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A Letter from B. B. Haywood
Dear Reader,
Imagine this: Twenty-five acres of blueberry fields in
Downeast Maine. A vegetable garden, fifteen chickens, one
Halloween-born sleuth and her retired professor dad, a
slew of quirky townspeople, and a collection of
mouthwatering blueberry recipes. Add it all up, and you
have Town in a Blueberry Jam, the first book in a
new cozy mystery series, which takes place in the coastal
village of Cape Willington, Maine.
Candy Holliday is the novel’s amateur sleuth. Along
with her father, Henry “Doc” Holliday, she
runs Holliday’s Blueberry Acres, a working blueberry
farm located on the outskirts of town.
Candy is joined in her mystery-solving adventures by her
best friend, Maggie Tremont. Together, they try to solve
two murders that have rocked Cape Willington—and
they find themselves in a life-and-death struggle in the
story’s climax.
As you’ll see in the book, Cape Willington has its
fair share of quirky individuals, from gossip columnist
Sapphire Vine to red-haired playboy Jock Larson to German
baker Herr Georg Wolfsburger. The town also has its time-
honored traditions, such as the annual Blueberry Festival
and the Blueberry Queen pageant, which take place in late
summer. These events figure prominently in the story, and
were a lot of fun to write.
You’ll find clues to the mystery along the way, but
you’ll have to keep your eyes open, since there are
a few twists.
You’ll also find out a little bit about blueberry
farming and cooking with blueberries, and you’ll get
a chance to “explore” many of Cape
Willington’s charming sites. You’ll take a
stroll down Main Street, stop in at the Main Street Diner
for a bite to eat, and catch up on the local news with Doc
Holliday and “the boys”—his three best
buddies. You’ll pay a visit to the Black Forest
Bakery, where Herr Georg makes authentic German pastries.
You’ll head down Ocean Avenue to the historical
Pruitt Opera House, visit wealthy Helen Ross Pruitt at her
mansion on the point, and drive the coastal loop for
beautiful views and a breath of fresh, salty sea air.
Writing this book was a family project for us. It was
written under the pseudonym B. B. Haywood by Robert and
Beth Feeman, while living just a mile or so from the
rugged Maine coast. Our two children contributed to
portions of the book, and as a family we talked about the
story often during its early development.
The series took shape over a number of months, and even
years, as we explored the small towns in Maine and
throughout New England, from the rocky coast in the east
to placid Lake Champlain and green Vermont in the west.
Many of the places we visited gave us inspiration and
ideas. In creating the story, we combined the real with
the fictitious, and came up with a cast of characters and
a town we have grown to love.
We will continue to expand and explore Cape Willington
with each new book, and we’ll continue to write
about its quirky and (we hope) fascinating characters. We
have big plans for future books in the Candy Holliday
Murder Mystery Series, and look forward to writing them.
We hope you’ll look forward to reading them as well!
B. B. Haywood
(aka Robert and Beth Feeman)
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