Happiest of National Cat Day to you all!

For several years now, I’ve launched my Crazy Cat Lady cozy mysteries on this day, in honor of all the cats we have taken into our homes and hearts, as well as all those cats who are still looking. May they find them now.

I’ve featured lost and homeless cats in my books before, but Cat’s Play looks at a different tragedy that may come into a cat’s life, the death of their cohabitor. In this story, Winter Orange (Winnie, for short) arrives into Lynley’s care when her person is murdered. What Lynley never guessed when she took on the cat sitting assignment was that Winnie was psychic. Winnie, an opiniated little diva, communicated her whims and desires in no uncertain terms for Lynley to follow and obey, but then her clairvoyance comes in handy  however when life in the mansion take on a dangerous edge.

A clairvoyant cat and a covert cult place Lynley and her feline ward in the path of danger!

Eccentric recluse Roderick Payne has bequeathed his vast estate to little Friends of Felines cat shelter, but the gift comes with a catch. Friends of Felines must “find Payne’s killer,” but since the man died of natural causes, that will be a trick.

I remember the exact moment I came up with the idea for Cat’s Play. I was at the beach with my husband and the cats. It was evening, and there was a fire in the fireplace. I don’t know where the thought came from- it was just suddenly there.

It took time and work to move from a one-line synopsis to a fully fledged book. Winnie came first, because there is no story without a cat. Then the setting, a mansion based very loosely on a combination of Piggott’s Castle with its hilltop turret and the Pittock Mansion, a French Renaissance-style château in the West Hills of Portland, Oregon. The Masonic thread insinuated itself into the storyline from my own past, my father having been a Mason. The killer? Well, they arrived from a series of conclusions and illusions to be someone that surprised even me.

Book Notes:

The “All-Seeing Eye,” or Eye of Providence, while not designed by Masons, has been used by the group to represent the omniscience of God.

Potassium chloride is a drug specifically is used for patients with low levels of potassium in their blood. A potassium chloride overdose causes severe heart arrhythmias and mimics a heart attack.

The tri-color coat of the calico cat can be found in many cat breeds. Calicoes are rarely male.

Now for the drawing!

The winner of the a paperback copy of Cat’s Play, plus the winner’s choice of two other paperbacks from the Crazy Cat Lady Cozy Mystery series, plus a black cat pendant is….

Nancy S!

Nancy has been notified. Thanks to everyone else who took the time to enter the contest. You may not have won a free copy of Cat’s Play, but you can still buy it  here, both for Kindle and in print.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFMBSMKD