Tag Archive for: Every Last Secret

Cover Reveal–Every Last Secret

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 by Linda Rodriguez

I’m excited to announce that on Tuesday, September 7th, the first of my Skeet Bannion mystery novels, Every Last Secret, will be re-released in ebook and trade paper format in a new edition with new covers. This is a thrill, especially, because readers have asked for a paperback version of these books for a long time, and my former publisher would not bring them out in that format. All three of my Skeet Bannion mysteries will be released with new covers in these new formats as a prelude to the launch at the end of the year of the 4th Skeet Bannion mystery, Every Family Doubt.


 This is the book that first introduced Skeet Bannion, Cherokee campus police chief in a small river town and former Kansas City, Missouri, homicide detective. Skeet has left the big city and come to this bedroom community to escape her drunken and disgraced policeman father and her ex-husband, who refuses to give her up. She’s tired of the grim toll that being an urban homicide detective has taken on her and is looking forward to a more peaceful existence in this quiet, little town. 
Still, murder happens everywhere, and when it happens in her town and on her campus, Skeet moves back into the investigative mode and obsession with justice that made her one of the most successful big city homicide detectives and the highest ranking woman in that police force before she resigned. No one kills someone on her watch and gets away with it scot-free. Little does she know that this case will change her entire life.
I hope the many fans of these mysteries will enjoy this peek at the new cover of the first of them. Keep an eye out for the new edition of Every Last Secret in paperback for the first time, coming Tuesday, September 7th.

Linda Rodriguez’s 12th book is The Fish That Got Away: The Sixth Guppy Anthology. Her 11th book was Fishy Business: The Fifth Guppy Anthology (edited). Dark Sister: Poems was her 10th book and a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, an anthology she co-edited, were published in 2017.  Every Family Doubt, her fourth mystery featuring Cherokee detective, Skeet Bannion, and Revising the Character-Driven Novel will be published in 2021. Her three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, Every Last Secret—and earlier books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart’s Migration—have received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for film. 

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Native Writers Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Learn more about her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com 

My Writing Vacation – Or Books I Enjoyed When I Let Myself Read for Fun by Debra H. Goldstein

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Many of you know I stepped down from the bench a year ago to give myself the freedom to write during the day.  The results were mixed.  In the beginning, I couldn’t get disciplined enough to do much more than organize my daughter’s wedding, travel, and watch every possible episode of How I Met Your Mother and NCIS. I finally found my writing “legs” and finished a novel that beta readers are now reviewing and wrote and submitted a number of short stories.  Four of them, “A Political Cornucopia,” “Who Dat? Dat the Indian Chief!,” “Early Frost,” and the “Rabbi’s Wife Stayed Home,” were published by Bethlehem Writer’s Roundtable (November 2013), Mardi Gras Murder (2014), The Birmingham Arts Journal (April 2014) and Mysterical – E (April 2014), respectively. At the same time, my 2012 IPPY Award winning mystery, Maze in Blue, was re-released by Harlequin Worldwide Mystery as a May 2014 book of the month.

When I received notice that Maze was reissued and the fourth story had been accepted for publication, I

decided to take a two week vacation from writing and rejoin the world of being a reader.  Some of the books I could have done without (diet books – I’ve gained weight since I decided to write), some were simply okay (a biography of Barbra Streisand), but some proved to be pure fun.  One of the exciting things to me, is that many of the books I really enjoyed were written by authors I have met at various conferences and who, in many cases, have written guest blogs for “It’s Not Always a Mystery.”(http://debrahgoldstein.wordpress.com)

For a good suspense read, let me recommend Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Agatha winning The Wrong Girl.  I read her Mary Higgins Clark MWA winning The Other Woman last year and eagerly was awaiting this book.  Then, I picked up the third book in the Skeet Bannon series written by Linda Rodriguez.  Every Hidden Fear was published the week I took my reading vacation, I couldn’t put it down – each book only has hooked me on Skeet since Linda won the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition for Every Last Secret.

I wanted to get a little food and farm reading in so I turned to Edith Maxwell’s A Tine to Live, A Tine to Die which I followed with Leslie Budewitz’s Agatha winning Death al Dente. Food wasn’t my only companion during my reading excursion.  I added a little comedy and romance with Kendel Lynn’s Board Stiff.

Much as I enjoy mysteries, I needed to spice up my life with a few good looking men so my bedtime reading was Robert Wagner’s Pieces of My Heart.  Tonight, I’m snuggling up with Rob Lowe’s book, Love Life.  I plan to read fast because tomorrow I’m giving myself back to writing.

Pitching the Great Books

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I’d like everyone to welcome the fabulous and talented Linda Rodriguez! She is not only an amazing friend, but one heck of a writer. If you don’t believe me, her novel Every Last Secret is out TODAY! Trust me, you’ll want to check it out. In the meantime, Linda has an excellent challenge for all of us today! Take it away, Linda…

Recently, I served as a judge on a panel billed as “American Idol for book pitches—without the Simon Cowell.” Four of us judges listened to twenty-five aspiring authors give one-minute pitches for their books as if we were editors or agents they’d met at a conference. We then gave the authors feedback designed to help them improve their book pitches, and the author we decided had the best pitch was later connected with an appropriate agent and editor in the book’s specific field.

This event was so entertaining and educational that people paid just to come in and watch it without participating. It gave me a new appreciation of the power of a good book pitch. I wrote a blog post about the event, and a commenter lamented what book pitching would have done to Melville’s Moby Dick. This left me wondering how some books I’ve read would be pitched in today’s competitive market. See if you can guess the author or title of the books being pitched below. Then, in the comments, try pitching some book you’ve loved.

Book 1

In this great noir novel, Ethan’s secret love for his wife’s sweet cousin and nursemaid, Mattie, grows daily as his wife becomes more ill-tempered and demanding. He struggles with his desire and his conscience. When his wife decides to send Mattie away, Ethan can no longer bear it. He tries to run away with her and fails, so Mattie suggests a suicide pact. Ethan agrees, but at the last minute, will he be able to carry this off, or will his weakness cause him to fail yet again and pay a grim price the rest of his life?

Book 2

Mystery upon mystery fills this novel, and it ends with one of the most suspenseful chases in literature. A great lady has a great secret, but Tulkinghorn, her wealthy husband’s lawyer, ferrets it out with the intention of blackmailing Mrs. D. to do his bidding. Tulkinghorn has other plots, as well, forcing a retired soldier, George, to tarnish his honor and ruining him anyway, using a discarded French lady’s maid as a cat’s-paw with a promise of a job and threatening her with deportation when she calls in his promise. In the midst of all these crimes and plots, a police detective, Bucket, keeps an eye on the main players, especially Tulkinghorn. When Tulkinghorn is murdered and George arrested for it, Bucket searches for the true murderer all the way into Mrs. D’s boudoir. But even if Bucket finds the killer, can he keep a greater tragedy from occurring?

Book 3

A poor but beautiful girl is violently raped by a wealthy man and left pregnant. After her newborn dies, she tries to start a new life where her sordid history is not known. She falls in love and marries, only to be deserted by her husband when he learns of her past. With her father’s death, she and her family become destitute and homeless. Finally, she is forced to become her rapist’s mistress, only to murder him when her husband returns to find her. Her landlady sees the blood seeping through the ceiling and calls the police. Will our heroine escape to freedom with the love of her life or be caught and executed for the murder of a brutal aristocrat?

Answers: Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton; Bleak House, Charles Dickens; Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

Linda Rodriguez, author of Every Last Secret, blogs about books and writers at www.LindaRodriguezWrites.blogspot.com. She reads and writes everything, even poetry, and she spends too much time on Twitter as @rodriguez_linda.