Still Knife Painting (A Paint & Shine Mystery)
by Cheryl Hollon
About Still Life Painting
Still Knife Painting (A Paint & Shine Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Publisher: Kensington (June 30, 2020)
Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN-10: 1496725247
ISBN-13: 978-1496725240
Digital ASIN: B07W8VL149
Miranda Trent has set up a sweet life in a scenic corner of Appalachia — until she stumbles across the trail of a killer . . .
After inheriting her uncle’s Red River Gorge homestead in Eastern Kentucky — smack dab in the middle of the Daniel Boone National Forest — Miranda comes up with a perfect business plan for summer tourists: pairing outdoor painting classes with sips of local moonshine, followed by a mouthwatering sampler of the best in southern cooking.
To Miranda’s delight, Paint & Shine is a total success — until someone kills the cook. As the town’s outsider, suspicion naturally falls on Miranda. Murdering the best biscuit baker of Red River Gorge is a high crime in these parts. Miranda will have to prove her innocence before she’s moved from farmhouse to jail cell faster than she can say “white lightning” . . .
About the Guest Post
Art Inspires Art even during a Pandemic
By Cheryl Hollon
I’m delighted to be a guest at Jane Reads. Thank you, Jane (and Maxie), for hosting me on your site with the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour.
I write every day. Every single day. On Saturday, on Sunday, I even write on holidays. This is actually a time saver for me. If I don’t open up my current manuscript for a few days, I forget what I was doing and end up spending quite a bit of time getting my head back into the mystery.
Writing for me is exhilarating and at the same time exhausting. I tend to push ridiculously hard for the last several weeks near the deadline for turning a book over to my publisher. That means a twelve to sixteen-hour day living and breathing in book world. I call this phase book jail. As a result, I’m a quivering mass of nervous energy and completely empty of words. I have trouble writing the simplest e-mail.
I have a solution. I walk into a museum. I wander with no set plan or no set time limit. I just let the art wash over me and it begins to recharge my creative energy. For the artist, this is cross-training at its most pleasant.
Unfortunately, these past long weeks, museums have been shut tight. They’re slowly beginning to open, but I’m going to wait a little longer to visit. I needed another source of motivation and quick.
I’m lucky enough to live right in downtown St. Petersburg, FL. Temporarily, for a shot of inspiration and respite, I have been walking through our downtown city parks. There are white statues of renaissance folk, waterfront walking paths, and a great view of the construction progress of our new pier. A unique treat is the Gizella Kopsick Palm Arboretum with more than 500 palms and cycads representing some 150 species from around the world.
A little further away, we have the Old Northeast neighborhood of stately homes filled with beautifully landscaped flowers and brick cobbled streets. A manatee joined me on one of my walks near the Vinoy Hotel. Heaven.
Another source of renewed inspiration is the dozens and dozens of murals that grace our city with art on nearly any flat and not so flat surface. Lately, I’ve noticed more and more dumpsters that are incredibly imaginative and charming. It seems weird to toss garbage into a signed work of art.
This technique for ‘filling the well’ refreshes my creativity in little more than an hour or so. After that, I’m ready to pound the keys for another writing day.
How are you staying creative?
About Cheryl Hollon
Cheryl Hollon now writes full-time after she left an engineering career of designing and building military flight simulators in amazing countries such as England, Wales, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and India. Fulfilling the dream of a lifetime, she combines her love of writing with a passion for creating glass art. In the small glass studio behind her house in St. Petersburg, Florida, Cheryl and her husband design, create, and produce fused glass, stained glass, and painted glass artworks. Visit her online at her website, on Facebook, or on Twitter.
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