Author Spotlight: Melissa Westemeier Newest Nun the Wiser Mystery Is Here!

We have a winner!  Lauri Kapitzke, you are Melissa’s giveaway winner. Melissa will be in touch. Thanks to everyone who stopped by! We love talking to our readers!

What fun to welcome mystery writer Melissa Westemeier back to the Spotlight! Her newest novel Dropped Like a Bad Habit is book 2 in the Nun the Wiser series for Tule Publishing.

Melissa Westemeier grew up around the edge of nerd culture, but marriage and motherhood with three sons immersed her in it. She’s fluent in Marvel, DC, Dr. Who, Star Wars, Godzilla, and more thanks to their influence. Her fiction work includes rom-com and a trilogy loosely based on her experience tending bar on the Wolf River in Wisconsin. She’s thrilled to realize her childhood dream of writing murder mysteries. Her books blend her humor and appreciation for nerd culture while tackling serious themes and unpacking the puzzle of whodunnit (and how and why!). In her spare time, Melissa needs to be outside or near a window. Her passions include hiking, swimming, biking, reading, and fantasizing about her next vacation destination.

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Sister B’s New Hobby in Dropped Like a Bad Habit

We last saw Sister Bernadette Ohlson in Old Habits Die Hard coming to terms with her lack of hobbies. Her friends and neighbors at The Abbey: Senior Living keep busy with all sorts of activities. Some have side hustles, where they make money, like Elena Lopez and her tailoring business, Phil Thomas retains his position as an editor for a chemistry journal, and Cliff Warneke does repairs around the building in exchange for a break on his monthly rent. Rin Sato destroys people’s old china settings and creates beautiful mosaics out of them, repurposing family heirlooms as table tops and boxes and wall hangings. Jan Kovitz is always busy crafting and cooking and baking for pleasure and for her children and grandchildren. Leo Tanaka and Jorge Garcia garden in the courtyard, Fern Panske is an avid doll collector, and the Harringtons knit and sing. Everyone’s productive except for Bernie, who bemoans the fact that her hobbies don’t create anything. She’s not crafty, she doesn’t care to cook, she can’t build anything or sew or garden. Her main hobbies are putting together jigsaw puzzles and reading.

In Old Habits Die Hard Bernie discovers she has a knack for eavesdropping and investigating and feels her enthusiasm for sleuthing rise as she assists Detective AJ Lewis. It’s a great hobby, but the opportunity to solve murders is limited to how many murders take place in her sphere.

As a woman of deep faith and convictions, Bernie feels compelled to help others, so when Ethan Brecht invites her to participate in community activism to fight a proposed development of a section of Chestnut Street, she’s all in. Her ties to the neighborhood are strong and she loves the convenience of all the little shops and the neighborly vibe that permeates her section of Eugene, Oregon. Plus, it’s not a stretch for her to write letters to city council members or the local newspaper to advocate for preserving her neighborhood. The communication and organization skills that served Bernie well as a middle school English teacher translate into this new purpose as a community organizer and activist. Bernie’s new passion is fighting to save her neighborhood and rallying support for her side.

People’s self-esteem and sense of happiness and personal satisfaction are tied to the quality of their social engagement and their sense of purpose. Bernie’s social, she lives in a building full of interesting people, but after she retires and completes her bucket list of traveling around the world, she has to figure out her next chapter. In Dropped Like a Bad Habit Bernie discovers how she can contribute to the world around her while using her gifts and talents—and I guarantee, it’s never the same old project or passion from one book to the next in the Nun the Wiser Mysteries. Her battle for her neighborhood begins and ends in Dropped Like a Bad Habit—she’s got a brand-new focus in her next adventure, A Fatal Habit (coming in Feb. 2026)!

GIVAWAY! Tell us, readers, what’s a “new chapter in life hobby” you’ve picked up for yourself? One lucky commenter will receive a signed coy of Dropped Like a Bad Habit and some other author swag. 

Dropped Like a Bad Habit

The bodies keep piling up along Chestnut Street…

When Sister Bernadette hears from the local pharmacist about plans to redevelop and gentrify their small community on Chestnut Street, she rallies her neighbors at The Abbey: Senior Living to help stop it. Chestnut Street is home to local mom-and-pop businesses that The Abbey’s residents frequently access. But when the healthy pharmacist mysteriously drops dead with no discernable reason, Detective AJ Lewis is stumped. Then another, younger, business owner dies with no explanation, and AJ is suspicious and starts to dig.

Sister Bernie, trying to solve  small, seemingly nonsensical thefts, is intrigued and positions herself to collaborate with the police for what she hopes will be her second murder investigation. Why did two seemingly healthy men conveniently die? Who’s behind the shadowy Vision Corporation? Each question leads to a dead end or another question. And then there’s an unexpected death at The Abbey. Coincidence or connection?

Murder’s becoming a bad habit Sister Bernie and AJ are determined to break.

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