Hi I’m Mae, well really I’m Maeve, but my sister couldn’t say my name when she was little and it got shortened to Mae. Here’s the crazy part, my last name is December! So I’m Mae December. I love my parents, truly I do, but I hate my name.

My day usually starts with stuff you don’t want your day to begin with. It starts with “poop.” Yes, I said poop and I meant it. I have a kennel where I can board ten dogs. When I built the kennel, I carefully outfitted each dog run with a leather flap leading to a fenced outside area. The dogs can go out to do their business, but sigh….they rarely do. I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that I delay my morning shower until AFTER I clean up the poo. Of course I feed the little rascals too.

I normally wear jeans or sweats. According to Tammy, I have wonderful hair. There’s a lot of it and I turn into a blonde in the summertime. It’s curly and when it’s humid (is there a place more humid than Tennessee?) it just gets bigger and bigger. Since it’s confession time, I admit I am ten pounds heavier than I would like to be. Apparently giving up sweets and exercising more would help. I run my boarding dogs every day, but giving up desserts is not possible, really it’s just not.

Once cleaned up, I usually get a call or a visit from my mother. Her name is Suzanne December. Why oh why couldn’t the woman have named me after herself? Mom is in her fifties and still very attractive. I am thirty and with the help of my best friend Tammy am trying hard to look 20-something. My mother is a writer for a local small town newspaper. She writes the gossip column. Of course, she is incensed when I say this. She says it’s about local NEWS! Right… So far, I have avoided being the subject of one of her columns, but if I get involved in trying to solve another murder, all bets are off. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I live in a hundred year old farmhouse I bought with my former fiancé, Noah. He died tragically in an auto accident, and I still miss him dreadfully. Still, in the interests of full disclosure, I must report that his last name was West. Can you believe it? If we had married, I would have been Mae West. My friend Tammy said he was totally hot, but his name was a deal-breaker. Tammy runs a dating service called “Local Love”. She is a total Cupid and can’t keep her nose out of my love life or lack thereof.

I run a dog boarding business and have developed a “designer mutt” called a Porgi. It’s a combination of a corgi and a pug. I also have three dogs of my own. I have a Welsh corgi named Titan and a black Pug named Talullah. You guessed it, they are the parents of my Porgi puppies. I also have an old Rottweiler who used to belong to Noah. He suffers from arthritis and gastrointestinal distress. I love him, but the dog farts a lot.

Last month I was exercising my boarding dogs when I saw a flash of red through the trees. I felt my heart begin to pound but made my way slowly toward the grove. A Viszla pointer was standing in perfect point position looking down at my neighbor, Ruby Mead Allison, who wearing one red cowgirl boot. It only took me a moment to know that she was dead. I grabbed the dogs and ran for home. Once I caught my breath, I called the Sheriff’s Office. That’s how I met my handsome boyfriend, Sheriff Ben Bradley.

Unfortunately he doesn’t much like my meddling in crime any more than my mother does. I personally feel he is denying himself of my penetrating insights into the criminal mind. After finding Ruby’s body, I was incensed when he had the nerve to treat me as a suspect. Ruby was pregnant and in the process of divorcing her husband, David. There was a question about who was the father of her child. Women are much better at understanding what other women are up to. I did end up identifying Ruby’s killer, but crime fighting also gave me an excuse to keep hanging out with Sheriff Ben. He doesn’t ever need to know that part.

Today, I am looking out my kitchen window, past the pots of red geraniums on my porch railing at the thermometer which already reads 80. Tammy is stopping by later. She is intent on getting me to tell her whether I have slept with Ben Bradley. Meanwhile, I am intent on finding out how many guys she is “dating”, I use the word euphemistically. Tammy is almost thirty and I think it’s time she decided on a beaux to keep.

So that’s my life in a nutshell—Mae December, dog breeder and boarder, amateur sleuth and Sheriff’s girlfriend. In the community of those sworn to “protect and defend” I am known as a “Badge Bunny.” Humiliating but true, although there’s only one badge in Rose County I am interested in making baby bunnies with…eventually.

You can read more about Mae in One Dog Too Many, the first book in the “Mae December” mystery series, published by Camel Press. Books are available at retail and online booksellers.

Meet the author
Mother and daughter writing team Lyn Farquhar and Lisa Fitzsimmons live in Michigan and Tennessee respectively. Both are life-long readers who are also dog lovers. Lyn owns two Welsh corgis and Lisa has two pugs and a Siberian husky. Lisa works as a Muralist and Interior Designer and her mother, Lyn, is a Professor of Medical Education. You can find them online at liafarrell.net.