VERENA DELUCA

https://www.aconitecafe.com/verenadeluca

https:..www.amazon.com/stores/Verena-DeLuca/author/BO8778FGD1

Verena spends her time homeschooling her artistic daughter, walking the nature trails around her Texas home. She is the owner, with her partner, of the Aconite Cafe, a publishing company. A true coffee lover, Verena is the author of A Fresh Brew: A Dragon Cozy Mystery. She also wires the Hill Country Mysterys, Dusty Paws Mysteries and is part of the Cozy Mystery Tribe Anthology books.

Forty, foxy, and fond of forensics.
Moving back to my old stopping grounds came with more trouble than I bargained for. I left my investigation agency back in Fort Worth to start over free from stress.

This is the first book in a series. The third book is planned to be released in February 2023 with another 2—3 books to release during 2023.

Who is your protagonist?
Blair Warren is a 43-year-old go-getter—or she used to be. Once upon a time, she had a dream to bring every cheater to justice. To give every woman the confidence they needed to leave relationships that were harboring their dreams. But that was before a heavy hitter in Dallas ran a slander campaign against her agency. Now she is living a small-town life she never wanted and trying to put back the broken pieces of her own confidence.

Tell us what time frame your stories are in and what setting or world?
Blair’s story takes place in modern day Kingsland, Texas. While the events, places and people of Blair’s story are fiction, the town is a very real tourist trap that fans of the series can visit for themselves. Like with all of Verena’s books, Blair lives in the same universe as the Hill Country Mystery series, even making pop in over appearances there.

Is your book part of a series? If so, tell us about the series.
Murder in LBJ Cove is a part of the Firedrake Investigation series. Throughout these books, we will follow Blair as she solves murders with her friends in Kingsland, Texas.

What has happened to propel your character into a “new beginning”?
In a prequal story, Cheated into Retirement, Blair is forced to leave a life she built from scratch.
For as long as she could remember, all she ever wanted was a successful P.I. business deep in the bustle of city life. She had it all, living the dream she worked hard to make a reality, but one case, one lie, one scorned spouse blew it all up.
Within less than a year, she found herself back home, living in the small town she ran from trying to find a new balance in a life she never asked for.

Is your protagonist happy about this new beginning or resistant to it? 
For the first time in her life, Blair is lost without a passion to drive her forward. When she lived in Dallas, a stable relationship, or a group of friends were not things she desired. At first, all she wants is to wake up from the nightmare and have everything back to the way it was.
She finds herself working in a job that is the furthest away from investigation she can be—a bakery—trying her best to hide from the realities of her new life. But a passion is a passion, and throughout Murder in LBJ Cove she discovers there’s more to investigating than just cheaters.

Give the readers a hint of what’s to come for your character in future books.
When we meet up with Blair in Murder in LBJ Cove, she is broken and humbled by her experiences in Dallas. The smear campaign against her hit her harder than she ever thought it would and she can’t imagine ever going back to investigation again.
But over the first few books, we’ll watch as each case gives her a little bit of her confidence back. She’ll discover how much of a blessing that tragedy was and find out what she really wants for her life. From friendship to romance, Blair is going to do a 180 on her life goals and discover that there is happiness on the other side.

Victoria LK Williams