Thursday 19 October 2017

Love Agatha Christie and Cozies? Love My Discounted Series!

Join My Book Club as They Channel Miss Marple in Their 1st Cozy Mystery — Book 1: Just 99c (one week only!)


Agatha Christie isn't just the Queen of Crime, she practically invented the Cozy Mystery genre, which is now one of the most popular crime genres in the world, and certainly my favourite (in case you hadn't worked that out).
In an effort to pay homage to the great Dame Agatha, and to provide my readers with fun cozy mysteries, I wrote my first Agatha Christie Book Club back in 2012—and it has gone on to be my best-selling book, out-selling my Ghostwriter Mystery Series two books to one!

Now Let me Make This Clear...

NO ONE can replace the Great Agatha Christie, certainly not author Sophie Hannah (who tried several times) and certainly not me.
And that was never my intention with this series.
Instead, my books take a fresh and contemporary approach; 'fanzines' if you like. In this series I've gathered a group of Agatha Christie devotees together, thrown a baffling mystery at them, then sat back and watched as the book club friends consider what Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple would do to sift through the clues, recognise the red herrings, and work out whodunnit. 
It's been a lot of fun to write and I hope you find it a fun read. I've since released a second adventure in the series: Murder on the Orient (SS) and have a third book due out for Christmas. 
If you haven't had a chance to read one, get in fast. Thanks to BookBub and Amazon, I'm discounting the first in the series—down from $3.99 to just 99c.
The offer starts on October 19 and runs until October 26. To grab your discounted copy, go straight to your fave e-store, to Amazon, or for BookBub subscribers in the UK, Australia, Canada or India, click here
Happy (cozy) reading everyone.
xo Christina (C.A.) Larmer

Tuesday 3 October 2017

Why I Started My Ghostwriter Series (& How You Can Win One + 44 More!)

I love Sue Grafton and her Alphabet crime series, really I do, but by D is for Deadbeat, I began to realise they were becoming dead boring!

Product Details
If I read about private detective Kinsey Millhone pulling on her 'turtleneck sweater' or 'wrinkle-resistant black dress' one more time, or stopping to grab a McDonald's cheeseburger, or hanging out with her elderly landlord, I was going to hit somebody with the book.

I know that they're murder mysteries and I know that this may all sound a little vacuous to you, but I kept wondering why Kinsey was so, well, stuck.

Are there no shopping malls in Kinsey's suburb? Does she not tire of the same old meal?* And does she not want to move out of Henry's converted garage and buy a new place of her own?

Just because you create a wonderful character—and Kinsey really is the cream of the crop—does not mean your character shouldn't change and develop and grow. 
She's human. That's what we do!

Let me repeat: I love Sue Grafton. I can only dream of her worldwide success. I acknowledge that she's a master storyteller and I am just a piddling wannabe, but as a lifetime reader I just longed to see Kinsey blossom or deteriorate or get a limp or something! It may seem trivial to you but it just didn't ring true. By the time I got to S is For Silence I could hold my tongue no longer.

Nobody wears the same outfit. Every. Single. Day. Zzzzzz. Nobody eats the same takeaway, or lives in the same tiny rental. At least, nobody I want to spend that much quality time with.

I desperately wanted to see my favourite PI become a little more interesting and a lot more independent.

Are smart detectives really that dull, I wondered?


I don't think so. That's why I created a crime-solving sleuth of my own. 

Roxy Parker is a smart-talking, Sydney-based ghostwriter with a love of fashion and an interest in decent food, who just happens to stumble upon mysteries of her own. 

Now, I was always going to write crime fiction, I can't credit Grafton with that. But I did use my disappointment with Kinsey to develop my own protagonist. I wanted my sleuth to be a little cool, a little classy but, most of all, to be constantly surprising. And to be interesting in EVERY facet of her life, not just inside her brain. It's not just that she changes her outfit occasionally (who knew?), she's constantly growing, developing her sense of self, making new friends, even changing homes in one book—and keeping my readers on the edge of their toes. Or at least, that's the idea.

Six books later, and I hope my Roxy has evolved as I intended her to, but you can be the judge of that. I'm giving away the first in the Ghostwriter Mystery Series, and, for the next week or so, offering readers the chance to discover a whole new series of their own.

Thanks to Amy at Authors Cross Promotion, I've teamed up with 44 other series writers to make our books available to you. Here's your chance to celebrate series creators and maybe find the perfect match for you.

Win up to 45+ Series eBooks!

(2) Grand Prize "Gift Baskets" of ALL eBooks!
(45+) Winners of Individual eBooks (randomly selected titles)



Just get in quick! The competition ends in under a week.


Happy (series) reading everyone!

xo Christina

*I know Kinsey does experiment with Rosie's mad Hungarian cooking and I thank goodness for that. It's one of the reasons I keep coming back.