Toes in the Tulips: (Adventures of Gladys) (The Mystery Book Nook Shared World) by Katherine H. Brown | Book Review and Guest Post

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Welcome to my stop on the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour for Toes in the Tulips: (Adventures of Gladys) (The Mystery Book Nook Shared World) by Katherine H. Brown. Stop by each blog on the tour for interviews, guest posts, spotlights, reviews and more!

Toes in the Tulips: (Adventures of Gladys) (The Mystery Book Nook Shared World)

by Katherine H. Brown

Toes in the Tulips: (Adventures of Gladys) (The Mystery Book Nook Shared World)
Cozy Mystery
3rd in Series
Setting – Seashell Bay, Alabama
Independently Published (September 5, 2023)
Number of Pages: 74 (word doc pages / 30k words)

Another who-dunnit featuring one of your favorite Senior sleuths as well as an exciting new installment of The Mystery Book Nook Shared World.

Gladys is head over heels excited for the new community garden project. In fact, she’s created a whole new event: the Community Garden Plant Potluck. The plant potluck is more popular than even she imagined until one of the community garden members is found toes up in the tulips, dead as can be.

Gladys won’t rest until the killer is planted in a jail cell and the Community Garden project is free to grow again. But when clues don’t make sense, she might have to do a little out-of-the-box research using an interesting new resource, The Mystery Book Nook Forum, online.

My review of Toes in the Tulips

I enjoy reading cozy mystery books with senior sleuths! It seems like they can get away with lots more than younger amateur sleuths can, and they usually just say what they’re thinking. They’ve lived long enough to stop caring so much about what others think, and that’s really evident with Gladys…especially when she buys a certain hat.

I have read one other Gladys book, but you really can enjoy this book on its own. Toes in the Tulips is a quick read since it’s only 74 pages, so you can just sit and enjoy a quick mystery in a couple of hours! In this book, poor Gladys is a suspect in a murder when she finds a body in the community garden. Having contacts on the inside so to speak, gives Gladys a heads up when the police are planning to arrest her. Thank goodness Gladys has been down this amateur detective road before!

Toes in the Tulips is a fun cozy mystery to solve! I enjoyed it because it’s got a quirky main character as well as side characters who either play a role in helping Gladys or support her with sweets! If you’re looking for a charming, quick cozy mystery to read, pick up Toes in the Tulips!

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All views expressed are only my honest opinion.

Author Guest Post

Hello and thank you so much for allowing me to pop over and introduce myself. I’m Katherine H. Brown, Texas author of cozy mysteries, clean reads, steampunk, and even a few children’s humorous mysteries.

It is always a pleasure to be on a blog tour with the opportunity to discover new blogs for the first time with awesome bookish content as well as get a chance to find new readers who may not have heard of my books before.

Many readers are very curious about the process each author has for writing a book. And how right you are to be curious because the answers always vary, I’ve never met an author who did things the exact same way which, I suppose, is another reason such a plethora of fun and different books are floating around the cozy mystery world.

Here is a bit about my personal book-writing process.

First, I start with a general concept. Sometimes this is a character or even a conversation that I think of at random. This occurs far more than is helpful – I can’t possibly write the number of books that would go along with these random thoughts – but when a thought sticks, makes me laugh, or immediately sends my brain down a rabbit hole of ideas then I jot that particular gem of randomness down. Sometimes on my phone, sometimes in one of my many spiral notebooks (I buy new ones every time school supplies go on sale lol).

Now, usually these inspirations occur while I’m already in the middle of another book so sometimes they have to sit in my notebook and wait patiently. Other times, I get so excited I have to start working on them more.

The next step for me after an idea and general concept of the characters is to create a title. I absolutely have to have the title first; I don’t know why. If you browse my books, it will be obvious to many of you that I am also obsessed with alliteration.

After a catchy (to me at least, and hopefully to you) title, then I start writing the scene that had jumped into my head and caught my attention.

I also name my main two or three characters at this time. Yes, it is a sad and true fact that I spend far more time googling names for book characters than I did for my daughter’s name (Scarlett if you are wondering).

Before I write very much further, there is another step that always helps me. Or distracts me. Probably both. Definitely both. I design a working book cover!

This might be one of my favorite steps. In the future, designing covers for other authors is something I want to consider but for now I practice on myself and I absolutely love capturing my vision for the book by creating the book cover and having it saved on my phone lock screen to remind me I should actually be writing the book.

The writing goes smoothly for a while. Or as smoothly as it can when writing between momming a three-year-old, driving around a fourteen-year-old, library visits, and teaching yoga workout classes.
Inevitably, I get stuck somewhere in the middle.

This might be because I’m a pantser and find actually knowing who the culprit is in advance to be very boring.

Once I go through a few weeks of snacking and reading, I jump back to the laptop and push through until that one thing I couldn’t decide clicks and I happily write until I can barely see straight in order to finish by my self-imposed deadlines.

To sum it up:

Random idea

Obsess over character names

Begin to flesh out opening or character personalities

Create a fun title

Write a bit

Create an even more fun cover

Write a bit more

Life and procrastination

Get excited about the story again and finish in a mad dash of post-procrastination stress

And that’s how the story gets written!

Thank you all for stopping by this part of the blog tour and I look forward to more time with you later.
Katherine Brown

Thanks for being here, Katherine!

Don’t miss this fun new adventure with some favorite characters!

The Mystery Book Nook Shared World (3 books)
No Good Deed Unpunished: (A Vangie Guillory Mystery) (The Mystery Book Nook Shared World)
Estate in Peril: A Maude and Mabel Cozy Mystery (The Mystery Book Nook Shared World)
Toes in the Tulips: (Adventures of Gladys) (The Mystery Book Nook Shared World)

Adventures of Gladys
Bonbon Voyage: Adventures of Gladys Humorous Senior Cozy Mystery Series
Half-Baked Homecoming: Adventures of Gladys Humorous Senior Cozy Mystery Series
Toes in the Tulips: (Adventures of Gladys) (The Mystery Book Nook Shared World)

About Katherine H. Brown

Katherine Brown is a wife, mom, Texas author, and unreformed bookaholic. From childhood, Katherine has devoured books for fun, for escape, for inspiration. As an author, it is Katherine’s goal to provide that same fun escape for others and encourage a love of reading in any age group. Clean cozy mysteries with sass and good Southern manners are her specialty, though recently Katherine has taken the jump into the steampunk world with a fun twist on Mary Poppins inspired characters. When not writing, Katherine enjoys weekly trips to the library with her toddler, teaching yoga workouts, and spending time with family.

Author Links

Instagram instagram.com/katherinebrownkatie

GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18681694.Katherine_Brown

BookBub https://www.bookbub.com/authors/katherine-h-brown

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/katherinebrownkatieauthor/

Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Katherine-Brown/e/B078J72H8M

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Purchase Link – Amazon