A Deadly Legacy, Malia Zaidi – Guest Post
Hello and welcome to The Cozy Book Blog by Diane-Lyn! I am so excited to be today’s stop on the virtual
book tour for A Deadly Legacy, the new release by Malia Zaidi. Many thanks to Amy Bruno at Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours for the invite! Keep reading to learn about this intriguing historical mystery novel, and enjoy my special guest post by the author herself! Thank you again for stopping in and enjoy the tour!
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Best, Diane-Lyn
A DEADLY LEGACY BY MALIA ZAIDI
Publication Date: March 15, 2022
Paperback & eBook
Genre: Historical Mystery
Series: A Lady Evelyn Mystery, Book 6
A few months after the Carlisle Detective Agency opened its doors, Lady Evelyn and her partner, Hugh, are twiddling their thumbs. The cases are slow to trickle in, leaving the detectives feeling uninspired. So, when Evelyn’s Aunt Louise asks her to join the local chapter of the Women’s Institute, she has no excuse to decline the invitation. Yet what she expects to be a tedious gathering, turns out to be anything but. She meets former suffragettes and outspoken women, eager for change, forcing Evelyn to reexamine her own prejudices. A decidedly less welcome surprise is the body she comes across only a few days later. Evelyn need hardly be a professional detective to recognize a murder when she sees one. Amid planning her wedding and navigating family affairs, she sets out to solve the case. The investigation takes Evelyn and Hugh into the past, examining the war years, which left the present far from untarnished. Is the victim’s history connected to her death? Could her involvement in the war have given someone a motive for murder? The questions pile up, and Evelyn and Hugh must race against the clock to discover the truth, before more lives are lost, not least, their own…
Guest Post by Author Malia Zaidi
The Struggle of Endless Possibilities
A part of what I love about reading and writing is that it can take you anywhere. New
worlds can be created, characters can be granted inhuman powers, adventure, true
love. There are no limits when it comes to fiction, but for a writer just this endless
opportunity can sometimes prove a bit of a burden.
My books, The Lady Evelyn Mysteries, are part historical fiction, part mystery,
and so they are grounded in facts in terms of setting and period details. However, when
it comes to what the characters do and where the story goes options are far more
unlimited. How to choose a path? For some writers, I know it helps to map out and plan
every chapter, to know precisely where the story will go, for others, outlines feel
constricting, and are ever changing to the point of being entirely useless. My own
process falls somewhere in between. I start with a rough outline, but all the details are
left for me to fill as I write. Sometimes it can be difficult to decide on a path to take and
tempting to veer away from it at times when a different possibility enters the equation.
The endless options can make writing daunting at times, but I find, once I get started, I
get a better feeling of what is right for the story and what isn’t. For my genre, there is
just enough certainty, just enough grounding in a world that already exists or existed,
that I cannot hurl myself too far from the right track. For other genres like fantasy or
science fiction, I imagine choosing a direction is far more challenging. A world that you
create from nothing can be anything, and therefore the story runs the risk of being
overfull. My advice is simply to go with your gut and keep writing. It can be a daunting
task sometimes, especially when your imagination is given completely free reign, but I
believe if a story is going to be told, the author will have a sense for what is right for it.
AMAZON | BARNES AND NOBLE | BOOKS-A-MILLION | INDI
About the Author
Malia Zaidi is the author of The Lady Evelyn Mysteries. She studied at the University of Pittsburgh and at the University of Oxford. Having grown up in Germany, she currently lives in Washington DC, though through her love of reading, she resides vicariously (if temporarily) in countries around the world.
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM
Blog Tour Schedule
Thursday, May 19
Review at Passages to the Past
Monday, May 23
Excerpt at Heidi Reads
Friday, May 27
Excerpt at The Caffeinated Bibliophile
Monday, May 30
Guest Post at The Cozy Book Blog
Tuesday, May 31
Review at Gwendalyn’s Books
Thursday, June 2
Guest Post & Excerpt at Older & Smarter
Saturday, June 4
Review at History from a Woman’s Perspective
Monday, June 6
Excerpt at bookworlder
Thursday, June 9
Excerpt at Coffee and Ink
