An Intimate Murder by Stacy Verdick Case Excerpt, Giveaway & Interview

An Intimate Murder

by Stacy Verdick Case

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BLURB:

A Catherine O'Brien Mystery.

When Jonathan and Susan Luther are murdered in their home, St. Paul homicide detective Catherine O'Brien and her partner Louise discover this isn't the first time the Luther family has been visited by tragedy. Is it a case of bad family luck or is there something more?

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Excerpt:

The world as a whole is a strange place, and the people who inhabit this world are even stranger. The Luther’s neighbors proved to be the strangest I’d encountered in ten years of law enforcement. Considering the whackos and ice-blooded murders I’d run into, these neighbors could be proud of their over achieving ways.

The street looked benign, an affluent tree lined parkway with a BMW or Mercedes in every other driveway. The neighbor across the street had a pickup truck in their drive, but it turned out to be the yard man’s, who happened to be cleaning up the left behinds from the oak and maple fall deposits. Pretty to look at until they rotted into brown slime piles on your grass.

We questioned every neighbor on the block but no one heard the gunshots. They lived behind triple pane glass where the temperature was never too hot or too cold. Only one had dared to steal a glance out their insulated glass when an older car, rusted in too many places and not carrying the pedigree of a classic automobile, sped down the street.

“I knew right away they were up to no good.” Bernice Leigh, who claimed a relation to Janet Leigh, rocked on the edge of her tufted, chintz ottoman.

“Well maybe not right away.” She rolled her hand dramatically in the air. “At first I thought the car could belong to one of the boy’s friends who visit the Luther’s from time to time.”

“Did you know the Luther’s very well?” Louise nibbled the edge of a Ginger Thin Mrs. Leigh had fanned out on a china plate, and placed on the coffee table in front of us.

Bernice Leigh shook her head with such force that her hair, which had been so obviously a wig, dislodged itself and canted to one side. Bernice righted the wig without as much as a second thought.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Stacy Verdick Case was born in Willmar, Minnesota.  After a brief stint as a military brat, where she lived in Fort Sill Oklahoma and Fort Campbell, Kentucky, her family moved back to Minnesota.

Stacy has written all her life earning a High School Writer Award and a Daphne Du Mauier Award for excellence in Mainstream Mystery/Suspense.

Stacy currently lives in a suburb of St. Paul with her husband of twenty-years, her five-year-old daughter, and their two cats.

An Intimate Murder is the third book in the Catherine O’Brien series.

Interview

Where are you from?  The glorious state of Minnesota! I was born here in a small town called Willmar. I was a military brat growing up so we moved around quite a bit, but ultimately my family move back here. I always thought after I graduated I would move to New York but I met and married a Minnesota boy who somehow convinced this City girl to move to the country. Now I cope with traffic jams caused by stray cows and waking up to find wild animals staring in my deck doors.

Tell us your latest news? My lastest release is An Intimate Murder. It’s the third book in the Catherine O’Brien mystery series.  Like the previous two books An Intimate Murder is a fun, fast-paced mystery with more than a few laughs.

When and why did you begin writing? I don’t remember a time I didn’t write. I think I’m just a natural born story teller. I used to carry a red, spiral bound notebook with me everywhere I went. It was my version of a security blanket.  I think I write to retreat from the world and to sort things out.  A lot of times things I’m struggling to understand will make it onto the page, but not always into a book. I’ve told people that I really don’t know how I feel until I write it down and sometimes it surprises me.

When did you first consider yourself a writer? I’ve always considered myself a writer. It’s always been part of my identity. However, it was a struggle coming to terms with being an “author”.  For some reason I couldn’t reconcile the two. Even after my first book came out I felt like a writer and not an author. It wasn’t until bloggers started writing Author Stacy Verdick Case on everything that I was like, “Okay, yeah that’s what I am now.”

What inspired you to write your first book? The first book in the Catherine O’Brein series was again one of those I need catharsis moments. I was working for someone who stole a lot of money from me and I wanted to kill him. So I did. On paper. It was a lot healthier than actually hunting down this person and offing him. I used to feel uncomfortable with the notion that I could harbor homicidal tendencies until I met a criminal profiler and she told me the number one reason women kill is money. Take my man and you might get away with it but take my money and WATCH YOUR BACK!

What would you like my readers to know?  That stepping into Catherine’s world is a lot of fun. I write to entertain readers and allow them to have some fun for a while. I feel like if reading An Intimate Murder make you smile, or better yet laugh, at the end of a hard day then I’ve accomplished my goals.

Thank you so much to Deal Sharing Aunt and your readers for letting me come into your world for a brief time. I am so grateful to me here.

Visit Stacy on the web:

www.StacyVerdickCase.com

Twitter @SVerdickCase

https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Grand-Murder/265021126858004

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5094848.Stacy_Verdick_Case

Stacy will award a $50 Barnes and Noble GC to one winner, and a signed ARC of An Intimate Murder (US only) to two randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during this tour and her standard tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway