It is always a pleasure to welcome back mystery author Lauren Carr to Omnimystery News.
Lauren has a new Mac Faraday mystery on the bookshelves, Open Season for Murder (Acorn Book Services; June 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats). And, we have learned, she's off on a cruise this week! But before she leaves, she submitted this guest post to us, one she titles, "Vacations Can Be Murder".
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Photo provided courtesy of
Lauren Carr
With Spring being in the air and pollen attacking my sinuses, I have realized that the time has come to start planning my summer vacation. I'm leaving on a cruise this week! My first one! The Bahamas. I've signed up for the behind the scenes ship tour and of course I will be looking for all the best place to hide — and find — bodies!
As a mystery writer, I can suggest that there are certain people you should not ask to plan your vacation. Quite simply, surely someone will end up dead.
Take Agatha Christie. She sent all of her detectives on vacations and not one of them got away without a dead body turning up in their suitcase. In Murder on the Orient Express, Hercule Poirot took a trip on a train and ended up stranded in a snowstorm with a dead body and a car full of murder suspects.
In Death on the Nile, Agatha sends Poirot on a cruise on the Nile. Maybe she was trying to make up for fiasco on the train trip, and it happened again. Someone ended up dead and Poirot had to go to work. (I hate it when I go on vacation and end up having to work, don't you?)
And then there was that tour group that Agatha sent up to a mountain top retreat in And Then There Was None. We had more than one dead body on that trip with a mysterious killer plucking off the vacationers one by one. That travel brochure wasn't lying when it said "exciting" and "one to remember" … if you live through it.
You would think after what her friend Hercule Poirot went through that Jane Marple would have told Agatha Christie, "Thanks, but no thanks" when she offered to send her on A Caribbean Mystery. Next thing you know, people are getting hit on the head and being shot.
I don't think it is so much Agatha Christie as it is mystery writers in general. Our detectives need vacations and nothing is more fun than having a dead body wash ashore at the beach. Our protagonists are not the type to quietly drink margaritas on the beach. If they were, would you want to read about them?
The fact of the matter is that mystery writers are incapable of planning vacations without someone, somewhere, somehow, getting shot, stabbed, poisoned, hit over the head, or thrown off a cliff or tall building or bridge. That's why my husband insists on planning our vacations. The worst thing that can happen on his vacations is that we can die from boredom that comes from knowing that everyone is going to get home alive. What fun is there in that?
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Lauren Carr is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She also passes on what she has learned in her years of writing and publishing by conducting workshops and teaching in community education classes.
The owner of Acorn Book Services, Lauren is also a publishing manager, consultant, editor, cover and layout designer, and marketing agent for independent authors. This year, several books, over a variety of genre, written by independent authors will be released through the management of Acorn Book Services, which is currently accepting submissions. Visit the Acorn Book Services website for more information.
Lauren lives with her husband, son, and three dogs on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at MysteryLady.net and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Open Season for Murder by Lauren Carr
A Mac Faraday Mystery
Publisher: Acorn Book Services
"It's Ashton. Robin, it's me, Ashton."
Spring is in the air. In Deep Creek Lake, the burst of blossoms on the trees has the effect of a starting pistol in the race to get the resort area ready in time for the seasonal residents return to Spencer, Maryland.
This year, the Spencer Inn, Mac Faraday's five-star resort, has the added duty of preparing for the Diablo Ball, an annual benefit event that used to kick off Deep Creek Lake's summer season. The exclusive gala has drawn in A-listers from across the country — including suspects and witnesses connected to Ashton Piedmont, a young woman who had disappeared while skinny dipping in Deep Creek Lake five years earlier — days after the last Diablo Ball.
Intrigued by a mysterious phone call from a young woman claiming to be Ashton, retired homicide detective Mac Faraday can't resist diving head first into the cold case. But he's not the only one. Someone behind the scenes has gone to a lot of trouble to bring Ashton Piedmont's friends and enemies to the Diablo Ball — which promises to be a gala event to die for!
— Open Season for Murder by Lauren Carr
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