Chirstmas in Tahoe with a really busy author

Please welcome my Wednesday weekly guest, prolific author Kathi Daley. Her energy, from writing to cooking, sports, and gardening, amazes me. Leave a comment for Kathi, if nothing else then to say where do you get so much energy? Do you sleep?

 

It’s snowing as I write this. Huge Christmas snow that drifts slowly to earth, dancing to and fro, before it lands gently on the frozen surface of the meadow outside my window. The house is quiet and I am alone with only my thoughts, a crackling fire, and my dogs for company. I am lucky enough to live in a small community situated on one of the largest alpine lakes in the world. My house is surrounded by forest, making visits from the forest animals who call our region home a daily occurrence. While small-town living is not for everyone (just ask my sons, who couldn’t wait to move to a larger town the moment they graduated high school) I love it and couldn’t in all honesty see myself living anywhere else.

Christmas on the mountain is a particularly magical time of year. The small towns around the lake go all out to welcome holiday visitors with white lights shining from store windows, huge trees decorated with Christmas ornaments, and festive red bows displayed to draw in last-minute shoppers. Most years we have snow blanketing the area to allow for the much-anticipated opening of the ski resorts for which Tahoe is known. For me, Christmas is about spending time with family and friends as I juggle the demands of baking and decorating to ensure that every holiday is a memorable event.

Somewhere between enjoying the outdoor sports I love and my volunteer work in the community, I write two cozy mystery series. My Tj Jensen Paradise Lake Mysteries are full-length cozies of approximately 300 pages. The series is set in a small alpine town near a large freshwater lake, and the protagonist is a high-school gym teacher who lives on the family resort where she grew up. Books in this series are published three-to-four times per year.

I also write a series I think of as a cozy lite. Each book is between 150 and 200 pages, with a new story coming out every six-to-eight weeks. This series is also set in a small alpine town where the protagonist, Zoe Donovan, is the owner of a wild and domestic animal rescue and rehabilitation center. If you love having animals as a focal point in a story, you will love this series. My readers tell me that the appeal of these short books is the ongoing interaction between the characters as they live out their lives.

In addition to my cozy mystery series, I published a mystery/romance this holiday season. Road to Christmas Past is a heartwarming story about a woman who receives an early Christmas gift from her dead aunt and sets out across the country with a handsome PI to follow the clues to a family she never knew she had.

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Kathi Daley lives with her husband, kids, grandkids, and Bernese Mountain dogs in beautiful Lake Tahoe. When she isn’t writing, she likes to read (preferably at the beach or by the fire), cook (preferably something with chocolate or cheese), and garden (planting and planning, not weeding). She also enjoys spending time on the water when she’s not hiking, biking, or snowshoeing the miles of desolate trails surrounding her home. 

Books by Kathi: Zoe Donovan Mysteries: Halloween Hijinks, The Trouble with Turkeys, Christmas Crazy, and Cupid’s Curse (January 2014); Tj Jensen Paradise Lake Series: Pumpkins in Paradise, Snowmen in Paradise (January 2014); and Road to Christmas Past, a mystery/romance.

Visit Kathi:

Facebook at Kathi Daley Books

Twitter at Kathi Daley @kathidaley

Webpage www.kathidaley.com

Email: kathidaley@kathidaley.com