The House on Crow Mountain

by Rebecca Lee Smith

GENRE: Mystery

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BLURB:

When her aunt suffers a stroke, New York portrait artist Emory Austen returns home to the North Carolina mountains to mend fences and deal with the guilt over her husband’s senseless death. But that won’t be as easy as she hoped.

Someone in the quirky little town doesn’t like Emory. Is it the sexy architect who needs the Austen land to redeem himself? The untrustworthy matriarch? The grudge-bearing local bad boy? Or the teenage bombshell who has raised snooping to an art form? Even the local evangelist has something to hide. Who wrote the cryptic note warning her to “Give it back or you’ll be dead?” And what is ‘it’? As the clues pile up and secrets are exposed, Emory must discover what her family has that someone would kill for.

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EXCERPT:

The piecrust table still sat upside down where it had come sailing through the window the night before. Inside the house, bloodstains from Henry's wounded shoulder streaked across the floor, the oak hall tree lay on its side like a coffin, and one of the oil lamps had been shattered. Everyone said it was a miracle the place hadn't caught fire.

I wrapped my good arm around the wooden porch post and gazed across the meadow at the brilliant azure sky. One lone crow soared overhead. A harbinger of death or a good luck sign? Its glossy black feathers reflected off the sun. The bird dipped across the horizon, leading with its sharp pointed beak, riding the breeze up and down before disappearing behind the woods I had run for my life in the night before. In the morning light, the deadly thistles were invisible, blending in with the tall grass to cunningly disguise their razor-sharp leaves.

James climbed the steps and stood beside me. “Are you ready for this?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

I raked my fingers through my short curls, the same curls he had washed so carefully in the sink at the Thompson Motor Lodge. He held out his bandaged hand, blistered to the bone from holding Daisy's rope, and I took it.

Sheriff Riley rounded the corner of the house. “We've found something.”

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Talking with author Rebecca Lee Smith!

What is your writing environment?

I either write in a sunroom flooded with light or on a little table in the corner bedroom where it is cozy and quiet (unless someone opens the garage door). I am finding that if I switch up where I write once in a while, the change in scenery gives me a different mindset. It also helps me stay off Facebook and focus on the manuscript.

What is your writing process?

I’m not much of an outliner, but you have to plan things when you’re plotting a mystery or you get in trouble really fast. I’m a very linear writer, so after I get all the particulars figured out (setting, major characters, motives) I just start at the beginning and keep going. I do use the corkboard/3X5 card feature on Scrivener to keep my timeline straight and move scenes around if I need to. But that is all I use Scrivener for. I still write in Word, even though Microsoft Word and I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship.

What authors have caught your interest lately and why?

I started reading Ann Cleeves during the pandemic. She writes cozies but also the Vera Stanhope and Shetland crime series. I love her books. They kept me sane during lockdown. I’ve just started Book 2 of Sherry Harris’ Sea Glass Saloon Mystery series, A Time to Swill, and it’s so good. (Where does she get those great titles?) My daughter-in-law, who reads anything and everything, loaned me her copy of a wonderful book called The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister. It was luminous.

What was your inspiration for this particular novel?

I live in the mountains of East Tennessee, and some of my favorite scenery in the world is where the Appalachian and the Blue Ridge Mountains meet on the Tennessee/North Carolina border. It’s wild and craggy and breathtaking, and I knew I wanted to set a mystery there someday. I also knew I wanted to write about a small town that is full of charm, surrounded by farmland with a thriving artists’ community at its core. My obsession with long-buried family secrets gave me the nugget I needed for the plot. Because you can bet your sweet Aunt Fanny that even the most upstanding families always have a few juicy secrets tucked away.

What are you working on now and when can we expect it to be available?

The House on Crow Mountain is a standalone, but the new book I’m still polishing will hopefully be the first in a new series. It’s about what happens when the richest, most despised woman in town leaves her fortune to an unemployed elementary art teacher out of spite, then turns up dead.

What do you like to do when you are not writing?

Pre-pandemic, I loved hanging out at the local pub. But now, it’s mostly reading, watching English murder mysteries, crocheting while watching English murder mysteries, deadheading the marigolds (one of the few plants the neighborhood deer won’t eat), and visiting with my (vaccinated) kids, who each live an hour away in opposite directions. I also walk a rather lively Jack Russell terrier named Wilbur twice a day. And I’m teaching myself to quilt.

What is one interesting fact about you that readers don’t know?

I have acted in or directed over 100 plays and musicals.

Top 3 things on your bucket list?

Ziplining through a forest.

A hot air balloon ride.

Visiting Florence, Italy (one more time).

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Rebecca lives with her husband and a dog named Wilbur in the beautiful, misty mountains of East Tennessee, where the people are charming, soulful, and just a little bit crazy. She's been everything from a tax collector to a stay-at-home-mom to an award winning professional actor and director. She loves to travel the world (pre-pandemic) because it makes coming home so sweet. Her Southern roots and the affectionate appreciation she has for the rural towns she lives near inspire the settings and characters she writes about.

www.rebeccaleesmith.com

Twitter: @rbeccaleesmith

Facebook: Rebecca Lee Smith

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3xaBocU

Barnes and Noble: https://bit.ly/39JTJTl

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3unX18j

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GIVEAWAY:

Rebecca Lee Smith will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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