The Morelville Mysteries Full Circle Collection Boxed Set

The Morelville Mysteries Full Circle Collection Boxed Set-1

From the AuthorHi, I’m Anne Hagan, the author of the Morelville Mysteries series and the spin off Morelville Cozies series. I’d like to take a moment to introduce this special companion guide to you.

The first Morelville Mystery novel, ‘Relic’, was released exclusively to sss in December of 2014. Since that time, six additional books have followed in that series and one for the cozy series. All of those were also released exclusively to the same single retailer. ‘Relic’ is now available via most major retailers.

The boxed set, The Morelville Mysteries Full Circle Collection, which you’re receiving this guide with, is comprised of the first four novels in the original lesfic themed mystery series. Each book contains a stand-alone mystery but there’s also an ongoing romantic sub plot that runs throughout the four stories that culminates – comes full circle, so to speak – in Book Four, ‘Hitched and Tied’.

This four book set is not available at sss. This companion guide, made up of previous blog posts about the series, isn’t available there either. Right now, you can only get it with this set...er...you can, of course, go out and dig through all of my posts to get the 16 missives from my head that follow but why do that when you can easily read them all right here?

I appreciate you buying this collection of eBooks. Thanks for being a reader and thanks for reading.

Anne Hagan

My Ideal Reader: A ProfileOriginally published February 4th, 2015

A note from Anne: What follows is a blog post, as written, that was meant to appeal to my audience at the time I wrote it – mostly other writers. As a reader, please feel free to skip down to the fifth paragraph for my take on why I write the books that I do.

When you write novels and you sell what you write, you spend a lot of time wondering just how many books you can sell. You'd very likely be lying if you said you never ran calculations to see how many books you'd have to sell to make a million dollars or to make 'X' amount of dollars per month, and so forth. We all like to dream, after all.

In a perfect world, our novels would sell to a target market that ran from ages 13 to 80, male and female, from all races and from all walks of life. We all know it isn't a perfect world. Even a blockbuster best seller doesn't appeal to everyone. Most of us will never taste the sweetness of having anything more than, possibly, a niche category best seller.

Certainly, you should write the story you want to write but, if you intend to sell your work, you should consider penning a story that a reasonably sized group of people would be willing to buy and read. We've already established that everybody is not in your audience. You need to figure out who is.

Who is your ideal reader? What does he or she like to read? What's she like, overall? Where does he live? How old is she? Those are the kinds of questions you need to ask yourself. Once you've established who your target market is, you need to make sure your book is a fit for it and that, once it's published, you advertise it to that market.

Personally, I've always been a fan of mystery fiction. As I've aged, I've gravitated toward sleuths who are like me; middle aged females. I'm also a member of the LGBT community and I like it when my protagonists reflect that too but it isn't an absolute requirement. If you write a mystery with an over 30 lesbian sleuth that has a half way interesting description, I'm probably going to want to read it. Give her a female foil and potential love interest and you can surely count me in. Guess what? I'm not alone.

When I wrote my first book, ‘Relic’, a mystery, there were a lot of ways I could have gone with my dual leads. They could have been male and female in the most traditional sense of mysteries. They could have been young to appeal to the YA audience. The book could have been clean of both graphic s*x and any sort of gore description and been an almost 'cozy' mystery (you can’t get around the two leads in the book being law enforcement professionals). I had to define who I wanted the book to fit.

I chose to have my story resemble the books I most like to read. I like writing what I would want to see and I like writing what I know about. I could have gone other ways with the book and, probably, sold more books and made more money. Leaving a little money on the table, so to speak, is less important to me than enjoying the craft of writing and producing something that other women like me want to read but often have a hard time finding.

Where in the World is Morelville?Originally published February 18th, 2015

Map of the Fictitious Village of Morelville, OH

My spouse grew up on a farm just outside of a tiny, unincorporated Ohio village. Her grandparents had a home in the village. That's where her mother grew up and where she spent a lot of time growing up herself. After we met, she lived with me in the Columbus, Ohio metro area for several years but just over a year ago (*back in late 2013 as I write this guide - Anne) we bought a house in this little town and moved here. I based much of the local color in my book Relic on this little slice of heaven.

No, this village isn't called 'Morelville'. Morelville doesn't actually exist. It's a figment of my imagination that's been set down in an area that I'm also quite familiar with a ways away from here. For the sake of better story settings, it's fictitiously set in Muskingum County Ohio near the Blue Rock State Park and State Forest southeast of the small Ohio city of Zanesville and just east of the Muskingum River town of Philo, Ohio.

Around the village I actually live in, mushroom hunting for Morel mushrooms is a popular sport in the spring. The name 'Morelville' stems - pun intended - from the mushroom collecting hobby so many around here enjoy. That and a lot of the other activities depicted in book one – the one with the Morel Mushroom on the cover) and that will be depicted in book two, ‘Busy Bees’ are common throughout this area of Eastern Ohio in the foothills of Appalachia. Rodeos? We've got them. Hunting, quad riding, motocross, bee keeping, moonshining, oil drilling? Check! Those things are all done around here and much, much more. Amish? Yeah, they exist in a 5-7 county area en masse very near Muskingum County. Are they actually in that county? Not many but there are a few. I've extended their reach just a bit to add a little more local color. They played minor roles in book one. They'll be a little more prominent in book three.

A lot of book two takes place in the limits of the city of Zanesville rather than in the village of Morelville. For the second installment, I use a lot of real city locations mixed with a few that are made up. The Hive restaurant, for example, really does not exist but the 'Y' bridge most certainly does as does Genesis Hospital, the Delong funeral Home (though its name is longer) and several other places. The Blue Rock State Forest also exists and there are oil drilling rigs all over eastern Ohio but the farms and rigs I say are near there are made up. If there are real farms and rigs in the area, it's pure coincidence.

It's fun to me to make up places for the action of my stories to take place but I do think that it's important to give my readers some frame of reference that's realistic.

Excerpt from the Morelville Mysteries Quick GuideOriginally published June 24th, 2015

A note from Anne: What follows is a ‘Quick Guide’, that was written for Morelville Mysteries series readers before the release of Book 4, ‘Hitched and Tied’ so it’s a bit dated for a full accounting here. I’ve chosen to include it because it does give a little detail about some of the supporting characters in the book and a little more information about the Zanesville setting I use throughout the series.

The Morelville Mysteries Characters:Dana Rossi: A Special Agent with the investigative division of the United States Customs and Border Protection Service. At the start of Book 1, Dana is 34 years old and approximately 5'6" inches tall. Click the link for a full character profile of Dana.

Melissa 'Mel' Crane: Mel is the fictional County Sheriff of the very real Muskingum County, Ohio. She was born and raised on a farm near the tiny fictional village of Morelville and she currently resides in the village with her twin sister Kris and Kris's two children, Beth and Cole. At the start of Book 1, Mel is age 35 and approximately 5'10". A link to a full character profile for Mel is here.

Karissa 'Kris' Crane: The twin sister to Mel, born minutes later, prefers to be called Kris. She and Mel live in their grandparents (now deceased) former home in Morelville along with Kris's children by a previous marriage to Jeremy David Roberts.

Cole Roberts: The 15-year-old son (as of book one) of Kris Crane. Figures in Book 1 and prominently in the upcoming Book 4.

Beth Roberts: The 13-year-old daughter of Kris Crane. Beth figures in Book 1 and more prominently in the upcoming Book 4.

Jesse Crane: Father to Mel and Kris and grandfather to Beth and Cole. Married to Faye Crane. Featured in Book 1 and more prominently in Book 4.

Faye Crane: Mother to Mel and Kris and grandmother to Beth and Cole. Married to Jesse Crane. Featured in all books (and may someday get her own cozy series...just sayin')

All of the books have other recurring and one time characters. Book 3 features some people from Dana's past in the form of exes. Book 4 will introduce Kris's romantic love interest (straight) Lance, and Dana's parents and brothers.

Settings:Morelville: Morelville is an entirely fictional village that comes right out of my own head. It has similarities to the tiny unincorporated village that I currently live in but it has myriad differences too. For purposes of the story, I've placed it in Muskingum County Ohio in an area that is actually rolling farm land surrounded by dense forest. If you go there, you won't find Morelville, only cows and trees and a corn field or fourteen.

Zanesville: Zanesville is a real city (town) with a population of about 25,000 people. It's the County Seat of the real Muskingum County, Ohio. Throughout the book series, I use actual locations in Zanesville to depict completely fictional events. I also make up locations in Zanesville that do not now exist nor have they ever. Some locations that do get repeated mention, like the Sheriff's office, I've located more conveniently to the action of the stories. Genesis Hospital is referred to often in at least three of the books. The hospital is real and there are many fine professionals working there to provide the very best healthcare possible. Events and staff members at the hospital are entirely a figment of my overactive imagination and are no way reflective of anything or anyone at the real life Genesis facility.

The War on DrugsOriginally published December 19th, 2014

I’m a few chapters into my 2nd novel in the Morelville Mysteries series now. I’ve managed to kill off a character and to start building the mystery surrounding that. Without going into a lot of detail (no spoilers here!), one of the keys to that tale will involve illegal drugs and drug trafficking. In my imagination, I had a pretty good idea where I wanted to go with that particular story line. One of my leading ladies, Dana, is a Customs special agent. A drug trafficking story line is made for her line of work.

A couple of nights ago, when my spouse turned in early and I wasn’t at all tired, I stayed up flipping television channels. I ran across the show ‘Drugs Inc.’. I ended up spending the next two plus hours staring at the tube in stunned amazement. I’d seen programs in the past about the war on drugs but I’d never seen this program which is a bit different. It goes inside the drug trade and shows a lot of what’s going on from the point of view of successful drug dealers on the street level. Some junkies and addicts manage to make it on camera too.