You Can't Get Blood Out of a Shag Carpet by Juliette Harper Blog Tour and Giveaway

Welcome to the blog tour of You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet by Juliette Harper! This is the first book in A Study Club Mystery series and it's now available for sale on Amazon and Smashwords for only .99 cents!
This tour runs June 15-26 with reviews, interviews, guest posts and excerpts. Check out the tour page for the full schedule.

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About the Book:
Wanda Jean Milton discovers her husband, local exterminator Hilton Milton, dead on her new shag carpet with an Old Hickory carving knife sticking out of his chest. Beside herself over how she’ll remove the stain, and grief-stricken over Hilton’s demise, Wanda Jean finds herself the prime suspect in the case. But she is also a member of “the” local Study Club, a bastion of independent Texas feminism 1960s style. Club President Clara Wyler has no intention of allowing a member to be a murder suspect during her administration. Aided by her younger sister and County Clerk, Mae Ella Gormley; Sugar Watson, the proprietress of Sugar’s Style and Spray; and Wilma Schneider, Army MASH veteran and local RN, the Club women set out to clear Wanda Jean’s name — never guessing the local dirt they’ll uncover in the process.

Only .99 cents at

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Excerpt;

D.T. Armstrong offered the weeping woman a tissue and then said, “Can you tell us what happened yesterday, Wanda Jean?”

Wanda Jean dabbed at her eyes with the tissue and tried to compose herself. Sniffling loudly, she launched into an account of the previous day. The morning started like any other at the Milton household. Hilton got up early to mix his chemicals for work. As the owner of Hilton Milton’s Pest Service, he was proud of his ad slogan, “Hilton Milton Kilt’em.” He took pains to ensure his pesticides were top-shelf poison, equally effective against all varieties of Texas creepy crawlies.

“We had breakfast together,” Wanda Jean said, “and then I had to go to the grocery store to get hamburger because today is Study Club.”

D.T. frowned, “What does hamburger have to do with Study Club?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, D.T.,” Clara snapped. “We’re at Club until after five. If the husbands want to eat, they fire up the grill. I know you’re an old bachelor, but use your brain.”

“My mistake,” D.T. said, holding his hands up placatingly. “Go on, Wanda Jean.”

“Well, that’s it,” she said. “I went to the store and got the ground round and came home and found Hilton dead in the living room.” She turned to Clara and added earnestly, “Barker’s got a good price on the hamburger, Clara.”

“Darn it,” Clara said, “I don’t have any place to refrigerate it before I head back to the ranch.”

“If Lester will let me go home,” Wanda Jean said, “you can put it in my refrigerator.”

D.T. cleared his throat to steer the conversation back on track. Both women turned toward him. “Wanda Jean, can you tell me what you saw when you walked in the door?”

“Well,” she said, “usually I’d go in through the kitchen, but Hilton had all his sprayer stuff out there on the porch and I don’t really care for the smell of DDT, so I used the front door and there was Milton laying there on my new shag carpet. The stain was just awful,” she finished, her voice breaking.

“And you say it was a carving knife?” D.T. asked. “Was it one of yours?”

“It was my best Old Hickory,” she said. “The one we use at Thanksgiving with the turkey.”

“Now, Wanda Jean,” D.T. said, clearing his throat, “you’ve hired me so we have something called attorney-client privilege. That means you can tell me the truth and I have to keep it just between us. Did you kill Hilton?”

“No, D.T.,” she said, without blinking. “I didn’t.”

“Okay,” he said. “You tell Lester what you told me and nothing else. I’ll be sitting right there with you, but you just tell the same story. Since you’ve already been arrested, we’re gonna have to get you out on bail. Can you afford that?”

Wanda Jean shook her head and whispered, “No.”

“I can afford it,” Clara said, reaching for the phone. “Just let me tell Clint I’m gonna spend the money.”

With purposeful strokes, she dialed the number to the ranch. When Clint Wyler came on the line she said, by way of greeting, “Clint, I need bail money.” Then, after a pause, she added, “No, it’s not for me. Don’t be ridiculous. I need to take the money out of the First National Bank to pay Wanda Jean Milton’s bail.”

Another pause.

“Murdering her husband,” Clara said.

Still another pause, broken by Clara’s exasperated words, “Clint Wyler, if I thought she did it, would I be paying her bail? I have no idea what it’s going to cost. I’ll let you know. We’re trying to take care of this and get to Study Club at 3 o’clock. Don’t forget to stir those beans I left on the stove.”

She returned the receiver to the cradle with a resounding thump and said, “Okay, D.T., we’re good on bail. Now can we please get a move on here? Wanda Jean and I have to get to Club.”

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About the author:

Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti and Rana K. Williamson. You Can’t Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet is the first installment of Harper’s debut cozy Study Club Mysteries, an hilariously funny look at the often absurd eccentricities of small town life. The second book, to be released in coming months, is called You Can’t Put a Corpse in a Parade.

The droll series, set in the 1960s, is a light-hearted spinoff of Harper’s Lockwood Legacy a nine-book chronicle of the lives of three sisters who inherit a ranch in Central Texas following their father’s suicide. Three of the novels are currently available: Langston’s Daughters, Baxter’s Draw, and Alice’s Portrait. The fourth book, Mandy’s Father, will appear in Summer 2015.

And don’t miss Harper’s first foray into the world of the supernatural, Descendants of the Rose, Book 1 in the Selby Jensen Paranormal Mystery series. The second Selby Jensen book, Lost in Room 636 is also scheduled for a Summer 2015 release.

Pauletti, an Easterner of Italian descent, is an accomplished musician with an eye for art and design. Williamson, a Texan, worked as a journalist and university history instructor before becoming a full-time freelance writer in 2002.

Website | Twitter (@jharperbooks) | Facebook

Giveaway:
One (1) winner gets a $50 Amazon Gift Card (INT), one (1) winner gets Langston's Daughters, Baxter's Draw and Alice's Portrait in paperback (US) and one (1) winner gets Descendants of the Rose in paperback (US)

Ends June 29th

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This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions.