Author Spotlight: Kris Bock Is back with a New Mystery and a Fun Giveaway!

What a treat to welcome Kris Bock back to the Author Spotlight! She’s not only one of my favorite mystery writers, she’s also a fellow Tule Publishing author!

Kris Bock writes mystery, suspense, and romance, often with Southwestern landscapes. In the Accidental Detective humorous mystery series, a witty journalist solves mysteries in Arizona and tackles the challenges of turning fifty. The Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the employees and customers at a cat café. Watch as they fall in love with each other and shelter cats. In the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series, a Texas ranching family wins a fortune in the lottery and find out winning the lottery causes as many problems as it solves. Kris’s romantic suspense novels include stories of treasure hunting, archaeology, and intrigue.

Sign up for the Kris Bock newsletter and get an Accidental Detective short story and other freebies. Then every two weeks, you’ll get fun content about pets, announcements of new books, sales, and more.

Is A Stone Cold Murder (the Reluctant Psychic Mystery book 1) a Cozy Paranormal Mystery?

Thanks so much for inviting me back, Nan. After publishing six books in The Accidental Detective humorous mystery series, I’m writing a new series. In the Reluctant Psychic Mysteries, a quirky loner who can read the history of any object with her touch gets drawn into mysteries at the museum of oddities where she works.

Book 1, which just released, is A Stone Cold Murder. Petra Cloch can touch an object and sense the emotions people have left behind. She avoids friendships so she won’t need to explain her gift or feel like a voyeur. Now she’s starting a new job at a quirky private museum in smalltown New Mexico. When she picks up a rock in her new office, she feels flashes of rage, fear and death. Everyone says her predecessor died in a car crash, but what if he was murdered? If he died because of the job, she could be next.

Is this a cozy mystery?

That’s an interesting question because people don’t agree on what makes a mystery “cozy.” One definition says that the main character is an amateur detective (so not a police officer or PI). The story should have minimal violence and gore, no sex on the page, and only the gentlest of swearing.

But in the US, there’s been a trend for several years of cozies that feature women who are into cooking or crafting. Often, the books start with them losing their job. Their boyfriend/fiancé/husband leaves them, or they catch him cheating. Then, they inherit a business in a small town that involves something like cooking, crafting, or a shop with antiques. (Sometimes the female main character starts a catering business or opens a shop.) Throughout the series, they stumble across dead bodies and develop a relationship with a love interest.

I like cozy mysteries more in theory than I often do in practice. I like following an amateur detective rather than seeing the grittier details of a police procedural. I like knowing the ending will be reasonably happy, with justice served and no shocking twist like the main character turning out to be the villain or getting killed at the end.

However, I probably give up on half to two-thirds of the cozies I start because I get bored. The characters aren’t that compelling. The mystery takes too long to get going or doesn’t have high enough stakes, because the main character could simply stop investigating and suffer no consequences. Or maybe the author spends more time on the romance than the mystery. (I read and write romance as well, but when I’m in the mood for a mystery I don’t necessarily want a romance.)

A great cozy mystery depends on a compelling, charming main character and a dramatic mystery that is well-written. A strong main character is a great place to start because if you’re going to write an entire series about someone, they’d better be interesting and fun!

In the Reluctant Psychic series, Petra has the psychic power of psychometry. She can touch an object and read emotions left behind by people who’ve worn or used that object.

I’ve read a few mysteries with main characters who have psychometry, but I’ve often felt the writers made it too easy on the character. I don’t think that would be an enjoyable way to live. In creating Petra, I thought about what it might be like to actually have that skill, especially if you didn’t have a supportive family. She starts out as a loner, quite closed off, and trying not to use psychometry.

Before I started writing, I wanted to make sure I could write her as someone who was interesting, likable, and ideally even funny. I started writing thoughts from her viewpoint and discovered a somewhat dark sense of humor that worked well with her past experiences and who she is.

The first several books have her starting to accept her talent, making friends who support her, and figuring out who she is and how she wants to live. To some extent, I’m letting her tell me all those things. Readers who want a traditional love interest introduced in the first book might be disappointed because Petra isn’t ready for that. I’m not sure if she ever will be, but by book three, out next year, she’s becoming more open to the idea of letting people see who she really is and trusting them not to betray her.

So, back to the question: Is this a cozy mystery?

It depends on how one defines cozy and what the reader expects. She is certainly an amateur detective rather than a professional, and the violence is mostly off the page. (Of course Petra gets herself into dangerous situations, because those are exciting and fun, although I hope her behavior never seems reckless!). She lives in a small town, but there’s no crafting or cooking – she has a geology degree and works as a curator in a quirky museum. She develops good friends, but any love interest will have to approach Petra cautiously over a long time.

A related question might be: Is this a paranormal mystery?

Petra has psychic powers, but she’s not a witch. Another character sees auras, but this isn’t a world where many people have psychic powers, and the psychic powers mentioned are about sensing rather than more dramatic powers like telepathically communicating or moving objects. There are no supernatural creatures.

So it’s a paranormal mystery, but in a very limited sense, where the world is basically “real” as we know it. If you believe some people can see auras or if you’ve ever seen a ghost, then this world may not seem particularly paranormal. So, I am calling it a cozy paranormal mystery, but basically, it is what it is, and I hope readers will enjoy it!

Early reviewers have said: “A good old-fashioned murder mystery with a twist. The supernatural elements make this book interesting. It was suspenseful and kept you guessing until the end.”
“I really enjoyed the intro to all the people in this small community. So many interesting characters.”

Thank you for visiting with me today, Nan!

**Giveaway!** For a chance to win an e-book copy of A Stone Cold Murder, please tell me whether you’ve ever had an experience that might be considered paranormal. If not, would you like to?

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Kris Bock writes mystery, suspense, and romance, often with Southwestern landscapes. In the Accidental Detective humorous mystery series, a witty journalist solves mysteries in Arizona and tackles the challenges of turning fifty. The Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the employees and customers at a cat café. Watch as they fall in love with each other and shelter cats. In the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series, a Texas ranching family wins a fortune in the lottery and find out winning the lottery causes as many problems as it solves. Kris’s romantic suspense novels include stories of treasure hunting, archaeology, and intrigue.

Sign up for the Kris Bock newsletter and get an Accidental Detective short story and other freebies. Then every two weeks, you’ll get fun content about pets, announcements of new books, sales, and more.

A Stone Cold Murder

She hates her gift – but it just might save her…

Geologist Petra Cloch can touch an object and sense the emotions of the people who’ve held it. It’s a miserable way to live. She studied rocks because they rarely ‘talk’ to her and she’s dodged friendships so she won’t need to explain her gift or feel like a voyeur. But when she takes a job as the rock and mineral curator at an unusual western history museum and picks up a jagged crystal in her new office, flashes of rage, fear and death hit hard.

Everyone says her predecessor died in a car crash, but what if he was murdered? Under normal circumstances, Petra would never become involved, but what if the previous curator died because of something he did on the job? She could be next. Petra knows she’ll need evidence, not her psychic sense she hides. Can she trust her chatty colleagues who invite her to lunch and to join a book club? And what about the far too watchful Sheriff who keeps showing up unexpectedly…

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