Keenan Powell and the Good Things Jar #bookgiveaway

HALLIE EPHRON: I had the great pleasure of reading Keenan Powell's debut novel, DEADLY SOLUTION, and it's a corker! 

Who knew Alaska had mean streets? And the opening, set on one of those mean alleys, grabs the reader by the throat. In Chapter Two we meet a complex, prickly new crime fiction protagonist, attorney Maeve Malloy, and Keenan (an Anchorage attorney) is in her element. It's a seriously good read with compelling ideas to chew on and an ending I didn't see coming. 

So I'm delighted to welcome Keenan as a guest (and newly minted!) author on Jungle Red. She's a writer at the top of her game, talking about how one of life's unexpected complications made her stronger.

KEENAN POWELL: My grandson came to live with my last year, rather abruptly, and it was a period of adjustment for us all. He was twelve years old at the time.

I wanted him to feel my home was his home. So, with help from my oldest daughter, I transformed my periwinkle yoga room into a soft gray mancave, filled it with manly brown bunk bed set and decorated it with Star Wars posters.

He said he would like to wake up to the smell of frying bacon. Who doesn’t? So, I started making a fry-up every morning. Sometimes I’m frying up ground turkey in bacon grease because bacon every day is more sodium than I want in my body, but the smell is what’s important, right?

We created our own traditions, mostly around food because he’s a growing boy. Every Saturday morning, we go to breakfast at Gwennie’s Old Alaska Restaurant, which is stuffed with animal mounts and other Alaskana artifacts. After breakfast, I give him three quarters to drop into the wishing well in the middle of the restaurant which is designed to look like a gold miner’s panning site. 

This photo of Gwennies Old Alaska Restaurant is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Also, I started a “Good Things Jar” which is kept on the kitchen counter next to the coffee pot. The idea is to write down good things that happen on a slip of paper and put them into the jar. Then, if I’m feeling a little sad or stressed, I look at all the good things piled up in the jar. The grandson has joined in too. He’s thankful for the new Star Wars movie.

My notes in the jar include meeting Hank Phillippi Ryan at a Mystery Writers of America University in Seattle a few years ago, learning from her on Facebook about the Malice Domestic grant, winning the grant, using the grant money to go to Book Passages Mystery Writers Conference, consulting with Hallie Ephron and Rhys Bowen at Book Passages, and receiving invaluable critiques from them, and then going on to sign with Level Best Books. 

I have a lot to be thankful for, most especially the generosity of the mystery community.

One of the more recent notes in the Good Things Jar is the January 23, 2018 release of my debut, DEADLY SOLUTIONS. I was twiddling my thumbs in a continuing legal education seminar several years ago when the inspiration for this book hit me like lightening, demanded to be written and led me into this whole new wonderful world of a writer’s life.

HALLIE: We're so happy to welcome you, Keenan! 

Do you have anything like a Good Things Jar in your life? I don't, but I'm starting one now.

Keenan will be giving a copy of her book away to one lucky US-based commenter.

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DeadlySolution

Less than a year after drinking sidelined her career as a public defender in Anchorage, Alaska, Maeve Malloy is asked to defend an Aleut Indian accused of beating another homeless man to death. With no witnesses to the crime and a client who claims to have no knowledge of the night of the murder due to a blackout, the case is stacked against them.

As Maeve works to maintain her sobriety, she and her investigator Tom Sinclair search for answers in homeless camps, roadside bars, and biker gang hangouts. When they uncover more than a few people with motives all their own for wanting the victim dead, they are determined to prove their client's innocence before he is sentenced to a life behind bars for a crime he swears he didn't commit.

When Maeve and Tom discover there may be a link to an unusually high number of deaths among the homeless community, the search is on for a killer hunting among the most vulnerable members of society.   

     

Keenan Powell was born in Roswell, New Mexico, several years after certain out-of-towners visited. Her first artistic endeavor was drawing, which led to illustrating the original Dungeons and Dragons when still in high school.

Her publications include Criminal Law 101 in the June 2015 issue of The Writer magazine and several short stories. She writes the legal column, Ipso Facto, for the Guppies’ newsletter, First Draft, and blogs with the Mysteristas.

She lives, and practices law, in Anchorage, Alaska. When not writing or lawyering, she can be found riding her bike, hanging out with her Irish Wolfhound, studying the concert harp, or dinking around with oil paints. Find her on facebook at www.facebook.com/keenanwrites