Danita Minnis

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Rebecca Lee Smith will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Author Interview: Rebecca Lee Smith

1. How did you choose your genre? What made you write this book?

When I first started, I tried writing romance, but for some reason, a dead body kept turning up in the manuscript with a mystery to solve. Then I segued into romantic suspense, got two books published in that genre (which I’m exceedingly proud of), but was never really comfortable making sure the romance had equal billing with the mystery. One day, while reading a cozy mystery by Sara Rosett (she writes the wonderful Murder on Location series), it suddenly occurred to me that since cozies were what I loved to read, it might also be what I loved to write. I was right.

2. Writers write what they know, and must observe the world. Are you a firstborn, middle or last child, and how does this shape your view of the world?

I’m a first-born child with only one sibling, a brother, who is five years younger than me. My two sons are five years apart. I read once that if there are five or more years between siblings, the second-born child takes on the characteristics of a firstborn. This may explain all the fighting and vying for attention when they were growing up. It also explains why I feel an innate responsibility to take care of other people.

3. Where is your favorite place to write?

In a cottage on the Outer Banks at Kill Devil Hills, NC, upstairs on the widow’s walk facing the ocean. If I’m at home in the Tennessee mountains, I love to write outside on the patio until the mosquitos start snacking on me.

4. How do you feel about killing your darlings, and what do you do with the remains?

I keep a file for passages I decide not to use but love. That being said, I almost never kill my darlings. I think a writer’s darlings are the things that illustrate their distinctive take on the world. It’s what makes them stand out. When you read something someone else has written, and suddenly realize that you “get” them—I believe that’s because they didn’t kill their darlings.

5. You are introduced to your favorite author. Who is it, and what is that one burning question you must ask them?

Ann Cleeves. Where the hell do you get your ideas?

6. Inquiring minds want to know…tell readers something about you that no one knows.

Until I was nine, I lived in a house that was located beside a church, across the street from two funeral homes, down the street from two flower shops, and around the corner from a fire station. It was fun. The firemen taught me how to play croquet.

7. You are stranded on a deserted island with only a backpack for company. What three items are in your survival pack?

Dove chocolates, Milton’s multi-grain crackers, and a solar-powered Kindle.

8. If you could have one superpower in your existence, what would it be?

Having the power to manifest enough food for the world, so no one would ever go hungry (while being invisible).

9. Favorite snack?

Pretzel crisps dipped in Harris Teeter jalapeno pimento cheese.

10. Indy 500 – Do you know how to get where you’re going or do you drive the speed limit?

Yes.

The House on Crow Mountain

by Rebecca Lee Smith

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GENRE: Mystery

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BLURB:

When her aunt suffers a stroke, New York portrait artist Emory Austen returns home to the North Carolina mountains to mend fences and deal with the guilt over her husband’s senseless death. But that won’t be as easy as she hoped.

Someone in the quirky little town doesn’t like Emory. Is it the sexy architect who needs the Austen land to redeem himself? The untrustworthy matriarch? The grudge-bearing local bad boy? Or the teenage bombshell who has raised snooping to an art form? Even the local evangelist has something to hide. Who wrote the cryptic note warning her to “Give it back or you’ll be dead?” And what is ‘it’? As the clues pile up and secrets are exposed, Emory must discover what her family has that someone would kill for.

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Excerpt:

Could it be something of Kent’s they were after? Something he’d kept hidden? He was good at keeping secrets. In fact, he’d been a master at it. After his death, I’d packed the few possessions he hadn’t moved out of the apartment and sent them to his parents. I’d kept nothing except the gold wedding band he’d thrown at me from across the room and his cell phone.

Kent’s death.

Hard to even think those words, much less say them out loud. It was all still so surreal.

Maybe everything that had happened in Bitter Ridge was karma. Maybe the Universe was finally giving me exactly what I deserved. Kent’s death had been my fault. And no matter how much he had deceived me, or betrayed me, or reduced my sad little trusting heart to shrapnel, I could never forgive myself.

I laid my head on my knees and closed my eyes. I rocked my body back and forth, like a child trying to soothe itself when sleep will not come. Then at last, in the cool dark shadows of the night, I began to cry.

Oh, God, I was so sorry. I hadn’t loved Kent for a long time. At the end of our marriage, I hadn’t even liked him. But I had never wished him dead.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Rebecca lives with her husband and a dog named Wilbur in the beautiful, misty mountains of East Tennessee, where the people are charming, soulful, and just a little bit crazy. She’s been everything from a tax collector to a stay-at-home-mom to an award-winning professional actor and director. She loves to travel the world (pre-pandemic) because it makes coming home so sweet. Her Southern roots and the affectionate appreciation she has for the rural towns she lives near inspire the settings and characters she writes about.

www.rebeccaleesmith.com

Twitter: @rbeccaleesmith

Facebook: Rebecca Lee Smith

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3zOrNsb 

Barnes and Noble: https://bit.ly/39JTJTl

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3unX18j

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