Does this picture make you want to read See Jane Dance! before its release date? The third book in the West River Mystery Series will be available at Amazon on October 10, but you can read it sooner by joining the launch team.

Before passing on the deets about how to join, I want to explain why See Jane Dance! updates have been sparse in the last several months, it’s because my indomitable mother (Doris Newell’s prototype) passed away on June 23, a few months shy of her ninety-fifth birthday. Saying good bye was hard. Still, I rejoice to think of her free of pain and reunited with her husbands, her parents, and her seven siblings who left this earth before her.

Now that most of her legal and financial matters settled, my attention is focused on the upcoming release of See Jane Dance!, the third book in the West River Series. Here’s a quick peek at how Jane and her fellow Little Missourians decide to usher in the new year:

1978 is only a few days old when Jane Newell stumbles over a body on her way to Round the Bend, Little Missouri, South Dakota’s most popular (and only) bar and cafe. Soon she’s juggling not only a murder investigation, but also the addition of four kindergarteners to her lively country school classroom. Thanks to weekly square dance lessons paid for by her mother, the town switchboard operator, and the school janitor, all of them determined to kick start her romantic life, she’s also fending off eligible bachelors right and left. Jane braves bone-chilling temperatures, dangerous snowstorms, and town gossip as she and the sheriff zero in on a killer who’s dancing too close for comfort.

If that’s got your curiosity doing a jig and you want find out how Jane tracks down the killer, please consider joining the See Jane Dance!  launch team. Here’s what’s in it for you:

• An advance reader copy in September.
• A FREE Kindle version on October 10.
• An invitation to whatever kind of launch party I have time to dream up. This one depends on how much attention Mom’s remaining affairs require.)

Your part is to write an honest review and post it on Amazon after the book releases on October 10. (More about that in future blog posts.) To join just email me. I would love to have you on the team. I guarantee that taking square dance lessons with Jane and her rotating roster of partners will not be boring.

Now for two final tidbits regarding See Jane Dance!…

First, Mom’s chocolate chip oatmeal cookie recipe can be found at the end of the book. Second, Mom learned to square dance in gym class while attending a small, conservative Christian college in the 1940’s. The students, however, had to refer them as “square games lessons” because dancing wasn’t allowed on campus.

Which goes to show that words really do matter.