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2024 New Releases for SWW Authors #1

Kris Bock (aka Chris Eboch), Lisa Haneberg, Parris Afton Bonds, Carol H. March, and Larry Kilham represent the diverse membership of SouthWest Writers (SWW) with books published in a variety of genres in 2024. Their new releases couldn’t fit in this year’s interview schedule, but look for 2025 interviews or updates for some of these authors.

A list of interviewed SWW authors with 2024 releases is included at the end of this post.


Someone Rotten Riding the Rails: Female Sleuth Cozy Mysteries (The Accidental Detective Book 6, Tule Publishing, January 2024) by Kris Bock. Former war correspondent Kate Tessler has solved multiple murders since returning to her Arizona hometown. Now the FBI needs Kate’s help. Two Russian crime families have rented a private historic train to the Grand Canyon for their children’s wedding. To infiltrate the train, Kate poses as a reporter to cover the society wedding, and her crew of misfits pose as train staff. Their goal to observe is derailed when the groom disappears and a dead body turns up. Everyone’s a suspect and trapped on the train. Kate and friends must uncover the truth before their mission goes off the tracks.

Pride and Prejudice at The Cat Café: a Furrever Friends Sweet Romance (Pig River Press, March 2024) by Kris Bock. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a fortune should donate to a cat rescue. The Furrever Friends Cat Café helps people find furry forever friends – and just might lead to romantic love too. This Pride and Prejudice modern adaptation features fresh twists to delight both fans and new readers. The Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the workers and customers at a small-town cat café, and the adorable cats and kittens looking for their forever homes. Each book is a complete story with a happy ending for one couple.

You’ll find Kris Bock on KrisBock.com (and Chris Eboch on ChrisEboch.com), Instagram, and Goodreads.


Far From Ordinary: Predicaments, Misadventures, and Illuminations (January 2024) by Lisa Haneberg. This is a hilarious new collection of essays, poems, and short stories about adventures and misadventures. Lisa Haneberg engages readers with fascinating facts and eccentric tales about awkward experiences that went seriously sideways. The essays and poems highlight Haneberg’s quirky personal adventures, while her short stories subject fictional characters to outlandish escapades and entanglements. Dish unto others as life has dished upon you, as the saying goes. The collection includes twenty-six pieces ordered from the most straightforward to the weirdest.

Look for Lisa on her website LisaHaneberg.com, on Facebook, Instagram, and her Amazon author page.


Love and War on the Rio Grande (Paradise Publishing, April 2024) by Parris Afton Bonds. Where the Rio Grande River meanders through the Pass had long been a gathering spot for Anglo and Spaniard and Indian. Determined colonists, fierce Indians, devout padres, pistoleros, cavalrymen, railroad barons, and high-class harlots had all played their roles here. Beginning with the declaration of the Texas War for Independence on March 2, 1836, the stage was set for three females, all born on that same historic day. From thereon, their incredible lives were to be irrevocably interwoven. Their friendship leads them into escapades and romance covering a half-century of El Paso’s illustrious history—forbidden and life-changing adventures.

You’ll find Parris on ParrisAftonBonds.com, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X.


Open the Door to Your Creative Life (May 2024) by Carol H. March. Dare to Discover Your Inner Artist! Something is stirring! Do you hear the call? Get on board with your Creative Self and become the joyful, creative person you are meant to be. If you want to write, paint, compose, sing, start a business, or improve your life in any way, your Creative Self can lead you along the path to success. Say no to the voice of fear. Say no to the inner critic. Say yes to the wisdom within and discover your true potential. Be the person you know you can be. Open the door!

Visit Carol on her website CarolHollandMarch.com and her Amazon author page.


Hope: Poetry for our Future (July 2024) by Larry Kilham. Hope is a collection of Larry Kilham’s best poems through 2024. In this world struggling with identity, culture wars, and forecasts of apocalypse, Kilham’s poetry offers hope through themes of dealing with environmental change, nature, life’s passages, AI, and more. His poems have been included in many anthologies and have received many awards.

You’ll find Larry on his website LarryKilham.net and blog, and on his Amazon author page.


SWW Author Interviews: 2024 Releases

Tim Amsden
Love Letter to Ramah

Michael Backus
The Heart is Meat

Rachel Bate
Hatch Chile Willie

Irene Blea
Dragonfly

E. Joe Brown
A Cowboy’s Fortune (Kelly Can Saga Book 2)

Gency Brown
A Right Fine Life

Mary Lou Dobbs
Badass Old White Woman: How to Flip the Script on Aging

Lynn Ellen Doxon
The Moonlight Cavalry

Robert D. Kidera
Burn Scars

Kendra Loring
The Saga of Henri Standing Bear

William Murray
Worn Out Saddles and Boot Leather

Jeff Otis
Raptor Lands: The Story of the Harrowing Return of the Dinosaurs

Léonie Rosenstiel
Protecting Mama: Surviving the Legal Guardianship Swamp


KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner loves creating worlds of fantasy and science fiction. Her current work in progress is The Last Bonekeeper fantasy trilogy and short stories in the same universe. A member of SouthWest Writers since 2006, Kat has worked as the organization’s secretary, newsletter editor, website manager, and author interview coordinator. Kat is also a veteran, a martial art student, and a grandmother. Visit her at klwagoner.com.




Author Updates: Marty Eberhardt & Katayoun Medhat

Marty Eberhardt and Katayoun Medhat are mystery writers hard at work adding to their respective series. These members of SouthWest Writers (SWW) each had a new book published within the last year and has an interview posted on the SWW website.


Author Marty Eberhardt started the Bea Rivers cozy mystery series in 2021 with Death in a Desert Garden. Her latest release set in the Sonoran Desert is Bones in the Back Forty (Artemesia Publishing, 2023). Look for Marty on her website MartyEberhardt.com, on Facebook, and on her Amazon author page. For more about her work, read her 2021 SWW interview.


What trouble does your main character, Bea Rivers, face in Bones in the Back Forty?
Lots of trouble. A skeleton is found on the grounds of the garden where she works … this doesn’t seem to be much more than an interesting puzzle at first. But then somebody’s car hits her boss on a bicycle, and he’s in a coma. She has to take over. And someone seems to be stalking her. It’s not clear if these things have to do with her help with the murder investigation related to the skeleton. Her boyfriend lives halfway across the country and she’s a single parent with way too many responsibilities.

What makes Bea the kind of protagonist that readers connect with and root for?
She’s an overwhelmed working parent who’s trying to do a good job. There are lots of people like this everywhere! As the story progresses, her confidence and competence grow. I was pleased to see this.

Bones in the Back Forty is the second of the Bea Rivers Mysteries. When did you know you wanted to write a series?
I figured I would write at least three books, showing how the protagonist changes. I also wanted to show the Sonoran Desert in its many seasons; the series is in some ways a love song to the Sonoran Desert.

Why do you write cozy mysteries as opposed to other kinds of mysteries?
I don’t much care for gratuitous violence, nor do I wish to be explicit about sex. I like mysteries with great characters, a complex plot with a murderer who’s not easily discovered, and plenty of humor. Cozy mysteries and traditional mysteries fit these categories. These genres are also appropriate for conveying some messages that matter to me … such as climate change is real and threatening; water conservation is essential in the arid Southwest; and natural and cultural diversity can provide great joy to all humans. In this book, I also have a message about respect for our ancestors.

Do you have any writing projects in the works?
I’m working on a third Bea Rivers mystery, set in southern California, and also a long-time project … a historical novel set in early 1960s Saigon.


Katayoun Medhat is the author of the Milagro Mysteries that began with The Quality of Mercy (2017) and continued with Lacandon Dreams (2018). Her newest book in the series is Flyover Country published in 2022 by Leapfrog Press. You’ll find Kat on her website KatayounMedhat.com and her SWW author page, as well as on Facebook and Twitter. Read more about her writing in SWW’s 2020 interview.


What would you like readers to know about the story you tell in Flyover Country?
As Old and New West collide and bad faith actors prepare for future rule, the bucolic idyll of Milagro crashes and burns. A gruesome find, the slaying of a miniature horse by a cougar, and the mysterious vanishing of a park ranger give cop Franz Kafka, aka K, plenty of opportunity to misinterpret events, overlook clues, and create some more adversaries. As K deals with the tragic fallout of his job, he finds himself caught up in a lethal clash of worlds. So it’s basically a tale of contemporary life—with twists.

For those who haven’t read the first two books in the Milagro Mystery series, tell us about your main characters.
K is a stranger in a strange land. He is a natural rebel, great at subverting authority and questioning the status quo, and so isn’t really cut out to be a cop. Maybe he is jinxed, because every time he tries to do his job properly, inevitably tragedy follows.

K’s soul brother and sidekick, Robbie Begay, ex-Navajo police officer and track-reader, is everything that K isn’t — pragmatic, cynical, great at his job, and not at all given to illusions. The cases Begay and K work on bring out their differences and challenge their friendship, and often it is facing hazard and danger that draws them back together. There is a gruff tenderness and generosity to their relationship, which has led some readers to call their friendship a bromance.

A third main character of my books is the community of Milagro in which K, who is quintessentially a loner and, like so many men who must go down these mean streets, commitment-phobic, has found a kind of Ersatz family.

Did I mention that K is now the owner of a bookstore? And the bookstore is becoming something of a community hub, which, as we shall see, brings with it an entirely new set of conundrums.

How did you choose the title of the book?
Apparently “flyover country” is used as a derogatory term for the swathe of rural land between the metropolitan seaboards. To me it holds a suggestion of the forgotten, the hidden, and the elusive; the friction between a bird’s-eye view and the teeming, bustling reality on the ground. The novel’s plot takes place down in the valley and up in the unknowable territory of the Mesa, in a kind of hell and heaven scenario.

What makes your series unique in the mystery genre?
The Milagro Mysteries are ethnographic and psychological mysteries. They are about a place, Milagro, and its people and the ravages and havoc that is played upon them, mostly by larger outside forces that are hard to withstand. The series’ core lies in its unique outsider’s view of rural America, and my conviction that deadly serious subject matter is best served up with a dose of satire.

Which of your three published novels did you enjoy writing the most, and which one was the most challenging?
The newest one is always the favorite one, and the most challenging—until the next one comes along. Writing my first book, The Quality of Mercy, was stress-free: entering terra incognita with no road map, no expectations, and an explorer’s enthusiasm. Milagro #2, Lacandon Dreams, in retrospect might have been the most challenging, because writing your second book is a whole other ball game to writing your first.

What writing projects are you working on now?
Currently I am editing Vision Quest, Milagro Mystery #4, the most ominous book in the series so far. And I’m working on a stand alone, which may turn out even more sinister and is set in Europe. And, of course, I’m seeding Milagro Mystery #5…


KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.




An Interview with Author Marty Eberhardt

Marty Eberhardt is a former director of botanical gardens whose poetry and short prose can be found in nearly a dozen publications. In October 2021, Artemesia Publishing released Death in a Desert Garden, Marty’s debut novel and the first of her Bea Rivers cozy mysteries. You’ll find her on her website MartyEberhardt.com and on Facebook and LinkedIn.


What is your elevator pitch for Death in a Desert Garden?
Bea Rivers’ euphoria over her new job at Shandley Gardens is shattered by the death of the Gardens’ founder. When the police determine the death was a murder, Bea is drawn into the investigation, while trying desperately to maintain the life of a committed single parent dating a struggling writer. Every one of the members of the Gardens’ small staff and board are murder suspects. Through the sizzling and beautiful days of a Sonoran Desert summer, someone keeps dropping odd botanical clues. As Bea’s family’s safety is threatened, she discovers just how tangled the relationships at the Gardens really are.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
While I am familiar with the inner workings of public gardens, I haven’t had much to do with the police. I was fortunate to have a few friends in law enforcement who answered questions, and one read the book through.

Tell us how the book came together.
I’m not sure where the story idea came from, but first I imagined the place and the protagonist. The rest of the characters arrived in my brain and decided to do what they wanted to do. I picked a mythical botanical garden in Tucson, because I’m familiar with both public gardens and Tucson. I picked a harried single mother because I well-remember what that felt like, and I think many parents know this stress (even if they’re not single). Work/parenting challenges are front and center during this pandemic!

Who are your protagonists, and what do they have to overcome in the story? Will those who know you recognize you in any of your characters?
Many will see part of me in Bea Rivers. I was a single mom working in a botanical garden. Those in the know will also see the late Tony Edland in the character of Angus. Both of them are lovely guys. As for what Bea has to overcome, she has to be a good parent and a good employee simultaneously. As if that weren’t enough, she needs to solve a murder, because people she cares about are in danger of being accused.

Why did you choose the book’s main setting?
The setting is Shandley Gardens, a public garden in the Rincon Mountains east of Tucson. Using the Rincon foothills location gave me the opportunity to write about the beauty of the Sonoran Desert, which I love deeply. Also, there is no public garden in this location, in case anyone is looking for close comparisons.

What makes Death in a Desert Garden unique in the cozy mystery market?
There are several unique, or nearly unique, parts: the setting in a botanical garden, the Sonoran Desert natural history, and the single parent protagonist.

What was your favorite part of putting this project together?
I’ve heard many authors say this, but it was the way the characters took on a life of their own. I didn’t know until I got to the computer what they were going to say or do. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did plot things out, but how each character reacted to their circumstances was part of the mystery of the mystery.

You also write poems and short prose. Is there one form you’re drawn to the most when you write or read?
My primary reading interest is literary fiction. I also read a bit of nonfiction, especially if it relates to something I’m writing, and I read poetry. But I punctuate the serious stuff with mysteries. I relax with them, and so I tried to write one that would have what I want out of a mystery: a tough puzzle, some quirky characters, and a strong sense of place.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m writing a sequel to Death in a Desert Garden tentatively titled Bones in the Back Forty. A forty-year old skeleton takes a murder investigation from Shandley Gardens to a small town in southern New Mexico, where there’s a history of archaeological looting. I’ve also written an entirely different kind of book, a period piece set in early 1960s Saigon. It’s the story of how family members’ lives are changed by living in South Vietnam during the Diem regime, at the time of Buddhist burnings and multiple coups d’états. It’s tentatively titled American Innocents.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
We humans must all nourish ourselves with what gives us joy, so that we have the strength to do the work of caring for each other and the planet. Much of my joy comes from immersion in the natural world. I try to communicate that in everything I write.


KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kathy posts to a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.




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