Hi there, guys and dolls! Hope your summer has been going along swimmingly. Yours truly has been having such a fantabulous one, I’m always up to something.

Which makes me think about my Santa Lucians in my Poppy Cove Mysteries and what they do. Everyone’s got a story to tell; a past, present or future that shapes and defines them and here’s a few that have been amusing recently.

Daphne Huntington-Smythe – Our darling fair-haired girl. She seems to have had it all so easy in her young and carefree life. Now it’s starting to get to her after she realizes that almost everyone else has had some kind of dangerous fun. Tired of her pristine life, she’s thinking about what kind of decent trouble a girl like her could get into. She finds some in A NATE TO REMEMBER and I know there will be more to come in future tales.

Barbara Lewis -Poor Babs. She’s Nancy Lewis’ eldest daughter and such a sullen and sulky girl. She trails behind her mother, feeling misplaced and out of step compared to her mother and younger twin sisters (more on them later). Babs nags at me, pulls at my heart strings and gives me a little mischievous thrill when I think what she wants to get up to. Wait for it, it’s coming.

Loretta Simpson – Now why would a high flying gossip columnist hang up her heels in sleepy Santa Lucia? She keeps giving me hints of what her life was like in McCarthy era Hollywood. What was her past like? Hmm…

Irene Swanson – Another Los Angeles transplant. She got kicked out of the city for being a bad girl. Wonder what exactly she did? We sure do, and slowly but surely she’s telling me and then we’ll be sure to tell you, dear readers.

Betty Young – Such a sweet little thing, blissfully married to her sandwich eating Oldsmobile salesman Dwight. Always rushing home to get dinner on the table and being the perfect housewife. I’m thinking that girl’s bright enough to have further ambitions, and she’s starting to agree. I mean, just how many ways can a girl make a sandwich anyhow?

Betsy and Anita Lewis – Nancy’s twin daughters and also Barbara’s younger sisters. The identical girls have their own world and now that they have graduated from their private high school have way too much time on their hands and are sidling around Santa Lucia like a pair of Siamese cats. Don’t you just know they’re bound to be up to something.

Then there’s always Margot Williams, who we have unearthed her past in A NATE TO REMEMBER. She’s bound to have more to come in her life, as well as the rest of the swanky social set in my toddlin’ little town. Stay tuned, more misadventures and mayhem to come!

Toodles,

Barbara Jean