What Was Going on During the Writing of the Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries?
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When I proposed the glamping mysteries to my agent, I wanted my amateur sleuth to have a job where she wasn’t tied to an office. By giving Jules her own business with a team of helpers, I was able to give her the opportunity to sneak out and poke around for clues. I am an 80s girl, who loves pop culture. Jules gets her name from Demi Moore’s character in St. Elmo’s Fire. Jake gets his name from Michael Schoeffling’s character in Sixteen Candles.
My aunt and uncle owned a traditional campground in the 1970s at Crabtree Falls in Virginia, and it was such a fun place. I based Jules’s campground on this one with the addition of posh trailers and tiny houses for the glamping experience.
The mystery in the first book, Vintage Trailers and Blackmailers, came to me at an IT data and security conference in Orlando, Florida in 2012. I went to a session on Bluetooth technologies and learned how easy it was for bad actors to hijack all kinds of smart devices, including medical ones. And hence, I now had the crime and a motive for some really bad deeds. I love technology, but sometimes, it makes me want to hide under the bed.
I was writing the third book in the series during Covid, and we were streaming so many things on Netflix and other services. I was definitely watching The Tiger King during this time, and the name for book three, Christmas Lights and Catfights, was born. Plus, wouldn’t it just make you scratch your head to figure out why a big cat tamer would register for the town’s Christmas parade?
And at the time I was writing Teddy Bears and Ghostly Lairs, my Chessie Sisters in Crime chapter had a presentation with a group of paranormal explorers, and they provided some ideas for a ghost search. I am also fascinated with an abandoned hotel/motel site on Afton Mountain near Charlottesville. The crumbling site sits high above the mountain top that you can see from I-64. That made the perfect location for a paranormal exploration that I turned deadly, when Jules and the gang encountered a dead body instead of something other worldly.
All of the Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries are available at your favorite bookstore.
