Guest Post: Kari Lee Townsend

I would like to welcome Kari Lee Townsend, author of Corpse in the Crystal Ball, the second novel in her cozy mysteries A Fortune Teller Mystery.  In this delightful second mystery, Sunny has to deal with Mitch's ex-girlfriend, especially when her body turns up in the woods, implicating Mitch in her murder.  Can Mitch trust in Sunny's unusual talents to help save the day?




How I came up with the idea for this book!


Authors come up with ideas for their books from all kinds of sources. The news, a song, a snippet of conversation … just about anything can spur an idea. In my case, when I first came up with the idea to write a mystery series, I knew I wanted it to be paranormal. There is just something so mysterious and fascinating about the paranormal to me. But I didn’t want it to be just any paranormal. I tried to think of something that hadn’t been done. So I searched some publisher sites. I found a few series revolving around a psychic, but I didn’t see anything about fortune telling. I once had my tea leaves read and was totally hooked. I had my palm read as well as a past life reading, but there was still so much out there I wanted to learn about. That’s where I came up with something to make my series even more unique. I decided to have each book focus on a different fortune-telling tool. That way I could do the research, learn about something I’m interested in, and share it with the world.

My main character, Sunshine Meadows, is a real psychic. She simply uses various fortune-telling tools to help her interpret her visions. What she sees always comes true; it just sometimes takes her a while to fully interpret the meaning of what she sees. And that’s half the fun. In the first book, Tempest in the Tea Leaves, I decided to start with reading tea leaves, since that’s how I was first introduced to the world of fortune tellers. With that story, I loved the idea of having Sunny move to the small town in upstate New York called Divinity. I live in upstate New York, but the town is fictional. It’s based on a lot of the small towns I grew up in, and I thought it would be fun for her to be from a big city and now try to adapt to small-town life. Sunny gives a reading to the small-town librarian and predicts she will die. When Sunny becomes the main suspect, she has to clear her name in order to keep her business alive and stay on the path to her fresh start.

Sunny and Detective Mitch Stone are total opposites, yet they fall for each other after he helps to clear her name. In book two, Corpse in the Crystal Ball, Sunny uses a crystal ball to give Mitch’s ex-girlfriend Isabel a reading. Later Sunny aids the police in finding Isabel’s body in the woods, and now Mitch is the prime suspect. Only, Mitch has a hard time stepping aside and letting Sunny help clear his name this time. I didn’t really have any outside forces help me come up with these ideas so far. That has happened to me with other books, but for these, it’s been more about the characters and who I wanted as the prime suspect and what situation would be the most logical to put them there. And speaking of characters, I introduce Sunny’s Granny Gert in book two, and yes, you guessed it. She will become the prime suspect in book three, Trouble in the Tarot. Sometimes it’s more characters than situations that dictate what we do.

Author Biography
National Bestselling Author, RT Reader’s Choice Award & Agatha Nominee Kari Lee Townsend lives in Central New York with her very understanding husband, her three busy boys, and her oh-so-dramatic daughter, who keep her grounded and make everything she does worthwhile…not to mention provide her with loads of material for her books. Kari is a longtime lover of reading and writing, with a masters in English education, who spends her days trying to figure out whodunit. Funny how no one at home will confess any more than the characters in her mysteries!


Kari writes fun and exciting stories for any age, set in small towns, with mystical elements and quirky characters as Kari Lee Townsend. Kari also writes romantic comedies and women’s fiction with the same sense of humor and quirky characters as Kari Lee Harmon.

To find out more about Kari and all her books go to http://www.karileetownsend.com/ or click on the links below:

Kari Lee Townsend (Website & Newsletter & Facebook & Twitter)

National Bestselling Author of The Fortune Teller Mysteries

TEMPEST IN THE TEA LEAVES 4 1/2 Starred RT Review

Best Amateur Sleuth of 2011 RT Reviewers' Choice Nominee

Best First Novel Agatha Award Nominee

CORPSE IN THE CRYSTAL BALL - June 2012 (preorder now)

DIGITAL DIVA: TALK TO THE HAND (Kindle & Nook)

DIGITAL DIVA: RISE OF THE PHENOTEENS (Kindle & Nook)

DESTINY WEARS SPURS (by Kari Lee Harmon) (Kindle & Nook)

PROJECT PRODUCE (by Kari Lee Harmon) (Kindle & Nook)