I love to wake up wearing my favorite tee shirt which says The Queen of Everything. It starts my day off right – that and a breakfast that includes plenty of fat and sugar. I don’t trust a woman who won’t eat fat and sugar. Usually I have three slices of bacon, two eggs scrambled with plenty of cheese and butter, and two buttered biscuits slathered with strawberry/fig jam. Homemade. Aunt Ruby Nell’s growing figs down on the farm and lately has been trying to find her Domestic Diva. We’re all crossing our fingers that she won’t set her caftan on fire. Nobody but Ruby Nell Valentine would make jam wearing a caftan suited to the queen of a country nobody ever heard of.

After breakfast, I call Callie. If a day went by without talking to my cousin, best friend and partner in crime, I guess I’d have to eat six doughnuts to get over it. Today she’s seeking love advice from the expert. That would be me, the woman with more men trying to find my National Treasure than Elvis has fleas. That’s Callie’s favorite hound dog, in case you were thinking of somebody in a white sequined jumpsuit. And National Treasure is what I had tattooed on my hips when Callie and I were chasing the Memphis mambo murderer up on Beale Street. A great place to go if you like pork barbecue and blues.

Since nobody’s been stabbed, shot at, covered with peanut butter and hung out for the birds, I get out my baking pans and start making cakes for the Christmas charity benefit at the mall. I’m the best cook and caterer in Mississippi, and let me tell you, these people in Tupelo keep me hopping. I always keep plenty of leftovers for personal emergencies. Just last week when I was trying to decide whether to let Rocky Malone find my National Treasure, it took half a chocolate pound cake and a dozen chocolate chip cookies before I could make a decision. Of course, Callie ate some of it, but I reckon she’s destined to be skinny no matter how much chocolate she eats.

After the baking’s done, I drive out to Hair.Net so I can be front and center with all the Mooreville gossip swirling around Callie’s beauty shop. Plus, I have to help Elvis take care of my tender-hearted cousin. Listen, if you think a 190-pound bombshell and a basset hound can’t keep this Valentine family straight, just hop in your car and drop by the beauty shop. I’ll keep the Prohibition Punch chilled for you.

You can read more about Lovie in Elvis and the Blue Christmas Corpse, the fifth book in the “Southern Cousins” mystery series. The first book in the series is Elvis and The Dearly Departed.

Meet the author
This best-selling author has almost 70 books to her credit. She lives in a cottage in Mississippi and loves gardening, playing piano and singing in church choir. Her dogs inspired Elvis, the basset hound who thinks he’s the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in her popular comedic Southern Cousins Mystery Series. She writes literary fiction under the pen name Anna Michaels. She has acted in several stage roles at her local community theater and won many writing awards, including a Romantic Times Pioneer Award for creating the sub-genre of romantic comedy. Several of her romances have been optioned for film.

Follow the author on her websites: www.peggywebb.com, www.annamichaels.net and on Facebook (Peggy Webb and Anna Michaels).

Books are available at retail and online booksellers.