Troubled Water blog tour is through Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours and includes a giveaway and an author guest post. Share, leave a comment for the author, enter the giveaway, and share.
Book Details
Troubled Water: An Aging Ain’t for Wimps Mystery
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Northern Florida
Publisher : Misterio Press LLC
Publication date : July 28, 2026
Digital
https://amzn.to/4wAJb1b
Paperbacks will be available too!
What does it say about you when your coming-of-age story begins at seventy-one?
Amy Bridges Parker asks herself that question as she resists her domineering sister’s attempts to take over where her subtly controlling and recently deceased husband left off.
Then her sister Clara turns up dead! And a young man claiming to be the grandson of Amy’s first husband—the one who died in Vietnam fifty-two years ago—gives the sheriff a prime suspect. The boy had a grudge and must have gone after the wrong sister.
Amy isn’t convinced. She can’t really explain why, but she likes the young man. And she knows better than most that her sister, a mean girl back in high school, had plenty of old enemies. But who hated Clara enough to actually kill her? Or did the killer get the wrong sister after all?
About Kassandra Lamb
Kassandra Lamb has two loves: writing and psychology. In her youth, she discovered that writers need day jobs in order to eat. Partial to food, she studied psychology. Now retired from a career as a psychotherapist and college professor, she spends most of her time in an alternate universe with her characters. The magic portal to this universe (i.e., her computer) is in Florida, where her husband and dog catch occasional glimpses of her. Kass has authored over 40 books, including four mystery series and a romantic suspense trilogy.
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:
WEBSITE: https://kassandralamb.com
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/kassandralambauthor
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/kasslamb/
BLUESKY: https://bsky.app/profile/kasslamb.bsky.social
BOOKBUB PROFILE: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/kassandra-lamb
GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5624939.Kassandra_Lamb
Purchase Links
AMAZON BARNES & NOBLE KOBO APPLE GOOGLE PLAY
TOUR PARTICIPANTS
August 10 – Jody’s Bookish Haven – SPOTLIGHT
August 10 – StoreyBook Reviews – AUTHOR GUEST POST
August 11 – Books, Ramblings, and Tea – SPOTLIGHT
August 11 – Romance Novel Giveaways – AUTHOR GUEST POST
August 12 – Sarcastically Yours, Jen – SPOTLIGHT
August 12 – Books1987 – SPOTLIGHT
August 13 – Ascroft, eh! – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
August 13 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
August 14 – Sarah Can’t Stop Reading Books – REVIEW
August 14 – Sarandipity’s – AUTHOR GUEST POST
August 15 – Socrates Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
August 15 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – SPOTLIGHT
August 16 – Cozy Up With Kathy – REVIEW, AUTHOR INTERVIEW
August 16 – story.book.lady– REVIEW
August 17 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – REVIEW
August 17 – deal sharing aunt – SPOTLIGHT
August 18 – Ruff Drafts – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
August 18 – Book Hookup – REVIEW
August 19 – Boys’ Mom Reads! – SPOTLIGHT
Author Guest Post
A Peek Behind the Curtain–Writing Mysteries by the Seat of My Pants (1000 words)
by Kassandra Lamb
Fiction authors fall along a continuum in terms of their writing process. Some are plotters. They
methodically outline their stories, write character sketches, etc. before they even begin to write
the story itself.
I, on the other hand, prefer writing mysteries by the seat of my pants.
We pantsers (yes, that’s what we’re called) are on the other end of the continuum, with many
authors falling somewhere in between.
Unfortunately, I mostly had plotters as English teachers while growing up.
They taught me that one should always outline before writing anything.
Since I am naturally an organized, methodical person, this made sense to me. So that is what I
did. It worked great for book reports and term papers in school and for professional articles later.
But for my fiction stories, not so great.
I’d write the outline, and maybe a chapter or two. And then I’d “get distracted” by life, and the
story would languish in my hard drive for months, sometimes years, before I paid attention to it
again.
Usually, I’d haul it out when I thought of a new way to approach some part of the story. It might
be the beginning, or maybe how the killer was caught, etc. I’d pull up the outline and tweak it.
I might or might not look over what I’d already written, editing it some. And I might add another
chapter or two.
A few short stories got finished, eventually. But the novel-length mystery I’d been working on
since my mid-forties—it never seemed to get past Chapter Five.
I told myself that I just didn’t have time to focus on writing a novel, what with working for a
living and raising a child. I promised myself I’d “get serious” about writing fiction once I was
retired.
What I didn’t know…
I didn’t realize that the problem wasn’t lack of time or focus—it was my approach. I was NOT a
plotter.
I discovered this by accident. A little while after I retired, I yet again had a new idea for the
opening of that mystery novel. So I sat down at the computer to write that opening, before the
words disappeared on me.
I didn’t even look at the outline this time. I just started writing that new opening…and six weeks
later the first draft of that novel was finished. I’d written practically non-stop, pausing only to eat
and sleep.
And I realized in retrospect that outlining had been my downfall. Once I’d outlined a story, I lost
interest. The creative spark was gone. The story had already been told.
How could such an organized person be a pantser?
I pondered this question for a while, before the answer dawned on me. Organization is a good
idea for doing most things in life—cleaning the house, paying the bills, etc.
But it wasn’t necessarily the best approach to being creative!
Once I realized this, I cranked out story after story. I loved the feeling of “being in the flow,” the
words seeming to pour out of my fingertips on their own.
Eventually I found a better balance in my life, and didn’t write quite so obsessively night and
day. But I’d learned that I had to stick to my pantser nature if I wanted the stories to keep
coming.
What I know going into a new story.
I actually know very little. I have the basic story concept—the “what if such-and-such happens?”
I know who my main character is, and the opening scene usually comes to me early on.
And since I write murder mysteries, I almost always know who’s going to get killed, by whom,
and why.
In other words, I have Point A, the opening scene, and Point Z, the climax where the killer is
revealed. But I have only small inklings of how I will get from A to Z.
Then I sit down and start writing. Usually, each scene unfolds in my head before I actually write
it, but sometimes it’s only moments before.
What changes as I go along.
Just about anything may change. The main character has never changed, but a few times, my
muse has decided to kill someone other than the original intended victim. And sometimes the
killer changes. Maybe they’re becoming too obvious or I’ve developed a liking for them, so I
make them a red herring instead and come up with a different killer and motive.
And then there are the rabbit trails… Sometimes a scene seems to come out of nowhere. Often, it
involves a secondary or minor character. I’m not sure where my muse is going with the scene,
but I keep writing.
When I get to the end of the first draft, I revisit that scene. It may have developed into a subplot
or provided another suspect. But sometimes nothing ever came of it.
Then I have to either delete the scene or develop it further. I’ve gone both ways, depending on
the story. One time, I created a very plausible additional red herring out of one of those random
scenes.
The downside of being a pantser.
Your first draft is a hot mess! It takes a lot of editing to get it cleaned up. A first draft takes me
roughly three months to write. And it takes at least that long again to get all the editing done. But
I love editing, so that is not a hardship for me.
Plotters may point at the lengthy editing and say, “See, that’s what’s wrong with writing by the
seat of your pants.” But if pushed, they’ll admit that they spend about the same amount of time
up front on the planning. 😉
Plotter or pantser or somewhere in between—there’s no right or wrong way to do this writing
thing. Every writer has to discover the process that works best for them. I’m so glad I finally
discovered mine.
Giveaway
Prize – 1 – Giveaway Prize is a signed paperback of the book, Troubled Water, a Grumpy Cat 2027 wall calendar, Grumpy Cat stickers, a Troubled Water tea (or coffee) mug, and Taylor’s of London teabags (English Breakfast tea, and Yorkshire Gold)
