Hallow (Lone Star Book Blog Tour)

 

HALLOW: A FRACTURED FAMILY TALE

A Black Orchid Enterprises Mystery, Book #5

By M.R. Dimond

Mystery / Cozy Mystery / Lawyers & Criminals Humor

Publisher: Rock Rose Press

Pages: 321

Publication Date: May 30, 2024

SYNOPSIS

Family: What you don't know can kill you.

Young Texas attorney JD Thompson enjoys his life in a small Texas town, where he lives with his ABBA tribute band, college roommates, and seventy black cats that his veterinarian partner rescued before Halloween. Probate cases with inheritance squabbles leave him time to help family members, like when his grandfather receives a surprising present from the past. But the squabbles turn deadly, the present isn't a gift, and the lovely woman who captures his heart isn't what she seems. As he stands in ashes with murder on the doorstep, JD races to defend his client, his family, and his home. Can he untangle the dark secrets threatening to destroy everything he holds dear? The walls are already splattered with blood.

Join JD and the quirky Black Orchid Enterprises gang in their fifth Texas mystery as the holiday season rolls in—fall holidays, that is, from High Holy Days to Thanksgiving.

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BOOK TRAILER

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Character Interview

HALLOW by M.R. Dimond

 

Character interview questions courtesy of Lois Winston

 

Character’s Name: Dianne Cortez

Series: Black Orchid Enterprises Mystery series

Author’s Name: M. R. Dimond

                             

   Image: Adobe Stock

 

Dianne Cortez (CPA, CFE) is president of Black Orchid Enterprises, the umbrella firm of three professional offices located in Gregg House in Beauchamp Texas. Unless dancing or singing, Dianne never seeks the limelight. Anastasia Pollock has interviewed her partners attorney JD Thompson (https://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2021/12/mr-dimonds-amateur-sleuth-jd-thompson.html) and veterinarian Johnny Ly (https://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2023/04/an-interview-and-cornbread-recipe-from.html), and now it’s Dianne’s turn to dish.

 

1. What was your life like before your author started pulling your strings?

I thought I was living my dream. Well, I was. I earned the two college degrees I wanted. I passed the exams to be a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Fraud Examiner the way I’d planned. I scored my dream job with a prestigious accounting firm in Austin, Texas. Only the dream was a nightmare, and I didn’t know how to wake up. The author moving me to Beauchamp, Texas, with my college housemates woke me up for sure!

2. What’s the one trait you like most about yourself?
   I love math. You might not think so, but it makes the world go around. However, I never forget that numbers are attached to people. Math is the foundation of my favorite activities—dancing, singing, gardening. Somebody said, “God is the infinite number.” I can see that, though the nuns who taught me in high school weren’t impressed when I mentioned it.
3. What do you like least about yourself?
   I’ve dated JD Thompson three times and lived with him in college—and now. Sometimes we lived together even when not dating, because a lease is a lease and money is money. I don’t know what’s wrong with me that I can’t make us work. My parents love him. My sisters love him. I love him too, but somehow … I don’t know … something happens when we try to do the romance dance. He’s not going to see this, is he?
4. What is the strangest thing your author has had you do or had happen to you?
   Move in with my ex yet again? Sing in the ABBA tribute band we formed in college? Investigate murders? Shoot people to defend my friends? Sure, I’ve always carried a gun for protection, but it’s not like I had to use it. Give holiday parties for the entire county? Run a community disaster shelter and fix Thanksgiving dinner during a flood? Take care of as many as seventy cats at a time? Road trips with JD? The fun never ends. Some days I don’t want to get out of bed to find out what happens next.
5. What is your greatest fear?
   When I moved to Beauchamp with JD and Johnny, I swore off all my bad habits, including dating. That was supposed to last a year, but it keeps lasting. I wonder if I’ll ever find love. I say I want to, but I don’t do anything to make it happen. I come from a big family. Will their love and the love of my friends be enough for a lifetime? I’m not thirty yet, so I might have time later, but every year I grow more settled with the way I am now.
6. What makes you happy?
   Dancing. Singing. Spreadsheets.
7. If you could rewrite a part of your story, what would it be? Why?
   I’d definitely write out my past trauma, which I can’t help feeling has something to do with my semipermanent singleness. And I wouldn’t meet JD the first week of college. Maybe if I’d met him later, we could have a mature relationship. I wouldn’t want to miss going to Paris with him after we finished our bachelor’s degrees. But we broke up twice after that. Maybe we could still go to Paris if we met and dated later.
8. Of the other characters in your book, which one bugs you the most? Why?
   JD, of course.
9. Do you have recipes or crafts you’d like to share with us?
   I grew up taking care of my younger siblings and cousins, and my only recipe for hungry, screaming kids is to throw everything in the kitchen into a pot and call it dinner. For a variation, I wrapped everything in a tortilla. I started making crafts for Day of the Dead as soon as I could wield scissors, and it doesn’t look like I’ll ever stop. This PBS Kids page (https://www.pbs.org/parents/crafts-and-experiments/make-your-own-colorful-papel-picado) has instructions for making papel picado banners close to the way I make them, though I use heavier paper so they don’t tear easily. Since I met JD and discovered he was allergic to marigolds, I make paper marigolds, like those at the Tinkerlab website (https://tinkerlab.com/simple-paper-marigolds-dia-de-los-muertos/ ). I leave the real ones outdoors.
10. What's next for you?

I have to survive the yearly business tax deadline in September and the final personal income tax deadline in October. Everyone suddenly realizes the day before that they have to file taxes. Tax deadlines aren’t random; they fall regularly as Christmas. People always act like it’s a huge surprise. I don’t ever plan beyond those days. Besides, the holidays follow soon after, and I shudder to think what the author has in store for us then.

 

Follow Dianne at https://dimond.me, where she regularly contributes to Thoughts, the website blog, and in the Black Orchids Mystery series (https://books2read.com/ap/8vp0bM/M-R-Dimond).

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After stints in professional orchestras, law firms, cat rescue, bookkeeping, and technical communication, M. R. Dimond returned to a childhood dream of writing fiction, which has turned out to be about musicians, lawyers, veterinarians, accountants, and cats. Her Black Orchid Enterprises Mystery series, set in her near-native Texas, currently contains five novels with more soon to come.

She has had short fiction published in Strange Horizons, Dancing USA, and various anthologies (most recently in Dreaming the Goddess; Hook, Line, and Sinker; and Riddles, Resolutions, and Revenge), as well as nonfiction articles in various publications.

She holds an MBA from University of Tulsa and is a veteran of writing workshops, including Clarion, Viable Paradise, Jim Gunn’s Center for Science Fiction, and Taos Toolbox. She lives in the wilderness east of Austin, Texas, with her husband and many foster cats.

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