Take a Trip to Hidden Springs for a Buck

Some of you have enjoyed my Hidden springs Mysteries. Others of you may not know I wrote a few cozy mysteries under the author name, A.H. Gabhart. Of course, if you read through my writing journey a few weeks ago, you’ll know that I have always loved reading mysteries and once, when I was in rejection valley, daring to set off down the writing trail with mystery ideas in mind.

I thought it would be great fun to model my fictional town of Hidden Springs after my own little hometown. The difference was that Malinda Keane, my main character’s aunt/mother, constructed a wall around this little town to keep those big box stores from changing the flavor of a little town like Hidden Springs.

Main Street is still the place to be. Mom and Pop businesses are all along the street. The citizens go to the courthouse in the middle of town to do their necessary business of buying car tags and drivers’ licenses along with paying their property taxes and when they get in trouble, going to court. After all, it is a courthouse.

Years ago, in my own little town, I once upon a time saw a woman, who was a little different than most, walking along a street with a broom. She was sweeping now and again. The sight of her stuck in my head, and years later, she was an inspiration for the opening scene of my first Hidden Springs story, Murder at the Courthouse. Who better than the town’s busybody to find the first body to get the murder mystery underway?  Here are the first couple of  sentences that I hoped would let readers know right away they were in a little town where everybody knew everybody else’s business or at least, thought they should.

Miss Willadean Dearmon found the body on the courthouse steps at exactly 8:50 a.m. Miss Willadean appeared at the courthouse every weekday morning at that exact time, barring holidays, major illnesses, or snow over her boot tops.

She turns out to be quite disturbed and more than a little thrilled at the same time to find some stranger on the courthouse steps. Not drunk as she first assumed but dead. Not only dead but murdered. She’ll have a story to tell forever, and you can be sure she’ll be telling it. Over and over.

Then there are the cats. These are cozy mysteries, although mystery 2, Murder Comes by Mail, is a little more suspenseful than most cozies. But the cat on the cover will pull the book over into the cozies. Some cozy mysteries feature the same cat in every story and on every cover, but I was an equal opportunity person for the cats. I let a new cat have a starring role in each mystery although Aunt Lindy’s cat, Grimalkin, makes an appearance in each of the mysteries.  Grimalkin does have a more important cat role in Murder Comes by Mail.

The mysteries all got good reviews. When I do book talks, I still have people ask me when I’m going to write another Hidden Springs mystery. I’d like to. Someday maybe I will. After all, in a little town like Hidden Springs, sometimes somebody wanders in and becomes a convenient victim of murder. Aunt Lindy is never happy about that. She would prefer Michael wasn’t a deputy sheriff wearing a gun and vowing to keep the town safe by being on the front line. But until she can get him to marry the girl she thinks he should and settles down to sell insurance or be the principal of the local school, she will cover him with prayers while she does a little meddling to make things come out the way she thinks they should.

In the last Hidden Springs mystery, the mystery starts off with a young girl, Maggie, a wanna-be-writer who hides out in a neighbor’s empty house for privacy to write in a high turret room. Naturally, she’s the one to find the body. But is is murder or a tragic accident?

Right now, all three of the Hidden Springs ebook versions are on sale for 99 cents. Not just the first book, Murder at the Courthouse, but the other two, Murder Comes by Mail and Murder Is No Accident, as well. That’s as good a deal as you can get. You can check them out on Kobo  who initiated the sale, but when I checked out some other internet booksellers such as Amazon, they had joined in with the 99 cent price. Sometimes if you download a Kindle book from Amazon, you can get the audio book for a super low price too. I did the narration on all three of the Hidden Springs mysteries. That was a lot of fun.

Wherever you shop for ebooks, always check before you hit the buy button to be sure you’re getting the expected price because sales like this come and go quickly. Still, right now you can load all three Hidden springs ebooks on your ereader for about $3.00.