Here it is, the ebook cover of the prequel novella to the Soul Garden Mystery series… One Feeling After Another, coming your way October 29, 2026!
I’m quite happy with how this one turned out. The eye-catching red of the background signals the genre — especially important this time around, since the word MURDER is not in the title.
I wanted the cover to sit comfortably next to That Murder Feeling (Book 1), while doing its own novella thing. Enter the teal medallion with the mushroom. It hints at the genre-bending, whimsical, feelings-as-clues aspect of the story and ties the design to the Book 1 cover, which has a teal-and-orange color scheme. The plan for future books in the series is this: four medallions for novels; single medallion for novellas.
I particularly like the thin gold-foil circle around the medallion, which makes the whole thing pop and is another visual callback to the Book 1 cover and its gold-foil framing.
The ebook has already started going up for preorders in a few stores, listed below. You can find the full list of retailers here.
You can also request the ebook from your local library — it should make its way over to Hoopla and other digital libraries. (There’s no way of estimating how long that might take…books just sort of trickle over.)
Will there be a thin, novella-width paperback to go with the ebook? The answer is… yes! Stay tuned.
Minnesota basically has three seasons—white, green, and the red/orange/yellow of autumn—and we’re deep in the green. The picture is of our neighborhood lake; the dog’s favorite walking path goes all the way around. There are birds, turtles, and squirrels to see. The mosquitoes haven’t been too bad this year (they seem to like me for some reason so that’s a big plus), maybe because we’ve had fewer thunder-hail-downpour storms than usual. It doesn’t feel like autumn is just around the corner, that’s for sure.
Writing Update
The prequel novella to That Murder Feeling is nearing the finish line! After some back and forth, I’ve settled on a title… Ta-da:
One Feeling After Another: A Soul Garden Mystery Novella
The manuscript is scheduled for a copy-edit in late September, but I’m hoping to get some reader feedback first. Which leads me to the next section…
Call For Beta Readers
Since One Feeling After Another is a prequel (Book 0.5), I’m looking for a couple of beta readers who haven’t read Book 1 yet (That Murder Feeling) so they meet the world of the story with fresh eyes. The beta readers would be asked to provide short feedback that essentially boils down to: Could you understand and enjoy this story without having read Book 1?
Some quick info: One Feeling After Another is a speculative mystery novella of 30,000 words—roughly a hundred pages, or about a third of the length of a typical novel.Cracking the case, one emotion at a time. Small town PI Rod Gray sees people’s soul gardens—and this time, he’s tracking greed. Two Lakes resident Millie Barnhill has died, a million-dollar inheritance has gone missing, and Rod’s been hired to find the money. Someone knows more than they’re saying—but greed never lies.
If you haven’t read Book 1 yet and would be interested in providing feedback on the prequel novella draft, please respond to this email (or drop me a comment below if you’re reading this online). I’d email out the ARCs on Friday, September 4th. Feedback requested by Friday,September 18.
What I’m Reading
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Sci-fi thriller. This one has been on my TBR list for a while. It turned out to be somewhat darker than what I usually read but I quite liked it. Fast-moving, twisty and clever, with quite a taut writing style. There’s also an Apple TV series based on the book, but I haven’t tried watching it yet.
The Moon-Spinners by Mary Stewart. I haven’t read this 1962 novel since I was a teen but recently happened to come across it. Back then I didn’t pay much attention to the vividness of Mary Stewart’s descriptions of the Greek island of Crete—the vegetation, the scents, the heat, the sea—but this time around they jumped out at me. I’d always thought of the book as an adventure story, but nowadays it would probably be marketed as New Adult romantic suspense. Or maybe a beach-read, if you’re looking for one.
Promotion Corner
That Murder Feeling is $1.99 in ebook on all retailers until the end of the month, which means it’s a good time to grab it if you haven’t done so yet! Read more about the book here. Full list of retailers can be found at this link: https://books2read.com/thatmurderfeeling
My books are also in a couple of promotions this month, one for mysteries and thrillers, and the other for speculative fiction. Clicking on the two images below will take you to the promotions.
I found three copies of the original-cover paperback edition of All the Whys of Delilah’s Demise on my shelf and I’m giving them away to three subscribers of this newsletter as a small thank-you for following along. The cover change happened back at the end of 2024, and I meant to do this sooner!
First, a bit about the book. All the Whys of Delilah’s Demise is a 330-page speculative mystery set beneath a protective dome during a new ice age. When the city’s #1 citizen falls to their death, low-ranked intern Scottie becomes the prime suspect and must solve the murder before she’s exiled into the frozen wilderness beyond the dome.
Here’s the original cover, with its yellow criss-crossed lines and blue-green background:
It’s good to update covers once in a while, as the market changes. Same story inside… Current cover, black background with a woman gazing into her reflection in the eye:
If you’d like a chance to win a signed paperback with the original cover, just fill out a (super short! three questions only!) form. You can find the form here: Giveaway Entry Form.
No mailing address is required to enter. If you’re selected as a winner, I’ll contact you to collect your shipping information. U.S. and international entries welcome.
Entries close a week from today, at 11:59 p.m. CDT on Tuesday, August 4. Three winners will be drawn on August 5 at random. I’ll send out emails to the winners and make an announcement under this post on my Substack.
If you have any problems with the form, you can also enter the giveaway by replying to this email, or leaving a comment under this post.
Good luck and thank you for being part of my reader community!
So you know how I’m writing a mystery series where the PI walks around clocking soul gardens around people, ones where greenery shifts and creatures pop in and out with the owner’s mood? Well, when you spend hours and hours doing that, dreaming up what emotions and feelings might look like in green, you start to notice gardens in real life.
More than you did before. Much more.
Look, that tree has an odd trunk. What a peculiar flower. Weird hole in the ground, I wonder if someone—or something—lives in it.
Earlier this month, I found myself in a garden. We’d traveled to Europe to visit family, just in time for the first of the London heat waves. The temperatures were milder during the second part of the trip, the Austria one. It was late afternoon and I had gone out to explore Salzburg’s Mirabell Gardens. The garden is famous for, among other things, being one of the filming locations for the movie The Sound of Music.
Mirabell Gardens, looking in the direction of Hohensalzburg Fortress.
I’ve always liked formal gardens, maybe because I possess a minimalist green thumb. (We have exactly six small plants in the kitchen that somehow miraculously hang on and what’s in the yard is hardy enough to survive without much attention.)
So there I was, enjoying the neat paths, perfectly-planted rows of flowers, and the view of Hohensalzburg Fortress on its hill overlooking the town. The rain that had threatened to fall had changed its mind and I had my umbrella tucked under my arm. I climbed a set of stairs to see what the upper level of the garden looked like, only to encounter a pair of odd statues at the top of the steps. They seemed engaged in some kind of battle/sport/game. Here is the one on the left as you walk across the short bridge:
Dwarf with Spiked Sleeve
Past the bridge stood a whole circle of statues.
I had stumbled onto the delightful Dwarf Garden (Zwergelgarten).
The Dwarf Garden.
To my modern eye, the figures looked like they just stepped out of a fantasy novel or folk tale. Did it feel a bit like I’d walked into a movie set for the Soul Garden series? Just a bit. There are no dwarves in Rod Gray’s catalogue of feelings—though there are gargoyles (looking on with disapproval) and the Gnome of Envy & Jealousy. The gnome is rosy-cheeked and likes to hover, winking, just out of reach. It would have fit right in.
Dwarf with Spade
Later I looked it up and learned that the “oldest dwarf garden in Europe” was created in 1715, originally held 28 marble statues (now down to 17), and that the game played by the pair of dwarves guarding the bridge was called pallone (it’s where the English word balloon comes from.) Also, the sculptures may have been based on real people. If that’s the case, their names have been lost to time. What’s left is a curious bit of history—and a reminder that you never know what you might encounter in a garden, be it real or fictional.
Inbound Book Fair
Save the Date! If you’re in the Twin Cities, I’ll be at the Inbound Book Fair on Saturday, July 11, from 11 am to 7 pm. The event takes place at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand and is shaping up to be a fun one. The organizers, Inbound BrewCo, describe the philosophy behind the event this way:
Remember the thrill of a Scholastic Book Fair as a kid? We’re bringing that nostalgia back, but for grown-ups!
Come and meet local authors, bookish crafters, peruse wares from indie bookstores, all while sipping craft drinks. There’ll also be a silent auction for the Loft Literary Center (I contributed an auction item, a 50 Page Manuscript Critique; hopefully it will bring in a bid or two.)
You can buy tickets here. (There’s a coupon! Use the discount code NEVE20 to receive 50% off any ticket type for up to 10 total tickets. Limit of 4 per order. Code is valid through July 4th. Children 12 and under get in for free.)
You’ll find me with my books and signing pen at Table 20, in the vicinity of one of the entrances and the Loft Literary auction. Hope to see you there!
What I’m Reading
I’ve been enjoying Peggy Townsend’s The Botanist’s Assistant. A suspicious death in a science lab, with an eccentric and likable botanical expert on the case. Next up on my TBR list is Yume Kitasei’s The Deep Sky.
Hope June is treating you well. Thanks for reading,
That Murder Feeling, my mystery set in a snowy small town in Minnesota, is on sale this week as part of a BookBub feature. The book follows a PI who can see people’s emotions as living soul gardens, and who gets pulled into a murder that hits close to home.
That Murder Feeling is discounted to $0.99 on all ebook retailers. Here’s a partial list of places where you can find it:
This is the first time this particular book has gone on sale, so if you’ve been meaning to pick it up, this is the window. Sale ends on Friday, April 23.
In non-book news, here’s Grif the goldendoodle enjoying his favorite activity, a spring walk. (The black smudge on his tongue is natural pigmentation.)
Ears on the move
Thanks, as always, for reading and supporting my work. I appreciate you being here!
Spring is slowly pulling in into Minnesota and all of our snow has melted (for good? for now? who can say.) Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a prequel to That Murder Feeling. It’s not meant to be a full length novel, more “cookie-sized.” When I sat down to outline it, I wasn’t sure where it might end up length-wise but the word count just crossed from novelette territory into novella (17,500 words or above). So novella it is, a bit more than cookie-sized. It’ll be about 90 pages when it’s finished.
Even with an outline, I tend to do a lot of revision and editing. What I used to do — to give myself some distance from the manuscript and enable me to look at it with fresh eyes — is to tweak the font between revisions. Times New Roman to Palatino to Garamond, that kind of thing. It never worked as well as the universally recommended approach, letting the manuscript sit for a month or longer without looking at it or even thinking about the story. But I’m not a fast writer and adding big pauses between drafts is SLOW.
The Green Draft
So with the novella, I’ve been trying this new thing where I change the background color in Microsoft Word’s Immersive Reader between drafts. I like the Immersive mode because you can choose column width and set it to be more like a published book. There’s also an option to change text spacing and have Word read the words back to you. And then there’s the page color.
The new approach, turns out, works well.
For one thing, having a specific, named color gives more of a sense of progress. Done with the Yellow Draft, next up: Green. And so on.
There’s also more of a delineation between drafts, encouraging forward progress. No sneaking back to polish previous chapters. Leave that for Blue.
And it’s just plain fun to choose the colors.
I’m limiting myself to four passes, which might be a lot for some authors, but not so much for me. I like to polish and tweak and move stuff around and debate whether Option A or Option B works better for a character or story line… So it’s good to have a framework. The planned sequence is: Yellow, Green, Blue, Orange, where the read-through gets faster and faster each time.
After that I’ll draw a line under the manuscript. Done. Whoosh. Off it goes to my editor. When it comes back, I’ll make any changes and then there’ll be a final read either on paper or my Kindle.
The prequel story take place about a year before the events in That Murder Feeling. No title yet…Stay tuned for more!
The novella will be part of the Soul Garden Mysteries. Just a reminder, as a subscriber to my author newsletter, you have access to bonus content for the series! Click through to the hidden page on my website.
What I’m Reading
If you’ve been following this newsletter for a while, you’ll know that what I write hovers on the border between SFF and the mystery genre, sometimes falling more one side or the other. The same can be said of the books that I read (with a few other genres thrown in.) The last couple of newsletters I’ve had mysteries to recommend. This month, it’s two science fiction novels.
Lost in Timeby A.G. Riddle. This one has been on my to-be-read list for a while. Based on the cover, I was anticipating a sci-fi thriller but it’s more of a combo of a thriller and an intricate murder mystery, with plenty of twists and time-travel surprises.
The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei. An adventurous, imaginative space quest with plenty of likable and interesting characters. I’m about a third into the book and enjoying it very much.
Let me know if there are any novels you’ve enjoyed lately and want to recommend! (Leave a comment on Substack or reply to the newsletter email.)
Books, Lots of Books
March seems to be kind of a bookish month, in that there are spring sales and promotions everywhere you look. Here are a couple that include some of my books.
The first one—the graphic says it all—is geared toward time travel books.
My box of author copies of That Murder Feeling kept being delayed in shipping but finally arrived earlier this month. I love how that orange looks. It’s not quite so bright as in appears in the photo, more of a weathered, pastel hue.
I’ve mailed off copies of the book to the beta readers who kindly provided feedback on the early drafts — if you are on that list and didn’t get your paperback or ebook copy, let me know!
Huge appreciation to the beta readers and a big shoutout also to the book’s developmental editor, Kristen Weber, and its copy-editor, Shannon Page. I’m grateful for their sharp eye and care. Couldn’t have done it without them.
Signed Books
If you’re in the Twin Cities area, I’ll be signing/selling books at the Rosemount Writers Festival, our local book event here south of the Cities. The festival takes place on Saturday, March 14, 2026 from 9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Hope to see you there!
Order signed copies online! If you would like to order a signed paperback to be mailed to you, I’ve set up a Ko-fi page (pronounced “coffee,” as in “buy your favorite creator a cup of coffee.”) I’ll list books there as I happen to have them in stock, which is to say stacked on a bookshelf in my office. The books on the shelf tend to ebb and flow depending on what events/giveaways are going on. At the moment there are three listed on Ko-fi: That Murder Feeling (Book 1 of the new series), All the Whys of Delilah’s Demise (a standalone novel) and Regarding Ducks and Universes(also a standalone novel).
And don’t forget to let me know if you’d like your copy personalized!
What I’m Reading
I’ve been on a mystery reading stretch the last month or two. Here are a couple of books that I enjoyed:
Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guestsby KJ Whittle. A modern day retelling of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. A page-turner. London as the setting, sharply drawn characters, and an unsettling ending.
My genre-bending whodunit, That Murder Feeling, is out today in ebook and paperback! I’m thrilled to finally have the book out in the world. As you can see in the photo above, Grif the goldendoodle thoroughly checked out the draft copy and approved it. (For scale, the dog is 50-ish pounds and the book is 5.5 by 8.5 inches and 309 pages long.)
I had a lot of fun writing this. Coming up with the various garden elements and creatures to represent each of the (many, so so many) feelings and emotions that made it into the story. Weaving them onto the pages alongside the mystery arc. Wondering if any of it made sense in the end and hoping it did. You can read Chapter One here.
The ebook is available on all platforms. The paperback just went up on Amazon and will appear on other retailers in the next few weeks. I’m working on a way to make signed copies available — more details on that in the next newsletter.
If you’d like to ask your local library to carry the title, the ebook is listed in the OverDrive catalogue and also cloudLibrary. Libraries can order print copiesfromIngramSpark. (ISBNs: ebook 978-1-7366979-2-4 / paperback 978-1-7366979-3-1)
Bonus content for subscribers to this newsletter! Click here for access to a hidden page on my website, where you’ll find a catalogue of all the named feelings and emotions in That Murder Feeling, plus a couple of other things. I recommend waiting until after you’ve finished reading, as there are spoilers.
Hope you have as much fun reading this one as I had writing it.
Seasons greetings, friends! Here we are, the last week of 2025 and the final newsletter of the year.
The wraparound cover for the print version of That Murder Feeling should be arriving in my mailbox any day now. In the meantime, everything’s on track for the January 13 release of the ebook (full list of retailers can be found here) and reviews are starting to trickle in on Goodreads, NetGalley, and elsewhere.
Many thanks to those of you who’ve already read the ARC and posted a review. Much appreciated!
Fellow author Carolynn Gockel also has a book releasing in January, a sci-fi time travel adventure. The ebook is available for preorder on Kindle. It looks to be a fun read and is on my TBR list!
Over on Mastodon, we had a holiday thread going and one of the questions was “Do you have a favorite holiday treat this month?” Everyone had a different answer, from hot chocolate to eggnog to snickerdoodles. In our household, here’s a cookie that’s as much of a Christmas/New Year’s staple as a fir tree. Bear in mind that I have no talent for taking photos of food, but I did my best with the cellphone camera.
Vanilice (Vanilla Cookies)
These are Serbian walnut cookies (vanilice). The recipe listed on Food52 is similar to our family’s, with a few small tweaks: we use butter instead of lard and skip the lemon zest; also, you can order vanilla sugar on Amazon, you don’t have to make your own. The recipe calls for shredded walnuts — you need a nut grinder — but the walnuts found in grocery stores tend to be… not great. We order ours from Tierra Farm and they’re so good I snack on them daily.
The vanilice cookies are delicious with or without the jam filling, traditionally rose hip or apricot. Our 21-year-old loves these, so they never last long in our house!
The Bonsai Collection at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory.
We’re at the tail end of autumn here in Minnesota, with a sprinkling of snow expected in a day or two. I took the photo above a couple of weeks ago outside the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in St. Paul. A short bit of history: the glass-domed Victorian-style garden opened in 1915, sits next door to Como Zoo, and is well worth a visit if you’re in the area.
That’s their bonsai collection, each tree on a shelf of its own, with the weak November sun at its mid-day height. Not sure why but it surprised me to encounter tiny trees sporting fall colors, same as their big cousins a few yards away! Nature is amazing. Below is a photo of the big trees just down the path.
The big trees at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory.
Book News
That Murder Feeling picked up a lovely early review from Readers’ Favorite: “Neve Maslakovic takes the genre and twists it… A unique, original, and charming mystery.” Less than two months to go till release day! If you’re a NetGalley reviewer, you can now access the ARC here.
In backlist news, The Far Time Incident, the first book in my time travel series, is the Monthly Kindle Deal for November. Last few days to grab it at the discounted price…
What I’m Reading
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite. Scifi novella. A fast paced, fun mystery set on a spaceship. The first in a series (Dorothy Gentleman Book 1)
