FATAL FIRST EDITION -- Jenn's Release Day!

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JENN McKINLAY: How much do I love this cover? Let me count the ways... 

As ever, Heathcliff the dog is featured and now Zelda the cat is as well. Maybe that's how you can determine the longevity of a cozy series. How many of the amateur sleuth's pets are on the cover? 

The artist Julia Green is always amazing and when I told the art department that the opening of the book is a murder on a train and that a train set with the dog would be cool...well, they delivered. I mean look at that cover. It's fabulous!

This book is my homage to Patricia Highsmith's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN mashed up with Agatha Christie's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. This mysteries really make you want to try train travel, don't they? 

But truly the entire plot came about when I decided it would be fun to have my characters meet up with the characters of my plot group buddy Kate Carlisle, author of the NYT bestselling Bibliophile Mysteries. Her amateur sleuth Brooklyn Wainwright is a professional bookbinder and it just felt like my librarian Lindsey Norris needed to meet Brooklyn. Of course, I spent months teasing Kate that I was going to kill off her characters (I could never, I adore Brooklyn) but when it was time to submit the manuscript, I sent Kate the relevant pages and she approved the cameo. Not gonna lie, it was a blast to write another person's characters, especially since I'm a super fan as well as a friend of Kate's.

Hey, here's a thought the Reds should all scramble books and write each other's mysteries...aaaaand, they all just keeled over in horror! LOL.

But seriously, what do you think about cameos of characters from other author's series, Reds and Readers? Yay or Nay? 

ABOUT FATAL FIRST EDITION

People are dying to get their hands on a rare, valuable book in the newest Library Lover’s Mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The Plot and the Pendulum. Briar Creek Library director Lindsey Norris and her husband, Sully, are at a popular library conference in Chicago to hear book restoration specialist Brooklyn Wainwright give a keynote address. After the lecture, Lindsey looks under her seat and finds a tote bag containing a first edition of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, inscribed to Alfred Hitchcock. Brooklyn determines the novel is one of a kind and quite valuable, so Lindsey and Sully return the book to the conference director, not wanting to stir up any trouble. But just hours after the pair boards the train back to Connecticut, rumors that the Highsmith novel has gone missing buzz amongst the passengers, and they soon find the conference director murdered in his private compartment. And worse—the murderer planted the book in Lindsey and Sully’s room next door, making them prime suspects. Now, they must uncover the murderer and bring them to the end of their line, before they find themselves booked for a crime they didn’t commit. Featuring a cameo by a beloved character from the New York Times bestselling author Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile series!