Both are tight-wire acts, fraught with peril, but also imbued with hope….and folly. BUT, each can have glorious consequences. Well, the teaching the husband thing, not so much. That one didn’t work out so well…
But the co-authoring thing? It turned out like gangbusters!
Recently Josie Brown, author of The Housewife Assassin series, and I decided our heroines should meet. I mean, seriously, Lucky in London, crossing paths with a black ops team on loan to the CIA? Who could resist? Not this gal, that’s for sure. And so, sitting in the Milwaukee airport, Josie and I plotted and planned, killed off a bunch of people (amazingly nobody reported us to the police) and laughed and giggled until we had a plot we both loved.
And The Housewife Assassin Gets Lucky was born.
I’m here to tell you dead bodies, hilarity, a little romantic wishful thinking and some awesome clothes are all part of the mix.
Here's the blurb!
When two hot, haute heroines team up to solve a murder, neither can afford to be fashionably late.
No one expected to find a dead girl in the Royal Suite at the Babylon’s posh London club.
Who would kill her? And why?
With little to go on, and no friends to rely on, Lucky O’Toole, the Babylon’s Chief Problem Solver is dispatched to…solve the problem.
But she needs to be in Paris. Her fiancé—and, worse, his mother—are counting on her presence at a party in her honor in seventy-two hours, more or less.
With a personal-life time-bomb ticking, Lucky hopes for a quick solution.
A mystery woman, seen leaving the Royal Suite just before the girl’s body is discovered, attracts Lucky’s attention.
She has to be the key…
On loan to the CIA, assassin Donna Stone Craig and her crack black-ops team have stepped into a viper’s nest. First, they darn near get out-bid and overwhelmed at an auction to acquire a vintage purse hiding some critical intel its lining. Then a very important source Donna is to meet at the Babylon London Club winds up dead. And the young woman’s intel—bearing incredible global consequences—is encrypted.
She was the only one who could give Donna the cipher, and she’s dead.
Surely someone else would know. But, who?
It’s easy to see why Acme’s prime suspect is the tall brunette who acts like she owns the place. Lucky O’Toole shows up at the wrong time, and in the wrong place.
But before Donna and Lucky can find the right answers, they’ll need to overcome their reservations and resolve their differences.
But can they learn to trust each other before the real killer gets away?
They have to. Their lives—and world peace—depend on it.
So, why tackle such a project?
For me, the choice had to do with bringing something new to the Lucky series. When a series extends for more than a few books, it’s important to find ways to keep injecting new things, new enthusiasms, new twists and turns that keep not only the reading experience fun and fresh, but the writing experience as well. If I’m not having fun telling the story, you won’t have fun reading it.
And, with the same characters in the same setting, having fun, keeping it fresh, becomes harder and harder. Of course, with Vegas it’s easy to bring in a new cast of conventioneers, etc. and that helps. But, the core setting, the core people (all now good friends of mine 🙂 ) are the same. When I move Lucky out of Vegas, I have a new palette. Of course, I always inject trouble from back home to keep Lucky’s life real. And well, because I want to know what’s happening with all the characters I’ve grown to love as well.
It’s a fun mix and a fun challenge.
Co-authoring gave me the latitude to put Lucky in a spot she’s not normally in, a foreign country with no safety net. I was really interested in seeing what she would do. In London, Lucky was the same Lucky, just…more. Stronger, more in charge, still worried about her love life, still juggling her mother’s angst—this time over naming the twins—still worried about her father’s fragile health, still fending off unwanted advances, still in love with vintage couture and fast cars.
Still land-on-her-feet Lucky.
But, as a writer, it was such fun to add energy, new twists, and new characters to Lucky’s world. I found it invigorating and tons of fun. And it taught me a bit more about Lucky. I saw different sides to her that Vegas doesn’t highlight, which pleased me.
And I think it will you as well.
I know you’re thinking, So, what happened? Did the friendship survive?
Yes! Despite different processes, different approaches to telling a story, different schedules (Josie is nocturnal—it was like she was in a totally different time zone half a world away) we both love turning a good tale! And Josie’s Donna, the Housewife Assassin, is a perfect foil for Lucky’s rapier wit.
Yep, the two ladies had fun. AS did their creators.
London will never be the same.
The Housewife Assassin Gets Lucky releases August 3rd: Preorder Now!
Read an excerpt of The Housewife Assassin Gets Lucky
