Soft Serve Sleighing (Coffee & Cream Café Mysteries) by Lena Gregory
About Soft Serve Sleighing
Soft Serve Sleighing (Coffee & Cream Café Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery
5th in Series
Setting – Long Island, NY
Publisher : Gemma Halliday Publishing
(January 28, 2025)
Number of Pages - 226
Kindle ASIN : B0DLHPWDNT
From author Lena Gregory comes a delightfully delicious cozy mystery...
With most of Eastern Long Island closed down for a blizzard, Danika Delaney and her friends are holed up in her old fashioned malt shop, the Coffee & Cream Café, with ice cream and hot chocolate. However, their plans to wait out the storm in cozy company are interrupted when a popular YouTuber and her two companions show up at the door—they've been trapped by the storm, and Dani generously offers to serve them breakfast. But her generosity isn't rewarded in kind, as the reviewer then tries to extort money from Dani in exchange for a good review! When the storm finally clears, Dani is happy to have seen the last of them.
Or so she thought.
Dani and her friends decide to go sleigh riding the morning after the storm clears, but instead of a winter wonderland, they find the extorting YouTuber...dead! To make matters worse, Dani suddenly finds herself accused of the woman's murder. Intent on restoring her reputation, Dani sets out to prove she didn’t do it. This is one storm she's not sure she can weather...
About Lena Gregory
Lena Gregory is the author of the Bay Island Psychic Mysteries, which take place on a small island between the north and south forks of Long Island, New York, the All-Day Breakfast Café Mysteries, which are set on the outskirts of Florida’s Ocala National Forest, the Mini-Meadows Mysteries, set in a community of tiny homes in Central Florida, and the Coffee & Cream Café Mysteries, which take place in a small town on the south shore of eastern Long Island, New York.
Lena grew up in a small town on the south shore of eastern Long Island, but she recently traded in cold, damp, gray winters for the warmth and sunshine of central Florida, where she now lives with her husband, three kids, son-in-law, and four dogs. Her hobbies include spending time with family, reading, and walking. Her love for writing developed when her youngest son was born and didn’t sleep through the night. She works full-time as a writer and a freelance editor and is a member of Sisters in Crime.
Interview:
Where are you from?I’m
originally from a small town on the south shore of eastern Long Island, but
about five years ago, I traded in cold gray winters for the (usually) warm
sunny ones in Central Florida.
Tell us your latest news?I’ve just released the fifth book in my Coffee & Cream Café Mystery series, Soft Serve Sleighing. And I am currently writing the sixth book in the series, tentatively titled Rocky Road to Murder.
When and why did you begin writing?When my youngest son, who is now fourteen, was born, he didn’t sleep through the night. Since my daughter was seven before she started sleeping through the night, I figured I was in for a lot of years of sleepless nights, which was fine by me because I rarely sleep anyway. I’ve always loved reading, but with all those nights looming ahead of me, I decided to give writing a try. I knew nothing about the writing process, didn’t own a computer, didn’t know what Microsoft Word was, didn’t know how to send an email…never mind using track changes for editing. But I wanted to write, so I set up a loose-leaf binder and began my first novel by hand.
Once my husband realized I was serious about writing a novel, he set me up an office and got me a computer. One of my best friends taught me how to work Microsoft Word, and I took off from there, researching everything I could get my hands on about the writing process.
When did you first consider yourself a writer? After my first cozy mystery, Death at First Sight, was published with Berkley, even though I’d had a handful of stories published by then, I finally started to consider myself a writer.
What inspired you to write your first book? My first cozy mystery series, Death at First Sight, was inspired by a debate over dinner one night about whether or not ghosts were real. I thought it would be fun to have one character who firmly believes, one character who absolutely does not believe, and the main character caught somewhere in the middle.
Do you have a specific writing style?I started out as a pantser. I’d just sit down and write whatever came to mind. I loved the twists and turns in the plot and the surprises that would inevitably pop up. The only problem was, I sometimes wrote myself into a corner that way. And forget word count. My first book came in at almost a hundred thousand words! Now, I’d have to say I’m a hybrid. I do still enjoy writing whatever comes to mind, but now I have at least a rough outline of the basic story.
How did you come up with the title? I sometimes struggle to come up with titles. I find it easier to write a 65,000-word novel than to title it, and my editors often end up choosing the titles. But the title of my newest release, Soft Serve Sleighing, actually just came to me out of the blue and sounded fun.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp? The underlying message in most of my novels is friendship. No matter what my characters endure, they always have a small group of loyal friends who see them through no matter what.
What would you like my readers to know? I enjoy creating stories that are fun and a bit suspenseful. If your readers decide to give them a try, I hope they enjoy them!
Thank you so much for having me! I’ve enjoyed visiting.
Author Links- Newsletter:http://lenagregory.us12.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=9765d0711ed4fab4fa31b16ac&id=49d42335d1.
- Website:http://www.lenagregory.com/
- Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/lena.gregory.986
- Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/Lena.Gregory.Author/?fref=ts
- Twitter:https://twitter.com/LenaGregory03
- Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14956514.Lena_Gregory?from_search=true
- Pinterest:https://www.pinterest.com/lenagregoryauth/
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Thank you so much for having me and for sharing the release of Soft Serve Sleighing!
ReplyDeleteyw! Good luck with your release
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