I’d like to welcome the fabulous Molly MacRae to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday!

Things you need for your writing sessions: My laptop or a writing implement (pen, pencil, crayon, paintbrush, stick, gouging tool, pudding, spaghetti sauce, melted chocolate, etc., though preferably not blood) and one of my notebooks or any scrap of paper or surface.

Things that hamper your writing: Life – it’s a constant tussle between the two, but the tussle will continue because I don’t plan to give up on either one anytime soon.

A few of your favorite things: Books, my husband’s paintings, pictures of my family, office supplies, craft and art supplies, Ghirardelli’s dark chocolate chips,

Things you need to throw out: Old shoes at the bottom of the closet, cardboard boxes stacked in the basement (some of them for years) because they look so useful, some junk in the basement and the garage (and I’ve found a junk hauler – hooray!)

Favorite foods: Dishes with basil (including basil ice cream), ginger, chickpeas, cilantro, cheese, mango, avocado, and chocolate.

Things that make you want to gag: Rice Krispies treats, oatmeal raisin cookies, any kind of drink like Kool Aid, Hawaiian Punch, of Gatorade.

Something you’re really good at: Cat whispering

Something you’re really bad at: Dusting and weeding

Things you always put in your books: Places I’ve lived and don’t get to visit as often as I’d like.

Things you never put in your books: Characters I wouldn’t want to know (although I’m suspicious of the villains).

Things you’d walk a mile for: Almost anything (we live within a mile of the library, grocery stores, drugstore, ice cream shop, hair cutter, park, hardware store, bakery)

Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: fun house mirrors (they give me vertigo)

Favorite places you’ve been: Ocracoke Island, Washington Island, Iona (another island), Scotland, upper east Tennessee.

Places you never want to go to again: That one lane track that petered out on the edge of Buffalo Mountain in Tennessee, with the sheer drop on the driver’s side and the solid rock of the mountain on the passenger side, in the stick shift with 4 kids in the back and no place – no place – to turn around. I’ll be happy to walk up the mountain, though. Nice place.

Favorite things to do: Read, read to the grandchildren, write, cook, work crossword puzzles, walk, relax in the screen tent in the backyard.

Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing: Dusting or weeding regularly.

The nicest thing a reader said to you: “Thank you for the honor of being part of your writing world. You are amazing!”

The craziest thing a reader said to you: “Do you mention any antique dental equipment in your books?”

Some real-life story that made it to one of your books: When I managed a small independent bookstore an extremely frustrated parent came in looking for a book on their high school student’s summer reading list. They’d tried the library and the other bookstore and no one, NO ONE, had even heard of the author Evan Fromen. I went to a shelf and brought back a copy of Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton and they went away happy. That made it into Lawn Order, a mystery with Margaret Welch, who’s a bookseller, and her sister Bitsy, who’s annoying.

Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not: Knitting skill. My skill lies only in knitting flat rectangular things.

About Molly:

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” In addition to the Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries, Molly writes the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch she writes books for Annie’s Fiction and Guideposts. Molly’s short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction.

Let’s Be Social:

Website http://www.mollymacrae.com/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/molly.macrae.9/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mollymacraewriter/

Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/MollyMacRae/

X https://x.com/MysteryMacRae