Edith/Maddie here, really happy to welcome our friend Cheryl Hollon back to the Wickeds. She has new book, a first in a new series, out, and I just picked mine up from my local indy bookstore! About Still Knife Painting:
Miranda Trent has set up a sweet life in a scenic corner of Appalachia—until she stumbles across the trail of a killer . . .
After inheriting her uncle’s Red River Gorge homestead in Eastern Kentucky—smack dab in the middle of the Daniel Boone National Forest—Miranda comes up with a perfect business plan for summer tourists: pairing outdoor painting classes with sips of local moonshine, followed by a mouthwatering sampler of the best in southern cooking.
To Miranda’s delight, Paint & Shine is a total success—until someone kills the cook. As the town’s outsider, suspicion naturally falls on Miranda. Murdering the best biscuit baker of Red River Gorge is a high crime in these parts. Miranda will have to prove her innocence before she’s moved from farmhouse to jail cell faster than she can say “white lightning” . . .
Take it away, Cheryl.
I’m so pleased to be welcomed by the Wickeds to launch STILL KNIFE PAINTING, the first book in the Paint & Shine Mysteries. This new series shares a book birthday with three of these fabulous ladies: Edith Maxwell/Maddie Day, Liz Mugavero/Cate Conte, and Barbara Ross.
My brand-new series is set in eastern Kentucky where my parents and most of my relations settled after immigrating from Ireland and Scotland in the early 1700s. Our earliest records indicate that our ancestor took a ship from Donegal as an indentured servant.
I was born in a tiny two-room hospital and then my parents moved to Dayton, Ohio, to find employment. To my great good fortune, I spent most summers at my Grandma and Grandpa’s neat and homey farmhouse. I ran as wild as a fawn among the grassy fields, towering cornstalks, and loamy gardens.
They owned a small grocery and post office where they kept not only baby chicks, but an entire glass case of penny candy. They sold more candy than anything else. It was wonderful to hide underneath the feed bins where it was shady and cool. I would listen to everyone gossip as they picked up their mail and staple supplies.
My grandma included me in all her housekeeping tasks. I learned how to peel potatoes, string beans, shuck corn, crochet, make lye soap, and use a treadle sewing machine. My grandpa let me tag along when he fed the pigs, milked the cow, picked blackberries, and weed the gardens. I loved every minute.
Readers: Do you have special memories of your grandparents’ house?
I’m offering a #GIVEAWAY plus #SWAG. You’ll be entering for a chance at the following package.
It contains two paper coasters, a pad of sticky notes, a bookmark, and a signed advanced reader’s edition of STILL KNIFE PAINTING (Paint & Shine Mystery Book #1). Leave a comment by midnight July 4 for the chance to win everything pictured. This giveaway is limited to U.S. residents. (Sorry, but complicated trips to the Post Office aren’t happening.) Good luck!
STILL KNIFE PAINIING released on June 30, 2020, and is available for you to order online at Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and in your favorite local bookstores using IndieBound. It is published by Kensington Books. If budget is tight, please ask your library to order it.
Cheryl Hollon is also the author of the Webb’s Glass Shop Mysteries. She writes full-time after an engineering career designing and installing military flight simulators in England, Wales, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and India. Living her dream, she combines a love of writing with a passion for creating art. Cheryl is Past President of the Florida Gulf Coast Sisters in Crime, a member of Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. Cheryl and her husband live in downtown St. Petersburg, FL.
Visit Cheryl and her books at her Website, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.