What's It Like to Be Dead?

[Peg Herring]

The second Dead Detective Mystery, DEAD FOR THE MONEY, comes out on Friday, and the publicist for LL-Publishing has arranged a blog tour for me beginning in May. (This in itself is cool, because I've always had to arrange my own before.) In most of the posts, I'll be letting Seamus, Dead Detective, explain his view of things. I'll keep you apprised of the schedule as it develops.

So what is it like to be dead? There are so many possible answers that the mind boggles. Some say death is the end of everything, which is so un-fun that I refuse to contemplate it. And where would I get three more novels if I accepted that idea? I recently read a book called SPOOK, in which author Mary Roach examined the question of life after death. She spent some time on reincarnation, explaining the specifics of that belief system, but I've never been fond of reincarnation as a concept. It seems a lot like the game of Pacheesi, which used to frustrate me as a kid. You move forward and forward and forward, and then you have to start all over at the beginning?

Of course the Judeo/Muslin/Christian belief system, which stems from one root religion, teaches reward and/or punishment after death. I chose to stick with that for this series, putting my own strange twist on things and hoping that my readers know that "fiction" starts and ends with the same letters as "fun." In other words, don't try to analyze me from what I write. It's all Seamus' fault anyway. He's the one who crawled inside my head and left all these outrageous ideas.

So what's the second Dead Detective Mystery about? Seamus is asked to investigate the death of wealthy William Dunbar, who fears his beloved grandson might have pushed him off a cliff. It's a typical case for Seamus, except he's asked to take along a cross-back-in-training, Mildred. The case is more complicated than expected, and Dunbar's young granddaughter Brodie, a problem child with a penchant for practical jokes, finds danger stalking her. As things move toward a frightening conclusion on the Mackinac Bridge, Seamus works to control the over-eager Mildred, help the vulnerable Brodie, and prove that someone did kill William Dunbar, all the while hoping no one else in the family will end up DEAD FOR THE MONEY. http://www.ll-publications.com/deadmoney.html