I am participating in the Crazy Cozy Blogfest being held over at  Mystery Writing is Murder and  Confessions of a Watery Tart,   two blogs for cozy mystery readers and writers.   If you are visiting me through the blog hop, welcome!  I originally posted my story way too early so you followed a link to an old post that has been updated.  The contest rules are to create a cozy in 150 to 250 words which is a little crazy in itself, but here is my entry.

All In

by Teresa Trent

    Dina Elliot sat in the bushes outside the Regal Hotel waiting for her quarry. What she was doing she wasn’t proud of, but it had to be done. At any moment, Monique Sellers would be coming out of the towering glass doors of the one of the most expensive hotels in Houston, and when she did….

Dina’s phone vibrated in her pocket. It was a text from Mel. Mr. Rodriguez had come by for the rent. She would just have to stall him for a few more days, and then they would have the cash. Hopefully. Finding space on the top floor of Yardley, Texas’s only Mexican restaurant had been a godsend, both in location and all the free burritos she could eat.

The sun’s reflection bounced off the glass door as it slid open. Monique Sellers pranced out holding a little dog close to her fur clad body. Dina jumped out from the bushes, aimed and click…the small-town wedding photographer was now officially a member of the paparazzi.

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The cozy writers who are putting on the contest have some pretty good cozies of their own.  Check out their book’s below!


The Azalea Assault
Cam Harris loves her job as public relations manager for the Roanoke Garden Society. It allows her to combine her three loves, spinning the press, showing off her favorite town, and promoting her favorite activity. She’s just achieved a huge coup by enlisting Garden Delights, the country’s premiere gardening magazine, to feature the exquisite garden of RGS founder, Neil Patrick. She’s even managed to enlist world-famous photographer Jean-Jacques Georges. Unfortunately, Jean-Jacques is a first-rate cad—insulting the RGS members and gardening, goosing every woman in the room, and drinking like a lush. It is hardly a surprise when he turns up dead. But when Cam’s brother-in-law is accused and her sister begs her to solve the crime, that is when things really get prickly.

Alyse Carlson: Alyse Carlson is the pen name for Hart Johnson who writes books from her bathtub. By day she is an academic researcher at a large Midwestern university. She lives with her husband, two teenage children and two fur balls. The dust bunnies don’t count. This will be her first published book.

You can find her book at these locations:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Indie Bound
Confessions of a Watery Tart

Quilt or Innocence
Beatrice has a lot of gossip to catch up on—especially with the Patchwork Cottage quilt shop about to close. It seems that Judith, the landlord everyone loves to hate, wants to raise the rent, despite being a quilter herself… But when Judith is found dead, the harmless gossip becomes an intricate patchwork of mischievous motives. And it’s up to Beatrice’s expert eye to decipher the pattern and catch the killer, before her life gets sewn up for good.

Elizabeth Spann Craig: Elizabeth writes the Memphis Barbeque series for Penguin/Berkley (as Riley Adams), the Southern Quilting mysteries (2012) for Penguin/NAL, and the Myrtle Clover series for Midnight Ink. She blogs daily at Mystery Writing is Murder, which was named by Writer’s Digest as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers for 2010, 2011, 2011.  You can find her book at these locations.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Indie Bound

…..But wait, there’s more….I am also launching my new book, OVERDUE FOR MURDER this week.

Murder checks in when authors present romance, vampires, chick lit and alien abductions at the Pecan Bayou Library where one of the writers receives a killer review. Join my sleuth, Betsy Livingston in her second mystery as she tries to clear her own name in this tale of small town Texas life and murder. Available on Kindle.