My guilty secret: Guest post by Author Lynn Cahoon

Welcome guest author Lynn Cahoon to Killer Hobbies today, and check out her newest mystery, Mission to Murder!  How about you?  Are you a toucher?

 

I’m a toucher.

I think it started when I took my first home ec class. Visiting a fabric store for the first time, I strolled through the aisles of bolts. Cottons, wools, tweeds, silks. I loved running my hand over the cloth. So when we started to learn to knit and crochet, I was in heaven. Making my own nubbie cloth, then transporting that strand of yarn into a pillow case, or a scarf that made me happy.

I even enjoyed ironing as a kid.

Now that you know that fact about me, it won’t surprise you when I tell you I have a stash of fabric. I think I love the idea of quilting a lot more than the actual work. I’ve only done a few small wall hangings where I hand pieced and hand quilted. Great activity while watching a movie or waiting for a kid to finish with (add in your child’s sport here) practice.

I’ve moved my stash three times in the last six years. From a rental in a small town that could be the poster child for Small Town America. To another rental in a historical Mississippi river town.  And finally, to our own home in the same river town. 

Two Christmas’s ago, I took another leap of faith and bought a sewing machine.  It sat in the box under my dining room table, unopened, for a year. Then last month I pulled it out and patched several pair of my husband’s jeans.  Sewers everywhere are cringing when I say this as denim is hard as nails for machines. 

But it survived. Last week I mended an old quilt we use for camping. I’m feeling like Suzie Homemaker or at least the woman the teenage me expected.  Some days I think they might show up at my door and take away my Future Homemakers of America president’s gavel.

A few months ago, I started adding to my fabric stash. Twice now, I’ve purchased fat squares from a vendor at the local flea market. My fingers itched as I considered my purchases.

Have I made anything yet?

No, but that’s not the point. I can make something. Well, I could if I found the right pattern and a matching solid to bring them all together. And the time to actually cut and piece and sew and quilt.

Those pieces of fabric are like the untold stories floating around in my head. Waiting for the right connecting piece to be uncovered so the story can come to life. The Tourist Trap series came out of a dangling idea. During a spring break, I’d been visiting California and fell in love with a house for sale. I took a picture of the run down cottage fifteen years ago and when I developed the film (yes, it was that long ago), I stuck the picture on my wall near my writing desk. I knew the house would be a major part of the story. I just didn’t know how. Now, four books later, I’m deep in my South Cove world and the pieces just keep coming together. Just like a good quilt, with hills and valleys to run your fingers over, a joy to touch.

BIO- USA Today and New York Times, best-selling author, Lynn Cahoon is an Idaho native. If you’d visit the town where she grew up, you’d understand why her mysteries and romance novels focus around the depth and experience of small town life. Currently, she’s living in a small historic town on the banks of the Mississippi river where her imagination tends to wander. She lives with her husband and four fur babies.

Website: http://lynncahoon.wordpress.com/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/LynnCahoonAuthor

Buy links: Amazon | iBooks | Nook  

Mission to Murder

In the California coastal town of South Cove, history is one of its many tourist attractions—until it becomes deadly…

Jill Gardner, proprietor of Coffee, Books, and More, has discovered that the old stone wall on her property might be a centuries-old mission worthy of being declared a landmark. But Craig Morgan, the obnoxious owner of South Cove’s most popular tourist spot, The Castle, makes it his business to contest her claim. When Morgan is found murdered at The Castle shortly after a heated argument with Jill, even her detective boyfriend has to ask her for an alibi. Jill decides she must find the real murderer to clear her name. But when the killer comes for her, she’ll need to jump from historic preservation to self-preservation …