Volume #5 in the series is now available & the series has a new look!

It’s been a long time in coming, I know, but the fifth book in the Jorja Matthews mystery series is now available. Happy dance!!

Here’s the new eBook cover for Price of Betrayal and you can swing over to Amazon anytime to make your purchase. The paperback is also available but with a different cover at this point, as I’m still in the process of trying to rework that cover to match the eBook. It has been, to put it lightly, a process.

The fifth book would have been available much sooner except that I made the decision to redo all of the covers for the series. I wanted to release the new book, but decided to put it off until I could complete all the necessary changes on the other books in the series. I knew it would be a project, but I didn’t realize how long it would take and once I began the process there was just no turning back until I reached the end. While the paperbacks aren’t technically complete since I still need to update them if everything works as I hope, all the hard work is past me now.

Needless to say, I feel a huge sense of accomplishment, and I’m very pleased with the end result. I hope readers will be, as well.

When No Mother of Mine was originally released, I worked with a cover artist who gave me what I wanted at the time but it was before I realized I would leave myself stranded with a lack of ideas for future covers that would need consistency. From that point on, each new book received a cover not in harmony with the others. I’ve been unhappy with them for awhile now but wasn’t sure how to fix them.

One day it finally hit me about how I should update the covers (I’ll credit this to finally tackling morning pages – something I’ll write about later). What I decided to do with each cover for the series was to use photos from the local area – my stories are fiction but the town I’ve set them in is not. When I originally wrote No Mother of Mine, it wasn’t with the intention to write a series. That’s just how it ended up working out, as I worked through the story, learned more about the characters and realized there was more to the story than I had originally realized. A series was born by accident, if you can believe it, because that’s what the characters wanted.

And a series of books should look like they belong together. I’m thrilled now that my series does just that. More importantly, the covers will share pieces of this little town I decided to place my characters in. Even better still, I’m free from worrying about what my covers on other books in the series will look like! This gives me freedom you can’t imagine.

The local cemetery

Without further ado, here’s a look...at the new look with details about where the photos were taken:

The photo for No Mother of Mine was taken at the local cemetery. Why use the cemetery? It has history. I have family there. It's also a beautiful, quiet area that will forever be a part of this small town.

Trail at the city park

The photo for Best Kept Secrets is from a trail that's part of our city park. It's a nice little walk over the hills and through the woods, past an old foundation I have no idea would have been used for but must have had some purpose, over a small creek and through more ferns that you could count.

Old bank, recently remodeled

The cover photo on Ties That Bind is part of the historical district on the main street through town, and is of the old town bank that was recently remodeled. The inside turned out amazing and while it was a huge undertaking, it was great to see my friends tackle the idea and set forth in motion the vision that became a reality. 

Quarry rocks near the quarry pool

Cross My Heart shares a photo of some of the quarry rocks which were stacked on each other haphazardly years ago near the quarry in the city park and have been a place for kids to play ever since. I remember playing on them as a kid myself and I take Jozee there even now to climb on them for fun. It was only after I decided to use this photo for this novel that I realized there was a cross carved into the top right rock. 

The photo used for Price of Betrayal is of McIntosh, one of our local lakes as seen from the Yelm-Tenino trail. This is a lake my husband has enjoyed fishing on, especially when our boys were little and catching fish was a fun experience.

So this is what I've been working on and what I'm now thrilled to share with you. I'll share more later once I know where I stand with the look on the paperbacks.

Until then...read on and carry on!

Happy Mother’s Day!

My plan had been to write a full-blown blog post today but I decided that my mental and physical attention will be better spent outdoors, not planted in front of my computer where I'll likely find other tasks to fill my day once I've completed a blog post. 

So, for Mother’s Day I’m going to play outside and go with the flow, doing whatever activity draws my immediate interest. 

In the meantime, I thought I’d share some photos of flowers I’ve taken over the years…just because. Consider this a virtual gift from me to you.

Some of these flowers were gifts, others were in my garden or my mom's garden - I enjoy placing cut roses or other flowers from my garden in old Ball canning jars.











To all mothers out there, whether you’re a biological mother, a stepmother, or an aunt or other family member who’s like a mother, I hope you have a beautiful, wonderful day!