Today, I am beyond thrilled to be introducing Julie Mulhern, an amazingly talented debut author whose new romantic mystery THE DEEP END is garnering much deserved praise and streaking up the charts. You see why when you read the excerpt.
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| Available from major retail booksellers and in ebook format from Amazon |
Swimming into the lifeless body of her husband’s mistress tends to
ruin a woman’s day, but becoming a murder suspect can ruin her whole life.
It’s 1974 and Ellison Russell’s life revolves around her daughter and her art. She’s long since stopped caring about her cheating husband, Henry, and the women with whom he entertains himself. That is, until she becomes a suspect in Madeline Harper’s death. The murder forces Ellison to confront her husband’s proclivities and his crimes—kinky sex, petty cruelties and blackmail.
As the body count approaches par on the seventh hole, Ellison knows she has to catch a killer. But with an interfering mother, an adoring father, a teenage daughter, and a cadre of well-meaning friends demanding her attention, can Ellison find the killer before he finds her?
Excerpt
June, 1974
Kansas City, Missouri
My morning swim doesn’t usually involve corpses. If it
did, I’d give up swimming for something less stressful, like coaxing cobras out
of baskets or my mother out of bed before ten.
Watching the sun rise over the seventh green is often the
best part of my day. I dive into the pool while the water is still inky. When
the light has changed from deepest indigo to lavender, I break my stroke, tread
water and admire the sky as it bleeds from gold to yellow to pink. It’s a
ritual, a metaphorical cleansing, a moment of stolen peace.
After all, I have a teenage
daughter, a mother with strong opinions, a Weimaraner named Max who plots to
take over our house on his path toward world domination, and a husband. Much as
I’d like to, I can’t leave him out.
I kicked off my Dr. Scholl’s, tossed my husband’s
button-down onto a deck chair, dove into the dark water and gasped at the
sudden, encompassing cold. That shock of chilly water against my skin is better
than coffee when it comes to waking up. Maybe not better. Faster.
My legs kicked, my arms sliced and I settled into the
comforting rhythm of the Australian crawl. My fingers knifed through the water,
anticipating the smooth parting of liquid. They found fabric and the horrific
touch of cold flesh.
“Part
mystery, part women’s fiction, part poetry, Mulhern’s debut, The Deep
End, will draw you in with the first sentence and entrance you until the
last. An engaging whodunit that kept me guessing until the end!” – Tracy Weber,
Author of the Downward Dog Mysteries
Julie Mulhern is a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean--and she's got an active imagination. Truth is--she's an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions. She is a 2014 Golden Heart® Finalist. The Deep End is her first mystery and is the winner of The Sheila Award.
Find Julie here:
E.E.: Where do you write and how often?
Julie: Remember Murder She Wrote and
the shots of Jessica Fletcher pounding away at the typewriter on her kitchen
table? I too write at the kitchen table (laptop not a Royal typewriter). I do
it because it is close to the coffee-maker. I get up between four and five
every morning to write so a steady stream of caffeine is essential.
E.E.: Tea or coffee?
Julie: See above. Coffee with a
healthy (okay, unhealthy) dose of cream.
E.E.: Why the 1970s?
Julie: Part nostalgia—I was a kid of
the seventies and remember by childhood through a rose-colored haze. Part
fascination with the roles that women play in society and decades when those
roles change dramatically (I’d love to set a book in the 1920s). Oh, and I also
like the music (not so much disco).
E.E.: Do you listen to music while you write?
Julie: No, but I listen to music
while I think about writing. When I’m
thinking about a book for the Country
Club Murders I listen to so much seventies music that my kids carry earplugs.
Sometimes a song will slip into a book. In Guaranteed
to Bleed, which releases in October, the heroine and her daughter have an
argument and on the radio plays The Bitch
is Back.
E.E.: What would we find in your heroine’s purse?
Julie: Car
keys—two of them—one for the ignition and one for the trunk. Also Kleenex, lip
balm, a comb, a sketchbook, pencils, three separate single earrings, a
checkbook, a billfold and house keys.
E.E.: What’s the first thing you do when you finish
a book?
Julie: Stretch
the crick out my neck then start the next one. Seriously. By the time I finish
a book, I am so sick of it I can’t stand it. Meanwhile, there’s been this
bright, shiny idea waiting for my attention. I hop in feet first. The honeymoon
lasts for the first ten chapters. That’s when the next shiny idea starts
begging for attention.
E.E.: What’s next for you?
Julie: A Haunting Desire, my RWA Golden Heart book, will release from Entangled Select in August. Guaranteed to Bleed, published by Henery Press will release October 6th. Right now I’m writing, A Haunting Need, book two in the Haunting series. By late May, I’ll begin the third mystery in Country Club Murders. Lots of early mornings and lots of coffee!
Today, Julie is giving away an autographed copy of her debut novel, THE DEEP END. All you have to do is comment and enter the raffle.
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