Cozy mystery author Marlene M. Bell is back! We’re chatting about her new novel, A Hush at Midnight.
Bio:
Marlene M. Bell has never met a sheep she didn’t like. As a personal touch for her readers, they often find these wooly creatures visiting her international romantic mysteries and children’s books as characters or subject matter. Marlene is an accomplished artist and photographer who takes pride in entertaining fans on multiple levels of her creativity.
Marlene’s award-winning Annalisse series boasts Best Mystery honors for all installments including these: IP Best Regional Australia/New Zealand, Global Award Best Mystery, and Chanticleer’s International Mystery and Mayhem shortlist for Copper Waters, the fourth mystery in the series.
In 2024 she released A Hush at Midnight, a standalone cozy mystery. So far, the novel has received the Literary Titan Gold award, Silver Global award for Women’s Crime fiction and is a 2025 Top Pick for Author Shout.
Welcome back to Reviews and Interviews, Marlene! Please tell us about your newest release.
A Hush at Midnight is the first novel I’ve written beyond my Annalisse series. I felt that it would be a good exercise to remove myself from old characters and create new ones.
In this story, Laura Harris, a celebrity chef, has the sad experience of finding her longtime mentor murdered. Laura is caught up in the investigation once she’s informed that she’s the sole beneficiary in the elderly woman’s will. Plenty of motive to want the woman dead according to authorities. Laura was one of the last people to see her alive.
Excerpt from A Hush at Midnight:
Stenburg, Texas – Friday evening
A killer sunset plunged toward the horizon, casting its tangerine glare on the Stenburg Estate’s green metal roof and aging bricks. Since her hasty arrival from the Los Angeles area last year, Laura Harris had sought out the renowned East Texas skyline for its towering thunderstorm clouds and the lemonade-pinks at twilight.
The colors gave her a sense of calm before the inaugural trip to see her elderly mentor and dearest pen pal, Hattie Stenburg. Laura last visited with her in California—over a decade ago.
As Laura skirted a large puddle in her Subaru and stopped along the shoulder of the roadway, she parked the car, turned off the engine, and exited the driver’s side. She breathed in air filled with pungent smells of wet pine needles and dampened leaves. Laura had passed through the April shower a few miles east of the Stenburg town limits sign. Leave it to the Stenburgs to live in a town named after themselves.
Snaggled grapevines across the road on Hattie’s property sat stoic and graying in long horizontal rows from the oil and gravel highway road to the classic red brick two-story at the top of the hill. The vines showed no signs of new growth even though T-posts held the outstretched limbs twisted within wire and sagging driplines. Gnarled stumps had been left behind from a time when the Stenburgs had added varietal grapes to their company’s wine processing vats prior to Warren Stenburg’s death nearly eight years ago—before Laura’s dad took over as the Texas corporation’s chief executive officer.
What’s the next writing project?
I’m currently outlining my next book. A thriller that takes place in Northern Tennessee. My main character is an interior designer – out of work – and she’s about to be evicted. Her fiancé is missing and her old boss has been murdered on the same day as her meeting with him to reinstate her. She found his body. The meeting never took place.
What is your biggest challenge when writing a new book? (or the biggest challenge with this book)
The challenge rising to the top of every book I’ve written is finding the right editors. It’s an ongoing problem to find competent copy editors, (especially,) and proofreaders. I published the Uncorrected Proof copy of A Hush at Midnight to help me avoid the pitfalls of previous books. Fortunately, I rarely have writer’s block and can usually put out the first and second drafts within a year.
If your novels require research – please talk about the process. Do you do the research first and then write, while you’re writing, after the novel is complete and you need to fill in the gaps?
I like to research as I go for anything technical. I try not to get too law-enforcement-procedural in my murder mysteries, even though I come from a law enforcement family. For story locations and visualizing the landscape, I purchase coffee table books of the area prior to writing each book. I need to see the place I’m writing about in order to be as accurate as possible in my descriptions. If my developmental editor finds issues in research, I go back and work through it again in subsequent drafts. I make a habit of using the internet for research as little as possible since information there is often incorrect.
What’s your writing space like? Do you have a particular spot to write where the muse is more active? Please tell us about it.
My writing space is an L-shaped desk with too many sticky notes, index cards and folders holding relevant information about every book I’ve written. My computer screen is large and so is my printer. Both take up entirely too much room, but I’ve grown attached to them! When I’m outlining using index cards, I like to sit in the library in front of a fire with a good book and make notes as they come to mind. It’s where I do my best work.
What authors do you enjoy reading within or outside of your genre?
Harlan Coben for suspense/thrillers and Colleen Hoover. I like Andrea Penrose for her take on Historical mysteries from a UK point of view. There are a few police procedurals in the mix if I need to bone up on law enforcement procedures. I like to read in most crime genres.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers today?
I like to write with the reader in mind; my stories are a getaway to places most people in the USA might not have had a chance to visit. Entertainment with a satisfying AHH factor at the end.
Links:
Website | Facebook Author Page | Facebook Personal Page | X (Formerly Twitter) | Bookbub | Goodreads | Instagram | Amazon page link to eBook
Thank you for coming back to Reviews and Interviews!
