Much Ado about Nauticaling (A Whit and Whiskers Mystery) by Gabby Allan
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About 'Much Ado about Nauticaling'
Whitney Dagner is your tour guide to a Pacific paradise that’s to die for—only to find it’s a place people are also willing to kill for—in Gabby Allan’s 'Much Ado About Nauticaling,' first in the 'Whit and Whiskers' Mystery series.
After far too many years in the Los Angeles corporate world, Whitney Dagner has come home to Santa Catalina Island off the California coast to help her brother Nick run Nautically Yours, the family tourism business. Between gift shop shifts selling all manner of T-shirts and tchotchkes and keeping her feline Whiskers in fine fettle, she pilots the Sea Bounder, a glass bottom boat showing tourists the underwater sights of aquatic plants, marine life—and a murder victim?
The self-proclaimed “Master of the Island,” Jules Tisdale was a wealthy man with business interests throughout Catalina who was about to be honored as Person of the Year before someone strangled him with his own tie and tossed his body into the water. That someone appears to be Nick, who had a raw deal from Jules and no alibi the night of his murder. To clear her brother’s name, Whit will have to investigate Jules’ shady associates and not exactly grief-stricken family members—with the unwelcome help of Felix Ramirez, police diver and Whit’s ex-boyfriend who’s looking to rekindle their relationship.
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About Gabby Allan
After writing plays for her friends to act out as a kid, bad poetry in high school, and her high school Alma Mater song, GABBY ALLAN finally found her true passion—cozy mysteries. Being able to share her world with readers, one laugh at a time, and touch people’s hearts with her down-to-earth characters makes for the best job ever. This California girl now lives with her husband, daughter, and two insane dogs in Central Pennsylvania where she is hard at work on her next novel.
Good morning, Blog Readers! I’m so thrilled to be here with you today to share my new series.
I’m Gabby Allan (also Misty Simon) and I write Rom Cozies for Kensington. They’re a wonderful mix of cozy mystery and rom com. I love this concept and am so thankful for the opportunity to share this new series with you!
Small towns and the people that inhabit them fascinate me. I’ve lived in bigger cities, but my heart has always been in small town locales. What’s not to love about being in a place where a lot of people know your name and you can never get away with anything without someone telling your grandparents? If I eat too many whoopee pies or don’t wave to my great aunt while she’s walking and I’m trying to drive, my mom gets a call. If I am out to dinner, I might run into ten people I know and stop at each table to catch up really quickly and end up eating an hour later than I had planned.
But I also have the circle of women who know me enough to ask me how I’m doing and really listen to an answer that isn’t “fine.” Or an aunt who will drop by with snickerdoodles because she knows how much I love then and she just made a fresh batch with me in mind.
So when I’m writing my cozies, I try to pull all those things in to the story world. This time, though, we’re on an island in the Pacific Ocean where my intrepid sleuth Whit has recently returned to the place she used to stay for the summer to help her brother run a glass bottom boat company. She’s choosing to leave her corporate life on the mainland and live the island life. She’s doing a good job, too, until a dead body floats under the boat and then we have issues. Addin some complications, like her brother having recently fought with the dead guy and then taking off to hide, and Whit is going to have to figure out whodunnit before her brother gets tossed in jail.
I love making the whole family a part of each mystery. I love delving into the community that would live on an island that hosts many tourists but under four-thousand permanent residents. They’re driving golf carts, working jobs, and making a life for themselves.
The possibilities are endless in a town where you’re surrounded by family and friends of the family and relationships that go back for generations, good and bad. But when there is the potential for not being able to just go to another state and you’d have to have a boat or plane to escape, you have even more fun to work with. And I did.
I love playing with the concept of what it means to be a part of a community like that. The wonderful parts where you never feel totally alone.At any given moment you could put out a hand and someone will take it and give you a huge helping of love and support, or a slap upside the head to get you back on the right track.
And bringing that into the books, with all the mess of relationships and secrets and loyalties and families is one of the true joys of writing about a small town in a small town. I never run out of ideas on how to make my main character, Whit’s, life difficult. I love pitting her against an ex-boyfriend she thought she’d left behind. And having her best friend on island with her, having to deal with her brother and her grandparents, and living in a place where everyone knows everyone. It has been an absolute blast to have her talk with her cat Whiskers about what to do next and to have pretty much the whole cast expecting her to find clues instead of telling her to keep her nose out of it.
I hope you’ll join me as we dive into the world of Whit and Whiskers, where murder doesn’t happen often, but when it does Whit might just have to save the day. I’m pretty sure she’s up to it.
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Thanks so much! - Gabby Allan
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a good murder mystery. Thanks for the chance.
ReplyDelete