ReGina Welling - Meet the Author ????

Hi,

I thought I’d take a moment to introduce myself. I’m ReGina Welling, and I write cozy mysteries, some paranormal, some not, all with humor, some with a touch of romance, some by myself, some with my writing partner and daughter, Erin Lynn who is also a Sleuthing Women author.

 Well, there, that about sums it up, so I’ll be off.

No? You want to know more?

Okay, well, then. Here goes.

I’m originally from a tiny, tiny town in Maine…like fewer than three hundred people live there. I married a sailor and moved around a bit. Mostly to Norfolk and then back to Maine while my husband was out to sea. During the past thirty and something years I’ve been married to my second husband, we’ve moved back and forth from his hometown of Syracuse, NY to various towns in Maine before settling permanently in three lovely acres in the back of beyond.

Seriously, if you put my address into GPS, most of them will tell you to turn left into the field down the road from us because that’s where Google’s map car turned around. Don’t do that, by the way, the field is on private property, and the owner will look at you funny.

Anyway, it’s nice here in the woods. We have deer that come and visit just about every day in the winter, and we see the occasional fox, plus a rafter of turkeys wanders through now and then. Isn’t rafter a funny word to describe a group of birds? If anyone had asked me when it was time to come up with a name for that, I’d have gone with yurkle. A yurkle of turkeys. Sound good to me, but nobody did.

Our dog has a love/hate relationship with the deer every winter. We get mostly the same ones, some of them we’ve watched as they grew from fawn to doe or buck, and there’s one we call Sad Eyes. He isn’t remotely scared of the dog and will stand just a few feet past the perimeter of the dog’s lead to taunt Dash with his disdain.

Another denizen of our neck of the woods is the bald eagle that soars over my backyard from time to time. He and his mate live somewhere near the river, which isn’t too far from my house. He shows up and gives me a dip of his wing but can often be found sitting in a high tree at the end of our road, watching the turkeys eat birdseed put out by the neighbor down there. He’s never around when I have my camera with me, but I live in anticipation of that one shining moment when he shows up and lets me get a shot of him.

We also have mutant tractor mice in our yard. My husband calls them that because they like to build nests in the motor of our lawn tractor. Or, they did until we found something that keeps them out. Mouse nests are NOT good for lawn tractor motors. They’re not good for boat motors, either. Also, and I know this from experience, mice don’t like boat rides.

Also, from experience, I can attest that trying to remove said mouse from said boat takes three grown adults. Okay, two adults who are trying and one who is laughing her butt off at them. I’ll leave you to decide which one of those adults was me.

Please note no mice were injured in the boat ride debacle. He went overboard right near the shore, and we watched him swim and scamper back onto dry land. Had he begun to flounder, we would have saved him. I only kill in fiction. We check the motor now, before we leave the house, though.

Let’s sum up.

ReGina Welling writes books, lives in Maine, and runs boat tours for mice.

What else, you ask?

Hmm. Let’s see.

There’s a scene in Ghost Mortem involving a bee and two women in kayaks. That scene was based on a real-life kayak trip with my daughter. We were paddling along on Sebec lake, just minding our own business and enjoying some peace, when a bee decided we might be flowers.

We’re not, just in case you were wondering.

Sniffing us did not satisfy the bee’s curiosity, so it began a very effective harassment campaign on us. From the shore, I’m certain we looked certifiable as we circled each other, flipping water with our paddles to try and convince the bee to leave. We might have also taken off our life jackets and waved them around a bit.

I almost wish someone had done a video.

Again, no bees were hurt in the making of this story. The little jerk finally got the hint and flew away, but he bedeviled us for a solid ten minutes first and spent a considerable time crawling around in my hair. I was not a fan. I’m allergic, so I know to sit still if a bee lands on me. And I love bees, so I don’t hurt them if I can help it. Don’t want the little buggers in my hair. But I digress.

Hi, I’m ReGina Welling, I take mice for boat rides, do not hurt bees, and I write books.

Oh, and ReGina is my middle name, and it is spelled with a capital G. There’s more, too. On official documents, it’s spelled like this: Ré Gina…with the accent mark and the space, and everything.

So, there you go. I have a weirdly spelled name, drive a boat taxi for mice, participate in bee-driven kayak gymnastics, and I write books.

Speaking of the books, half my family thinks they’re the inspiration for at least one of my characters. Truth is, only one of them was actually inspired by anyone in my family, and that is Estelle, the ghostly grandmother in the Psychic Seasons books. She’s a combination of my two grandmothers and my mother-in-law. None of them are around today to know they’ve been immortalized in ink, but I’m sure they’d be okay with it.

That’s my time for today. Maybe next time, I’ll tell you about the bat in my aunt’s camp. *hint…no bats died in the making of that story, either.

Blessed be,

ReGina Welling

To learn more about me or my books, you can follow me on Amazon or Bookbub, or you can join my readers group on Facebook, or by email.