Meddling With Murder
by Ellie Campbell
Genre – Cozy Mystery
Date of Release 9th April 2016
Number of Pages 300
Not up on Amazon yet.
Synopsis
Crouch End Confidential, the agency started by housewife and mother, Cathy O’Farrell, with ex-cleaner, Pimple is failing badly. Hardly surprising when Cathy’s too soft-hearted to charge their only clients, little old ladies seeking lost pets and a school kid searching for his stolen bike.A new case involving a teenager in possession of an unexplained Glock pistol promises to change all that. Quickly Cathy’s deep in waters over her head, forced with hilarious results to pose as a mathematics tutor, a subject of which she’s truly clueless. There’s also the tricky situation of best friend and new mother Rosa hiring her to investigate her fiancé, Alec, plus the mysterious sabotage of Cathy’s friends’ cycle shop and a gang of yobbos dealing drugs at her children’s primary school.Worst of all, an ill-fated trip to rural Norfolk has Cathy’s husband, Declan, intent on buying a post office and transplanting the family to safer climes, threatening to tear Cathy permanently from her beloved North London home.Pretty soon Cathy’s risking her friendships, her marriage and even her life untangling all these messes. But that’s what you get for meddling in murder…
About The Author –
Ellie Campbell is a pseudonym for sister writing team, Pam Burks and Lorraine Campbell. Running wild as tomboys in Scotland, playing imagination games, they couldn’t dream that one day they’d co-author novels despite an ocean between them. From boring clerical jobs in London to a varied life of backpacking and adventure travel, both started almost accidentally as short story writers, Lorraine when working in publishing, Pam as a fun hobby while an at-home mother of three.
By the time each had 70 short stories published internationally, Pam was settled in Surrey, England, and Lorraine had finally taken root in Boulder, Colorado. Long telephone chats about life and fiction led to their current collaboration. They have produced five acclaimed novels – How To Survive Your Sisters, When Good Friends Go Bad, Looking For La La, To Catch A Creeper and Million Dollar Question. They write contemporary women’s fiction laced with humour, romance, and mystery.
When not hunched over computers, Lorraine, a certified ROTH ‘horse whisperer’, can usually be found messing about with her four rescue horses and Pam on a fund raising bike ride, madly cycling over mountains to Paris, Barcelona or Gibraltar on the back of her husband’s bone-shaking tandem.
Author Links:
Webpage: http://chicklitsisters.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ecampbellbooks
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/ecampbellbooks
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/settings/authors#authors-search Ellie Campbell
Purchase Link:
Interview
Where are you from?
We were born in Inverness and raised mostly in Edinburgh,
Scotland – total tomboys, we might add.
Our father was Scottish and our mother English although we’d never admit
it because of course in all our games and early history classes, the English
were the enemy! We spent our childhood summers in the mystical Isle of Skye,
running through the heather, fishing for crabs and daring each other to enter
the frigid ocean. We moved as pre-teens
to the South of England where we became horse-crazed stable brats and after
high school ended up working in London.
We now live in England and the USA but consider ourselves Scottish
through and through. There’s nothing
like taking a Scottish lass out of Scotland to turn her into a confirmed patriot.
Tell us your latest
news?
Besides Meddling With Murder being published on April 9th,
our entire family is flying over to visit Colorado and we’re throwing a huge
party. (Publication day also happens to
be Lorraine’s birthday.) And Lorraine has just signed up for a 17 day horse
riding trek in Mongolia during August which will involve six-hour days
traveling through remote forests and steppes. With camping (ugh.)
Meanwhile Pam will be “Riding the Alps” in July – in other
words puffing away on the back of a tandem bicycle while her husband on the
front guides a group of fearless cyclists on a five-day 424-mile alpine route
involving 45,000 feet of climbing and numerous hairpin bends. She usually closes her eyes at those
points! After that she’s booked to tour
around Russia, which she has yet to plan. All she knows is she’s starting in
Finland and ending in Finland.
When and why did you
begin writing?
Lorraine: I loved
writing but in the early days it took the form of letters. Then I started working for a literary agent
who encouraged me to start short fiction.
But I think it was always in the blood.
I was a total bookworm, devouring several books a week. I even used to
dream entire novels that I’d forget when I woke up. Pam and I started several
books and plays together when we were children though not sure we ever finished
them.
Pam: I enjoyed writing
essays at school and was thrilled but totally shocked when my English teacher
once read out one of them to my class and they all clapped. Like Lorraine, I
also did a lot of letter writing, especially as I went backpacking for a few
years and that was the only real way of keeping in touch with family and
friends. I started joining writing
groups in my early twenties and began with poetry – I still have notebooks of
poems that I wrote back then, but thankfully they’ll never see the light of
day. I began writing short fiction a bit
later than Lorraine (well she is older than me – ha – so it makes sense) and
she was the first person I rang when I sold my first story.
When did you first
consider yourself a writer?
Lorraine: When I sold my first short story to Woman magazine
in the UK. Or maybe the second. The first could have been a fluke.
Pam: Same as Lorraine.
The second person I told when my first short story was published was a
very accomplished writer friend of mine – who’d won big prizes in journalism.
He said, tongue in cheek, that I had to wait to sell the next piece before I
could call myself a writer.
What inspired you to
write your first book?
It was a natural progression to tackle a longer piece of
fiction after years of short stories.
And it so happened both of us wanted to write a book about sisters,
being the youngest two of four and knowing a lot about the subject. With our shared history and similar outlook,
it was the perfect project for our first collaboration.
Do you have a
specific writing style?
Not exactly, our writing has changed somewhat as we
develop. But all our books seem to have
some kind of a mystery or at least dramatic twist or two that we hope will keep
the reader guessing. And they all have
humor in them, and things that interest us like female friendships besides
issues like alcoholism, bigamy, sibling rivalry, power struggles within
marriages. We like romance but we like
to stay grounded in reality and real life is often hilarious. Having said that, the three books that
comprise the Crouch End Confidential series, Looking For La La, To Catch A
Creeper and now our latest, Meddling With Murder, are in the first person, more
in the cozy mystery genre and definitely have more of the comedy caper
element. Cathy O’Farrell is quite an exaggerated
outrageous character and her antics don’t exactly follow a predictable or
reasonable path.
How did you come up
with the title?
We wanted to keep the alliteration that we had in Looking
For La La and To Catch A Creeper. We
liked Meddling With Murder because Cathy’s always getting caught up in things
that lead to a killer, much to her husband Declan’s dismay.
Is there a message in
your novel that you want readers to grasp?
We could probably come up with something, but
intentionally? No. Unless it’s something like. ‘If you’re a
blabbermouth by nature, it’s probably a bad idea to start a confidential agency
that forces you to keep secrets.’ Or,
‘Beware the best friend who asks you to trail her fiancé?’ Or even, “Thank goodness we’re not teenagers
in today’s confusing world.’
What would you like
my readers to know?
That we love hearing from our readers and are thrilled when
people like our work and fans stay in touch. We’re never too busy to chat.
Thank you so much Deal Sharing Aunt. So glad that you joined in the tour! All the best and have a great week - Pam and Lorraine (Ellie Campbell)
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