SUNNY TRULY IS BACK!

The  Sunny Truly Mystery Series is as charming and playful as a field of pink bluebonnet flowers. Our favorite apprentice P.I. from Texas is back so get ready to lasso a good read! If you have read the first two books in the series, I’m sure you can’t wait to start the newest book, Mimosas & Murder.  Once again, Sunny Truly uses her Texas sass to solve mysteries and relies on a colorful group of friends, both people and animal, to solve some intriguing mysteries.

She is more fun than Sunny Truly! She will be sharing a Texas-sized compendium of her writing thoughts, her life, her recipes- it’s all amazing! First, you can start by checking out the book series. While you get to know Sunny Truly, I’ll be making CeCe’s sunny margaritas!

 

Here’s where you can find the series, which at this time is only available on Amazon.

1.Margaritas & Murder: A Sunny Truly Mystery- Book One.

ON AMAZON MARGARITAS & MURDER: SUNNY TRULY MYSTERY BOOK ONE

2. Merlot & Murder: A Sunny Truly Mystery – Book Two

ON AMAZON MERLOT & MURDER: SUNNY TRULY MYSTERY BOOK TWO

3. Mimosas & Murder: A Sunny Truly Mystery – Book Three

ON AMAZON MIMOSAS & MURDER: SUNNY TRULY MYSTERY BOOK THREE

 

Mimosas & Murder

Jena’s 5 Star Review

Before we get started please see my review of Margaritas & Murder here.

Here’s my review of Merlot & Murder.

Book 3 in the Sunny Truly Mystery Series give us plenty of what we love! Austin, restaurants, food trucks, family brunches, wine and the effervescent Sunny Truly are all back, and so are Cleve, Floyd and the spaceship home. I really could end this review right now- you all ready know you will love the characters, the witty zingers, the mysteries and especially Sunny and her upbeat, ingenuous sleuthing skills.

 

Ok, I’ll tell you a bit more. Book 3 begins with a rookie cop checking out a suspicious parked car. “Is the guy dead or drink?”

 

Meanwhile, back at the Truly family’s monthly brunch, Sunny asks, “One last mimosa?” Before she can finish the pitcher herself, Sunny’s sister and boyfriend burst in with shocking news about a murder.

 

And so begins our romp with Sunny as she tries to solve this case and assist Cleve with some other interesting situations. We meet plenty of entertaining suspects as Sunny uses her scheming mind and her understanding way with people to discover who killed the well-regarded reporter, Jay Tolliver.

 

Sunny is a hard worker. Is Jay really beyond reproach? Is rich Astrid really as venomous as she seems and what about her stepdaughter Veronica, with two boyfriends dead? Is it time for Veronica the party girl to sober up? What does Ursula know? And then there’s Opal, the former high school snob who now runs a lifestyle blog- is her mind too inquiring? As Sunny says, “My alpha waves were swimming like frenzied salmon upstream to mate.

 

In addition to the main mystery there are plenty of other intriguing side mysteries to keep us turning the pages. And the wit and humor never stops. The cat looked like she was waterskiing and Floyd was her speedboat.

 

I have to say I was impressed with this line, A gold shimmer like a Gustav Klimt painting…

 

And I loved the part where Troy helps Delia in the office. She froze her computer screen after pounding the keyboard a zillion times.

 

What impresses me the most about Book 3, and the whole series is how clever, entertaining, and funny Author Osgood’s writing is, while still creating relatable and real characters. I enjoyed the bits about Sunny’s Mom and her new interest in blogs. Yes, there are mysteries to be solved, and the ending of this mystery is exciting and thrilling, but my pleasure comes from enjoying the ride with Sunny.

 

Speaking of endings, we have some expected nuptials, and an unexpected proposal. I hope there is a Book 4 in the series coming soon because I want to know more about Sunny and Cleve. Hurricanes and Honeymoons? Mai Tais, Marriage and Murder? Please, Ms. Osgood, give us some more Sunny. I highly recommend this book series.              Jena C. Henry, May, 2017

Take it away CeCe!

Hello. Thank you, Jena, for inviting me to be a guest on your blog today. I’m CeCe Osgood and I write twisty, suspenseful and fun cozy mysteries. Although I’ve just finished the third book in this series, let me introduce to the first one:

MARGARITAS & MURDER: A Sunny Truly Mystery 

The series is set in Austin, Texas and the main character, Sunny, is an apprentice private investigator.

Fresh from a divorce and the “death” of her career as a high school history teacher, Sunny returns to her hometown, Austin, and is hired by Haylock Investigations. Never in her wildest dreams did she think she would be working as a private investigator, so she’s thrilled and excited and really nervous.

I chose Austin for the setting of the book because I lived there while I was attending the University of Texas and for many years after that. It’s one of the fast growing cities in the US (which makes me kind of sad because I remember when it was a sleepy college town without nightmare traffic problems).

More importantly, Austin is where I tasted my first margarita. Here’s a view of the city from Lady Bird Lake, named after Lady bird Johnson, the wife of President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ).

 

Way back then, my friends and I would meet almost every Friday night at a Tex-Mex restaurant known for its fantastic frozen margaritas. They were HUGE, deliciously limey and ice-cold.

But as good as those margaritas were, the best I’ve ever had was just recently at a friend’s house. She often vacations in a lovely town in Central Mexico and brought back this splendid recipe for margaritas.

The first thing she told me was to get really good brand of 100% percent blue agave silver tequila because then you wouldn’t get a headache if you over imbibed. (FYI: I was staying at her house that night so no drinking and driving. That’s never a good idea.)

Making Margaritas: Here’s a little background on the plant used to make tequila. This is a blue agave plant which grows primarily in northern Mexico. It’s a succulent and its true name is Agave tequilana, although it’s also called Agave azul.

At the core or heart there’s a high amount of fructose and between the eighth and fourteenth year this heart is harvested, stripped of its leaves and heated to convert the starches to sugars, then fermented and distilled.

A digression: Agave is also the name of a character in Greek mythology and means “illustrious.” She was the daughter Cadmus, the founder and king of the city Thebes – the major rival of ancient Athens. Agave was a follower of Dionysus, the god of the grape harvest, wine and intoxication.

(Methinks, this god of wine kind looks a lot like Ashton Kutcher.) 

My friend’s recipe for cold limey delicious margaritas:

Fill your blender with ice. Pour in:

6 oz tequila

2 oz triple sec

Juice of six limes

Then add Simple Syrup to taste.

(To make simple syrup: add 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water in a sauce pan. Heat until dissolved.)

Now, I’ve gotten to where I don’t care much for salt on the rim of my glass, but if you do, sprinkle salt, kosher instead of iodized for a lighter taste, into a shallow plate.

Moisten the rim of your glass with a cut lime wedge. Notch the wedge for it to slip easily around the rim. Then turn the glass upside down and dip it into the salt.

(Sssh, a secret. If you prefer a less salty taste, add sugar into the plate of salt, say 50-50, and then dip the moistened rim into it.)

This post covers only frozen lime margaritas, not the lovely peach, or raspberry of other delicious fruity ones. but I think you could just pop in a  little fruit, maybe even frozen fruit. (Editor’s note- how can you go wrong with tequila and triple sec? NO matter what else you add- it will be awesome!)

Confession: my favorite dish with or without a margarita is cheese enchiladas, which I’ve learned to make as a quick and easy snack. Admittedly this recipe is NOT for the most scrumptious enchiladas I’ve ever tasted, but it is fast and easy.

Sometimes when I’m writing and deeply embroiled in plotting or getting the dialogue right for each character, I don’t have to time cook. So I’ve learned to make one or two easy dishes that can last a few days and then it’s such a matter of heating it up in a toaster broiler or microwave.

Or…if I don’t even have time to do that, I’ll have a bowl of cereal and 2% milk or a PB&J sandwich. (Editor’s note: Somebody else has cereal for dinner!) Ah, the glamorous life of a writer.

 

Here’s my recipe for:

CeCe’s Quickie Snack Enchiladas:

1. Spray a cassorole dish with oil. I use coconut.
2. Put a little salsa in the bottom of the dish. I get mine from a bottle. Cheating, I know, but remember it’s a quickie ’cause I’m writing.
3. Grate at least a half cup of cheese (more if you like it cheesy), grate a little onion, chopped up black olives, and diced green or red mild pepper. Then sprinkle these ingredients into a corn torilla.
4. Fold it over so the ends of tortilla are on the bottom of the pan.
5. Repeat this with the tortillas and your ingredients until you can fill the pan or casserole dish.
6. Sprinkle more cheese on top.
7. Pour salsa (green or red salsa—I do both sometime) on the folded tortillas. You can buy red or green enchilada sauce to use if you prefer. I happen to like a mild red salsa with green tomito sauce for a little tartness.
8. Sprinkle more cheese on top at your discretion. (Editor’s note- better sprinkle once more to be sure!)
9. Bake 15-20 minutes in a 350 degree oven. I use a small broiler oven.

So that’s my quickie snack cheese enchiladas. I recently bought zucchini to see how it would work as a filler with the onion, black olives and cheese. I haven’t made zucchini enchiladas yet, but soon. I know zucchini has a lot of water in it, so I’m going to cook a little firsthand use a paper towel to squeeze the moisture.

Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow to celebrate the start

of a new cozy mystery series.

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