Tech support arrived this weekend and updated my blog. My youngest daughter has a blog herself and being a Millennial, is better skilled in technology than Wilma Flintstone here. In a matter of minutes, she added the picture of the cover of my new book along with an Amazon link on the sidebar.

I’ve completed the process of changing the covers of my first two books in the Narrow Creek series to better show that these novels are cozy mysteries. My techie daughter swapped out the old pictures posted on this blog for the new ones, something I’d been afraid to try to do myself.

As you can see, for my first book, Ms. Dee Ann Meets Murder, the new cover on the right is brighter and more playful. I like the picture of the truck, which Dee Ann, the narrator, describes in Chapter One as being loaded with “a good portion of what we owned….” as she and husband Joe move to the small town of Narrow Creek for his job as “the new man at the bank.”

My second novel in the series also got a facelift. This updated cover of Life and Death in Narrow Creek has a picture similar to the original cover but a style that matches the revised cover of the first book. Colors are more vivid, and the font style is less fussy, don’t you think? Readers will discover the significance of the poison sign on the front door of the big house, the home of Dee Ann’s landlords.

My daughter also tested the Amazon links for these books to make sure they still work properly, landing a potential customer on the purchase site. And she created a tab for the new book, Money and Murder in Narrow Creek, at the top of the home page. Readers can click on this tab to read a synopsis of the book.

Bam! Done! She was in and out of my blog lickety-split and on her way to Chapel Hill to catch the Carolina/Duke football game.

Other News:

There’s nothing like a fall foliage mountain trip. My husband and I love the Banner Elk area, especially Beech Mountain, where there’s an impressive overlook and Fred’s General Store.

This trip, though, we decided to venture from our Beech Mountain base to somewhere new. I’d read about West Jefferson in Our State magazine and convinced my husband that the three-hour round trip from Beech Mountain would be an adventure. (We probably could have shaved off some road time, but we took a scenic, road-less-traveled route.)

We found a charming downtown in West Jefferson, filled with shops, restaurants, and an impressive stone church, all surrounded by mountains glowing with the colors of fall.

Many of the shops had eye-catching displays outside their front doors. Here’s one that’s unique.

Besides author duties and taking a trip to the mountains, what else have I been doing this fall? Volunteering! This year, I agreed to be president of the Rocky Mount Garden Club. You may be thinking of ladies in white gloves sipping tea while discussing their roses. I know that’s the stereotype of garden clubs. We do talk about flowers–minus white gloves and tea sipping–but there’s a lot more to the club. We have interesting speakers on various topics related to gardening at our monthly meetings, and we’re involved in several community projects.

For example, this fall, garden club members filled a planter at the entrance of the new Red Oak Elementary School with pansies and ornamental cabbages. We also spent a morning at Peacemakers, a local nonprofit serving an underresourced area, putting out pine straw on the grounds.

I’m telling you about these activities because as president of the Rocky Mount Garden Club, I’m recruiting new members. If you live in the area and are interested in joining (or finding out more about the group), contact me. My information is under the Contact Patsy tab. We’d love to have you!

Okay. The join-my-club pitch is over. I’ll leave you with pictures of two trees, resplendent in their fall attire. The photo on the left was taken in West Jefferson a couple of weeks ago. The photo on the right was taken today in my front yard, which goes to show there’s beautiful fall foliage at some point just about everywhere.