I’m Holly Parker, and I’m having a midlife crisis. There, I said it. I’m not even embarrassed. Okay, I might be a little embarrassed, but it isn’t like I’m doing anything crazy like quitting my job and joining the circus. It’s just that now that I’m fifty, I’ve decided that it’s time to start working my way through my bucket list. It isn’t even a long list and nearly everything on it is related to travel.

The only times I’ve ever traveled on my own before were for work conferences. If you work in banking, you’ll know how exciting (not) those are. Going on vacation all by myself is a very different thing. After some deliberation (and a few glasses of wine), I decided to start by visiting all fifty states. I’ll leave international travel until after I’ve seen my own country.

My boss is thrilled, because I have a lot of unused vacation days that I’ve carried over since I first started with the bank. We’ve agreed that I can take two weeks off every other month until I either get tired of traveling or run out of money. I just have to figure out where to go and then actually get on the plane. It helps that I’ve always been fairly frugal with my money. But you can’t take it with you, so I’m going to start spending. (Some of it, carefully.)

I’ll be honest, I always assumed that I’d be married before I got to fifty. I came close once. George and I were together for ten years before he decided to move to New York City. He didn’t bother to mention that he was going until his bags were already packed, so it was pretty obvious that our relationship was over at that point. We broke up the day I turned forty, and my love life has been fairly quiet ever since.

I don’t mind being on my own, though, even if traveling alone is going to feel strange. I may try to talk my best friend, Gina, into joining me for a few trips. I’m sure she’d be happy to come along, if she can get away from her husband and their three kids. (She’s George’s younger sister, which sounds like a complication, but isn’t. We just don’t talk about George – ever.)

So that’s me. I wish I could tell you that I put a big map of the US on my wall and threw a dart at it to pick my first destination, but I’m afraid I made my choice in a rather more boring way. I saw an advertisement for cheap flights and found a direct flight to Las Vegas for far less than I was expecting. Hotel rooms aren’t very expensive there, either. Maybe January is their off-season. Whatever, tomorrow I’m off to Las Vegas, Nevada. I have a small gambling budget, a medium-sized food budget, and a large budget for things like ice cream, cake, and wine. If you’re going to have a midlife crisis, you might as well enjoy it!

Anxious in Nevada, A Midlife Crisis Mystery #1
Genre: Cozy
Release: November 2022
Purchase Link

I’m Holly Parker, and on my fiftieth birthday I decided that it was about time I stopped adding things to my bucket list and started trying to cross a few items off instead. Visiting all fifty states was at the top of the list. I just had to find a cheap flight to somewhere interesting.

A low-cost, direct flight to Las Vegas was exactly what I needed. I didn’t waste my time overthinking it. I just booked the flight and packed my bags. After chatting with the couple in the seats next to mine on the flight, I was happy to arrive in Vegas and just go straight to bed.

My body clock, not yet reset to Vegas time, had me awake and eager to explore very early the next morning. I’d barely finished my breakfast, though, before I stumbled over a dead body. What are the odds that the victim would turn out to be the man I’d sat next to on my flight? Why is his former fiancée suddenly trying to be my best friend? And how do I convince the local police that I had nothing to do with his murder?

Meet the author
Diana Xarissa has been writing stories in her head since childhood. As she got older, she started writing them down, and she was delighted when she first heard about indie publishing and realized that she could share her stories with readers everywhere. She started publishing in 2013 and released her first cozy mystery, Aunt Bessie Assumes, in 2014. She now has over a hundred books available on Amazon across a range of different series. All of her cozy series are written with alphabetical titles, and two series are now complete from A to Z. (The Isle of Man Cozy Mysteries and the Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Novellas.) Anxious in Nevada is the first book in a new series, and she’s very excited to introduce Holly Parker to readers. Holly is working through her bucket list – finding murder victims definitely isn’t on the list, though! You can find Diana at DianaXarissa.com.

All comments are welcomed.