MMB Presents...A Conversation with Libby Klein

[Music] Hello and welcome to Mechanicsburg Mystery Presents A Conversation with Libby Klene. Libby is a native of Cape May, New Jersey, and has published nine books in her cozy mystery series featuring Poppy McAllister, who runs a bed and breakfast in that city when she's not solving mysteries. Then Libby decided to write a new book about a washedup ex- police officer turned rock musician in her novel Vice and Virtue.

Libby is vice president of a small tech company and lives with her family in Northern Virginia. And Libby, thank you so much and welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here. I wanted to get a little bit of of uh your book background um with the Poppy McAllister series because as I understand you have nine books in that series. Is that correct?

I do. I do. Five years worth of writing.

Wow. That's pretty good. Nine books in five years.

That's almost Agatha Christie level of productivity. Who is Poppy McAllister? So Poppy is a middle-aged plus-sized widow who returns to her hometown of Kate May because her best friend from high school has begged her to come back and attend their 25th high school reunion.

She wants backup so that they can face off against the cheerleaders who bullied them growing up. Poppy gets stuck in Kate May living with her great aunt Jenny who might be certifiably crazy. And she brings her black smoke Persian cat, Sir Figuro Newton, who is definitely certifiably naughty.

And they go to the high school reunion where one of the cheerleaders ends up dead in front of Poppy's old locker. And then another cheerleader arrests her for the murder. So that's how she gets stuck in Kate May.

turns Anjenie's house into a bed and breakfast. And as we learn in the other eight books, Anenie will create chaos and keeps getting poppy in hot water, having to uh deal with situations that anony manufactures. Now, uh that is a what I would consider a pretty typical cozy mystery setup and perfectly fine.

I've read some very good cozy mysteries. Um, what I was really impressed was about Vice and Virtue, which I had picked up when you had last appeared with the Mechanicsburg mystery because this is not something I have seen before. This is about Leila Virtue who is a recovering alcoholic and m former police officer becoming a musician.

And the story, it takes some very interesting terms. And I'm going to be pausing for at times like this because I really, this is the type of book you want to read without being spoiled. There's there's spoilers kind of throughout.

There's some interesting things that happen. I don't want to go once you're done, then you can read it again and enjoy it a second time, but it's not what I would consider cozy mystery. In fact, you called it women's fiction.

Is that right? That's right. So, a cozy mystery has certain elements.

There's an amateur sleuth. There's no sex, no language, and no violence on the page. It usually takes place in a small town with a zany cast of characters.

And that amateur sleuth almost always has some kind of hobby or job or business that comes into play in the series. In the case of Poppy, she's making gluten-free goodies and baked goods for the local barista. Leila is not a cozy mystery.

Bison Virtue is actually women's fiction. It's a women's fiction mystery. You can have women's fiction fantasy, women's fiction romance.

The difference is this. If you are building a tent in a cozy mystery, the murder mystery is the center pole. And then you can have a romance side plot and you can have a side plot with Anenny being naughty as she usually is.

In a women's fiction mystery, that center pole is the protagonist's emotional journey through something that she's experiencing. And then the side plot is a mystery or a romance or whatever else is going on. The other thing that separates Leila Virtue from Poppy is Ila is not an amateur sleuth.

She's a disgraced former police officer, but that still puts her in the category of law enforcement. even though she's not actively on the force anymore. And there's also the what interested me most especially starting out and reading reading the book is of course seeing the world from her eyes and seeing her reaction to things to um again try not to spoil anything but in the beginning you understand she does not want to be around police officers at all.

she wants to run from them and it's uh it's only when she's at a a children's party and again it's an extended scene um and this is where the mystery is introduced in which there's a clown chuckles the clown who ends up dying on stage um I I guess where in where did you decide or how did you decide to go from Poppy to a story of a recovering ing alcoholic and something. It's a little bit grittier, but it's not it's still not cozy, but it's not exceptionally gritty police procedural or anything like that. It's certainly very very readable in that extent.

But why did you go from one to the next? Well, first of all, you're not alone in not knowing what to spoil because I wrote it where everything is a spoiler. And the entire book is breadcrumbs where you find things out as they happen instead of me telling you off the bat, this is everything you need to know.

It was hard to write the back of the cover of the book. I mean, I really didn't want you to know that she was an alcoholic, but we had to put it on the back of the book because we had to say something. Can't just put read this book on the back.

So, what what happened to write the book in the first place was my editor at Kensington said that they were going to finish the Poppy series to tie up all the loose ends. I can always write more on my own if I want to, but as far as Kensington is concerned, the ninth book is the final. and he wanted me to write something new and he wanted me to step up to women's fiction.

Partly because if you're familiar with the Poppy McAllister series, Poppy has quite an emotional journey of her own. She spends more time talking to suspects and trying to solve the murder than a women's fiction would do. But there's a lot of depth to Poppy where she's got her own issues that she's trying to work through.

So he thought women's fiction would be a good fit. Now I have a background with Poppy where I was bullied growing up. Much of Poppy's life, her background is my background.

Whereas Leila, most of her background comes from my family. My father was a musician. I grew up he played keyboard in a band and he used to take us to some of his gigs.

So he would take us to nightclubs. not Sidi, not so much Sidi nightclubs, but he would take us to nightclubs. We would go to weddings, receptions that, you know, we didn't know the people.

We were with the band and that was always fun. So, I have such a love of music that I got from my father. Um, I used to listen to all of his records.

So, I grew up listening to not only Frank Sinatra, but Barry Manalo and the Eagles and Chicago. Chicago was a big one. So that started such a love of music and classic rock that my favorite genres of music is classic rock and of course 80s which is bizarre in the world of music.

But that was the years I was a teenager and I wanted to put that love of music and that knowledge of nightclubs and being in a band into a book. I also have family members with addiction issues. So having Leila have addiction issues and going to 12step meetings was also something that I was familiar with.

And I think it makes her a nice well-rounded character because vice and virtue stands for Leila Virtue who has vices and worked in vice. So it's it's got a multi-layered title. And those are the things that we were able to put on the back of the cover because we didn't want to spoil quite so much.

We want it to be fun for you to explore it and find things out for yourself. Yeah. And I understand that when I was uh when I was at college in Chapel Hill, I was actually at the time and I went to the clubs there like Cat's Cradle and there was bands showing up there um such as uh REMM and the B-52s because they were playing in the Austin music scene, Austin, Georgia um if I remember the right city right.

But um so yeah, you get that kind of um I was very interested in that kind of life, that kind of lifestyle. And I love reading rock memoirs and I'm kind of fascinated when you're bringing in all this background material essentially. Um open mic nights at clubs.

Um you there's talk of all kinds of musicians you know like uh uh Aussie Osborne for example and all the things that kind of background that kind of life which is essentially a celebrity life and you actually get into a little bit of that as well. And um as I was reading this, I was actually more impressed with the idea, and I'm sorry for taking up most of the time, but this is a kind of a review here, is that I was reading not so much a novel as basically a fictionalized memoir of someone who has experience with that kind of life as a musician. And I was um I kept reading I'm going, "Oh, wow.

This is new. I didn't know this, you know, rockstar security, uh, publicity, what the pitfalls of celebrity are, and of course, addiction. And you showed that quite well.

There's a number of meetings of AA and, um, along the way, uh, Leila picks up a few friends from there as well. Um, I guess so. Was there any additional research that you did say for the psychology of addiction or functions of AA meetings that helped you on on writing this?

Well, I did have to do research on the functions of AA meetings. The addiction I did not have to research. Uh I have family members who have addictions and I myself have been bossed around by cookies many times.

So, I understand even when you're there's temptation and it gets a hold of you and you're trying to shake it and how palpable it is if you can't have something but you want it. I understand that per personally firsthand. Um, I understand how AA meetings work because of addiction that runs in the family, but I myself had never been to one because I would have gone to Alanon meetings, which is family members of addicts.

So, I mean certainly research was done and while my father's a musician, he was not a guitar player. So, I'm very fortunate to have a friend who has a band, who plays guitar, who can help me and read all my stuff when I say, "Don't me screw anything up. " So, he's helped me make sure that I got all of that right.

Um, and there's a lot of stuff you can see in all the tabloids and a lot of magazines that people like to read that are like celebrity gossip magazines where you can kind of follow the path of certain people who maybe become notorious for their washing out and things that have gone badly in their lives. maybe too much money, maybe too much access to drugs, maybe too much time on their hands, and too much power to do what they want when they want. So, there's a lot out there um that I used as research to make sure that I got a lot of things right um or at least I should say believable because what's right for one person might be different for somebody else.

So, you know, the themes in Vice and Virtue are not exact for just one person. They hit I think a a whole slew of people in different ways. Uh her AA friends are we'll use that term friends lightly because this is three women who want to be friends with Leila.

I think that's a good example. I'm very familiar with a uh social support group setting. So that I did not have to research while I was not personally in an AA meeting.

Social support groups I've been in quite a lot. It's also that's very f it's a very fascinating subplot to watch uh Scarlet Brie and Clarice um try to make friends with Ila and she pushes them away. And I guess in a way you could also you could see it as kind of like that's an aspect of of addiction or um other things which I I shouldn't mention in here because it it really plays a role in the book where you have to hide and part of Leila's problem is that she's hiding uh from everything.

Absolutely. Leila lives in a rundown trailer park because she doesn't want to be around people. She wants to be alone.

So when these three women in AA start reaching out to her cuz they see her up there, you know, she's got full color sleeve tattoos, she's got blue in her hair, she's clearly a little funky, a little cool, and they're all in AA. So like they're very judgy of other things but not judgy of your alcohol addiction cuz they're all the same. So they think she would be very cool to hang out with and they start to reach out to her.

She wants none of it. Ila has issues with women. She doesn't want to be friends with women.

One of the big themes that I've explored through the book, which I'm sure other people have explored it. I haven't personally read it from other people, but I'm sure it's out there. But I've never read a book that explored when women don't like women.

And it's very common. I grew up that way. I have many friends who will tell you, "I don't like other women.

Women are catty. Women are judgmental. Uh women are too competitive.

" I mean, you hear it all the time. At least women hear it from other women. I don't know if men are ever hearing this.

No, we just don't talk to each other in general. Men are so happy to just be in the same room and play on their phones or watch football. Whereas women are always judging each other, what they're wearing, how they look, how they sound, what did she mean, reading into what she said, taking meaning that maybe she didn't mean.

I know I went through a lot of that when I was young. Uh I reached an age where I heard the phrase for the first time, I'm a girlfriend's girlfriend. I got your back.

And I thought, "Wow, I've never been like that and I've never had that, but I want to be that. " I can I can sort of understand that I've always been someone who's always kind of gone my own way and and been mostly happy being by myself. So, I don't have there are some people they have what they call a gift for friendship and you I just look at them and and just how do you do that?

I have no idea. But that's what really that's why I'm partly drawn to this book because there's issues in here like you said about women befriending women about uh basically transactional relationships especially and I've seen this before. There's a there's a screenwriting book I remember reading in which they talked about dealing with celebrities and they said the first thing you do and this is something that really throws them is that if you're going to meet with an actor a f a well-known actor and you're trying to pitch them a script.

You don't accept anything from them. You don't ask for anything. You don't accept anything.

Not even a glass of water. And for actors who have always had people approach them and say, "Oh, I love you. Can I get your autograph?

Can I get a picture with you? Can you call my friend here and talk to them? " It absolutely throws them.

They have no idea what to do because you're not there to pray on them. You're just here about the script. And there are elements of that that show up here as well.

And that um that's why Leila lays low, which is great. I mean it's uh I think also the name Leila is very appropriate for her. I guess she is kind of laying low, isn't she?

In addition to being the name of a famous song. Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of things that you'll find in Vice and Virtue that were intentional.

There's there's nothing that was an accidental, oh that'll be fun. Everything is intentional. Her name is intentional.

you won't even find out fully until the next book that will come out a year from now. You'll get even more backstory on on her name. So, yes, there's a lot of layers that whenever you read a murder mystery for the second time, it probably loses a little of its magic because now that you know who did it, you see all the clues that you might have missed the first time around.

Um, and you'll see all the things that I've planted with with the women and with aa and with the trailer park. But, um, you'll definitely understand why I planted what I planted the second time through. Yeah.

And I'm looking forward to talking to you about that book because then we can talk about the first book and go really into into detail about it, too, because then everything's everything's out of the bag. Um, but also I and I agree with you with that. It's almost like uh reading um Endless Night by Agatha Christie, which is one of those like Roger Akroyd and Orient Express.

You read that one again because the journey of the narrator is still compelling all the way through. Once you know the ending and you know how it all plays out, it's still interesting along the way. And I could see that same kind of rereadability going on here as well because Ila is having to struggle.

She's having to fight even something as simple. There was a point there where she's in the bar, I think, and she's having to talk to somebody and there's a bottle of booze in front of her. And it's, you know, it's I almost imagine that if a drop hit the bar, she would have to resist bending over and licking the alcohol off the bar.

That's how thirsty she is. And you convey that. Alcohol has quite a draw on an alcoholic to where there's times that you just feel the physical temptation, but any any addiction has that same visceral draw for the person who has an addiction.

Like I said, I've had many cupcakes and cookies boss me around where I'm not eating anything else for the rest of the day. I'm done. And my god, it's all I can think about.

All I can think about is there's a cookie upstairs. Like I just I can't shake the thinking about it. So, I completely understand what she's going through.

I mean, addiction is I think it's something that many more people deal with than just the alcohol and the narcotics. Um, people are addicted to things online. People are addicted to being online.

People can't get through the day without their phone because if they don't have their phone, all they can think about is, "Oh, I should look at my phone. Oh, I should look at this on my phone. " It's definitely something that most of us or many of us I think can identify with and have experienced maybe on a small scale what it's like.

Yeah. But it's it's still it's you I understand that addiction because I can have I have I love ice cream. Absolutely love ice cream.

And back in the day when when Teresa, she would have a they would have a sale down and she would actually buy like four or five boxes and put them in the freezer downstairs, which happens to be about 12 steps away from me. And it is the craving is if I have that sugar craving, it's very easy to just go over there with the spoon and just have a couple of mouthfuls or four or five or more. And and I wouldn't compare that to alcoholism, not in any means.

But the craving part of it, you can I can see you can write about that because the craving part is what's there. It's the similarity between sweets and and uh liquor. Well, and science has proven that the brain lights up on sugar exactly the same way it lights up on cocaine.

Really? So the brain the same addiction centers fire for sugar and cocaine. I mean, cocaine would bring along with it a societal uh looking down upon you, right?

So, it's not an acceptable addiction. Whereas any office party, people can say, "Oh, I'm addicted to cookies and eat them. " And nobody judges you, unless you're really overweight, which of course I am.

So, you feel the judgment as if you're snorting cocaine at the office party when you're overweight. You actually feel every bite you take of anything is being judged unless it's lettuce. So certain things are acceptable addictions in society's eyes, but the person going through it might not feel quite as good about it.

They might feel the burden of I wish I could just say no matter what it is. Mhm. With when you were in the process of writing this book, were there differences that were there, I would say, kind of struggles or changes that you have to make from writing say a cozy mystery to something that's a little more uh substantial, emotionally deeper.

Um, now that even if you didn't have the case, I mean, the the mystery does come up and you had to work around how do you have involve an ex police officer investigating a case when she has absolutely no authority to do it and no inclination to do it either. I again, you did a really nice job of showing the resistance from her and how she gets pulled into the case. Anyway, well, for one thing, uh, Leila doesn't want to have anything to do with investigating, like you said, but the AA women find a connection between somebody that they know, who tends to be a little judgmental and a little critical of them, and the deceased, and they cannot make the connection in their minds how these two people would even know each other.

And so the motive behind these women wanting to look into the death of the clown is 100% nosiness. And they keep sucking Ila in. One thing that I did different from what you would generally see in a cozy when the clown dies on stage and the police come at no time is Leila a suspect because she's like persona nonratus with the police but they know she's not a killer.

Nobody's thinking she killed the guy. They just want nothing to do with her. And there's, you know, there's a whole backstory there as to why.

There's reasons I can't tell you that you'll have to find out on your own why the police want nothing to do with her. But it's not your typical cozy where she gets sucked into investigating because she's got to find out or she's got to clear her name. It's nothing like that.

Yeah. One way that Vice and Virtue is like a cozy is that there is no language. There is uh no graphic sex or graphic violence.

Um, Ila could use a gun, but she doesn't have a gun for various reasons. You'll find out. But, I mean, it it's it's not an amateur sleuth mystery.

So, like that would be, you know, potentially available to her in the future. Um, she doesn't try to solve to to save her career, to save her life, to save her job, or because she wants to see justice done. she just gets sucked into these women who get sort of keep putting her in a situation where they find things out.

So, that was fun. I think what really uh amused me more also because you mentioned their nosiness is they're looking at Chuckles the Clown and they're learning more about him and they're saying, "What's the attraction? and he's he's obviously had he's had three marriages and he's running this kind of business as well on the side and you're thinking part of it was just they just wanted to know why who what's the attraction to this guy?

What has he got? And again, it's it's women in this case looking at men. And I I I'll mention my wife has a calendar, a a day calendar of a hunk a day calendar on her desk.

And sometimes we'll get into a conversation about the particular models and whether they're good points and they're bad points and all that. And it amuses me. You know, it's something I would never have on my desk.

I have a uh farside calendar on my desk. I prefer that. Um, but it's as a man I find it very difficult to see the attraction as well.

And that's again, this is one of the things that drew me through the book. I just had to find out like they were about what's the attraction here. Um, again, it was just another issue that I really appreciated about this book.

Well, and chuckles would never be on that calendar that your wife has in a million years. But while I brought that out for comedy, I did also try to bring out that everyone deserves love because I didn't want it to come out as fat shaming or man shaming or age shaming because it really wasn't about that because those issues were really very specific to chuckles and were never meant to be sort of a societal general statement about people. So I do try to bring out that everyone deserves love.

And then I gave Chuckles some rather unpleasant characteristics that were not physical to sort of bring along the storyline of this guy is kind of ick. How did so many people get drawn into him to where now the suspect list is kind of long? Yeah.

And you start to find out things about his backstory and go, how in the world could that possibly happen with this guy? And it was a fun story. It morphed a little bit from what I had in mind when I first started writing the book.

I had to change a couple of things to uh I I started to think that women's fiction maybe it should have been a little bit more salacious and that's not me. That's just not my personality to write. That's why there's really no language in the book either.

Um so I really wanted to show that people can draw you into doing things. Well, there's a particular line. I wrote this down.

Women can be talked into just about anything if given enough honey. There you go. That's exactly it.

Yes. And you can agree or disagree with it. But the fact you put it in there as well as some other things because there's all kinds of um statements that people come, you know, that the the characters come up with that it gives the book an added bit of depth because the reader can look at this and go, "Now or maybe you got a point there.

" And again, this is something most women when they reach a certain age can look back and they have at least one regret, something that they've done. You know, how many women ended up committing crimes because they gotten enough honey to be drawn along. Women who end up in cults where, you know, you got one cult leader and 30 women, he's got kids with all of them.

See, to me, that's just weird. But you give them enough honey and it all starts to sound normal to them and you can drag them along into anything. Yeah.

I'm sure men too. I'm sure there's men that you can dry into drag into things. But as a woman, I'm only aware of how easy it is to manipulate women.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. If you're uh a beta kind of personality and there's a there's a kid over there who's taller and he's stockier and he's funny or he's active, it's easy to follow that person.

It's you're following the energy. You're following someone who's more interesting than you are and you're lonely and if you're lonely, you'll yeah, you'll do just about anything. That is a fantastic example because also I do believe there are women who are very strongminded and have such a strong sense of self they would never fall for stuff like this.

I didn't write about those women. I wrote about these women. So not all women could easily be dragged into whatever chaos.

But c certainly there are some out there that are probably going to be like shoot it down right now. It's over. Whereas I wrote about the other women, the ones more like me.

Yeah. And most of us are like that. Um I'm reminded of a friend of mine who he had a girlfriend in high school and I mean a girlfriend.

And he had multiple girlfriends in the years to come. And he is what we would call a Chad today. and he was always trying to get me to I guess, you know, to to go out and kind of be like him.

And I simply could not do that. I just simply did not have it in me to do that for various reasons I won't go into. But it's amazing to see him watch and some and somebody with um self-confidence who seems to be in a way he's was he's more emotionally mature then but over time because after all um his one marriage didn't last very long and I don't know what he's doing now but I don't think it's the same with me with a 30-year marriage under my belt and happy as a clam right.

Yeah. you know that you have to learn along the way um what works and what doesn't and sometimes you just have to be self-taught and sometimes you just have to learn through experience and if you're really lucky you actually have people around you could say you know maybe you shouldn't try that maybe this is something to look look for and that's again this is part of Ila's journey she's having to learn more about how to come back and how to leave the past behind right well and Ila's someone who as things in life have gone wrong, the way that she's dealt with it is cut it off. I want nothing more to do with it.

So, she's she's burned a lot of bridges because she's been hurt and things that have happened to her. She's like, I don't trust anybody now. Just burning it all down.

She's definitely I can't say she's learned the hard way. It's more that her pain threshold has been shallow to or the amount of pain that she's received has been so deep that she's said, "I'm done. " She's someone who will say, "I'm done.

Cut it off. Not go back. " And then she's cut people out of her life.

She just she doesn't trust. She's not easy to become friends with. She's not easy to develop deep relationships with.

And it's because of all the hurt that she's experienced. She doesn't want to go through it again. Yeah.

And at the same time, I it occurs to me now. I thinking this is a grim book and it's it's it is it isn't. It isn't because there's also there's also humor in here.

You see her trying to play her various gigs and the things that happen. I mean, when you play a children's party and you're not supposed to play Baby Shark and you're somehow supposed to do your rock classics cuz that's all you got and try to make it child friendly and dealing with hecklers. Oh, and that that reminds me you you one element in this is the uh class differences because she's playing at very um wealthy women's houses and I want to ask you is there were were you inspired by some by reality for some of these because the some of these are the descriptions are just they just beg your belief.

Well, there's definitely a class difference. Um, I think that a lot of the differences that we experience as people tend to be more the halves and the have nots. I think no matter what ethnic background you want to give it or that it falls into, people are still people and there's a vast difference between have and have not.

And there's a difference in the way many of them treat each other. You can usually tell somebody who is not comfortable with being around a lot of money because they'll talk to the staff more than they'll talk to, you know, those who are in the positions of honor. Um, and so Ila's very much a fish out of water with the way that she feels about the people who seem to have it all.

And she's being hired by people who seem to have it all. So, we get to see her discomfort with the way that they treat each other, the way that they treat her, the way that they maybe would treat the gardener. We see who she would rather talk to.

She definitely prefers the back of the house in the kitchen with the cook more than she prefers being out in the front with the MS and the mister of the house. Yeah. And there's also kind of a budding romance with Nick and his dog as well, a black Labrador.

Have you uh worked with black labs? I have one. I have a black lab named Vader.

He's the world's sweetest dog. He um Vader has a lot of characteristics of the dog in the book. And there those are things that we can't give away as much as I would love to talk about, but if you read Vice and Virtue, once you get to the end of it, that's my dog.

Yeah. And it has made having company come over very interesting because we can always kind of tell within our company who needed a little more affection that night because my dog will not leave them alone the whole time. Yeah.

So, there's lots of sweet moments and there's some conflict as well. Um, you know, push and pull between Nick and Ila. Um and and again it's all grounded in her personality which um I guess in one way you could say yes she's unpleasant but at the same time you understand it's earned.

You know she's in a really deep pit and she's having to deal with this and that makes it makes the book a very compelling read. I really really can't tell you just how much I enjoyed this book and I would recommend take a look at it. Um, and see for yourself.

You know, the book is coming out in a couple of days. By the time you see this, it will already be out. Um, and now then you mentioned uh Poppy McAllister.

Is there going to be anything else from her since Kensington has decided uh they were they were happy with the nine books? Well, Poppy is finished with Kensington, but that doesn't mean I can't write more. One of the ways Poppy and Ila are different is that Poppy has this internal monologue that is hilarious, and people are always telling me how funny they think Poppy is.

Ila just says it. She'll say it. So, Vice and Virtue for all of these deep, heavy issues is very, very funny and something that I I never thought about this before as the writer because I'm kind of just writing what's in my head and what's coming out.

But one thing people keep telling me as they're reading it or my beta readers or my critique group is how much they enjoy that I take deep, difficult issues and make them so funny and so easy to sort of swallow because Leila is sort of the straight man in a world of chaos. All of these characters around her, the AA ladies, they're funny, they're ridiculous. the trailer park people.

It's like living in Stars Hollow or uh it's it's more Stars Hollow than it is Desperate Housewives because the trailer park people, this is where a Leila would feel comfortable, but they're crazy. They're the they're the Gestapo of the lawn. They want to measure the grass and they want to check the time on when the the bins go back from the street and they'll give you handmade tickets that aren't enforcable.

So, there's so much funny stuff to sort of balance and make it fun to get through to see here's what Leila's deep issues are that are so painful, but you're laughing the whole time in between the crying in between the what is so bittersweet. Yeah. So, Poppy has nothing new coming out until I write something new.

Leila has a new book. This one isn't even out yet. Technically, Vice and Virtue doesn't really come out as we're speaking.

It comes out tomorrow and my launch for it will be at Mechanicsburg mystery bookshop. So, by the time you see this, it'll have already been out. Um, but a year from now, we'll have the second book in the series, and that's called Gimme Shelter.

Oh, lovely. Absolutely. And Gimme Shelter makes so much more sense when you've read the first book once you understand the now you know exactly why it's called Gimme Shelter.

Yep. Absolutely. And we haven't even talked about Margarit and her rooster, but we'll just leave that for people to find out in the book as well.

And there's other things too that that pop up along the way. And the I admit at the end I kind of teared up. you kind of hit everybody.

You hit me with that fold me and I like I said, you got me. It was a It's a good book. It's a good read.

Um, where can people find out more about you and about your uh personal appearance schedule so they can come see you and uh talk to you about the book? Well, if you go to my website, libbyleinbooks. com, you can uh get my newsletter.

And my newsletter will always tell you everywhere I'm going to be. It also has links to my social media, which I haven't been on as much as I should have been. But in my social media, like the Cozy Mystery Crew on Facebook or the Mystery Lovers Kitchen blog or anything else that I'm uh honored to have opportunities to take part of like podcasts like this one, um you can learn more about me, about my books, send me emails.

Uh, one of my big events coming up is I will be at the Kate May Coffee and Chocolate Festival the third weekend in June. I grew up in Kate May. I heard about this festival from somebody else who lives here in Virginia, so I've never even heard of it, but I'll be there for two days and I'm very excited.

That's wonderful. That is absolutely wonderful. And I want to thank you very much, Libby, for coming on the show and talking with us and of course for writing Vice and Virtue as well.

This is going to go up on the shelf and I'm going to have you sign a copy as well when you when I see you at Ice Cream for Murder. Um, so I want to thank you all for showing up and listening to us talk about a great book. And I want to thank Libby for coming.

And this is Bill Pel for Mechanicsburg Mystery Presents. And I hope that your favorite book is the one you're reading now. Bye-bye.

Thank you so much. Bye. Mechanicsburg.

Mystery Presents is sponsored by the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. To learn more about the store, visit the website at www. msterybooksonline.

com. And thank you for listening.