Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Waiting all summer for this day




August 15, 2017

Today is the day I’ve been waiting all summer for—cover reveal of my new novel, Pigface and the Perfect Dog (an Oak Grove Mystery). It’s my first full-length novel in over a year, and the first time I have revisited the college town of Oak Grove since The Perfect Coed was published three years ago.

Kudos to Sherry Wachter for the great cover, which I think matches the cover of The Perfect Coed in style and color. I’ve itched to share it with you for weeks, but when you sign up for a cover reveal, you’re pretty much bound to that date. So today’s reveal can be found at


English professor Susan Hogan and her partner, Jake Phillips, chief of campus security, return in this cozy mystery with an edge. Susan thinks she’s about to meet her maker when she confronts a rifle-carrying man, who looks like a pig, in a grocery store. Jake investigates the body of a young college student, shot in the back and found in an empty pasture. Aunt Jenny showers love on the new puppy a young man from the grocery gave her, but she feels she must get rid of that heavy collar.

 Trouble in Oak Grove begins with open-carry protestors in the grocery store and leads to a shooting, breaking and entering, threats, a chase, an attempted kidnapping, and a clandestine trip to the woods late at night. Will Susan Hogan land in trouble…or the hospital…again? Will Susan and Jake survive this as a couple? Susan is still prickly but she learns some lessons about life, love, and herself in this second Oak Grove Mystery.

Reader reaction to The Perfect Coed thrilled me.

Susan is a prickly character, and she doesn’t put up with any guff from her male colleagues, the cops, or even Jake. Aunt Jenny is funny and a great cook. I have a feeling all these characters will be returning for a sequel, so you’ll want to pick this one up now before you get behind. You won’t regret it.

Bill Crider, mystery author

Few mysteries open with a single paragraph of eye-popping intrigue, but The Perfect Coed is full of such moments and its introduction is apt warning that readers will rapidly become involved in something far from mundane or predictable: “Susan Hogan drove around Oak Grove, Texas for two days before she realized there was a dead body in the trunk of her car. And it was another three days before she knew that someone was trying to kill her.”

—D. Donovan, Senior eBook Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

Pigface, as I affectionately call this new novel, is available for pre-order on Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/Pigface-Perfect-Dog-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B073VSDKMH/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1502833947&sr=1-1&keywords=pigface+and+the+perfect+dog in both paperback and ebook form. It will be available September 7.

For those in the Fort Worth area, there’ll be a launch party September 21, 5:00 -7:00 p.m., at the Wine Haus, 1628 Park Place Avenue. Cash bar, snacks will be offered, and fun will definitely be had. Ya’ll come celebrate with me, please. Many of you will get an evite soon; if you don’t hear by September 11, please let me know. Questions, comments? Write me at j.alter@tcu.edu.










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