Edith here, happy to have Lynn Cahoon back with a new cozy release, Tea Cups and Carnage! Take it away, Lynn.
Finding Your Tribe
Let me just start by thanking the Wicked Cozy Authors (especially Edith Maxwell) for letting me come visit today. With that pleasantry out of the way, I want to talk about 
I’ve been around a lot of tribes lately and have been thinking about the way the world works now. As a kid, I loved it when I found my first tribe in middle school. We could have been called The Three Girls who Loved to Read. We spent our lunch hours in the school library, unpacking new books, updating the card catalogue, and just enjoying being around so many books.
In high school, my tribe was the geeky band kids. We ate lunch together, hung out together, traveled together to band activities, and all read the mandatory book – The Lord of the Rings. I felt like part of a community. People who understood me and didn’t judge if I was just a little different than the popular kids. This group got me through a lot of bad years.
When I was in college, I never found that group or my tribe. I hooked up with my first husband sophomore year and he was possessive. I thought that was love. I was wrong.
In the workforce, I enjoyed the people I worked with, but kept my distance. As my son aged, I joined a local church and I found a new tribe. People who loved reading, theatre, and God. My husband was not amused.
After the divorce, I decided I wanted to play darts. When I hooked up with my new beau, he was deep into the dart world. (Yes, there really is such a thing.) This was fun and I became pretty good for a girl (not my words), but I felt like there was something missing.
When we moved to St. Louis, I found out I had breast cancer. Through the months of treatment, I did some soul searching to determine what I wanted to do with my life. Writing came back as the answer time after time.
I joined a local romance writer chapter (new tribe). Wrote a few books, finally got published in 2012 (publisher tribe and then off shoot tribe). And now I find myself re-visiting my tribes. I’ve joined Mystery Writers of America and have a great tribe in the Chicago area I’m just getting to know. I’ve met a lot of cozy authors and am building my tribe one conversation at a time. I have a tribe of readers who are wonderful to get to know and easy to talk to either on line or in person.
My new husband and I have a tribe of people who like to ride the trails out where we own property.
I’m surrounded by people who are part of one or more of my tribes and I’m loving the sense of community. As a young girl in rural Idaho, I always wanted to be part of something more. Now I am and I’m loving every moment of it.
Tribes are a big part of my writing as well. In the Tourist Trap mystery series, Jill and the South Cove gang are a community that cares about each other. A place where I’d love to live. In Tea Cups and Carnage, the tribe is made bigger with a new business being added to the fold.
Readers: So what about you? Do you have a tribe that gets you?
Tea Cups and Carnage
The quaint coastal town of South Cove, California, is all abuzz about the opening of a new specialty shop, Tea Hee. But as Coffee, Books, and More owner Jill Gardner is about to find out, there’s nothing cozy about murder . . . Shop owner Kathi Corbin says she came to South Cove to get away from her estranged family. But is she telling the truth? And did a sinister someone from her past follow her to South Cove? When a woman claiming to be Kathi’s sister starts making waves and a dead body is f
Lynn Cahoon is the author of the NYT and USA Today bestselling Tourist Trap cozy mystery series. Guidebook to Murder, book 1 of the series won the Reader’s Crown for Mystery Fiction in 2015. She’s also the author of the soon to be released, Cat Latimer series, with the first book, A STORY TO KILL, releasing in mass market paperback September 2016.She lives in a small town like the ones she loves to write about with her husband and two fur babies. Sign up for her newsletter at http://www.lynncahoon.com