Virtual Book Tour & Giveaway: Murder at Leisure Dreams - Galapagos (Giovanna Rogers Mysteries, #2) by Sharon Marchisello

 

Murder at Leisure Dreams - Galapagos 

Giovanna Rogers Mysteries

by

Sharon Marchisello

About Murder at Leisure Dreams: Galapagos

 

Murder at Leisure Dreams - Galapagos (Giovanna Rogers Mysteries)
Mystery
2nd in Series
Setting - Galapagos
Publisher: Milford House Press
Publication date: June 26, 2025
Print length: 340 pages
Digital ASIN: B0FFR9Y2GW

Giovanna Rogers restarts her career as expatriate manager of the new Leisure Dreams resort hotel on Santa Cruz Island in the Galapagos. Due to her youth and limited proficiency in Spanish, she struggles to gain the respect of her staff and the company’s executives. She has to prove to them that she got the job because of merit, not because the CEO is a family friend. And prove to herself that she can overcome a past business failure and make the hotel a success.

When the story opens, Giovanna and her staff prepare for the hotel's grand opening. Friends, family, and corporate bigwigs fly in for the event. Renowned documentary producer Claire Costello and her film crew have arrived; Giovanna has the staff send a bottle of champagne to Claire's room to welcome the VIP guest. The next morning, Claire is found dead in her bed; the cause of death is apparent poisoning. Now Giovanna must work with her boyfriend, local police detective Victor Zuniga, to solve the case while juggling the details of the grand opening and controlling the narrative around the mysterious demise of a VIP guest on the property.

Complications in her relationship arise when Giovanna’s ex-boyfriend decides to join her family to attend the grand opening. Her best friend and several of her employees have a history with Claire. And Claire’s team is somewhat dysfunctional, keeping secrets and telling contradictory stories. Despite Giovanna’s efforts to maintain normalcy and apprehend the culprit, things continue to worsen.

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Author Guest Post

Please welcome Sharon Marchisello, the author of today's featured book, to the blog with this special guest post just for us!

Sharon, thank you for being here today!

Plotting a Mystery Like a Pantser

by Sharon Marchisello

Writers often say we are divided into plotters and pantsers. Plotters develop an outline before they begin writing. The level of detail varies considerably, but they basically know where they are going: where the major turning points in the story will be, who the characters are, what the climax will be, and of course, the ending. Pantsers, sometimes known as “discovery writers,” just start typing. They often don’t know from one day to the next how the story will turn out. I’m a pantser, and it’s maddening.

I wish I were a plotter. I created and followed an outline when I wrote my nonfiction book, Live Well, Grow Wealth, and the writing process was so easy! I wish I could transfer those skills to my fiction projects, but I’ve tried and failed miserably.

However, when writing a murder mystery, especially a simple whodunnit, some of the plotting is standard issue, almost fill-in-the-blank. Someone dies, usually near the beginning, and most likely, the cause is murder. A sleuth, usually a main character if not the protagonist, solves the case by the end of the book. And of course, there are suspects: characters with means, motive, and/or opportunity. Hopefully, enough to challenge the sleuth and make the story interesting for the reader. Sometimes, a second death occurs at the mid-point, and it’s often one of the main suspects, which can send the sleuth back to the drawing board or in another direction.

That still leaves a lot of work for the author, many questions to answer before you begin (if you’re a plotter) or while you’re writing (if you’re a pantser). Who is the victim? How did the person die? Why would someone kill them? And how? Who is the sleuth? If the sleuth is an amateur, how and why does she get involved? What’s at stake if she can’t solve the crime?

For my most recent mystery, Murder at Leisure Dreams – Galapagos, I pulled my protagonist from a previous novel, Secrets of the Galapagos, so her character was already developed. Giovanna Rogers is the manager of the new Leisure Dreams resort hotel just outside Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. She’s dating Victor Zuniga, a local police detective, so it made sense that a murder would happen in her hotel, and she’d work with Victor on the investigation.

Since the hotel is new, it needed to have a grand opening, bringing in outsiders, lots of people in close proximity, creating pressure for Giovanna and her staff. The murder occurs only a few days before the big event. Giovanna’s career is on the line; she wants everything to be perfect and for her guests to feel safe.

To up the stakes, I made the victim a VIP guest. Claire Costello is an American documentary producer who plans to use the hotel as a base while shooting her next nature film. One of my beta readers thought Claire seemed more like a movie star than a real documentary producer, so I leaned in to that aspect rather than change her character. She’s accompanied by a dysfunctional crew and has a history with some of the locals, including hotel employees.

How to kill her? I don’t claim any knowledge of firearms, and many readers are gun experts who are quick to call out an author for a mistake, so I wasn’t going to tackle death by gunshot.

Poison has always fascinated me. When I became a Master Gardener in 2014, I learned that many common, easily accessible plants can be highly toxic. During the pandemic, I attended a Sisters in Crime webinar featuring Luci Zahray, a retired pharmacist with a master's degree in toxicology, who is known as “The Poison Lady.” She gave a fascinating presentation tailored to mystery writers who want to kill people (on the page, of course) by poison. I was sold. Claire would die by poison.

My online research led me to the manzanillo (also known as manchineel), which is the only toxic plant indigenous to the Galapagos. (Not unique to the islands, it’s also found in the Caribbean, Central America, and even southern Florida.) I put a tree on the Leisure Dreams property. Every part of the plant is toxic, especially the fruit—the poison apples. Cool fact: although ingesting the apples can kill a human, they don’t bother the giant Galapagos tortoises, who like to snack on them.

I reached out to Luci via Facebook, and she gave me her email address. During the year I spent writing my first draft, I pelted her with questions about the plant and its active toxin, physostigmine. She was a wealth of knowledge and added much depth to the plot.

To keep track of my suspects, I created an Excel spreadsheet with a timeline for the night Claire drank the poisoned champagne. Each character who was present at the hotel that night had a column where I tracked their movements. Then I created another tab with a line for each character with a description, role, and possible motive, means, and opportunity.

I was pretty confident I knew whodunnit—until it was almost time for Victor to arrest the culprit. Then, I realized the person’s motive wasn’t strong enough to commit murder. My perp was innocent! So, it was back to the spreadsheet to study the other characters’ motives and figure out who really did the crime.

I guess if I were a plotter, I wouldn’t encounter these problems.

I share my first drafts chapter by chapter with my critique groups, which sometimes saves me from heading down disastrous, dead-end paths. Often, they’ll tell me, “This is great! I can’t wait to see what happens next.” And I think, yeah, me too.

About Sharon Marchisello

SHARON MARCHISELLO is the author of two other mysteries published by Milford House, the fiction imprint of Sunbury Press: Going Home (2014) and Secrets of the Galapagos (2019), which is the prequel to Murder at Leisure Dreams – Galapagos. She also writes the DeeLo Myer Cat Rescue Mysteries from Level Best Books. Besides novels, Sharon has published short stories in anthologies and online magazines; one was a 2022 Derringer finalist. She has written travel articles, training manuals, screenplays, book reviews, and a nonfiction book (Live Well, Grow Wealth - 2018). She earned a bachelor’s degree in French from the University of Houston and a master’s in professional writing from the University of Southern California. She is an active member of Sisters in Crime, the Atlanta Writers Club, and the Hometown Novel Writers Association. Retired after 27 years with Delta Air Lines, Sharon now lives in Peachtree City, Georgia. She serves on the boards of the Fayette Humane Society, Hometown Novel Writers Association, and the Friends of the Peachtree City Library. She loves to travel, including a trip to the Galapagos Islands in 2014.

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