Blog Tour Featuring Lavender Toes by Barbara Silkstone @barbsilkstone @dollycas #giveaway

Lavender Toes (A Cold Cream Murder Mystery)
by Barbara Silkstone

About Lavender Toes

Lavender Toes (A Cold Cream Murder Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
5th in Series
Independently Published (December 1, 2019)
Paperback: 174 pages
ISBN-10: 1712435833
ISBN-13: 978-1712435830
Digital ASIN: B0821NHR9V

Someone dear to Olive is found dead—toes up and barefooted—in Digby’s Bees lavender field. Olive and Lizzy team up with WonderDog to find the killer. Digby’s hives are home to the wondrous Soprano bees. The little buzzers are the source of the secret ingredient that powers their Nonna’s Cold Cream—a fountain of youth in a jar.

Finding the killer becomes more of a challenge as the gals protect Digby’s bees from a determined land developer who wants the beekeeper’s farm. The clock ticks as saving the honeybees becomes every bit as important as finding the cousin-killer.

While Olive and Lizzy buzz about, Grams, nonagenarian ace reporter for the Silverfish Gazette, takes on the story of a diamond heist in nearby Sarasota. Can the gals protect Grams from another near catastrophe or can the feisty lady handle it alone?

Help the Cold Cream gals solve the mystery of the Lavender Toes while once again bailing Grams out of trouble. And what about those bees?

Every book comes with a recipe for a homemade beauty product.

Nurture or Nature?

Are writers born with a passion to write or is it a skill taught by nurturing adults?

I was three years old when I ran away from home for the first time. Dragging my empty doll’s suitcase behind me I tottered down our apartment steps. The stairs were scary high, but I knew the wide world waited beyond the lobby door. My plan was to have an adventure and then make a picture book about it.

As I was midway on the apartment staircase, the step behind me creaked. Certain it was my mother following me; I picked up my pace without looking back. I was determined to see the world.

My cardboard suitcase was empty on the chance I found a homeless kitten. They were the next best things to pixies. Oh, how I wanted a kitten.

Bracing my shoe against the lobby doorframe, I wedged it open and squeezed out onto the street. I turned left because that was the way to my grandmother’s house. I was sure to encounter a big bad wolf as Red Riding Hood always met one on her way to her grandmother’s house. I intended to punch that wolf square in the nose and save my Babci from being eaten. Then I would draw a story about my heroics with my beloved Crayola crayons. Nothing says childhood like the scent of crayons.

I scooted to the first road alert for kittens or pixies, but not cars. I set one foot off the curb and into the busy street when I was airlifted by a firm grip on my topknot. My mother carried me home by my hair! A temporary set back in a perfectly good plan.

My runaways continued. One of my favorite tricks was hiding under the display cases in department stores. Giggling, I’d listen to the clerks frantically calling my name. Eventually, they’d find me. My mother’s face would be the color of my light red crayon. “She’s not my mother!” I would yowl driving her into a color I came to know as scarlet.

After a few of those mother-denials, I found myself wearing a harness and leash. I vented my mortification in my story drawings—illustrating a little girl in a superwoman cape, tethered by a rope.

At the age of four, I discovered a tiny space in our hall closet. It became my special place. I would sit in the dark closet, close my eyes and chant, “Now I shut my eyes real tight and wish and wish with all my might, please turn me into a black panther.” Guess what? It didn’t happen.

By the time I entered kindergarten I had determined the only way to have adventures was to become a majorette. I would be a professional baton twirler and travel the world. I accidentally clunked my little brother on the head with my new baton. Another dead end. But was I discouraged? Nope. On to more adventures.

In eighth grade, I published a newspaper patterned on Mad Magazine. My classmates loved it, giggling as they circulated it. Unfortunately, our nun found a copy. Nuns have no sense of humor—it’s one of the things they give up when they enlist. Sister Irma ordered me to stand at her desk where I received a whack across my right hand with her heavy wooden ruler. I crossed the fingers of my left hand behind my back as I promised never to create “funny stuff” again.

Writing five hundred Hail Marys with my wounded right hand gave me writer’s cramp but it didn’t slow me down. My need for adventures consumed me.

As I look back on my life I realize I have accomplished my goal. My catalog of adventures has given me anecdotes, incidents, and pickles to toss at my characters.

I was a midwife in the Peace Corps, an assistant to a fashion designer, a real estate broker, a developer, an alligator-watcher, an accidental skydiver, hot air balloon competitor, wife, mother, grandmother, and writer!

Yay! I made it. Definitely nature not nurture. Now to take a sniff of my crayons and get back to writing.

With love and laughter!

Barbara Silkstone

~*~

COLD CREAM MURDERS Bundle link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MDWGHYV

Author of the Florence Nightingale Comedy Mystery Series: The Giggling Corpse, The Killer Corset, and The Cheeky Corner, Barbara Silkstone is also the creator of the best selling Mister Darcy series of comedic mysteries ~ 9 Books plus 10 Regency novels and novellas, all with a light, humorous touch. She is also the author of the Wendy Darlin Comedy Mysteries – 5 Cozy Romantic Adventures reviewers describe as Nick and Nora Charles meet Lara Croft. Plus standalone cozies based on fairy tales: The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland and Zo White and the Seven Morphs.

Most books are available in paperback and audio!

Barbara Silkstone’s Amazon Author’s page

http://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Silkstone/e/B0047L8A8W

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About Barbara Silkstone

Barbara Silkstone‘s most current series is COLD CREAM MURDERS ~ GLOSSY LIPS, SMOKEY EYES ~SOAP ON A ROPE. Coming this fall Book 5 in the series: LAVENDER TOES. This series will have at least 6 books when complete. The adventures take place in the imaginary burg of Starfish Cove, Florida ~ a place near and dear to Silkstone’s hometown of Redington Beach on the Gulf of Mexico just north of St. Petersburg, Florida.

Barbara currently lives in Central Florida with her eccentric kitty who adores Liam Neeson and chasing lizards (the cat, not Barbara) 🙂

Silkstone is the best-selling author of both Regency Pride and Prejudice variations, including the popular the MISTER DARCY SERIES OF COMEDIC MYSTERIES ~ PRIDE AND PREJUDICE contemporary variations. All her books are light-hearted adventures based on Jane Austen’s timeless tales of love denied and love discovered. “Feel good” tales to warm your heart.

She is also the author of the Wendy Darlin Comedy Mystery series. Five coffee-snorting tales that combine Cozy with outrageous adventures.

Plus a mixed bag of standalone cozy comedy mysteries: Zo White and the Seven Morphs, Cold Case Morphs, The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland … and more.