Guest Post and Book Giveaway from Brenda Chapman
This week's guest post and giveaway come from Brenda Chapman. She's giving away a Kindle copy of her latest novel, Who Lies in Wait.
To enter the giveaway just email Brenda at brenda@brendachapman.ca
before the entry deadline of April 10, 2025.
So, without further ado, here's Brenda!
*****
My first mystery for middle grade readers hit the shelves twenty-one years ago, and since then, I’ve penned twenty-five books and several short stories with a couple of more books in the hopper.
That first middle grade mystery, Running Scared, which I wrote for my daughters became a four-book mystery series. After writing a few standalone mysteries, I began a seven-year stint, writing two books a year for two different series and two different publishers. The Anna Sweet mysteries are adult literacy novellas for Grass Roots Press while the Stonechild and Rouleau police procedural series is for Dundurn Press. I was also working full-time as a senior communications advisor in the federal government through this period — not certain how I managed to juggle everything, to be honest!
My latest series combines Ella Tate, a true crime podcaster and reporter for hire, with Liam Hunter, a detective in Major Crimes on the Ottawa force. Book four in the series, Who Lies in Wait, will be released May 1st. Following is a short excerpt from Chapter One.
*****
Detective Liam Hunter stepped out of his car onto the snowy country road and shivered at the thought of the misery waiting for him out of sight somewhere past the black ridge of trees. He took a moment to lean his head back and breathe, attempting to detach himself from what was to come but unable to rid himself of the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach that had worked its way into his chest. A quarter moon glowed milky white against the dark sky, the light hazy through the gathering clouds, their bellies low and swollen with moisture. A sharp blast of wind blew shards of ice against his face, and he hunched into himself, attempting to find warmth where there was none.
This is a desolate place to die.
The thought depressed him. He hoped that when his time came he’d be tucked up in a warm bed having just drunk a shot of whiskey, not in a location as isolated and frigid as this. Whoever was lying dead in these woods had not been given a choice.
His partner, Julie Quade, was already striding toward the entrance to the trail cordoned off with bright yellow police tape, her matching neon vest a bright smudge against the trees. She stopped and aimed the beam of her flashlight down the path, waiting for Liam to join her.
“I could have done without this tonight,” she said when he moved alongside. She yanked the hood of her parka over her springy mass of black hair with a gloved hand and tucked her chin into the scarf wrapped around her neck. “Really could have done without this.”
“You had plans?”
She snorted. “Needed to call my ex to pick up the kids, and he gave me an earful as per usual. The three of us had just settled in with a movie and popcorn, then the scramble to collect all their stuff and get them out the door. I wonder sometimes if they’ll ever forgive me for this hellish, workaholic life. Damn, it’s cold.”
He knew she didn’t expect him to comment. Already she’d turned and was crunching through the snow ahead of him toward the sound of activity deeper into the woods. “Did dispatch tell you anything about the victim?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard above the gusty wind.
“No, just that a guy’s dog led him to the body. Apparently, he drives here daily to exercise the hound. I don’t know how we’d find half the bodies we do without dogs off-leash.”
*****
Brenda Chapman is a Canadian crime fiction author with twenty-five published novels. In addition to short stories and standalones, she has written the lauded Stonechild and Rouleau police procedural series, the Anna Sweet mystery novellas, and the Jennifer Bannon mysteries for middle grade. Her work has been shortlisted for several awards including four Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence. She is currently writing a new mystery series set in Ottawa called the Hunter and Tate mysteries, and the third book in the series, Fatal Harvest was released April 15, 2024,
Brenda studied English literature at Lakehead and Carleton universities and earned a Bachelor of Education from Queen’s University. She taught for fifteen years in the field of special education followed by a Communications career in the federal government. She currently writes full-time and makes her home in Ottawa.
Brenda belongs to the Writers Union of Canada (TWUC), Sisters in Crime, Capital Crime Writers, and Crime Writers of Canada (CWC). She served two terms as president of Capital Crime Writers and two terms as the Ottawa/Eastern Ontario Director for CWC (2020-22).