I can’t believe I’ve been in Fresno for three months already! Back in July, I packed up my life after losing my book contract and my roommate, and moved to Fresno to live with my cousin P.I. Stephen Carlucci until I could figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Thankfully, he lives in the Tower District, which is the arts and entertainment district and cultural oasis of Fresno. When I moved here, the heat was brutal, but now things are much nicer except for the Tule fog.

Recently, I started an entertainment podcast called Tower Talk. But right now, my main focus is on helping my new friend, BookTuber, playwright, and bookstore owner Clark Halliwell, plan the Tower Halloween Mysteryfest, which should be a blast. We’re going to have an amazing group of mystery authors speaking, some Edgar Allan Poe Plays, and classic mystery movies. I love Halloween and mystery novels, so I can’t wait for this to start tomorrow! Hopefully, everything will go smoothly, unlike the community theatre production I was involved in when I first got here where someone was murdered. But enough talk of murder, let’s keep that on the page this time.

In the past three months, I have also managed to add two more animals to my family—Dan the black cat, and Watson the Pit Bull. But collecting animals in need is something I’ve been doing my whole life. Before coming here, I ran a pocket pet animal rescue (hamsters, guinea pigs, and pet rats), and I brought to the Tower with me my pet rat Merlin.

Well, I had better finish taking care of the furries, then hop on my bike and head to the bookstore. I’m going to be interviewing the Queen of Cozy Mysteries, Marilyn Bradford, on Tower Talk, and I am so excited!

I forgot to mention that I’ve also been working part-time for Stephen solving cases, but that’s all on hold until after Mysteryfest. Nothing but book, theatre, and Halloween fun for the next week. No real-life mysteries or murder allowed!

One of You, A Tower District Mystery Book 2
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release: June 2024
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase link

With her life on the California Coast behind her, Roxi Carlucci is beginning to feel at home in the Tower District—the cultural oasis of Fresno, CA—where she now lives with her cousin P.I. Stephen Carlucci, her pet rat Merlin, a Pit Bull named Watson, and a black cat named Dan. She has a new entertainment podcast, works as a part-time P.I., and is helping local bookstore owner Clark Halliwell put on the first-ever Tower Halloween Mysteryfest! The brutal summer heat is gone and has been replaced by the dense tule fog—perfect for Halloween!

She just wishes everyone would stop calling her the “Jessica Fletcher” of the Tower District simply because she found a dead body when she first arrived. But when one of the Mysteryfest authors is found dead, she fears she jinxed herself! The Carlucci’s are hired to find the killer before they strike again. Will Mysteryfest turn into a murder fest? How is the local gossip website back, and what does it know about the death of Roxi’s parents?

Meet the author
Lorie Lewis Ham lives in Reedley, California and has been writing ever since she was a child. Her first song and poem were published when she was 13, and she has gone on to publish many articles, short stories, and poems throughout the years, as well as write for a local newspaper, and publish 7 mystery novels. For the past 14 years, Lorie has been the editor-in-chief and publisher of Kings River Life Magazine, and she produces Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast, where you can hear an excerpt of her book One of Us, the first in a new series called The Tower District Mysteries. Book 2, One of You, was released in June of 2024. You can learn more about Lorie and her writing on her website mysteryrat.com and find her on Facebook, BookBub, Goodreads, and Instagram.