His every word may be a lie – #CozyMystery #RomanticSuspense #NewRelease

By M.S. Spencer (Guest Blogger)

Thank you so much, Lisabet, for letting me talk about my new mystery The Wishing Tree: Love, Lies, and Spies on Chincoteague Island.

Blurb

Will the wind whip her token from the Wishing Tree and make her wish come true?

Addison Steele dreams of the day her husband—lost at sea—returns to her. Instead, she meets Nick Savage, whose every word may be a lie. She is soon embroiled in mystery, all related to the top secret science station at Wallops Island, Virginia.

After a Belarusian scientist at Wallops is murdered, the questions multiply. Was it because he caught the person stealing classified documents or because he wanted to defect? Is Nick the spy—or is it his brother? How can she trust the man who is slowly claiming her heart when his story keeps shifting?

Introduction to Excerpt

Addison is fascinated by a trio of 18^th-century women writers of “amatory fiction.” Eliza Haywood, Aphra Behn, and Delarivier Manley, were known as the “naughty triumvirate” for their scandalously bawdy fiction. Foremost was Haywood (1693?-1756). She wrote some 70 works, including Love in Excess. She had a six-year affair with Richard Savage, the poet and noted scalawag, which ended in nasty recriminations.

In The Wishing Tree, Addison reads that Savage tried to claim Haywood’s affair was with Richard Steele, Addison’s ancestor. She is intrigued. Could Richard have been Nick Savage’s ancestor? Were the two families connected? In the excerpt Nick tells her about a feud between the Steeles and Savages that had lasted for generations. Was that the feud he talked about so casually?

Excerpt: Connections

She sat at her laptop idly googling, watching the clock till it was cocktail time. An article discussing Samuel Johnson and his pronouncements (negative) on the upstart American revolutionaries led her to his social set, of which Joseph Addison and Richard Steele were prominent members. “Johnson must have known my namesakes well.” She read on. A footnote referred to reports of a dalliance between the married Steele and a woman named Eliza Haywood. Was my ancestor a lecher? Her grandmother had always spoken of Richard Steele in such respectful terms. Was this Haywood person one of those women who try to smear a man’s reputation after she’s rebuffed? Or was Richard in fact a cad, a stain on his family’s reputation? Addison typed “Eliza Haywood” into the search box.

Several links appeared. She clicked on a biography. Eliza Haywood, along with two other women who formed the “naughty triumvirate,” was a writer of what the author called “amatory fiction.” Not as benign as it sounded, the snippets were quite ribald, even pornographic. As for Haywood’s personal life, she was apparently as promiscuous as her heroines. Addison was reminded of the old adage: Write what you know. The tale about an affair with her ancestor was unsubstantiated—that’s a relief!—but instead was thought to be a creation of a notorious grifter and womanizer named…She looked closer at the small print. “Richard Savage.”

She sat back. Savage?

The Wishing Tree: Love, Lies, and Spies on Chincoteague Island

The Wild Rose Press, July 17, 2023

First Edition, 2023

368 p.; PG-13

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About the Author

Librarian, anthropologist, research assistant, Congressional aide, speechwriter, nonprofit director—award-winning, multi-published author M. S. Spencer has lived or traveled in five of the seven continents and holds degrees in Anthropology, Middle East Studies, and Library Science. She has published sixteen romantic suspense and mystery novels. She has two children, an exuberant granddaughter, and currently divides her time between the Gulf Coast of Florida and a tiny village in Maine.

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