Looking for a trio of unforgettable characters who blend mystery, humor, and desert‑wild adventure? This month’s featured stories introduce three headliners—Alexie Linn, Joan Freed, and Sally the Loner—each with their own brand of chaos. From off‑grid living in the Sonoran Desert to ghost‑driven mysteries at Mormon Lake to a rebel life coach trekking from Arizona to the Arctic Circle, these women deliver intrigue, heart, and a dash of supernatural mischief. If you love character‑driven storytelling, cozy mysteries, or memoirs with grit, this month’s lineup is your new favorite rabbit hole.
A Passel of Puzzling People
Three headliners. Three wildly different lives. One author who somehow wrangles them all into stories that feel both impossible and absolutely true.
Every month brings a new batch of characters into the spotlight, but this month’s trio is especially puzzling—in the best possible way. They’re the kind of people who wander into your life, rearrange the furniture, leave you with more questions than answers, and somehow make you grateful for the chaos.
At the center of this passel of puzzling people is Alexie Linn, the author who writes them, survives them, and occasionally swears they write her instead.
But before we get to the rebel life coach, the six‑gun sidekick, the desert aunt, and the ghosts who refuse to mind their own business, let’s start with the woman who began it all.
🌲 Alexie Linn: The Storyteller Who Didn’t Mean to Become an Author
Alexie Linn’s first audience wasn’t human. It was feline.
Her earliest memory of storytelling is lying in a hammock strung between two cherry trees, a handful of kittens sprawled across her lap like tiny, purring critics. She whispered stories to them—tales about mountains, mischief, and imaginary adventures—and the kittens listened with the kind of rapt attention only cats and small children can manage.
But she didn’t call herself an author. Not yet.
That didn’t happen until The Gold Prospector bought and published Jack Post’s Mountain of Gold, a true story that proved her words could travel farther than her backyard. Even then, she didn’t leap into the author life. She tiptoed. She tested. She waited.
It wasn’t until she became an empty‑nester widow—facing quiet mornings, long evenings, and a life that suddenly felt too still—that she got serious about writing books that help people move forward after loss. Not with denial. Not with forced optimism. But with a genuinely happy heart.
Her characters began arriving like unexpected guests. Some knocked politely. Others barged in. And one of them—Joan Freed, the rebel life coach—refused to leave.
But while Alexie was waiting to become a real author, she did some beguiling living.
Alexie’s newest memoir, Alaska: My First Frontier, is scheduled for release on July 31. That date isn’t random. It’s daughter #2’s birthday—more than fifty years ago—and readers of True Tales from the Old Cabin will recognize her antics immediately. Alaska was the frontier Alexie didn’t know she needed, and the memoir captures the years she lived while waiting to become “a real author,” even though she already was one.
Alexie likes her coffee black, her apple cake slightly burnt, and her solitude uninterrupted. Her sidekick is whoever steps up at the moment—neighbors, strangers, readers, or the occasional ghost who refuses to stay politely in the background.
She knows she’s hit the target when a reader says, “A fun, provocative, and interesting story.” And this month, she’s offering three.
🔥 Joan Freed: The Rebel Life Coach Who Coaches Herself Into Trouble
If Alexie is the storyteller, Joan Freed is the wildfire.
Joan didn’t just rebel against societal norms—she rejected them with gusto. Fixed offices? No thank you. High heels? Absolutely not. Business suits? Only if they come with pockets big enough for snacks, a compass, and a spare flashlight.
She believes people need help where they are, even if “where they are” happens to be a tent, a trailhead, or the back of a pickup truck. She camps more than she commutes. She hikes more than she networks. And she has coached clients in places most life coaches wouldn’t dare to visit without a liability waiver.
Her sidekick, six‑gun‑totin’ Jenny Crawford, joined the chaos in book five (Elaine the Hoarder). Jenny is the kind of woman who can fix a flat tire, shoot a rattlesnake, and bake a pie without breaking a sweat. Together, Joan and Jenny have survived dust storms, questionable diners, and clients who should probably come with warning labels.
This month’s featured story, The Aurora Borealis Affair, yanks Joan and Jenny from the Sonoran Desert to the Arctic Circle and back again. It’s a tale filled with surprises—some delightful, some dangerous, and one that involves an amnesiac southern belle who somehow ends up crashed in Joan’s bed. She’s discovered after Joan and Jenny return from a hike.
Joan insists this was not on her itinerary.
She drinks her coffee black, her yogurt straight from the jar, and her nature wild and unfiltered. She is happiest when the wind is loud, the trail is long, and the next mystery is waiting just around the bend.
Click here to grab the free Prequel to the Joan Freed Mystery/Adventure Series.
🌵 Sally the Loner: The Desert Aunt Who Attracts Trouble Like a Magnet
And then there’s Sally the Loner—Joan’s spunky, wise, desert‑dwelling aunt who attracts misadventures the way porch lights attract moths.
Sally lives alone in an off‑grid adobe igloo two miles down the road from niece Joany and half a mile from a quirky community that generates more mysteries than rainfall. Her ghostly mother drops by for tea—despite having died twenty years ago—and Sally accepts this with the same shrug she gives to rattlesnakes and unexpected visitors.
She is the second natural spin‑off from the Joan Freed Series, and she arrived fully formed: stubborn, sharp‑eyed, and absolutely uninterested in living a normal life.
Before marauders tore her home to smithereens one summer, Sally called herself a Sunbird. Every July and August, she escaped the oppressive monsoon season by migrating to Mormon Lake, just south of Flagstaff. She’d been doing it for years—even after retiring from her job at the lodge.
But finding a safe place to park her van grew harder each year. Too many rules. Too many campers. Too many people who didn’t understand the sacred art of minding their own business.
So, she answered a Craigslist ad.
That ad led to The Mysterious Mistresses of Mormon Lake Lodge, book four in her series. The ad—naturally—was placed by three ghosts who needed their murder solved before they could pass on. Sally didn’t want the job, but her ghostly mother had told the ladies Sally would do the job. And who can win an argument with their long‑dead mother?
Sally wakes at 2 a.m. without an alarm, drinks her coffee black, bakes sourdough that could win awards, and prefers living alone—except when the universe decides otherwise.
Her life is a blend of desert silence, unexpected visitors, ghostly demands, and mysteries that seem to find her whether she’s looking for them or not.
Click here to get the free Prequel to the Sally the Loner Series.
🌟 Why These Three? Why Now?
Because they’re connected—not just by the author who writes them, but by the themes that run through their stories:
- Resilience
- Reinvention
- Mystery
- Humor in the face of chaos
- The stubborn belief that life can still surprise you
Alexie writes characters who don’t wait for permission. They wander into trouble. They wander out of it. They make choices that are messy, brave, questionable, and occasionally supernatural.
They remind readers that life is rarely tidy—and that’s exactly what makes it interesting.
🌄 A Month of Mystery, Mischief, and Frontier Spirit
This month’s featured stories highlight three corners of Alexie’s storytelling world:
- Alaska: My First Frontier — a memoir of becoming, belonging, and surviving the wild.
- The Aurora Borealis Affair — a rebel life coach adventure that stretches from desert heat to Arctic cold.
- The Mysterious Mistresses of Mormon Lake Lodge — a ghost‑driven mystery that proves the dead have deadlines too.
Together, they form a tapestry of puzzling people—each one flawed, fascinating, and impossible to forget.
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