Publications
- Railroad Bill The Old Weird South Anthology/December 2012
- Twenty-five Years is Silver Downstate Story
- It’s Not Murder The Pedestal Magazine
- Little Mamm’s Treasure Writers Weekly
- The Target, Writers’ Journal
Novels in Progress
The Kadence MacBride Mystery Series (Note: All of these books are pre-published)
Each book in the Kadence MacBride Mystery Series addresses her struggle to straddle two worlds: white and black, pre and post-integration. The mystery’s solution is directly impacted by a different area of African-American history.
Death of an Island Tart—complete, in submission (82,000 words) After a breakup of 268 days, 12 hours and 23 minutes, Kadence flies to the Caribbean to try and win her boyfriend Terrence back only to find him engaged. When his fiancée is killed, and Terrence is suspected, Kadence agrees to help clear his name. To solve the murder, they face the legacy of the island’s slave past and experience the islander’s resentment towards them as affluent African-Americans.
Death of an Idiot Boss— complete (70,000 words) Kadence MacBride is busting through the glass ceiling with her size 10 pumps to become her company’s first African-American VP. When the VP nod goes to her idiot white employee, and he’s found murdered, she becomes the chief suspect. To solve the murder, she’ll have to re-connect with the African- American community she largely abandoned in her climb up the corporate ladder and dredge up the ghosts of the Jim-Crow South.
Death of a Beached Whale (WIP)—(41,000 words to date): In the week before their Vegas wedding, Kadence must help clear Terrence’s gangster student, Aikeem, who is accused of beating his pregnant girlfriend to death. Everyone believes Aikeem is guilty—police, rival gangs, the press—even Kadence herself, everyone that is except Terrence. The truths Kadence learns clear Aikeem but stop her from going through with the marriage she so desires and forces her to face her own prejudice towards other African-Americans.
Death of a Black American Princess –Planning — Miserable since cancelling the wedding, Kadence agrees to accompany Terrence to his parent’s tony estate in the Hamptons. Terrence’s mother, who plans to use the cotillion to break the couple up for good, finds herself needing Kadence’s help when she’s accused of killing a descendent of the slaves her family once owned.
Janice Croom 