Dead Mule Swamp Druggist Ready for Pre-Orders

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Dead Mule Swamp Druggist is available for pre-order as an e-book on iBooks (app), Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Amazon (Kindle). Release date is set for December 26, 2017- hopefully just in time for some holiday reading. The advance price will save you 50 cents. Order now at $2.49 for automatic delivery the day after Christmas. Regular price will be $2.99.

This is the longest Anastasia Raven book to date, at about 80,000 words. Great value for your reading dollars!

Ana gets herself into all kinds of odd situations. Here's the synopsis:

Anastasia Raven has settled comfortably into life in Forest County. As in any community, obituaries are published each week. Suddenly, it appears that four deaths which occurred over the past year were not so ordinary and may be linked by overdoses of Oxycontin. Charlie Dixon, the druggist, is in the spotlight. What did a healthy middle-aged CPA, an elderly car dealer, a mentally challenged handyman, and a young artisan have in common? Was it just coincidence that they filled prescriptions days before they died? Why would Charlie want to kill these four people? Why would Charlie want to kill any one of these people? Ana takes on a new role in the community which gives her the credentials to look into the deaths. Her investigations lead her to uncover some of the darker aspects of small town life. Friends Cora and Jerry Caulfield, Adele Volger, and young Jimmie Mosher are never far from the action.

And now.... to whet your appetite even more, I give you Chapter 1, free.

    Colin Mueller was dead. Isabel Adams was dead. Ham Nelson was dead. Milo Sendak was dead.

    Even in a small town like Cherry Hill, in the middle of rural Forest County, people die. There were obits in the paper every week. I’d read them faithfully for over a year at my new home of choice in the northwoods, after leaving the suburbs of Chicago and a husband who had chosen someone named Brian as his new life partner. All water under the bridge, as they say—changes and death. But I mention these four deaths in particular.

    Colin Mueller had died in his sleep in late March. He was eighty-five.

    Isabel Adams was only thirty-two. She was found dead in her garden where she had been raking dry leaves from the beds in April, a victim of anaphylactic shock, stung by a bee. Her epi pen was in the house.

    Ham Nelson was killed in August, in a car crash. He’d failed to stop at a railroad crossing, and well... he’d died instantly. Few people mourned Ham. He was fifty-six, mentally challenged and did odd jobs on various farms. It wasn’t his handicaps that put people off; it was his aversion to showers that was the real issue.

    Milo Sendak took an overdose of OxyContin, and went to bed. He called no one. His was not a cry for help, but apparently a well-executed suicide. The problem was, he had no reason to kill himself. His first grandchild had just been born on September twelfth, and his daughter and son-in-law were bringing the baby to meet their grandpa. They had found him cold and still.

    The cause of Milo’s death was not obvious. He’d had back trouble for years, but other than that he was a healthy, energetic fifty-five-year-old, tennis playing businessman. An autopsy revealed the overdose of painkiller.

    The problem was, he’d just refilled his prescription the day before and only one pill was missing from the new bottle. How had one pill flooded his system with the drug? Had he been hoarding capsules?

    When the Sheriff’s office checked Cherry Hill Pharmacy's records for Milo’s OxyContin purchases, they discovered that Colin Mueller, Isabel Adams, and Ham Nelson had also filled prescriptions for the same drug just days before their deaths.

    The druggist, Charlie Dixon, was sweating bullets.

If you are on the MailChimp email list you'll receive Chapter 2 for free in a couple of weeks (and maybe other goodies). Sign up at Books Leaving Footprints Newsletter

Most importantly, thank you for being an Anastasia Raven fan! How can you help me get more fans? Tell your friends. Write a review of one of the previous books in the series. You are awesome!

Chapter 28 - Dead Mule Swamp Druggist

After not getting much done (I didn't even have a whole chapter for the last writers' group meeting) I managed to get myself in gear today. I finished Chapter 27 and have also written 28.

Total words to this point, 37,800. I've thought all along that this would be the longest book to date, and now I'm sure of it. Hopefully, it will also be the best.

What I like most about this chapter is the character development of Adele.

Here's an excerpt from Chapter 28:

    ...we could tell, since she [Adele] couldn't cover all the words, that the writing was very similar.
    The timer on the oven buzzed brutally, and we all jumped. Adele knocked the cardboard box on the floor with her right arm.
    Cora hustled to turn off the buzzer, Adele leaned over to retrieve the box thereby uncovering the papers, and as she did I slid the lined sheets closer to me. Cora peeked in the oven.
    "Two more minutes," she announced. Then she hurried to look over my shoulder.
    "They match," I said.
    "I agree," Cora said. "But clearly, the writer is more mature in the letters we have. That makes sense."
    Adele had recovered the box and was upright again. "Oh, let me show you, please," she implored. She sounded like a child whose surprise had been spoiled.
    "You're right," I conceded. "We're stealing your show. But don't keep us in suspense any longer. We need answers."
    She seemed to pause again.
    "Seriously, Adele. Enough is enough." I said.
    Adele, at last, settled down to business. "For several years, the district ran a contest for juniors and seniors in high school. They were to enter a thousand-word essay explaining the basis for their faith. I was the local judge. That meant that in addition to choosing the top three to be sent on to district competition I had to type those essays in a specific format. The originals were kept by the church, and when a lot of old records were dumped I took them home rather than have them be discarded."
    "Whose entry is this?" Jerry urged.
    "See for yourself. It's on the last page." Apparently at last satisfied with her success, Adele handed the papers to Jerry.

You can find the first four Anastasia Raven Stories at Smashwords or Amazon

Chapter 26 - Dead Mule Swamp Druggist

The book is moving along nicely. Conjured up a brain storm yesterday and filled in the missing plot elements to create the middle of the book. All the chapters are roughed out in a few sentences now.

The cover does need tweaking. The pills have to be capsules, so I'll work on that. I know, I know... lots of covers aren't consistent with the contents of the book, but that is one of my PET PEEVES. So it will have to be fixed. Not difficult.

The author enthusiasm encountered at the recent Authorpalooza event in Big Rapids has energized me. Maybe I can pick up the writing pace. That would certainly be a good thing.

Enjoy a piece of Chapter 26:

    "Whoa," I exclaimed, handing her the page I'd been reading. "I'm thinking younger. This passage is pretty hot."
    "Men never really get over that," Cora said with a smile. "But I see your point."
    We finished reading the letters we had copies of, but didn't find any further information that looked useful. I stared at Cora without speaking, and she returned my gaze.
    "We need help," she finally said.
    I was amazed to hear this from Cora.
    "What kind of help?" I asked.
    "Adele's kind of help. She stays on the front lines of events before they become history and pass into my domain. I hate to admit it, but we are similar except in our time period of interest."
    This admission led us to share a hearty laugh.
    "But, she can't keep a secret. Do we want everyone to know what we've found out?" I asked.
    "Roy and Wanda opened this can of worms. They'll have to accept the castings."
    Now it was my turn to be ignorant. "Castings?"
    Cora grinned impishly. "Worm excrement."

You can find the first four Anastasia Raven Stories at Smashwords or Amazon

Chapter 21- Dead Mule Swamp Druggist

Writing continues at way too slow of a pace, but at least it's happening at some speed rather than not at all. Chapter 21 done, and the next few are planned out.

And, you can see that I've improved the cover quite a lot as well. Maybe a few more tweaks yet.

Thanks to the new subscribers to the email letter.

Enjoy a piece of Chapter 21:

   "Right. And I don't recall that Ham was known for disappearing for long stretches of time," Jerry added.
   "Do you see this money as a motive for murder?" Cora asked. "It couldn't have been a huge amount."
   "We don't know that," Jerry said. "How many times have you read about people living in dumps who died with thousands of dollars hidden in the walls."
   "If he didn't have it really well hidden, it's gone now... into the hands of the dognapper Manny or Myron or whatever his name is. And I searched pretty much everywhere except a couple of outbuildings," I pointed out. "Of course, I didn't take the walls apart."

You can find the first four Anastasia Raven Stories at Smashwords or Amazon

Chapter 20 - Dead Mule Swamp Druggist

It's been way too long since I've been posting here. However, I'm still writing. Trying to keep a lot of balls in the air. That said, I just finished Chapter 20 of the next Anastasia Raven book, called Dead Mule Swamp Druggist. It is the longest and most complex book of the series.

Here's an excerpt from Chapter 20

   The woods, and the clearing surrounding Ham's trailer, didn't seem menacing at all in the daylight, just depressing. The trailer was old and wasn't quite level. The factory paint job was faded and scratched. Of course, no one had cleared any of the junk from the yard. The front door wasn't latched and it repeatedly opened a few inches and then closed again, as a light wind moved through the clearing. Every time the door hit the jamb I heard a soft thud. I was amazed that someone could live in such a dump. Yet, I'd never heard that Ham was a complainer. Maybe he just liked his privacy and didn't care about other amenities. I recalled that Adele had said he tried to keep the location of the place a secret. Now, I wondered what secrets he might have had that were worth hiding. Did he have secrets so big they got him killed?
   The small deck on the front was the newest thing on the property. It was solidly built of treated lumber and seemed completely out of character with everything else. I mounted the steps and opened the door. The first thing I noticed was the smell. Mold and decay. Decaying flesh. The second shock, as I stepped from the deck to the inside, was that the flooring was soft. Probably water damaged from rain coming in the open door. I wondered if I'd break through. It was a good thing the floor was only about three feet above the ground, but who knew what was underneath the trailer?
   With a quick look around the cramped interior, I located the origin of the foul smell. A dead raccoon was liquefying in the back bedroom. There was no apparent reason it had died there. As much as I didn't want to get anywhere near it, I was determined to search the trailer, so I returned to the yard and found a shovel with a badly weathered handle. I held my breath as I entered the bedroom, scooped up the body and headed for the woods. Giving a ninja yell to boost my strength and buck up my courage, I flung the remains as far into the brush as I was able. "That should help," I told myself. Out loud. Then I pulled a sliver from the palm of my hand.

You can find the first four Anastasia Raven Stories at Smashwords or Amazon