Returning Guest, Author Heather Haven

Today's guest is Heather Haven, and I'm pleased to welcome her back.  I've had the pleasure of working with Heather, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the Lee Alvarez series of which Death Runs in the Family is the latest. 

Author name: Heather Haven        

Book Title: Death Runs in the Family

Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing

Buy link: http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=425&category_id=69&keyword=death+runs+in+the+family&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

Website/Blog: http://www.heatherhavenstories.com/; http://heatherhavensays.blogspot.com/           Twitter@HeatherHaven; Twitter@PILeeAlvarez

Please tell us about yourself with the following favorites:

Food? I will eat anything, and you can tell the truth by looking at me, except for okra. I HATE okra.

Drink (non-alcoholic)? Martini, bruise it, baby, and don’t spare the olives.

Flower? Plumeria, reminds me of Hawaii

Day of the week? I love Sundays. I get to read the entire paper, if I want!

Time of day to write? First thing in the morning, when I am freshest. I can go until early afternoon, tho, or as soon as my back gives out!

Place to write? It doesn’t make any difference to me. I can write anywhere. I even wrote a story once on the back of a horse, riding a trail. Sure, it was a short story, but I did it.

Season? I like Spring, although it doesn’t like me. I have a lot of sneezing and wheezing going on but I do love the pure colors, blossoms, and that new greenery. Life renewing. It’s wonderful.

Holiday?  Christmas. I like to sing all the carols, buy presents, decorate my home, bake goodies. I also like the symbol of what Christmas is about. Hope for mankind. Peace.

Color? Aqua. Almost any shade of green/blue.

Animal?  There is no animal I don’t like. If I could, I’d have a farm and be just like Noah, invite in every living thing two by two, only without the flood waters, thank you.

Hobby? Walking. Wait a minute. Is that a hobby? Here’s one, but I don’t know what it’s called: I’d like to get into taking broken glass mosaic and gluing them in a design onto walls and pottery, stuff like that. Once again, I have no idea what it’s called. Thingie. Let’s go with Thingie.

Sport? Reading. Isn’t that a sport?

Song? "What a Wonderful World", but only with Sachmo singing.

TV show? Get ready for it, the old sitcom from the 90’s, The Nanny. Broad comedy and I love it. That said, I think The Good Wife is wonderfully written and acted.

Movie? Yowser. No can do. There are too many of them. Although, Jaws was great. I saw one of the mechanical Jaws hanging on the wall of a bar down in southern California recently. Big. I understand they didn’t save many of those plaster of Paris monsters at the time, and there were dozens of them. Each one did one thing. If somebody has one, they are supposed to be worth a fortune. Check out Ebay. Of course, you need room the size of a parking lot to put them in but still. Wait a minute. Did I get off the track again?

Book? “Hamlet”…no, no, Animal Farm…no, no, Right Ho, Jeeves…no, no. Never mind; I’m starting to stress. I can’t do this.

Author? Shakespeare, without a doubt. The man was a genius.

Word? DO!

Quote?   “The difficult is done at once. The impossible take a little longer.”

Now some easy one-word answers:

Coffee or tea? Coffee

Veggies or fruit? Fruit

Cat or dog? I have two cats. We’d better choose a cat, even though I love dogs. Sorry, more than one word.

Plot or not? Yes! What are we, a dictionary? A story requires a plot of some sort, not just a bunch of pretty descriptions. Uh oh, more than one word again.

Desktop or laptop? Both

Pencil or pen?  Both

Rain or sun? Sun

Mountains or ocean? Both

Plane or train? Train

Car or motorcycle? Car

Run or walk? Walk

Casual or dressy? Dressy. I sparkle well.

Indoors or outdoors? Indoors.

Reading: EBook or paperback? BOTH

Reading: Short story or novels? BOTH

Theater or rental?  Rental

Vampire or shifter? Neither

Horror or romance? Romance

Tell us about your new/latest release:

Title: Death Runs in the Family – Book Three of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries

Genre: humorous mystery

Blurb: Lee Alvarez’ ex-husband, Nick -- a man she divorced with joy in her heart and a gun in her hand – sprints back in her life only to disappear again. She’d love to leave it at that, but could he be responsible for the recent death of her cousin, who keeled over at the finish line of a half-marathon in front of hundreds of spectators? As PI for the family run business, Discretionary Inquiries, Lee follows the clues to Vegas, where she joins forces with Shoshone PI, Flint Tall Trees.  Together they uncover a multi-million dollar betting syndicate, a tacky lounge lizard act, and a list of past but very dead runners, plus future ones to off. At the top of the ‘future’ list is the love of her life, Gurn Hanson. Hoping to force the culprits out in the open, Gurn and Lee’s brother, Richard, vow to run San Francisco’s famous Palace to Palace 12K in only a few days. Can Lee keep the two men she loves from hitting the finish line like her cousin? With more at stake than she ever dreamed possible, Lee is in a battle against time to stop the Alvarez Family’s race with death.

Short Excerpt:

Chapter One

Another Mrs. Papadopoulos?

                  I threw back the covers and staggered to my front door, commanded by the insistent ringing of the doorbell. Ordinarily, after the night I’d had, and it being eight o’clock in the morning, on a Sunday no less, I would have just let it ring; hoping whoever it was would go away or fall into a sinkhole. But this ringer wouldn’t stop, and the bell sounded more and more like an air raid siren to my hung-over eardrums.

My name is Liana Alvarez. Everyone calls me Lee except my mother and the less said about that the better. My email reads Lee.Alvarez.PI@DI.com, but I don’t always respond in a timely fashion, especially when I’m in the middle of a case. D.I. stands for Discretionary Inquiries, the family-owned investigative service, and everybody knows what a PI is. I’m thirty-four-years-old, five-foot eight, 135 pounds on a good day, with thick, brown/black hair. The love of my life, the gorgeous Gurn Hanson, says my eyes are the color of twilight. At the moment, however, they mostly resembled a beady-eyed hippo’s.

The previous night, Lila Hamilton Alvarez, mother and CEO, fobbed off a last-minute job on me, one not so good for my California lifestyle. Due to our close relationship, my designer-clad mom knows she can do this. So, instead of being at home playing with my cat and sucking down a mango-orange-guava yogurt shake, I was imbibing huge amounts of Tequila Slammers. This slamming was in an effort to get the tipsy girlfriend of a software thief to reveal where he’d gotten to. Said girlfriend dished, but my liver will never be the same.

                  Me being about as hardboiled as a two-minute egg, the following morning found me sleep deprived, alcohol poisoned, and feeling enormously sorry for myself. But I still remembered to look out the peephole instead of throwing open the door because L.H. Alvarez did not raise a stupid child. Not seeing anyone, I leaned against the framework in a hangover-induced quandary. Was someone there or not?

But the ringing continued, so shrill and loud that it had to be an affirmative unless my front door’s electrical system had gone wiggy. I squinted into the little round circle of glass again, strained my eyeball downward, and spied what looked like the back of a curly, platinum blonde, female head. I left the chain on when I opened the door, because my mother did not raise…never mind.

Facing away from me, the blonde female continued to lean into my doorbell for all she was worth, oblivious to my presence. A serious shrimp, she wore a pair of fire engine red spike heels and still didn’t clear much over five foot two. Looking pretty harmless unless she came at me with one of those six-inch spikes, I undid the chain and opened the door.

“All right, all right. I’m here. Get off the bell.”

Startled, red stilettos wheeled around and faced me. “Hi,” she said in a voice with no bottom to it, reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe, but not nearly as sexy. “I was beginning to think you weren’t here.”

As self-confident as her body language had been earlier, she seemed to become unsure of herself, shy almost. Although how anyone could pull off shyness in that getup I’ll never know. The killer heels were a perfect complement to the red satin miniskirt, scanter than a Dallas cheerleader’s costume, and the plunging neckline of the yellow and green floral blouse emphasized cleavage aplenty. A thin, black polyester sweater, way too small, was buttoned haphazardly below her breasts. Clanking gewgaws hung from her ears, neck, wrists, and fingers. She looked like a walking display case of gaudy jewelry. Before me stood a young lady who could send any self-respecting fashionista screaming into the night.

Buy links; MuseItUp Publishing: http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=425&category_id=69&keyword=death+runs+in+the+family&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1