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Heather Weidner’s Glitter, Glam, and Contraband

Today my friend Heather Baker Weidner visits the 3M Detective Agency for a guest post. Please welcome her.

Author Interview

  • Tell our readers a little about yourself and your writing. Thanks, Thomas for letting me visit your blog. My name is Heather Weidner, and I write the Delanie Fitzgerald mystery series. I also have short stories in the Virginia is for Mysteries series and in 50 Shades of Cabernet and Deadly Southern Charm. And I write novellas for the Mutt Mystery series.
  • What are you reading now? I love to read, and since I’ve started writing, I consider reading as research. Right now, I’m reading Lee Childs’s Blue Moon.
  • What writing projects are you currently working on? I just published the third mystery in the Delanie Fitzgerald series, Glitter, Glam, and Contraband. I am working on edits to a new cozy series set near Charlottesville, VA, and I have a novella, “The Fast and the Furriest” that comes out in March in the next Mutt Mysteries.
  • Who is your favorite author and why? I have way too many to list. I love a good story and a good mystery, so my favorites are Lee Child, John Berry, David Baldacci, John Grisham, Janet Evanovich, Agatha Christie. Lisa Scottoline, Louise Penny, Sherry Harris, and May Corrigan.
  • When did you know you were a writer? And how did you know? I have always loved to write. I wrote stories, a teen romance, and a lot of bad poetry in high school. I had written several mysteries through the years, but I didn’t start writing seriously and thinking about publishing until after I joined the writing group, Sisters in Crime.
  • What’s the number one item on your bucket list and why? I would love to go to New Zealand. I have had a pen pal there since 1975, and I would love to meet her in person.
  • What’s in your “To Be Read” (TBR) pile right now? And how many TBR piles do you have? My TBR pile became a TBR bookshelf in my office. There is also another pile on my nightstand. I love to read.
  • What are some things you know now that you wish you knew when you started writing? Writing is a business, and you need to treat it as such. It’s also a tough business. You need to develop thick skin. Seek and take advice that will help you improve your craft. And keep writing. Don’t give up.
  • Where is your favorite place to write? Why? My new office has a big window behind my monitor. It faces the woods, and I can see the sunrise through the trees. It’s my treehouse view.
  • What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a writer? Don’t give up. If you want to get published, keep writing. Don’t get discouraged. And learn to take advice that will help you improve your writing.

Author Biography

Glitter, Glam, and Contraband is Heather Weidner’s third novel in the Delanie Fitzgerald series. Her short stories appear in the Virginia is for Mysteries series, 50 Shades of Cabernet, and Deadly Southern Charm. Her novellas appear in The Mutt Mysteries series. She is a member of Sisters in Crime – Central Virginia, Guppies, International Thriller Writers, and James River Writers.

Originally from Virginia Beach, Heather has been a mystery fan since Scooby-Doo and Nancy Drew. She lives in Central Virginia with her husband and a pair of Jack Russell terriers.

Heather earned her BA in English from Virginia Wesleyan University and her MA in American literature from the University of Richmond. Through the years, she has been a cop’s kid, technical writer, editor, college professor, software tester, and IT manager.

You can follow Heather at:

Website: http://www.heatherweidner.com
Blog: http://www.heatherweidner.com/blog
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HeatherWeidner1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeatherWeidnerAuthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heather_mystery_writer/

Synopsis of Glitter, Glam, and Contraband

Private investigator, Delanie Fitzgerald, and her computer hacker partner, Duncan Reynolds, are back for more sleuthing in Glitter, Glam and Contraband. In this fast-paced mystery, the Falcon Investigations team is hired to find out who is stealing from the talent at a local drag show. Delanie gets more than she bargains for and a few makeup tips in the process. Meanwhile, a mysterious sound in the ceiling of her office vexes Delanie. She uses her sleuthing skills to track down the source and uncover a creepy contraband operation.Glitter, Glam, and Contraband features a strong female sleuth with a knack for getting herself in and out of humorous situations like helping sleezy strip club owner, Chaz Smith on his quest to become Richmond’s next mayor, tracking down missing reptiles, and uncovering hidden valuables from a 100-year-old crime with a Poe connection.

You can get a copy of Glitter, Glam and Contraband here: https://www.amazon.com/Glitter-Contraband-Delanie-Fitzgerald-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B081PGYR7T/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2ATPC6CX9TM20&keywords=heather+weidner&qid=1574435358&s=digital-text&sprefix=Heather+wei%2Cdigital-text%2C156&sr=1-1

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Book Reviews – Blue Moon, by Lee Child

Blue Moon (Jack Reacher, #24)

Blue Moon by Lee Child

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series is suffering the fate of too many long-running series. It’s becoming predictable. Of course, that may be exactly what Reacher’s fans want. In this installment, Reacher wars against the Albanian and Ukrainian mobs in an unnamed American city, to right wrongs done to an elderly couple who are fighting to save their daughter from cancer. Early on, Reacher finds a sweet young thing working in a bar to share his bed and adventures, and we’re off and running. Fine if you like that sort of thing.
My biggest problem with the series these days is that all the suspense is gone. Reacher’s not only gonna win, there’s no one or nothing that’s even gonna challenge him. He just mows through the bad guys like they’re not even resisting. It’s pure catharsis, again, which may be exactly what Reacher’s fans want. Will I buy the next one? I swore after I read the last book that I wouldn’t, but guess what? At least I didn’t pay full price for it. Child’s still doing something right, but I wish he’d take a chance and change the formula.



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Book Reviews – Faithless, by Karin Slaughter

Faithless (Grant County, #5)

Faithless by Karin Slaughter

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Faithless is the penultimate book in Karin Slaughter’s Grant County series. When I began this series, I really wanted to like it, but each successive installment keeps hitting me as meh. Slaughter is a superb writer–her plotting, pacing, scene construction and word choice are all very good. She is a master at building suspense. I think I’ve finally identifies the problem I have with the stories–I don’t like the characters. All of them are flawed, which seems to be the trend these days, and I’m a romantic at heart, so that rubs me the wrong way. But they also make poor decisions vis a vis their work–decisions that would likely get one severely reprimanded, if not fired, had they occurred in real life. Naturally, the results such decisions are responsible for many of Slaughter’s plot twists, and her characters don’t seem to learn from their mistakes. I just can’t gin up much sympathy for people like that.
In Faithless, protagonists Police Chief Jeffery Tolliver and county coroner Dr. Sara Linton discover the body of a young woman who was entombed alive in a box with an air pipe attached, only to be killed later by cyanide poured down the pipe. The investigation leads to a rural religious cult. However, as much or more of the action in the books come from the characters personal demons–Jeffery and Sara’s on-again, off-again relationship, Detective Lena Adams abusive relationship and Sara’s sister’s involvement with the cult. I figured out the mystery pretty early on, so most of my reading was done just to prove I was right while shaking my head at the characters’ ill-considered actions.
I’ll read the last book in the series just to finish what I’ve started, but I don’t hold out great hope. Of course,these problems might be why the author chose to end the series after just six entries.



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Book Review – The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler

The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1)The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After many years, I’ve reread this classic P.I. novel by Raymond Chandler, and it did not disappoint. Yet I wonder if if it was submitted to an agent today whether it would even see the light of day.
The Big Sleep breaks many of the so-called rules for good writing so popular today. It does a lot of telling rather than showing, and contains many info dumps – Chandler’s impeccable descriptions of 1940s Los Angeles for which the book is justly famous. Protagonist Phillip Marlowe is a man’s man, and the female characters exude sex, decadence and duplicity – surely such a lack of political correctness would never make it into print today. The language is chock full of period slang that you’d encounter in a noir film – did the average person really speak like that in 1939? The plot is somewhat contrived, the characters larger than life. But somehow, it all works so wonderfully! Thank goodness Raymond Chandler did not have to adhere to today’s publishing standards.

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