What Did You Mean When You Said Hello?

What Did You Mean When You Said, “Hello?”

“What on earth are you talking about, Cub?” I asked the big, red-faced man who jumped off the seat of his dirt mover. “What did you mean there’s something in the well?” 

The whole book is based on that question and Darcy wondering if it was Best Left Buried.

My car’s headlights cut a yellow swath through the swirling snow. Heavy, gray clouds, trees crowding either side of the driveway, and the lateness of the December day made it impossible to see more than a few yards ahead, but at last I glimpsed the dark shape of Javin Granger’s Victorian house through the winter twilight.

Nothing about the moonlight on the picturesque scene hinted at the fact that Moonlight Can Be Murder.

When I awoke to sunshine, blue skies, and the fragrance of freshly perked coffee that morning, I had no inkling that a few hours later the sun would be blotted out by menacing clouds or that my mother and I would stumble upon a dead body in a brush pile in Goshen Cemetery.

In that first line of The Cemetery Club, lies the whole plot of the book: why would a dead body be on top of a brush pile in, of all places, a cemetery?

I awoke sitting straight up in bed, my heart doing double time. Was it rain pounding against my bedroom windows or the wind roaring around the house that had awakened me?

This introduction to  Grave Heritage tells us that something strange is going on. As it turns out, that weird awakening leads to a murder and one of the most frightening episodes of Darcy’s and Flora’s lives.

The letter came on a warm morning in November. Several weeks later, I asked my mother if she had a premonition, a tingling in her fingers before she read it.

Like Pandora’s box, the letter contained trouble and a plea that sent Darcy and Flora from Oklahoma to Texas and took them through two earthquakes in Grave Shift.

The nightmare jolted me awake. I sat up in bed, gasping for air, my heart hammering against my chest. Something had been chasing me through the dark rooms of Granger Mansion. I heard it breathing, panting behind me, its nails scraping on the floor. – By the Fright of the Silvery Moon.

These first lines of my six published Cozy Mysteries are designed to grab your attention and pique your curiosity. They also contain clues concerning the plot of each story. Likewise, the last lines wrap things up, leave you with a feeling of satisfaction, and cause you to look forward to the next book. I like all the final lines in the books (and why are you not surprised?) but I particularly like the last two lines of Grave Heritage:

Mom sighed. “The life of a lawman.”

I nodded. “He’ll never change.”

If you’d like to read more than the first lines, you can find all my books at Pen-L.com and Amazon.com.