From Across State Lines with Heather Weidner!

PA Cozy Mystery Writers
5 days ago
4 min read

From Across State Lines Blog Promo Image - Heather Weidner

Please give a warm welcome to Heather from Virginia…

Through the years, Heather Weidner has been a cop’s kid, technical writer, editor, college professor, software tester, and IT manager. She writes the “Pearly Girls Mysteries”, “The Delanie Fitzgerald Mysteries”, “The Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries”, and “The Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe Mysteries.” She blogs regularly with the Writers Who Kill.

Her short stories appear in the “Virginia is for Mysteries” series, 50 Shades of Cabernet, Deadly Southern Charm, Murder by the Glass, First Comes Love, Then Comes Murder, and Crime in the Old Dominion, and she has non-fiction pieces in Promophobia and The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers’ Cookbook.

Originally from Virginia Beach, Heather has been a mystery fan since Scooby-Doo and Nancy Drew. She lives in Central Virginia with her husband and a crazy Mini Aussie Shepherd.

Favorite Food: Pizza and Chocolate

Is your book set in the same state that you live in? (please describe the setting)

I write where I know. All of my novels are set in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Two are set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and one is at the beach. The Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries are set in the fictional town of Fern Valley near Charlottesville, VA, and the Pearly Girls Mysteries are set in the fictional town of Ivy Springs near Staunton, VA. The Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe Mysteries are set in the fictional town of Mermaid Bay, near the Historical Triangle of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown. I grew up in Virginia Beach, and we currently live near a lake in Central Virginia.

How did you come up with the title of your book?

I am very fortunate that neither of my publishers have changed my proposed book titles. The Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries all have a rhyming cadence (Vintage Trailers and Blackmailers, Film Crews and Rendezvous, Christmas Lights and Cat Fights, Deadlines and Valentine, and Teddy Bears and Ghostly Lairs.) The Pearly Girls’ titles all contain “murder” and an homage to the musical tradition of the property in Ivy Springs. Cassidy’s grandfather owned a honky-tonk on the property before the event business was established. (Murder Strikes a Chord, Murder Plays Second Fiddle, and Murder Whets its Whistle.) The Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe Mysteries, all have some reference to a nursery rhyme gone bad. (Sticks and Stones and a Bag of Bones, Twinkle Twinkle Au Revoir, A Tisket A Tasket Not Another Casket, and Life is But a Scream.)

Introduce us to one of the animals in your story.

We have always had dogs. Both of our crazy Jack Russells passed last year (at the age of 15), and we now have another crazy dog, our Mini Aussie Shepherd, who keeps us on our toes. Our dogs are such an integral part of our lives. I always have to include them in my novels. Bijou, the Jack Russell (based on my little Jack Disney) is a great companion and finder of clues in the Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries. Elvis the Chihuahua (based on my sister’s dog Bingo), is a key character in the Pearly Girls Mysteries. And the Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe Mysteries has a menagerie of pets, who are great companions and foils to the bad guys. We have Chloe the French Bulldog, who thinks she’s head of security at the Christmas Shoppe. Jules’s grandmother’s tuxedo cat, Neville the Devil cat, who now lives with Jules’s aunt, works hard to let know everyone who was boss at the store first. And Jules’s best friend Amy, who owns the local bookstore, shares her home with Mr. Darcy, a gorgeous Persian cat.

Favorite Way to Unwind After Work: Reading is the perfect way to unwind. But I also indulge in a lot of true crime podcasts and TV shows. Yes, I am one of those people who relax with “the murder shows.”

Murder Plays Second Fiddle: A Pearly Girls Mystery #2

A Little Bit About the Book:

Event planner, Cassidy Jamison, and her not-so-helpful sexagenarian staff of Roxie, Kate, Aileen, and Ruthanne are up to their elbows with a high school reunion committee’s constantly changing requirements for an event that must be the most elaborate and memorable at all costs.

When well-known reporter, Darcy Branch, and former cheerleader, Brittany Mahoney, are found dead on her property, Cassidy and the gang have to find the killer before the party’s over. And the more Cassidy and her Chihuahua mix Elvis dig for clues, the more deadly secrets they uncover, including one that changes everything she knew about her family’s history.

The Pearly Girls need to solve this fast before the Class of 2009 goes down in Ivy Springs history as the Deadliest Reunion.