Betty Owens posted: " Fay Lamb is a longtime friend and one of my favorite authors. Her "hallmark" is humor, so I was excited to see her name included on the list of contributors for The Visitor novellas. I have read this story and will soon be writing a review. It is a deli" Betty Thomason Owens
Fay Lamb is a longtime friend and one of my favorite authors. Her "hallmark" is humor, so I was excited to see her name included on the list of contributors for The Visitor novellas. I have read this story and will soon be writing a review. It is a delightful suspense story. Delightful, because it's funny with plenty of mystery and suspense.
--Betty Thomason Owens
Betty with Fay Lamb
When I was asked by my publisher if I wanted to take part in the writing of a contemporary mystery, light suspense series, of course, I said yes.
However, I must make a confession. The authors of the series gathered online in Zoom meetings, each one with a separate book. We began to plot out the secondary but title character of The Visitor who is the link to all of our stories. The Visitor shaped out to be a put-together professional, who wears her signature color red as a sign of her put-togetherness, with neatly trimmed nails and put-together hair. The job of the authors was to bring out her personality through the point of view of our main characters for each story.
The rebel in me saw Connie—the Visitor—only as the baby sister to my character, and my character is a lawyer turned stay-at-home-mom for eighteen years, whose baby and only child is about to go off to college and leave a hole in her heart. She'd already racked her brains on how to make his last summer before college memorable for her family, and she isn't letting a put-together, red-wearing little sister take that away from her. Pollyanna Reagan will get her sister out in the woods hunting Bigfoot with her family or she'll die trying—even if Connie's signature color might attack other dangerous wildlife.
Never fear. Neither Pollyanna nor Connie meets their demise. But someone else does, and guess who becomes a chief suspect. I'll give you a hint: his name is in the title.
So why was I so adamant about not letting Connie stay in her routine?
Because as an author, a lot of me goes into my characters, and while I was never the mother of Pollyanna's caliber, I have two sons that are as different as day and night. My youngest son, Ethan, though, did reach his full potential of being a royal pain, and I loved every moment of it. This story allowed me to relive the playful nature of mother and child. My son's name is Ethan as well.
Not only was The Visitor Meets Old Hairy a chance for me to live the old give-and-take with my boy, but it gave me a chance to visit one of my favorite places on earth. Shh… I can't mention that place here or my publisher might hunt me down much the way Bigfoot is hunted, and I might not get away with just a shaky camera aimed in my direction. We're having a contest, and you'll have to stay tune for details. We want you to guess the location.
Added to the people and the place of my story, one of my favorite subjects is Bigfoot. I know just about everything there is to know about him. I love the big fella, and if you read the story, you'll see how much I know through the knowledge of my characters. Did I research? Well, yes, I did, but that research has spanned a lifetime. Do I believe in the likes of a big hairy man-like creature?
I ain't gonna tell you, but you might find some insight into my way of thinking when you meet Pollyanna, Connie, Ethan, and Marc and traipse through the woods with them in search of Old Hairy.
The Visitor goes camping? Pollyanna Reagan can't wait to take her always-put-together, ultra-professional sister out into the boonies. But when they encounter what they thought was a mythical creature, they might both become sticks in the mud.
Of course, when they find a body, a stiff in the mud, Connie shifts into deduction mode. Was the deceased somehow scared to death or possibly attacked by what should be imaginary, or are there other, more human and certainly more vicious, intentions at play?
Match wits with The Visitor as she unravels this twisted puzzle and the family drama that surrounds it.
Since an early age, storytelling has been Fay's greatest desire. She seeks to create memorable characters that touch her readers' hearts. She says of her writing, "If I can't laugh or cry at the words written on the pages of my manuscript, the story is not ready for the reader." Fay writes in various genres, including romance, romantic suspense, and contemporary fiction.
If you'd like to catch up with Fay, visit her at her website, on Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter. Also, Fay has become a "novel" gardener, and she shares her adventure in her newsletter, Tales from the Azalea Garden. You can sign up for her newsletter, Tales from the Azalea Garden, here.
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Read all about it & Join the Expedition: Enter the contest by guessing at the clues given to you as to the location of each book in The Visitor series: https://www.writeintegrity.com/thevisitor
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