So, you want to know what a day in my life is like, eh? Guess I should punt this over to Elizabeth Buzzelli, she seems to have her nose stuck into a lot of my business but, first what I’ll do is tell you how most days go with me. I’m a Little Person, you know, which seems a big deal to a lot of people, but not to me. I’ve been this size all my life. I found out early that there are pros and cons to being my size. One pro is that a lot of people want to help me, even let me go ahead of them in lines just because ‘little’ to them means a kid. The cons are just what you would think, mostly ignorant people who point and make comments because they aren’t let out of the house often and they’re not too smart.
But there’s not much of that here in Bear Falls, Michigan, where I live with a lot of really nice neighbors and friends; like everyone at Myrtle’s Restaurant where I go for breakfast most days. Then I go home and write about the works of famous writers. Mostly what I do is find the hidden ideas and meanings in their books and expose then to the world, which works because most of them are dead.
After that I visit with my neighbors, Jenny Weston and her mother, Dora. We talk about the weather—which has been nothing but rain this spring. Right now we are making plans to take a trip back up to Michigan’s Northern Peninsula this fall and take a look at the lakes and woods and waterfalls we missed last time because Elizabeth got us mixed up, (even Feda, my dog), in terrible trouble with a bunch of academics and a group of Finnish people who live up there. She challenged me this time like nothing she’s ever done to me before: my beliefs, buried anger at what was done to my mother, and even my morality. A lot to think about when I got back from there, but then there’s always a lot to think about when Elizabeth gets ahold of me.
To listen to her, every day of my life is filled with dead bodies, scary places, and being threatened by killers. This last novel she got me mixed up in wasn’t quite like that though. What she did was take me back into my past, a place I don’t ever like to go, and then put me in the middle of a puzzle I couldn’t figure out until the very end. I will admit, this time she had me guessing if I was going to come out of it alive or dead and floating in Lake Superior. I was even wondering if I was going to win or lose to a bunch of people who had plagued my mother’s life. Rotten, stinking people . . .
Sorry for ranting. I’ll never get over what they did to her.
Anyway, Elizabeth tires me out. I’m sitting here in my office trying to bring a book on Jane Austin to an end: What I found was that Jane Austin had a wicked sense of humor and cut down people in her world with hilarious descriptions of them she put in her books. Most didn’t admit she was writing about them due to the embarrassment to follow.
I know Elizabeth is sitting somewhere right now in front of a computer thinking up ways to kill me or humiliate me or, as she tried once, to set me on fire.
It’s almost time to take Feda for her walk so she can say ‘Hi’ to the neighbors who just love her. Well, all but Samuel Johnson, down in the second block. He’s got this Great Dane, Atlas, who’s afraid of my little, one-eyed dog. Runs every time he sees her. Feda doesn’t take to bullying because she’s little so she makes a fierce noise and even jumps up and bites his ear.
After that it’s home to dinner and then bed. Really a quiet life.
Well . . . unless Elizabeth Buzzelli sticks her nose into my business and sends me out to catch a murderer . . .
I wish I had somebody to complain to about her.
You can read more about Zoe in And Then They Were Doomed, the fourth book in the “Little Library” cozy mystery series, released August 13, 2019.
Zoe Zola is one of ten invitees to an Agatha Christie symposium. Tempers flare. . .and then there are nine. Can Jenny Weston save Zoe from murder on the Upper Peninsula?
Little Person author Zoe Zola believes that one of the unluckiest things in life is to receive an invitation—in the form of a letter edged in black—to an Agatha Christie symposium at an old Upper Peninsula hunting lodge. Her reluctance dissipates when she learns that the organizer is named Emily Brent—the name of a character poisoned by cyanide in Christie’s And Then There Were None.
As a dreary rain soaks the U.P., Zoe and nine other Christie scholars—each of whom bears a vague resemblance to one of the classic mystery novel’s characters—arrive at the lodge. At the opening night dinner, arguments flare over the experts’ discordant theories about Christie. Next morning, the guests find one particularly odious man has gone—whereabouts and reasons unknown. Such a coincidental resemblance to a work of fiction is surely impossible; therefore, it appears to be possible.
As the guests disappear, one by one, Zoe resolves to beat a hasty retreat—but her car won’t start. She calls her friend, amateur sleuth/little librarian Jenny Weston, but Jenny will have to wait out a storm off Lake Superior before she can come to the rescue. If Zoe’s to stay alive to greet Jenny when she eventually arrives, she’ll have to draw on everything she knows about Agatha Christie’s devilish plots in Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli’s fourth tantalizing Little Library mystery.
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About the author
I live in Mancelona, Michigan, and use my home and lake and Michigan surroundings for my mysteries. I find the woods and lakes and ponds; the people, who are story tellers and happily share; the small towns; strange lonely lakes and wild streams, fill me with ideas—not just for the worst people can do to one another but also for the best we all can be.
I have written thirteen mystery novels and the latest And Then They Were Doomed, released August 13, 2019 from Crooked Lane Books. I am a member of Detroit Women Writers and Sisters in Crime. I taught at Skidmore College, Oakland University and now I teach at Northern Michigan College. I’m working on the sixth novel in the Emily Kincaid series.
All comments are welcomed.