The Friday Night Mystery Club (Friday Night Mystery Club Series)
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Illinois
Spot On Publishing (September 18, 2021)
Paperback : 346 pages
Synopsis
Decatur, Illinois/1986 – A nasty divorce leaves Cragan Collins with a mountain of bills and her grandmother to support. She takes a job as an ad salesperson for The Gazette. The market is tough, but Cragan finds a mentor in business reporter, Robert Smithson. One icy January day, Robert is found dead in a city park. His murder is dismissed as gay-on-gay crime. Cragan asks The Friday Night Mystery Club to find justice for Robert. Will Cragan’s quest for the truth land her on the obituary page?
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Guest Post
The Animals in My Life (and My Books)
By Joanna Campbell Slan
My readers know that I love, love, love animals. In fact, I can’t conceive of writing a book that doesn’t include them. Probably because I can’t imagine my life without them. Currently, my husband and I have two fur babies and two Siamese Fighting Fish.
The fur babies are Maple, the cat, and Jax, my Havanese puppy. Jax is my best friend, and the sweetest animal I’ve ever known. He’s never met a stranger, and he’s such a good traveler that when we get on a plane, he simply curls up in my lap and sleeps.
Maple was my son’s cat, but when he and his wife adopted a second cat, Greta, the two felines didn’t get along. Fortunately, my husband loves cats, and Maple likes men better than women, so the two of them—Maple and David—are absolutely in love with each other. She stares at the front door for hours after he leaves for work. Honestly, her devotion is touching.
As for the Siamese Fighting Fish, better known as Bettas, it’s odd that we wound up with two, since you can’t put two male Bettas together in the same tank or … they’ll fight! Duh! The first Betta we bought I named Zelenskyy because he’s blue with a yellow fin. The second was a gift for our friend, Jenny, but she hasn’t taken him home yet. We’ve been fish-sitting. (Is that a word?) Jenny named her fish, John, after John Steinway, one of the two Steinway & Sons brothers. Because Jenny is Chinese and red is a lucky color for her, John is a brilliant red.
Given all of this, it’s not surprising that Cragan Collins, the protagonist in The Friday Night Mystery Club, had to have a pet. She adopts Sher Kahn, a cranky Siamese cat. Sher Kahn used to belong to Cragan’s best friend who is killed in The Friday Night Mystery Club. Cragan discovers Sher Kahn at a local vet’s office, in a cage reserved for potential adoptees. Heartsick at the loss of her friend, knowing how much he loved Sher Kahn, and worried about the cat’s future, Cragan takes Sher Kahn home.
Re-reading this, I have to laugh. My books echo my life. Even more so than I realized. Like Cragan, we “adopted” a cat. Now all I need to do is to give my main character a Siamese Fighting Fish!
About the Author
“Our best friend, our next-door neighbor, and ourselves with just a touch of the outrageous.” That’s how RT Book Review describes Joanna’s protagonist, Kiki Lowenstein. The truth is that’s a pretty good description of Joanna Campbell Slan as well.
Joanna is a New York Times Bestselling, USA Today Bestselling, and Amazon Bestselling author, as well as a woman prone to frequent bursts of crafting frenzy, leaving her with burns from her hot glue gun and paint on her clothes. And the mess? Let’s not even go there.
Otherwise, Joanna’s a productive author with more than 80 written projects to her credit. Her non-fiction work includes how-to books, a college textbook for public speakers, and books of personal essays (think Chicken Soup for the Soul).
Currently, she writes five fiction series: The Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series (Agatha Award Finalist, contemporary, St. Louis setting, crafting), the Cara Mia Delgatto Mystery Series (contemporary, Florida setting, DIY, and recycling), the Jane Eyre Chronicles (Daphne du Maurier Award Winner, 1830s England, based on Charlotte Brontë’s classic), the Tai Chi Mystery Series (contemporary, senior citizen female amateur sleuth and Washington, DC setting), and the Friday Night Mystery Club Series (traditional mystery, 1980s setting, Midwest).
A former TV talk show host, college teacher, and public relations specialist, Joanna was one of the early Chicken Soup for the Soul contributors. She won a Silver Anvil for her work on the original FarmAid concert to benefit farmers.
In her ongoing quest never to see snow again, Joanna lives with her husband and their Havanese puppy, Jax, on an island off the coast of Florida.
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