at all.
A name floated up, soft at first, gaining weight as it rolled through the crowd.
Anya Belova.
They didn’t see Dr. Ludmilla Smith. They saw her double. For a moment, it felt less like a slight and more a transformation—power, attention, a strange freedom her own name never drew.
Sacred Ghosts is a Claymore Finalist at Killer Nashville—I might have mentioned it …
An excerpt: Nicky is alone on a high mesa in a howling windstorm when she’s struck by a vision …
Another wave tore over the mesa, driving horses and people before it. This time it broke farther out, the sliding curtain of sand shaping bearded men on foot, morion helmets with dull gray combs above chain mail that glinted like fish scales.
Nicky dropped to her knees as the world tilted, sand raining down and settling over a second legion of sprouting shapes, of riders shelled in silver breastplates and crested helmets astride warhorses draped in tooled leather and flashing brass medallions. They solidified in glorious, terrible detail, holding racks of bells clanging in a strident, off-kilter rhythm that assaulted her ears. Caballeros pressed forward in a staggered line, infantry closing the flanks, every weapon lifted as if one step from the charge.
The silver-chested giants with two heads—the monsters from the stories told at the kivas, stories she’d heard second-hand. The ghosts that made this place forbidden. But the thud of hooves, the clink of armor, the sour whiff of sweat and powder—none of it felt like a vision.
De-Extinct Zoo Mystery Series: Truth beneath the tales.
UNMASKED
There’s an American Cheetah (Miracinonyx trumani) lure chase in Unmasked that mimics real-life zoo cheetah chases like this one. And remember, Unmasked is ONLY 99¢ first in series!
SIGNS
In Signs, I added clothes donated by the Santa Fe Opera house and a raspberry beret (Prince’s BEST song. Yes, it is) worn in one scene by an ape named Jules Verne.
I first saw clothes “enrichment” at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha. That zoo was the inspiration for the De-Extinct Zoo Mystery series. A young orangutan had on a green frock coat, like a pirate, I kid you not. I wish I had recorded it. Instead, check this out:
Ambushed
I worked at Disneyland in high school and college, sometimes walking shadowy tunnels under the “Happiest Place on Earth”—cement arteries pulsing with ductwork and power lines. Rumor said there were deeper levels no one talked about. Ambushed is my way of sending something huge and hungry—the de‑extinct Quinkanas—loose in that dark underbelly.
Shattered
The actual “seed” for Shattered was the sad story of a 62-year-old man who, while possibly searching for a bathroom during a concert at the Oregon Zoo, somehow stumbled into a rhino exhibit construction site, fell into a pit, and died. No rhinos were present. I kept the rhino exhibit, but added a woolly rhino charge into the mix.
And it’s time to PRE-ORDER! I’m trying to break my pre-order record, so your help is much appreciated.
A New Feature: The Recovering Scientist (that’s me)
Scientific publications that make you 🤦♀️ …
Astronomers found sugar swirling inside a cloud of gas and dust near the centre of the Milky Way. Milk and sugar. Hmm…
Does that mean the Universe is actually a giant latte? ☕️ Cause I’m good with that.
A Swedish study that caught my eye:
A 25-year study found an unexpected link between cheese and dementia.
It’s actually good—the more full-fat cheese you eat, the less dementia. I do like cheese. 🧀
I experienced this first hand teaching biochemistry at a university:
The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome and the Potential Downfall
Of American Society
One student had THREE grandmothers pass away during the semester. 🪦 Sad.
Egg 🥚 attacks by strangers over a 14-month period as a study:
“Here’s egg in your eye”: a prospective study of blunt ocular trauma resulting from thrown eggs
All I could think about was Animal House (1978), John Belushi, and “FOOD FIGHT.”
Dump the next boring bestseller
Try a New Author
Engineered Nightmares
Deadfall Protocol: Five engineered predators the locals call Volkovs. APEX Unit is sent in to the storm to contain the breach, recover the research, and stop the creatures before they reach the village downwind. Major Sara Vance has hunted engineered monsters before. Never one that hunts her back …
A Supernatural Mystery
Counting Crows: On the fog‑drenched moors of Exmoor, former soldier Lorne Turner finds a man’s body aligned to the stars, carved with occult sigils and posed like an offering. The trail leads to a secret fraternity bound to power, privilege, and something older than faith itself. Lorne joins forces with village vicar Ella Morgan and witch Willow Hunter to stop the next sacrifice—before the spreading darkness claims another victim.
Buried in her Memory
The Meridian Line: She built her career catching killers; this case will cost her everything she believes about herself. Detective Constance Egan, the sharpest investigator in St. Louis Homicide, finds a woman posed on a levee with a ligature pattern she can’t explain—because it lives in a buried memory. Tracking linked murders along the I‑70 corridor, she uncovers a predator, a cover‑up, and a hunt that seems designed specifically for her.
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You are firing on all cylinders this summer! What glorious descriptions of an army emerging from sand- I have chills. Also, Little Red Corvette but let's not quibble.
Congratulations on the finalist status! That’s great news!