I am excited to be here today to bring you a guest post from author, Maia Chance. Please help me by giving her a warm welcome.
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THE TROPHY WIVES OF ALPENROSE: A MYSTERY
By Maia Chance
It’s 1965, and small-time American con artist Daisy
Mattson considers herself more of a survivalist than a
gold-digger. But when her new husband Count Burkhart of Switzerland
dies, she suddenly becomes the head of an international luxury hotel chain,
heiress to a fortune . . . and the prime suspect for murder.
Daisy’s sister, seventeen-year old Jo, has chunky thighs,
a penchant for wool cardigans, and a weakness for chocolate. In
short, she’s the polar opposite of her glamorous older sister. Pent
up in an elite finishing school, Jo discovers a group of distinctly creepy
girls who look straight out of Vogue,
secretly speak Russian, and who just might have something to do with Count
Burkhart’s death.
Enter a butler who’s more James Bond than Jeeves, a sexy
Swiss ski instructor, a legendary monster in the decrepit villa across the
lake, and a world-famous plastic surgeon who specializes in transforming women
into living dolls. In the charming alpine village of Ober Spyri, the
Mattson sisters race to clear Daisy’s name before she becomes the next one laid
to rest in Château Burkhart’s family crypt.
Since
2014 I have traditionally published six mystery novels, but I’m going to let
you in on a little secret: The Trophy
Wives of Alpenrose was the first mystery I ever wrote. For years it languished “under the bed,” as
they say, but I retained a soft spot for this story of two sisters from Idaho
navigating danger and intrigue in 1960s Switzerland. So, this year I took it out, dusted it off, did
some revision and editing, and sent it out into the world.
People often ask me about the stories behind my books, and the
origins of this one in particular stand out vividly in my memory. One day when I was hugely pregnant with my
first child, I was lolling around eating frozen yogurt and watching 1963’s The Pink Panther. I adore this movie’s glamorous ski mountain
setting and its wonderful retro makeup, hair, fashion, and interior décor—not
to mention the hilarious, action-packed plot.
That day, my imagination was captured.
Maybe it was because I had just finished reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which, as you may recall, also has an alpine
setting. Maybe it was just the preggo
hormones.
Whatever the reason, between bites of Haagen-Dazs peach
fro-yo, I decided that since I couldn’t even get up off my couch, let alone
time-travel to a glamorous version of Switzerland in the 60s, I’d just have to,
you know, write a book about it instead.
I mean, I was about to have a baby and I was in the middle of a PhD
program, so why not?
Once that story seed was planted, I drew from my own
experiences (for instance, growing up in rural Idaho, and my own travels in
Switzerland), and from some really fun research into vintage fashion magazines,
the history of girls’ finishing schools, and Cold War Russian spies. The book took more than a year to complete,
given what was going on in my life. I
wrote the second half squashed in my quasi-soundproof Toyota for an hour here
and an hour there while my husband looked after our (noisy) baby. But I got it done, and now, at long last, it (like,
well, a baby) is out in the world.
The Trophy Wives of Alpenrose: A Mystery is available for purchase
on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Trophy-Wives-Alpenrose-Mystery-ebook/dp/B073FFLR6G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502475877&sr=8-1&keywords=the+trophy+wives+of+alpenrose
Visit Maia Chance at
maiachance.com
and on Facebook at facebook.com/MaiaChance
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Thanks Maia for being here!
Happy Reading!
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