At long last it has arrived! The second book in the Maggie Dahl Mysteries series has just been released as an eBook on Amazon Kindle. The paperback is coming in a week or so, as well as wider distribution after 90 days as a Kindle Unlimited exclusive. For now you can get Open Secrets for just $4.99, or as a member of Kindle Unlimited. And you can read a six chapter sample FREE by just downloading it HERE from BookFunnel. Welcome back, Maggie! Lambertville has been waiting for another murder for you to solve.

About ‘Open Secrets’

Maggie Dahl returns in ‘Open Secrets.’ It’s been six months since the media circus surrounding the last murder Maggie solved, and a year since her beloved husband David died. The dust seems to have finally settled. Then one morning a customer walks in and asks Maggie to do her a favor.

Soon a body is discovered on a rural New Jersey road. A body Maggie is sure belongs to a local author whose next book was rumored to reveal secrets not everyone wanted known. But were they enough to kill for? And who murdered the woman found in the woods? Maggie is determined to find out, even as her life continues its road back to normal, complete with the possibility of new love. Can she find the answers she seeks in the death of a local celebrity? And will love be part of her life once again when she least expects it?

About ‘Black Cat White Paws’

In Black Cat White Paws, recently widowed Maggie Dahl finds herself faced with challenges on all fronts: life alone in a new town, running a business she and her husband had dreamed of and started together, and now pursuing a killer. Her sister Gerri moves from Philadelphia to Lambertville, New Jersey, to support her sister and start a new life of her own. Together the women search for a murderer, helped in critical ways by their neighbor’s cat. A black cat with white paws. A cat whose independence sets it all in motion and sees it through to the end.

Black Cat White Paws finds Maggie moving from New York City to Lambertville, an idyllic river town with artists, restaurants, incredible landscapes, and enough local characters to populate a murder mystery. Join Maggie, Gerri, Checks the cat, and a cast of colorful small town natives just as eager—and as shocked—to find a killer in their midst.

I’ve had a Facebook group for LGBTQ older people for many years now (LGBTSr), as part of my website of the same name. One of the members told me he was leaving the group because he is afraid “they” will begin tracking us, and not because they want to sell us products and laxatives.

I told him I was sorry to see him go, and that I would resist until my last breath. While fear is becoming pervasive among many of us who know it is a rational response to the hostilities we have known throughout our lives and that are daily returning with a vengeance, disguised as concern for parental rights and the defending of gender conformity, fear is something I refuse. Fear serves those who benefit from instilling it.

I think about the aged among my peers. Simply being able to marry has meant we are not denied access to our loved ones. We are not erased when they die. We are not refused services (although the incidence of LGBTQ people going back into the closet when we need nursing home care is unspeakably heartbreaking). It is the simplest of dignities and the frailest of protections in a world that would prefer to offer us none.

While Clarence Thomas is a cruel wretch, he is at least honest about what they plan to do. The lying reassurances from Alito and Kavanaugh (much like the lies some of them told in their confirmation hearings) remind me most of the way we calm animals before we euthanize them, assuring them that all will be okay as the needle goes in. Remove the blinders if you still have them on. Of course they intend to overturn marriage equality. Of course they intend to strip our rights, whether it’s the right to be intimate with the person we choose to be, or the right to have our children kept free from religious coercion.

Part of their magic trick is to pummel the country with imaginary reason, while our society is dragged in their preferred direction one ruling at a time. They did not save us from a coup when they refused to do Trump’s dirty work. They are simply carrying it out themselves.

There is nothing alarmist in saying what I see. Unfortunately millions and millions are sleep walking into a country many of us will not recognize in a few years, led by the feckless Joe Biden and a geriatric Democratic leadership that refuses to say it’s raining as their clothes soak through.

And that is that.

For the first five days of summer you can download two free Marshall James Thrillers for your Kindle reading pleasure. Settle in under your beach umbrella, and start those pages turning! Available from June 21 through 25.

MURDER AT THE PAISLEY PARROTTime waits for no one, including Marshall James. Now 58 and living in New York City, Marshall has outlived the expiration date he was given with a cancer diagnosis three years ago. He beat the odds but he knows he may not beat the clock. So he’s decided to tell a story or three about some murders he was involved in back in the day.

The year was 1983. The bar was the Paisley Parrot in Hollywood, a gay, mob-run dive where people came to drink and few of them remembered the night before. Marshall loves his job as a bartender there. But one night, among the regulars, a killer arrives.

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BEAUTIFUL CORPSE

“It was 1984. Prince ruled the airwaves. The Los Angeles Olympics had come and gone, taking with it a spotlight that had shone harshly on the city’s night crawlers and left them thankful for the shadows. AIDS was spreading its dark, black, wings over us all, and I was a happy guy. At least I thought I was, until things took a sudden turn for the deadly.” – Marshall James

It’s been over a year since Marshall James first became intimately familiar with murder. He’s six months sober now and happily living with the love of his life, LAPD Detective Mac McElroy. Despite the coming storm of AIDS and its devastating toll on the world Marshall knows, his dark days seem to be behind him. Then one night he says the wrong thing, storms out in anger, and walks straight into a nightmare.

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Our 10-night cruise was wonderful. I highly recommend Newport, Rhode Island. Then we sailed to Bermuda – been there, done that – and finally to Charleston on the way home. And now it’s back to the grind of retirement, or semi-retirement, or “I just need to make some money and get out of the house” retirement.

My husband Frank and I are as active as ever. He has been job-free for a number of years now and stays amazingly busy all the time. Me? Not so much. I write murder mysteries, publish websites, and do podcasts in the mornings, and then I often find myself with empty afternoons. SO … I will be returning to my old job, but only part-time. Three days a week, six hours a day. It will help pay for my COBRA insurance for the next year-and-a-half until I’m on Medicare. And it’s great insurance! It wasn’t as expensive as I’d worried it would be, and it’s very good coverage.

I enjoy the people I worked with in the Giant deli, and they’re excited to have me coming back. That was always the plan.

I’ll be back with the weekly LGBTSr.com emails starting next Saturday: The Weekly Readlines, Savvy Senior, columns, reviews, DIY suggestions, and more new things as the year progresses.

I have also finally (finally!) finished the second book in the Maggie Dahl Mystery series. The first was Black Cat White Paws, and now, coming soon … Open Secrets. A local writer who is mentioned in the first book takes center stage in book #2, as someone decides they don’t want her finishing the follow up to her successful collection of essays. Maggie finds herself involved and unable to stop searching for another killer in Lambertville, New Jersey, that never seemed to have much in the way of murder until she moved to town. Arriving this summer!

All subscribers will receive a complimentary 6 chapter excerpt!

See you soon.

I hope to be finished soon with the loooooong awaited sequel to Black Cat White Paws: A Maggie Dahl Mystery.

In the upcoming Open Secrets, local author Shanna Delaney, who first appeared briefly in Black Cat White Paws, becomes the center of a murder mystery. Shanna has written a follow up to her successful first collection of essays about life in a Delaware River town, and this time she’s rumored to be naming names. Not everyone whose secrets she could reveal wants them made public, and someone may be willing to kill to stop her.

Meanwhile, a year after her husband’s sudden death, Maggie finds herself on a date with a man who just may be the one to lead her back to a life away from the grief she’s known. Can she love again? And more importantly, will she?

Find out in Open Secrets, releasing fall, 2022.

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Hear ye, hear ye! Podcaster and mystery author Brad Shreve released our interview this morning. It was a pleasure talking with him about my books, characters, writing, and a bit of life in general. Fasten your headphones!

I’ve just sent out a complimentary copy of ‘Paper Hearts: A Marshall James Thriller Short Story’ to all current subscribers, and made it available to all new ones in their ‘thank you’ confirmation email. JUST SUBSCRIBE HERE and get yours!

In case you can’t wait for the audiobook version I’m recording, you can get the eBook edition of Paper Hearts: A Marshall James Thriller short story at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or half-price direct at my storefront!

This story first appeared in the anthology Cupid Shot Me: Valentine Tales of Love, Mystery & Suspense (A Queer Mystery Anthology Book 1).

I’ve been both a friend and fan of Dave Hughes for quite a few years now. He’s the founder of RetireFabulously.com, a recurring guest on my One Thing or Another Podcast, and now a fiction author with an upcoming release, Maybe Next Year:

“Bryan and Chris are high school juniors who have been inseparable best friends for three years. Now, they are discovering that their feelings for each other run much deeper than mere friendship.

Chris, whose open-minded family is completely supportive, is ready and able to live his life out and proud. For Bryan, whose father is the pastor of a very conservative mega-church in a Kansas City suburb, being gay simply isn’t an option. Bryan hopes that maybe next year when they leave Kansas to go to college together, he will be able to live more openly. In the meantime, they must learn how to navigate their conflicting family dynamics and boundaries if they are to fulfill their dream of spending the rest of their lives together.

Everything changes when Bryan is outed. His father will stop at nothing to force Bryan to “leave the homosexual lifestyle,” requiring Bryan and Chris to make some very difficult choices.”