Granny Hooks a Crook by Julie Seedorf – Review + Guest Post

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Granny Hooks a Crook by Julie Seedorf
A Fuschia Minnesota Mystery
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Published by: Cozy Cat Press (July 10, 2013)

Granny leads a secret life in the small, unique community of Fuschia, Minnesota. It’s not just her all junk food diet, multiplying pets, or her shocking bedtime attire that makes Granny one in a million. No, Granny is an undercover cop, charged by “the Big Guy” (the town’s police chief) of preventing theft in local stores. Granny takes her job seriously and daily foils many shoplifters using her trusty spiked umbrella and amazing acting skills. When some startlingly brazen burglaries begin to occur that Granny can’t solve, along with mysteriously appearing bad guys, disappearing clerks, and misplaced Corvettes, Granny begins to wonder if she isn’t ready for the wrinkle farm. Maybe, it’s fortuitous when she accidentally-on-purpose falls in the lap of an attractive older gentleman who is soon roped into her wild adventures, as they try to figure out what’s happening in their little town.

My Review

Granny is funny, sassy and mischievous. Granny is an undercover sleuth of sorts in her quirky little town. She goes in the shops each day and checks for shoplifters. While she is doing her sleuthing, some crazy burglaries begin to happen, along with kidnappings. Granny feels like she may be going crazy, or, as she calls it, ready to go to the wrinkle farm, as more and more strange occurrences happen.

If you like funny cozy mysteries, especially those with older sleuths, this is a story you should check out. I enjoyed it!

About the Author

DSC_0358Julie Seedorf owns her own computer repair business, but her secret undercover job is writing. Her column “Something About Nothing” for a Minnesota newspaper is about nothing, which is what we talk about most of the time, always with something underneath the conversation. Julie has been a wife, mother, grandmother, housewife, barmaid, salesperson, activity director, full time volunteer and more. Her motto is, “If you dream it, you can do it.” Her Fuchsia Minnesota, published by Cozy Cat Press is her first journey in her undercover career. Having lived in small communities in Minnesota all her life, she knows the richness and uniqueness that only a small town can bring and with a little humor and imagination, she transforms those experiences into her imaginary Fuchsia community.

Webpage: http://www.julieseedorf.com
Twitter: @julieseedorf
Blog: http://www.sprinklednotes.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sprinklednotes
Column: http://www.albertleatribune.com

Guest Post

Today I’d like to welcome Julie Seedorf to Brooke Blogs. Hi Julie! Thanks so much for stopping by today to share Granny and a guest post. Happy to have you here. 🙂

I was wrong. I will admit I was wrong. After all, Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is coming, shopping has started and……maybe if I actually admit I was wrong to my spouse, Santa might be good to me.
I got new glasses this week, just in time to start my Christmas shopping. I can actually see the price on the tags now without squinting and taking my glasses off. It is amazing how much I thought I was seeing but wasn’t.

That is where the “I will admit that I might have been wrong occasionally” comes in. You see I have been a little crabby when my spouse helps me clean. He tells me he cleans something and I know he has, such as wiping down the kitchen counters and the stove. Things get missed. I have been a little crabby because he cannot see close up without glasses. He doesn’t like glasses so he doesn’t wear any close up glasses so he can see. I have told him that possibly he should wear glasses so he could actually see what he was missing. I will admit now, I will admit now, yes, I will. It’s very hard to do. I will admit that I possibly was seeing challenged too. Can you imagine if I was seeing what he missed and I am seeing challenged too, what people might have seen when they came to our house? I thought we cleaned and they saw all we missed.

I realized my mistake the minute I walked in my door with my new glasses and looked at my hardwood floor. I had thought it looked good with the old glasses. With my new glasses I knew I had some polishing to do and some scratches to fix. I knew that I had been wrong in harassing my husband about putting his glasses on. I had mine on and didn’t know what I couldn’t see.

I have a new wrinkle cream that I love. I thought it was working great. It maybe is, but I don’t know what I have looked like before the wrinkle cream, because with my new glasses I now know why people have been looking at me strangely when I have told them the wrinkle cream was working. It is possible the wrinkle cream was working because my eyes were getting worse, and that was the reason the wrinkles were disappearing. If the wrinkle cream is working and it might be, I don’t know what my wrinkles looked like before, when I was viewing my vision in the mirror with my old glasses.

I have also been accused of being comma challenged. Perhaps it is because my eyes in my old spectacles had me putting in periods where a comma was supposed to be. My hands would slip on my keyboard and hit the period and my eyes would tell me it was a comma. I could use the same excuse when it came to editing my writing and my books. My squinty eyes missed the mistakes. I have to admit that sounds like an excuse that Granny from my book Granny Hooks a Crook book would use. The problem now is that I don’t have an excuse.

Granny (Hermiony Criony Fidalia Middlestadt, would think of some outrageous reason that she was making mistakes. For instance, Fuchsia, Minnesota is spelled Fuchsia. But Granny sometimes spells it Fucschia. Look at the cover of the book. It is no mistake that Fuchsia is spelled two ways. At least that is what Granny says in the second Fuchsia, Minnesota series due out soon. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually after all is said and done and Granny meets the the Biggest Big Guy of them all, our creator, that she misspells something on her tombstone too. She already has it written and she would find an excuse even if she is six feet under. Don’t worry, I have it on good authority that Granny is going to be around for a long time.

Perhaps in my stubbornness I am like my character in my book. Granny has many traits I admire and many traits that are like mine that drive others crazy, such as being too stubborn to see what was right before my eyes. Things were, undeniably different, than what I was seeing with my old glasses. It also made it hard for me to admit that I might be wrong about something.That also is a trait that I share with Granny.

I now can see those tags on the presents that will be under my Christmas tree. I can no longer open someone else’s gift by a pretend mistake with the excuse that I couldn’t read the tag. I would never have admitted it looked like an interesting gift and my curiosity got the better of me.

By the way, in you talk to my husband and family, you didn’t hear me admit that I am more like Granny than I thought, because Granny mimics some the things my mother used to do.I always vowed I would never be like my mother. My husband states from time to time: “You are just like your mother,” when he is exasperated by some of the stubborn things I do. Admitting that I am like Granny is admitting I am like my mother, and that would make him right. He can’t be right twice in one blog.

There is a saying: there is none so blind as those who will not see. It means you cannot make someone pay attention to something he or she does not notice. That was me. I didn’t notice I needed glasses, or I wouldn’t admit to the fact

That happens to us in life, especially at this time of year. What are you blind to this time of year? What is right in front of you that you could not see? Granny is going to open her eyes this season. Will you join her?

Excerpt

Granny didn’t always like to get up in the morning. It seemed a waste of a good bed to get out of it so early in the morning. First, Granny would wallow in the warmth. She would squirm a little and enjoy the softness of the mattress. Granny would then open one eye to see if it was light yet. If it appeared that the sun was up, she would open the other eye very slowly, not wanting to get too excited. Getting up too fast always made her head spin.

Granny would then stick her big toe out of the blanket, trying to determine the weather. Her big toe was a good barometer. If it started turning blue, she knew it was cold and her toe was going to throb on and off for the day. If it stayed red, Granny knew that it would be a good day for her flip flops, even though she wasn’t supposed to be wearing them. Her kids harassed her about wearing her flip flops, something about not walking properly and being at risk of falling. She couldn’t make them understand that at her age she was always at risk for falling, so why not live dangerously in her flip flops.

Granny always looked around first before attempting the final lift out of her bed. She had to make sure there weren’t any kids or grandkids visiting before she threw off the covers. At her age it was easy to forget if her kids and grandkids had stayed over. Occasionally, she forgot they were there even before she climbed into bed. It didn’t bother her that her memory was a little foggy. It was a good excuse to use when she needed to get out of something she didn’t want to do, or if she got caught somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.

Usually, if Granny remembered before she went to bed that her kids and grandkids stayed over, she would dress in her granny gown pajamas. It was what they expected of someone her age and she didn’t want to ruin their expectations. But when Granny was by herself, she occasionally slept in the nude and occasionally she wore her hot pink, silk shortie nightgown with red hearts on it. Or she might wear her purple leather PJ’s that stated Sexy Granny and I Know It.

Granny’s secret PJ’s always made her smile before she went to bed. It made the creaky body and the saggy skin feel better. She still felt like that sexy granny inside. Her mind never did keep up with her body.

There were times her kids would visit unexpectedly in the morning and have breakfast waiting for Granny when she stumbled into the kitchen from her warm bed. She could see the horror on their faces if they caught her in anything other than her granny pajamas. She would be sent to the wrinkle farm faster than she could lose her flip flops.

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I received an electronic version of the book in exchange for my fair and honest review. No compensation was received and my opinion was not influenced in any way. This post contains affiliate links.

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