Welcome to the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour for Hit and Mist: A Silicon Valley Mystery by Marc Jedel. Stop by each blog on the tour for interviews, spotlights, reviews and more!
He’s determined to prove his friend innocent of homicide. He may make things worse….
Hit and Mist: A Silicon Valley Mystery
by Marc Jedel
I received this book free to review; however, all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive compensation at no cost to you.
Hit and Mist: A Silicon Valley Mystery
Cozy Mystery
4th In Series
Publisher: BGM Press
Number of Pages ~250
When Marty’s surfer-dude pal is arrested for murder, he must squeeze his amateur sleuthing into his packed schedule. With his high-tech job busier than ever and his nieces’ antics sidetracking him, Marty’s ready for a Thanksgiving holiday. All he has to do is solve two murders. But if he can’t even convince his sister to bake his favorite chocolate pie, how can he hope to save his friend?
With the help of his girlfriend, some wacky coworkers and Buddy the rambunctious Labrador, Marty sets out to disprove the ironclad evidence. But as the suspect list blossoms out of control, his bumbling efforts might lead him into problems faster than a failing hard drive.
Can he clear his friend’s name before he’s blown to bits?
Hit and Mist is the fourth book in the riotous Silicon Valley cozy mystery series. If you like your murder cases twisty, your suspect lists long, and your detectives clueless, then you’ll love Marc Jedel’s humorous murder adventure.
Buy Hit and Mist to stumble onto the truth today!
My review of Hit and Mist
Hit and Mist is the first book that I’ve read in A Silicon Valley Mystery series, but it won’t be the last. In Hit and Mist, Marc Jedel tells us a story that is so crazy, you can’t help but be drawn in! When Marty’s friend is suspected of murdering not one but two people, Marty’s got to get involved. After all, the police can’t solve crimes without his help (uh huh, Marty, keep dreaming).
The characters are my favorite thing about Hit and Mist. Marty’s dad jokes made me groan because you know how dad jokes are. They’re so bad, they’re hilarious. Marty’s sister and nieces play an integral part in the book, and it definitely wouldn’t be the same without them…or their dog! Marty is such a great uncle. He steps in whenever his sister needs him. The girls love his dad jokes (okay, not all of the time!), and he enjoys spending time with them. Marty’s two best work friends add so much to the story. Mrs. Kim, Marty’s neighbor, is like a member of the family and steps in to help with his nieces and the dog when Marty is busy “solving crimes.”
I appreciate that Hit and Mist is a clean cozy mystery and hope the series continues in this vein. The mystery is so far out of Marty’s league, and his list of suspects is as long as your arm. But once it’s solved, you’ll think back and see that the clues were there. The police just happen to be way better at solving the crimes than Marty…shocker! I enjoyed this book very much and look forward to seeing what Marty gets into next!
Author interview
Thank you, Marc, for allowing us to get to know you better!
Q. When did decide to be an author?
I’ve wanted to write a book since I was young. For the longest time, it seemed I couldn’t come up with a good plot. Yet, my writing research clearly demonstrated that having a plot is critical to a book’s success.
One day, I received this awesome birthday drawing from my nieces. And my kids, or nieces, or one of our friends’ kids had done some crazy things. Probably all of the above. One thing led to another and the idea formed to loosely base a mystery with a self-absorbed, fashion-backward software engineer, his sister, and his nieces on my life.
It’s clearly fiction. I mean, I’m not a software engineer.
Q. What makes your cozy novels stand out from the crowd?
Silicon Valley is not your typical cozy mystery locale and Marty Golden doesn’t fit the normal profile of a cozy mystery protagonist. He’s not a woman and doesn’t run a bakery, bookshop, or bed & breakfast. While I like those cozies as much as the next reader, I find myself getting bored by reading similar settings and characters over and over.
Despite finding himself thrust into challenging situations, Marty isn’t exactly hero material. He has a wonderful combination of wit, irreverent humor and sarcasm mixed in with nerdy insecurities, absent-mindedness, and fumbling but effective amateur sleuthing skills.
I hope readers enjoy Marty and his nieces, sister, and other wacky side characters. Some of these help and some hinder Marty’s progress. With an active inner voice and not a lot of advanced planning, Marty throws himself into solving problems. Sometimes, he even succeeds.
Q. Are you a ‘pantser’ or an outliner?
I outline. I admit to it. If I didn’t, I’d still be trying to figure out how the book would end, or who gets killed. Once I thought I could wing it from a partial outline and I wound up changing the killer halfway through the story.
Creating an outline with each scene on one line of a spreadsheet helps me to look at holes, try to spread out when different side characters show up, and make sure the action keeps moving forward at a good clip. Then I go through all my notes and put them into the relevant scenes so I can include the right amount of humor as well as balance tension vs wacky situations. Once that’s done, there are no more excuses. It’s time to write.
The outlining helps me stay on track and gives me the flexibility to see where the characters will take me without going too far astray. Unless I decide to go astray because I’ve got a funny idea.
Q. Tell us about what makes your main characters different?
In a rare moment of introspection, I decided that the series should be about more than just humor wrapped in a mystery. A literary scholar, if one ever were foolish enough to select my novels for their dissertation, might say they’re about a search for family life, friends and happiness. However, Marty typically doesn’t realize this is what he wants out of life, so he tries hard to return to the quiet, simple and peaceful life that he had before his sister and his nieces moved to town.
As a male amateur sleuth who’s never worked in law enforcement, Marty stands out from the crowd of cozy protagonists. He bumbles his way through the investigations, armed with nothing but powers of self-delusion, an eye for detail, and the complete inability to leave a coherent voicemail. For me as the author, part of the fun is trying to figure out how he’ll solve the case in a realistic fashion without help from the police and without any special talents.
Q. What have you learned about yourselves since becoming an author?
I’ve noticed that I pay much more attention to my surroundings than I ever did. I also have become more willing to approach strangers and ask them questions. Who’d have expected that the solitary life of a writer would make me more social?
Q. What do you think the hardest part of writing is? What is the easiest?
For me, the hardest part of writing is coming up with a good plot, figuring out who killed whom, and why. Once I have a reasonable outline, I find I really enjoy the writing parts. I can often be found laughing in front of my computer as I manage to squeeze in some funny line of dialogue or anecdote into the middle of an important plot point. And, if I’ve tried to put in too many unnecessary bits of humor, my editor is great. She tells me that it was funny and that I should cut it. After the glow of hearing that she thought I was funny wears off, I realize she’s right and follow her advice.
Q. Anything else to tell readers?
I hope readers try my novels and enjoy them. They’re all free for Kindle Unlimited members. You can find the whole series at : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PHNT7XM. The first three are also now out on audiobook from Tantor Audio everywhere audiobooks are sold. I love to hear from readers via email or Facebook as that tends to motivate me to keep going on the next blank page.
Q. How can readers discover more about you and your work?
Website: www.marcjedel.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/MarcJedel.Author
BookBub: www.bookbub.com/profile/marc-jedel
Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/author/show/18403497.Marc_Jedel
Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/3eaFE1k
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mjedel/
Enter the giveaway ENDED
About Marc Jedel
For most of my life, I’ve been inventing stories. Some, especially when I was young, involved my sister as the villain. As my sister’s brother for her entire life, I’m highly qualified to tell the tale of this evolving, quirky sibling relationship.
My writing skills were honed in years of marketing leadership positions in Silicon Valley. While my high tech marketing roles involved crafting plenty of fiction, we called these marketing collateral, emails and ads.
The publication of my first novel, Uncle and Ants, gave me permission to claim “author” as my job. And achieving Amazon Best Seller status gave me even better adjectives to use in front of “author.” This has led to way more interesting discussions than answering “marketing.”
My family would tell you that Marty’s character isn’t much of a stretch of the imagination for me, but I’m comfortable with that situation.
Like Marty, I live in Silicon Valley and can’t believe that otherwise normal people would willingly jump out of an airplane and call it fun. Unlike Marty, I have a wonderful wife and a neurotic but sweet, small dog, who is often the first to weigh in on the humor in my writing.
Purchase Link – Amazon
Hit and Mist Tour Participants
June 1
FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
Reading Is My SuperPower – REVIEW
June 2
Cozy Up With Kathy – GUEST POST
The Pulp and Mystery Shelf – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
June 3
Brooke Blogs – CHARACTER GUEST POST
June 4
Literary Gold – CHARACTER GUEST POST
Reading, Writing & Stitch-Metic – SPOTLIGHT
June 5
Ascroft, eh? – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
June 6
MJB Reviewers – SPOTLIGHT
T’s Stuff – SPOTLIGHT
June 7
StoreyBook Reviews – REVIEW
June 8
Diane Reviews Books – REVIEW
June 9
Mysteries with Character – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
June 10
Christy’s Cozy Corners – REVIEW, GUEST POST
June 11
My Reading Journeys – REVIEW
The Book Decoder – REVIEW, AUTHOR INTERVIEW
June 12
Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
Carla Loves to Read – REVIEW, CHARACTER GUEST POST
June 13
Elizabeth McKenna – Author – SPOTLIGHT
June 14
Here’s How It Happened – REVIEW
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Thanks so much for the lovely review and for hosting me today. I’m very glad you enjoyed Hɪᴛ ᴀɴᴅ Mɪsᴛ. I think you’d enjoy the other 3 books in this series as you’ll see how these characters came into his life and more unusual situations that he manages to bumble through. I hope your readers will enjoy reading my books as much as I enjoy writing them. At http://www.marcjedel.com, people can get the first chapter FREE for all four of my books simply by signing up for my newsletter. Plus a new prequel novella will be released soon to members of my mailing list. Hɪᴛ ᴀɴᴅ Mɪsᴛ can be read standalone or as part of the series so now’s a great time to enjoy Marty’s adventures.
Thanks for stopping by and letting us know about the free chapters!