Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

I'm neck deep in NaNo, so no new stories right now. But this one I wrote last year is now finding its way into the new novel (bits and pieces of it, anyway). So this week and next I'll share the two-part story. Sorry about making a jump on the season, but you know those holiday bazaars have to be done early! A Pismawallops PTA Christmas “JJ, we need another table for the baked goods!” “JJ, the tree won’t light up!” “JJ, the—” I tuned out the last voice. Arne Hancock always had a crisis for me to fix. I dispatched two kids to get the table Patty Reilly needed for the brownies, and went to help Kitty Padgett with the lights that didn’t light. Kitty’s the PTA president, so she was getting her own share of people demanding instant fixes. “It’s plugged in?” I asked. Kitty gave that the eye-roll it deserved, so I added, “In an outlet that actually works?” The Pismawallops High gym needed some upgrades, no question. “I tried three outlets,” Kitty said. “It’s got to be a burned out bul

Write…Edit…Publish (WEP) is an online writing community now partnering with the Insecure Writers Support Group (IWSG). We post the third Wednesday of every second month. WEP challenges are open to all.  I don't really like horror, so I took the prompt in a different direction, and wrote a short story from my Pismawallops PTA mystery series. You'll only get the "deja vu" part if you read Death By Trombone :)  I managed to hit 1000 words exactly, exclusive of the title. Deja Vu All Over Again “We’ve been over this, Kitty. With my new job at the library I don’t have time for everything. I really can’t do the Fall Formal.” I crossed my fingers as I said it; I worked a great deal less at the library than Kitty did at their gas station. “We have been through it all before.” Kitty didn’t sound like she agreed with me. She sounded like she was laughing at me, or humoring me, which was worse. “You can afford one evening, and the library isn’t open Friday nights. Well, plus

  Flashback Friday is a monthly meme that takes place on the last Friday of the month . The idea is to give a little more love to a post you’ve published on your blog before.  Maybe you just love it, maybe it’s appropriate for now, or maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserved when you first published it. Thanks to Michael d’Agostino, who started it all, there is a solution – join Flashback Friday! Just join in whenever you like, repost one of your own blog posts , including any copyright notices on text or media, on the last Friday of the month. Use the Flashback Friday logo above, as designed by Michael d’Agostino. Link it back to host Jemima Pett (there's a linky list!) and add a link to your post in the comments on Jemima's post (or mine, or any other participant's).  ### I wanted a Pismawallops PTA story for Flashback Friday again, since the newest book just came out this week, so I hunted a long way back through the archives and found this story from 201

IT'S HERE! Death By Adverb   Available today.  Genre: Cozy mystery Ebook: 85,000 words Paperback:   approx. 285 pages He murdered the language, but who murdered him?   JJ McGregor’s not having her best summer. Her arm’s in a cast, her jeans are too tight, and her son’s in Texas with his dad. To make matters worse, she hasn’t spoken to Police Chief Ron Karlson since June. What’s more, she’s gotten fired by the biggest bully on Pismawallops Island.  JJ thinks her boss's vile prose and grammar are poisonous, but he's the one who turns up dead, and against all odds her summer gets worse. Now there’s a killer on the loose, JJ's on the suspect list, and she'd better make her peace with Ron before someone decides she's gone too far in the defense of good writing! Purhase Links: Smashwords Amazon Paperback coming April 15 Hop on over and visit some of our launch-week bloggers! Jemima Pett   March 26--Review Natalie Aguierre  April 3 Ellen Jacobson   March 31--Re

  Flashback Friday is a monthly meme that takes place on the last Friday of the month . The idea is to give a little more love to a post you’ve published on your blog before.  Maybe you just love it, maybe it’s appropriate for now, or maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserved when you first published it. Thanks to Michael d’Agostino, who started it all, there is a solution – join Flashback Friday! Just join in whenever you like, repost one of your own blog posts , including any copyright notices on text or media, on the last Friday of the month. Use the Flashback Friday logo above, as designed by Michael d’Agostino. Link it back to host Jemima Pett (there's a linky list!) and add a link to your post in the comments on Jemima's post (or mine, or any other participant's). Since Friday is my flash fiction day, I've been sharing stories from the archives. This one dates back to 2013, and since it is a mystery featuring my heroine, JJ MacGregor of Pismawallops

Decided to have some fun as we run up to the holidays (and yes, I will unashamedly say "holidays," because there are a bunch of them and I like to celebrate any that come my way, and encourage others to celebrate any they like). So I dropped in to see how the Pismwallops PTA handles the event. With a fund-raiser bazaar, of course! But nothing ever goes quite according to plan when JJ MacGregor is involved. It's looking like a 2-part story. A Pismawallops PTA Christmas “JJ, we need another table for the baked goods!” “JJ, the tree won’t light up!” “JJ, the—” I tuned out the last voice. Arne Hancock always had a crisis for me to fix. I dispatched two kids to get the table Patty Reilly needed for the brownies, and went to help Kitty Padgett with the lights that didn’t light. Kitty’s the PTA president, so she was getting her own share of people demanding instant fixes. “It’s plugged in?” I asked. Kitty gave that the eye-roll it deserved, so I added, “In an outlet that actuall

O is for Kevin Olsen, of the Pismwallops PTA mysteries In a nutshell: Kevin Olsen is a high school senior who plays a minor role in each of the Pismawallops PTA books. He plays football and gets his heart broken a lot. Biggest Secret: He isn't much for keeping secrets, really. JJ finds it easy to get information out of him, most of the time. Favorite Line: "But man, you know, I really liked her." What do you serve when all you have in the freezer is an ice-cold corpse?  JJ and her best friend Kitty struggle to hold the Pismawallops PTA together, and new volunteer Letitia LeMoine isn’t making it any easier.   But when Letitia’s strangled corpse turns up where the ice cream bars should have been, things get a whole lot worse.   JJ has to shoehorn in a search for the killer along with all her other problems: divorce, a 15-year-old son with his first girlfriend, a desperate race to complete the Yearbook on time, and her own tendency to get all wobbly-kneed around the C

K is for Kitty Padgett, of the Pismawallops PTA mysteries In a nutshell: Kitty is JJ’s best friend (see yesterday's post), and she's as patient as JJ is hasty. Kitty actually seems to understand teens. Biggest secret: She has far fewer answers than her kids think she does. Favorite line: "If only she'd learn to say please and thank you." Because Kitty believes that a bit of courtesy will go a long way toward making the world a better place. A favorite scene where Kitty yanks JJ's chain, just enough to prove she's no push-over. From Death By Trombone, Chapter 4. We ate and drank in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the sunshine, blue water, and bluer sky. June sunshine was rare enough on our island that we never took it for granted, and it had felt like a particularly long and wet spring. Or maybe that was my mood, my own struggles affecting the weather, or at least my perception of the weather. At last, mellowed by