The Starlight Mint Murder Mystery

After suffering a serious on-duty injury, Los Angeles cop Mel O’Rourke leaves the force battered, both physically and mentally. Looking for a fresh start, she moves to a quiet mountain town and opens the Babbling Brook Inn. Excited for her new life, Mel decides to participate in the town’s holiday cookie contest, but her newfound joy crashes when one of her guests turns up dead in her lobby.

Mel is tempted to attribute the death to natural causes but when another guest dies, her cop sense kicks in.  The local Sheriff tells her to stand down, but with her own life in danger, Mel won’t back off.  With everything on the line, she has to push through her own fears to catch the killer before more bodies drop, perhaps even her own.

Wild Women Authors is pleased to welcome Marla White as she celebrates the release of The Starlight Mint Murder Mystery, the latest release in the Christmas Cookie series published by the Wild Rose Press. With Marla is Mel O’Rourke, owner/operator of the Babbling Brook Inn. As always, Mel will go first.

Good morning, Mel. Thanks for taking time out of your schedule at the B&B to talk with us. Let’s start with The Starlight Mint Murder Mystery. What’s it all about? It all started when I was forced to quit the LAPD.  My large, pushy, Irish family encouraged me to move to the tiny mountain village of Pine Cove for a stress-free life. Ha! After just a few weeks I’m already battling an unruly cookie recipe and finding a dead body in the lobby of my family’s bed and breakfast. If the victim’s death goes viral with some catchy social media hash tag like #BnBofDeath or #ARoomtoDie4 before I know how and why he died, the Babbling Brook could be closed before we even get started. As you can guess, I have more than my hands full, and I still can’t get Grandma O’Rourke’s cookies to come out in some sort of edible form!  

What made you choose running a B and B for a career? This is actually a sort of ‘second act’ for me after I couldn’t be a cop anymore.  I sat down with my family and started kicking around ideas.  My brother Liam was not helpful at all since all of his suggestions involved NASCAR, Grand Prix racing, or monster trucks.  My sister Vinnie is the one who suggested I move to a small, quiet town for a while.  As kids, we’d come to Pine Cove a few times to camp and hike so I paid it a visit, saw the Babbling Brook was for sale and fell in love with the old place.  It just felt right.

Knowing what you know now, if you had it to do over again, would you stick with being an hotelier or do something different? I’ve only been running the Inn for a little over a month so I’m not sure I know enough to say.  I’m kind of hoping finding a dead body in the lobby isn’t par for the course or I’m going to have to re-think my career move! 

          But if you mean would I stick to being a patrol cop if I could, there are a lot of days I really miss the excitement.  No two days were ever alike, that’s for sure.  It felt good to make a difference, but I’m discovering I’m helping people who come to the Inn in a different way.

What is your biggest fear? It used to be small spaces, but then I nearly fell to my death from the top of a building so, yeah, heights are kind of an issue for me now.  But I love rock climbing so I’m working on it.

Who is your favorite fictional character and why? Captain James Tiberius Kirk, because he is such a bad ass! 

What is the best piece of advice you ever received? To not let the fear of making mistakes stop me from trying to do something.  Most people expect you to screw up, so worst case scenario you’ll simply fulfill their expectation.

Thanks for this, Mel. We wish you well with the continued adventures at the Babbling Brook. Now it’s time to chat with Marla.

Which writer or character[s], from either books or movies, [or both] have had a major impact on your writing? Robert Parker and Jim Butcher have both opened the door to letting my inner smart-ass roam free across the pages of my books.

But the writer who had the most impact was Janet Evanovich.  I had the honor of meeting her when I worked for a production company that was adapting her amazing Stephanie Plum novels as a television series.  She talked about getting up at five in the morning to write every day.  Like most of us, I struggle to find time to write so I drag myself out of bed with the mantra that successful writers get up at five in the morning.  That’s the only way I could have finished my first novel. 

With regard to research, where did you start for this novel? Did that lead you down different paths, thereby changing the original concept? I started my research with what kind of poisons could cause a death to look like a heart attack and how can they be detected.  (I hope no one ever sees my computer’s search history!) Because the story is set in a small town, I had to shift the plot a little since there wouldn’t be a lab available to test the victim’s blood. Though I did do some hands on research before I even thought of writing a novel. 

Like Mel, I have a cookbook with family recipes, only mine came from my mother.  The Starlight Mint Surprise cookie was one of my favorites as a kid so last year I tried to follow her recipe and just like Mel, I never could get it quite right for some reason. I thought a failed cookie made a perfect jumping off point for a story about a character trying to figure out what to do with her life.

Oddly enough, it was listening to the Cozy Mystery Quartet podcast by four Wild Rose Press authors gave me the idea to write a cozy and the perfect setting – Idyllwild, (which stands in for my fictitious Pine Cove) a town I visit almost every year so no research was necessary. 

Tell us a bit about your publisher. How did you hear about them; what influenced you to submit to them? I first heard about Wild Rose Press when they published my friend, CJ Bahr a few years ago. I knew she loved working with her editor and the company as a whole.  When she showed me the information about the submission for the cookie book series at the exact moment I was having a fight with a cookie, it seemed like kismet. 

How is the submission process? The submission process was much easier than I made it – LOL.  If you read all the words on the guidelines, it’s pretty straightforward. Of course I didn’t, and it wasn’t until I had hand surgery that I read the part about including a synopsis. Getting that done with just one hand to work with was a trick. 

What is the turn-around time from date of query to date of release? The turn around process has been amazing!  I think it took my amazing editor, Kaycee John less than a week from the time she acknowledged my submission to offering me a contract.   After that, it all came together pretty fast. The cover art by Diana Carlile didn’t take long and was exactly the way I pictured it. All in all, eight months passed from query to release date. 

What are you reading right now? Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache series.

What's next for you? More adventures with Mel, Jackson and the characters from  “The Starlight Mint Surprise Murder” for starters.  I also have a mystery set in the world of equestrian eventing that I’m polishing up as we speak in hopes of finding a home for it.  My other passion is my three book series set in the completely different genre of grounded contemporary fantasy that involves the former Archangel Gabriel and his troublesome family including Michael and baby brother Lucifer. 

To learn more about Marla White and the stories she creates go to:

https://wordpress.com/view/marlaawhiteauthorpage.wordpress.com

Twitter: @TheScriptFixer

Instagram: marlaw825

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marla.white.5249

To purchase The Starlight Mint Murder Mystery, go to:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ih1s07

Apple: https://apple.co/2RwPhl6

Barnes & Noble: https://bit.ly/3euAArC

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/the-starlight-mint-surprise-murder-by-marla-a-white

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59063838-the-starlight-mint-surprise-murder

Books2Read: books2read.com/u/bMw0v8