Year end update

Celebrating the accomplishments of my past interviewees!

Happy Holidays, Readers!

I’ve gotten to interview some amazing people over the past year or so and wanted to share some updates about their activities. Several have upcoming or new releases, others have had short stories published, and one reached a significant milestone in her podcasting career. All are hard at work on new projects. This is cause for celebration!

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Debut

Lucinda Gerlitz

Lucinda’s first cozy mystery, Manners or Mayhem, will be released in Fall 2026. When her chess partner is accused of murdering his wife, an elderly etiquette teacher tries to clear his name. But her sleuthing puts her struggling etiquette business at risk. Then the killer strikes again.

New Releases

Thomas Burns, Jr.

• The Pilgrim: A Tale of the 3M Detective Agency (Tales of the 3M Detective Agency Book 2)

(From the Amazon description) “When two Jesuit priests from New York knock on the door of the 3M Detective Agency in the small Southern town of Garton, retired Master Gunnery Sergeant Amos Murdoch has no idea his life is about to become entangled in a web of deceit, violence, and perversion. (…) (W)hat begins as a search for a lost soul ends with a shattered romance, blood spilled in a house of God, and a funeral no one saw coming. With the atmospheric lyricism of James Lee Burke, the unflinching moral vision of Flannery O’Connor, and the sly Southern humor of Guy Owens, The Pilgrim stakes its claim as a new, dark, and compelling entry in the canon of Southern Gothic crime fiction.”

Joanna Campbell Slan

• Resort, Two, Murder (Book #20 in the Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series) https://amzn.to/4a0OZZV

• Santa and the Slay Dogs, by Joanna Campbell Slan and Neil Plakcy https://amzn.to/4pfun4v

• Cara and Kiki’s Holiday Collection https://amzn.to/4ifHUXG

Darlene Dziomba

Tail of Deception will release in February 2026. “You can’t outrun your past.”

Christine Desmet

All She Wore was a Bow: Humorous, sweet Christmastime novella. Kincaid Hunter comes to Wisconsin for his buddy’s wedding and meets his match with the wedding decorator. https://writers-exchange.com/

Millicent Eidson

New release in her alphabetical series! In Ebola: A Microbial Mystery, Maya Maguire, a veterinary epidemiologist, joins with her colleagues to track down the source of the Ebola virus before it can infiltrate America. Available at Ebola: A Microbial Mystery

Judy L. Mohr

In February 2026, Judy will be releasing a non-fiction book, Antagonistic Beats of a Story. This book focuses on the antagonist of the story and their role in driving the plot. https://judylmohr.com/books/antagonistic-beats-of-a-story/

Also, she will launch of a course on building sustainable writing routines. “The Writer in You” is a 10-week interactive online course, starting on January 9, 2026, but enrollments are open now. Full details: https://payhip.com/b/zYSRf

E.A. Mayes

Her second New Mexico Noir mystery will be released as an ebook on December 1, 2025 & in paperback on January 15, 2026. Gavilan Mesa: Stolen land, stolen custody and a stolen life. The only witnesses were some prairie dogs …

Laurie Buchanan

The next book in the Sean McPherson crime thriller, Innocuous, will be released in April 2027.

Activities

Susy Robison

Susy has been speaking about Halley and the Mystery of the Lost Girls, as well working on a sequel. She also shares information about how middle and high schools in southwestern PA can invite The Asservo Project educators to speak to their students about how to protect themselves from the human trafficking hustlers.

https://www.theasservoproject.org/.”

Erica Miner

Erica is taking a well-deserved breather after publishing 3 books in 3 years!

The Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series

M.A. Lee

In March 2026, she will promote the duology Perils in Lace and Hard Iron, which contains The Bride in Ghostly White, as well as The Dark Lord, both vintage Gothic. She grew up reading Victoria Holt and Dorothy Eden, which influenced these novels.

Short stories & Anthologies

L. L. Kaplan

Lisa recently had a short story published in an anthology. “The Hack Job” was featured in The Most Dangerous Games, edited by Deborah Lacy and released by Level Best Books. She’s also hard a work re-working a novel for a potential agent.

Cayce Osborne

Cayce had a story “Midnight Creeper” published in Better Off Dead Volume 1: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Unfortunately, the publisher, Down & Out Books, went out of business, but the editor is working to find a new home for the book. She’s hard at work on a new novel, though.

Milestones

Shoney Sien

Podcaster Shoney just hit 10,000 downloads in mid-November. For a newer podcast, that’s terrific! She continues to bring attention to little known, unsolved crimes. Here are a few episodes that involve missing & murdered indigenous people.

https://slocrime.buzzsprout.com/2387261/episodes/17917789-megan-trussell-suspicious-death

https://slocrime.buzzsprout.com/2387261/episodes/17957996-megan-trussell-part-2

https://slocrime.buzzsprout.com/2387261/episodes/17416925-lilly-jack-sullivan-missing-children

https://slocrime.buzzsprout.com/2387261/episodes/17682759-lilly-and-jack-sullivan-still-missing

My own news

After receiving far-too-many form rejections for my query, I had several agents request a full manuscript. Unfortunately, all turned down the project. One mentioned that though she loved the book, she felt the subject matter was too somber to break out in our current market. Upon reflection, I agreed with her. But I’ve never been able to write a mystery/thriller that isn’t extremely dark. My one attempt to write a murder-free mystery ended in disaster when a character (you guessed it) was murdered.

I started writing when my younger daughter was five weeks old. She’s a freshman in college now. I’ve written approximately thirteen manuscripts, queried three, had two professionally edited, and received lots and lots of positive, glowing feedback … and received approximately 180 rejections for those last two manuscripts. I don’t feel that self-publishing is right for me at this moment. But after two decades of serious writing, something had to change.

So I pivoted and decided to write a second YA romance. After reading dozens of YA romance/rom-coms, watching many romantic comedies, and writing four drafts, I’m getting ready for beta readers.

The book has elements of the romcom movies How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Sabrina, only with teen theater techies. The premise: When a teenage wallflower tries to transform herself to gain confidence, she attracts the attention of her long-time crush and his brother, who schemes to separate the two. But he doesn’t expect to either fall for her or have her support while caring for his mother, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s.

I’m also currently looking for authors (both published or not) to interview in 2026. I’m still mainly focusing on mystery/thriller writers. But considering my own genre switch, I’m open to sweet/non-spicy/mildly spicy romance/rom-com/romantic suspense writers as well. If that’s you, send me a DM and we’ll chat!

I am thankful for each and every one of you and wish all of you the very best this holiday season. See you in 2026!