Monkey Business

DEAD DAY is the second book in the Grievance Collectors Mystery Series. I started writing this book in 2016. I don’t believe in coincidence, so when I realized that 2016 was the year of the monkey, I knew exactly what I had to do.

A few years before, a monkey  appeared on the university campus where I work. The university police issued a warning telling students, staff,  and faculty  not to approach the monkey since it was unknown whether the animal was dangerous. As you can imagine, there were numerous jokes, memes, and rumors about this dangerous monkey. The mix of humor and potential danger appealed to my writer’s imagination, and I knew I had to incorporate a monkey into one of my mystery novels.

Monkeys occur every 12 years in the Chinese Zodiac calendar and are associated with one of the Five Elements: Fire, Wood, Water, Gold (Metal), or Earth. Both the sign and the element of your birth year are said to affect your personality and destiny. Element-sign combinations recur every 60 years.

2016 is the year of the Fire Monkey, a character who is said to be ambitious and adventurous, but also irritable.

The monkey in my Dead Day book leads Dr. Bridget O’Leary to the scene of a horrific murder.

I anticipate that Dead Day will be available on Amazon in August, but if you sign up to follow my blog, I will send you  a pre-publication peak at the first chapter in this new mystery.