A Pilgrimage of Whispered Truths

 

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. M. Jayne LaDow will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

She set out to solve a mystery, not to fall in love.

In 1997 Virginia Beach, some truths refuse to stay buried…

Dani Jones is used to lesson plans and late-night grading, not murder. But when a student’s uncle confronts her after class and then disappears, her world tilts. Days later, during a Chesapeake Bay cleanup, she is there when his body is found, hidden in the marsh. As the last person to see him alive, Dani is suddenly at the center of a mystery that rattles the quiet coastal town.

Enter Gavin Larkhurst, a sharp-tongued radio newsman with a protective streak. His feelings for Dani make him desperate to keep her safe—even when she refuses to stop digging. But trust is fragile when danger lurks around every corner, and someone will do anything to keep the past buried.

Equal parts mystery and romance, A Pilgrimage of Whispered Truths is a spicy whodunit about uncovering secrets, risking your heart, and the lessons that change everything.

Read an Excerpt

The ocean had always been her refuge. Even now, with storm clouds bruising the horizon, Dani walked the shoreline barefoot, the wind tugging strands of hair across her face. The water hissed over the sand like something whispering secrets it could no longer keep.

She tried to quiet her mind—to let the rhythm of the waves wash away the questions still circling like gulls. But the past few days wouldn’t let her rest: Carl Rendell’s fury, the burned church, Brian’s haunted silence. Each memory rose and fell with the tide, reshaping itself into something sharper.

A flash of color caught her eye—a shard of glass half-buried near her foot. She bent to pick it up. Red, warped by heat. A fragment of stained glass.

Her breath hitched.

She turned it over in her palm, the edges cutting faintly into her skin, and for a moment she imagined the flames reflected there, licking at the sky. The wind howled, cold and certain.

Whatever she’d stumbled into, it wasn’t finished with her yet.

She slipped the shard into her pocket, the salt wind stinging her eyes, and kept walking toward the dark line of the pier, where the sea met the secrets she could no longer ignore.

Topic: Pros and cons of writing in your genre

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The Spicy Cozy Mystery: Having Your Cake and Eating It Too

Let me start with a confession: I write spicy cozy mysteries, which means I'm straddling two genres that occasionally side-eye each other at literary cocktail parties. It's like being a vegetarian who loves bacon. There's tension there, but oh, the flavor.

The Pluses:

The cozy mystery framework is delightful. Murder happens (preferably off-page or at least tastefully), an amateur sleuth investigates, justice prevails, and the cat or dog doesn't die. It's comfort food for readers who want their mysteries with a side of community and a guaranteed happy ending. People read cozies when they want to feel safe, even while someone's being poisoned with bad quiche.

But adding spice? That means my characters get to be fully realized adults with actual adult relationships. They don't fade to black and show up the next morning mysteriously disheveled. In my novel A Pilgrimage of Whispered Truths, my protagonist Dani Jones is a real woman with real desires, and that grounds her investigation of murder and mayhem in 1997 Virginia Beach in actual human experience.

The spicy element also creates tension that goes beyond the mystery. It's not just whodunit. It's whether these two people will finally get together, and what happens when they do. My protagonist is solving a murder and navigating a complicated romantic relationship, which means readers keep turning pages for more than one reason.

The Minuses:

Oh boy, the minuses.

I confuse people. Cozy mystery readers pick up my book expecting Miss Marple and get... not Miss Marple. Romance readers expect a full romance arc with mystery as decoration. I'm writing for the Venn diagram overlap, and that circle is smaller than I'd like.

Marketing becomes a contact sport. Where do I shelve this thing? What keywords work? How do I signal the spice level without spoiling the mystery? I've written more content warnings than I ever imagined, trying to say "Yes, there's murder, but also scenes your grandmother might skip" without sounding prudish or salacious.

And the balance issue is real. Too much spice and I've written a romance with an inconvenient corpse. Too much mystery and readers who showed up for the heat feel cheated. It's like cooking a complicated dish where I'm constantly tasting and adjusting, until the book is published and by then it's way too late to add more salt.

The Verdict:

Would I do it again? Absolutely. I'm plotting A Masquerade of Truth, the second book in the series, which will have cats, a deeper romance cycle, an old hotel, a ghost, and a murderer. Apparently I looked at the first book and thought, "You know what this needs? More complications."

The spicy cozy mystery confuses booksellers and baffles algorithms, but it lets me write the stories I want to read: mysteries with heart, heat, and a guaranteed happy ending. And honestly? That's worth all the marketing headaches.

 

About the Author:

M. Jayne LaDow is a playwright and author who leapt into writing romance after thirty-three years wrangling middle school English students. Her rom-coms and spicy cozy mysteries are inspired by her years in education, where she was regularly pied in the face, sang classroom karaoke, and dressed up like characters from novels.

She’s the author of The Marchfield Series — One Night Stands and Lesson Plans, Learning Goals and Dancing Poles, Pop Quizzes and Stolen Kisses, Tardy Pass, No Questions Asked, and the upcoming Budget Cuts and Midnight Lust — and the Tides of Truth Series, beginning with A Pilgrimage of Whispered Truth: A Steamy Cozy Mystery set in 1997 Virginia Beach.

She firmly believes every great story starts with a dash of trouble and a happily ever after.

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