SECRET BRIEFINGS
Vol. 8 No. 4 Feb. 25, 2026
A BIT LATE
Apologies for sending the newsletter a day late. I’ve been under the weather — again. Winter seriously mucks up my sinuses. But, here we are, closing out February 2026 already. The year is progressing way too fast for me, and perpetual sinus headaches aren’t helping.
ATA VIRTUAL RETREAT
One of my writing groups, the Author Transformation Alliance, is holding its sixth annual virtual writing retreat, three days of workshops and activities designed for writers of all experience levels.
The dates this year are March 27 - 29, 2026, and you can sign up HERE. Three full days of connection, creativity, learning, and renewal.
I’m conducting a workshop for the virtual retreat on writing a series. I’m toying with the title, “The Serial Killer — Oops, Writer!”
Let me know what you think, and I hope to see you there.
ROCKTOWN AUTHOR FESTIVAL
Every year, the Massanutten Regional Library system hosts an event highlighting local authors, the Rocktown Author Festival. I’ve been honored to participate several times from its beginning in 2019.
This year’s RAF is April 25, 2026, at the Massanutten Regional Library in Harrisonburg, Virginia, right downtown on Main Street. It’s free and family friendly, and the authors attending represent almost any genre you can think of.
I’ll be there with a bunch of my books, and I’ll also be on a panel, “What I Wish I’d Known: Authors Discuss Marketing.” Author Beth Macy will be the keynote speaker. Note: Ms. Macy is also running for the nomination to be the Democratic candidate in this year’s 6th District Congressional race.
For more information, including how to register for the Keynote Speech, go HERE.
MARCH BOOK SALE
March marks the 3rd “bookversary” of my debut mystery novel, Supreme Madness of the Carnival Season and the 1st “bookversary” of the second book in The Ewington Mysteries series, Mournful Influence of the Unperceived Shadow.
It’s going to Happy Book-Birthday all month long, with the eBooks of each novel only 99¢ to download (free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited member).
The Ewington Mysteries series is about a successful romance writer, Marilyn Hendrix, who in book 1 gets drawn into solving a mystery when she and her husband discover the bones of a long dead baby behind the wall of a room they’re renovating. She teams up with private investigator Cody Britto to find out whose baby and how it died.
Book 2 has Marilyn and Cody, now a couple, looking into a decades old missing person, a young woman who stood up her fiance on the day they planned to elope. What seems like a cut-and-dried case turns into the discovery of a family’s harrowing secret, one they would kill to keep.
I’m currently working on book 3 of the series, tentatively titled Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters. I’m aiming for a, what else, March 2027 release.
In the meantime, starting 3/1/26 you can catch up on the series for under $2.00. Mark the date, and find your bargain HERE.
FREE EXCERPT
But let’s close out February with an excerpt from this month’s featured book, QUINTET, a collection of reader magnets for the series A Perfect Hatred plus a bonus story.
That bonus story is “In Ukraine,” which started life as a scene in Descending Spiral, book 3 of A Perfect Hatred. Though I really liked the scene, both my editor and I decided it seemed out of place and delayed that book’s ending. When I decided to group the four reader magnets for A Perfect Hatred into a single volume, I revisited that scene, and after some editing, I had a story. What better place for it then than the reader magnet collection because it served as a bridge between books 3 and 4?
As a young man before his defection, Alexei Bukharin promised his mother he would find and kill the Nazis responsible for his father’s execution at the Battle of Stalingrad. While undercover in a right-wing, paramilitary organization, he finds by chance the final man on the list. So, at Christmas in 1994, he travels to a newly independent Ukraine to “report” to his mother.
Oh, and there’s a ghost.
QUINTET
“In Ukraine”
Dawn teased the sky when Alexei awoke, disoriented at first because he wasn’t in his own bed. He’d slept in the clothing he’d arrived in, not on purpose but from exhaustion. Added to his jet lag was the fact he hadn’t slept at all on the journey here.
The house was preternaturally quiet, what, he supposed, a tomb might be like.
He sat up on the side of the bed and shoved his feet into his shoes. In the bathroom, he looked out the window while he pissed. Frost covered everything like a white blanket, so thick it might be mistaken for snow. He washed his hands and splashed cold water on his face. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and decided on the spot, he wouldn’t while he was here. Somewhat of a disguise, he supposed.
His luggage sat where a great-nephew had placed it, his overcoat draped over the large suitcase. He pulled the overcoat on, tiptoed down the stairs, and began to walk. There was no destination in mind, but the cold air would clear his head, make his thoughts more coherent.
The frost crunched beneath his feet as he veered for the tumulus closest to the main house, the one he had climbed often as a boy. He could almost hear Sergei’s boyish voice begging him to slow down, but he would climb faster. Then, there had been no way to know he’d come to regret every slight, every teasing, every prank at Sergei’s expense.
Alexei stood at the base of the tumulus. The impression of a path remained. His hadn’t been the only feet to create it. No doubt his nieces and nephews had done the same as had his mother’s ancestors. On impulse, he climbed. As a boy, he’d have run up. Now, his steps were measured, slowing when his thighs protested. When he reached the top, he wasn’t breathing hard. The only good thing about Patriot City was getting his body into the best shape it had been in a while.
From the top of the tumulus he could see everything from the arc of sun in the east to fading stars in the west. Birds had begun to sing. A few cattle lowed. Horses nickered at each other. All sounds he’d heard almost every morning of his life until he was sixteen and went into the army. They were comforting sounds; they meant home, but he hadn’t missed them.