I’m back! With a new book!

For those of you who have followed my blog for years, you know it has been many months since I last posted. Thank you for your patience and support. For those of you who have been on my blog wait list and are hearing from me for the first time after we talked at some local event, thank you for signing up and welcome!

It’s not that I’ve been lazy—quite the contrary. I’ve been busy updating my website and blog format, and I’ve been writing a new book! The web site still needs some work, and I hope you will excuse me while I work out the kinks. But I’m jumping the gun a little bit now because I want to tell you about Last Call at Smokey Row!.

I’m excited about this book for a number of reasons. It’s my first fictional work outside the Cora Tozzi Historical Mystery Series. The new characters allowed me to be creative and explore areas I hadn’t gone before, including romantic scenes and nasty people who sometimes use bad language. Some characters were developed based partially on people I met long ago. In short, it was a whole lot of fun to write! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Pardon me for bragging, but it’s been getting five-star reviews from professional reviewers that you can read on my website!

Since all my books are set in Lemont (It’s what I do!), I centered this story in a fictional Lemont bar in the 1980s. A sort of Cheers vibe, but where pool shooters hang out. The main character stops in one day feeling grossly out of place. She’s never shot pool and knows nothing about the game. But she finds herself returning and making new friends and getting involved in their lives. If you want to check out how the fictional place might have been, stop in at the Main Inn in Lemont—or any of Lemont’s downtown bars really.

There are references throughout the book about the real notorious Smokey Row that flourished in Lemont in the late 1800s, a red-light district that offered drinking, gambling, drugs and women for pleasure. It was said back then that Smokey Row was one of the toughest streets in all of America, wilder and more sinful than Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone rolled into one. Today, some of the buildings that housed those activities are still standing. Although my story takes place some eighty years later, it is meant to convey some of the flavor of those times. At the end of the book is an author note that tells the history of the real Smokey Row.

For a little added fun, I’ve created Smokey Row—The Game. There is something that seventeen characters in the book share. It may be a profession, a family connection, a personality trait, a physical feature, or a secret – or maybe something else very specific to Lemont! There is a game card on my website if you go to the dropdown under books and bring up the page about Last Call at Smokey Row. The card allows you to write down the connection, then name all seventeen characters that share that connection.

What’s coming next? I plan to resume my local history blog very soon. The first post will be about, of course, Smokey Row!

Where can you get Last Call at Smokey Row? It’s available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle, and here in Lemont at Smokey Row Antiques—where else?