An Interview with Heather Weidner by E. B. Davis

 

Excitement is in the air as everyone in Mermaid Bay is preparing for the Christmas season. This year promises to be more dazzling than ever when the business council sponsors a competition for the town’s lucrative summer fireworks contract. The quaint little beach town is ready to be wowed with choreographed shows and drone action that light up the night sky.

Instead of goodwill and sparkles, two of the teams take the competition to new lows with corporate espionage, feuds, and sabotage, and Jade and her team at ‘Tis the Season are ground zero for all the explosive action. When one of the competitors turns up murdered near Jade’s shop, she has to solve the mystery before the holidays are ruined.

Amazon.com

 

A Tisket A Tasket Not Another Casket is the third book in Heather Weidner’s Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe mystery series. There’s an Amazon limited-time deal on audio memberships. If you join, the audio version of this book is available for 99 cents. The book’s release date is January 14.

 

The action takes place in the last few weeks before Christmas. Big sales days for main character Jade Hicks’s ‘Tis the Season Christmas shop. To enhance the holiday sales, Mermaid Bay offers competitions to three fireworks companies on the weekends in December to vie for Memorial Day and Fourth of July contracts. Lighting display enthusiasts and bus tours bring shoppers, adding to the selling season. But in amongst the sales, murder and mayhem plague the town. The characters carry the stress. Readers enjoy the cozy elements of lit fireplaces, good food, and warm relationships.

 

Please stop by and give WWK blogger Heather Weidner a wave!             E. B. Davis   

 

At what age did Jade move to Mermaid Bay? Did she go to high school there? She was in middle school when her parents were killed in a tragic car wreck, and she moved in with her grandmother. She left for college and a job in Richmond but returned when her grandmother was ill.

 

She took over her grandmother’s Christmas Shop, ‘Tis the Season three years ago. The shop is in a converted beach cottage, which implies a small venue. But she fits over three-hundred decorated Christmas trees in the shop and has a multipurpose room used for special events like local craft vendors sales.

·      Did she add on to the cottage? She did. She expanded the original store and added more space for Christmas tree displays and holiday events.

·      Did she also inherit her house? Jade was fortunate to inherit the store and the empty lot next door and her beach bungalow. When she took over, she did some renovations, and she added the online sales to help her bottom line during months when there are fewer tourists.

 

Two of the three fireworks companies are run by families that are competitive and contemptuous rivals. The younger male family members spy and goad trying to top the other. Is the pyrotechnics industry small and competitive? Is it highly regulated by state? The industry is heavily regulated (along with the drone use). I took some liberties to give me some characters who might not always follow the rules.

 

Do the companies develop their own ways to set off fireworks? Wouldn’t they patent their gadgets to protect their proprietary rights so no one else can use them or have to pay to do so? The industry has changed over the years and involves a lot of science and technology. I took some liberties with some smaller companies that might still use some of the ways of the past.

 

Chloe, Jade’s French bulldog, often spars with a stray cat she took in named Neville, the Devil Cat, now Aunt Lorelei’s companion.

·      How did the animals come by their names? I’ve always liked the name Chloe, and I seemed perfect for a prima donna French bulldog. During the pandemic, I followed the antics of a lot of cute animals on Instagram, and one was an adorable Schnauzer who was tormented by the live-in cat, Neville the Devil. It sounded like the perfect name for my spunky tuxedo cat.

·      Don’t they knock over trees or mess with the ornaments when they chase each other? They have been known to cause a ruckus in the store. Jade tries to keep Chloe corralled when Neville is there, so she doesn’t instigate him. Jade was also grateful that her aunt asked to adopt Neville, and now he’s living his best life in her condo.

·      Does Neville climb the trees? He hasn’t so far as Jade knows. He’s well-behaved and likes to pop out among the trees to startle the shoppers.

 

Jade’s Aunt Lorelei helps in the shop. Are the Mermaid Bay family from her mother or father’s side? Why does she work in the shop when she financially doesn’t have to do so? Lorelei is Jade’s father’s sister. She’s retired and doesn’t have to work, but she does to keep an eye on Jade. Plus, it helps Lorelei stay in the thick of Mermaid Bay’s gossip grapevine, and she finds that hard to resist.

 

Are electrical matches called ignitors in the industry? They are. During my research, I found that the terms seem to be used interchangeably even though how the devices function can be different.

 

When a Mermaid Bay gossip blog appears, the author is anonymous. To find out where the blogger is located, Jade goes to Domain.com and WhoIsThis.com. I went to those sites to find WWK. Evidently, if you set up on a large blogging domain like Blogspot.com, individual blogs hosted by this site aren’t listed. Is there a trick to finding out where a blogger is located? I took some liberties with the search sites. I needed a way for Jade to uncover that someone in Mermaid Bay had registered the site.

 

Jade is dating the sheriff, Nick. Unlike in many other cozies, Nick doesn’t seem to have any problems with Jade investigating. Why not? Nick grew up with Jade, and he’s known her for a long time. He also knows that she’s spunky and strong-willed and would still poke her nose in his investigations. They seem to have developed a rhythm where he shares scraps of information, and she is also able to help him since she interacts with so many of the townies and tourists.

Jade’s best friend Amy owns the town’s bookstore. She’s from Massachusetts. How did she get to Mermaid Bay? Amy’s prickly aunt Emory Jessup owned Mermaid Books, but she was brutally murdered in Sticks and Stones and a Bag of Bones. Instead of closing the store when she inherited it, Amy decided to move south and try her hand as a bookstore owner.

 

Jade ends up getting a confession from the killer and discovers the identity of the gossip blogger. But the killer tried to attack her after realizing she taped his confession. How did the sheriff get the confession? How did Jade defend herself? Jade always shares any information that she finds with Nick. By the end of the story, the killer is paranoid and fearful that Jade has leaked the information to the sheriff. The killer has an associate, and there’s a fear that the police know the secrets. Jade was at the store at the time of the attack, and she had to use what was handy in the office to thwart the killer.

 

Jade also solves the mystery of the local gossip blogger that has everyone in town intrigued. And this time she found out that the secret was hiding in plain sight.

 

What’s next for Jade, Nick, and Mermaid Bay? In Life is But a Scream (Book 4), a team of paranormal researchers come to town to document some sightings in and around the historic triangle (Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown). While Jade and Amy are observing the researchers in action, they encounter a very real body and a very real murder.

 

How do you balance writing two mystery series? Are they both with the same publisher? I have two series with Level Best Books, the Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries and the Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe Mysteries. I also have another series, The Pearly Girls Mysteries that launches this March with Keylight Books, an imprint of Turner Publishing. I only work on one book at a time.  I also keep a detailed character list for each series, so that I keep the details organized.