Tamara Lush likes to write in coffee shops and she may or may not be eavesdropping on you to get snippets of conversations to ramp up the sinister. At the least, she might take note of the unique way you sip your cappuccino.
The pandemic has put a crimp on her ability to hang out with convivial folks at places like St. Petersburg’s Kahwa, Black Crow or Bandit, but like everyone in this high-speed connected world, she is making due virtually. Lush gets her café ambiance fix from Coffivity, an app that re-creates the sounds of espresso machines and clattering coffee talk. She launches the app, puts in the buds and starts writing to the sounds of a Parisian café.
It all makes sense since Lush’s latest book Grounds for Murder (Crooked Lane, 2020) is the first in her Coffee Lover’s Mystery series.
Lush is a longtime journalist who by day (and often nights and weekends) covers Florida news for the Associated Press. Several years ago she took a detour in her spare time and began writing romance novels. Now, after 15 novels dripping with love and sex she’s turned her attention to mystery novels dripping with caffeine and intrigue.