Meet the Characters!

With the first new book in the revamped Lacey Stocking series coming out soon, I thought it would be fun to show you who is in my mind when I write.

Lacey Stocking

Lacey is a mix between Carole Lombard and Ginger Rogers. She stands 5’6″ with long, skinny legs and ample bosom.



The true inspiration for her personality came from Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday played by the magnificent Rosalind Russell. Hildy is a tough reporter who isn’t afraid to speak her mind, but she’s also compassionate and empathetic. That’s how I hope Lacey comes across. She’s sassy when she needs to be, but underneath it all is a big, tender heart.
Short bio: Born in Chicago on July 30, 1923. Lacey was supposed to be named Lucy but the nurse messed up her name on the birth certificate. Her father was a cop who worked the beat for years. Mother died in 1941 from an unknown illness, father died in 1945 from heart disease. She has two older brothers who are also cops. Lacey had to take care of her dying father while her brothers were off fighting in the war. After he died, she left home in search of freedom and feeling slightly bitter that she was left holding the bag on her own. She took a job as a secretary at National City Bank in Pittsburgh where she met Hardley. They got detective’s license in 1947 and formed their own agency. Her favorite sport is Hollywood gossip and has a crush on Cary Grant.

Hardley A. Witt

The first character to actually show up in my brain when I thought of writing Lacey Stocking was Hardley A. Witt. Lacey describes him as tall and lanky and the spitting image of Hollywood actor, Dan Duryea.

I had first seen Dan in two movies almost back to back that made me think of Hardley — Leo Hubbard in The Little Foxes and Duke Pastrami in Ball of Fire, but it was really his role as Pastrami where I first caught a glimpse of Hardley. Both characters thought they were smarter and tougher than they were. If you haven’t seen these two movies, I suggest you change that.

Short bio: Born December 10, 1918 in Youngstown Ohio, Hardley ran away from a tough homelife to Pittsburgh as a teen and eventually became a policeman. After WWII he worked for a bank as a security cop and quickly grew bored with it. He met Lacey and the two became good friends, eventually starting their own detecting agency. He’s not very bright, kinda goofy, but he’s good person through and through, likes to flirt with the dames but has a crush on Lacey. Can take a nap anywhere, likes to eat, drink beer, and play pool. Baseball is his favorite sport. The Chicago Cubs is his favorite team.

Sgt. Anthony Marelli

Marelli is a series regular, but he doesn’t get as much time on the page as the other two. He’s a tall, imposing Italian man (think 6’4″ and muscular).

Short bio: Born on April 30, 1912 and raised all around Western Pennsylvania, he always dreamed of being a cop. He eventually settled in Pittsburgh where he worked the beat for a few years. He wanted more so he took a promotion up north in Erie until his wife’s mother got sick and had to transfer back to the Burgh. Straight-forward and no-nonsense when in uniform. Nice guy but a tough cop. Became pals with Hardley. The two play pool together. Marelli has four kids and is happily married.

What a Difference a Few Years Make.

In 2020, I released the audio for my book, The Good Daughter, and was never happy with how it turned out, mostly the quality of the audio. At the time, I was working in a not so good space using not so good equipment, but I was determined to do this. I had wanted to get into voice over way back in my college days but was told that they mostly wanted male voices, not female ones, and I believed them so I just put the idea out of my head. Fast forward to 2016 and I’m in a better area with a lot of better things so I put the idea of doing VO back in my head. Going from stage to a booth was a huge learning curve or unlearning curve as what I learned in school couldn’t really be applied to being in a vocal booth. For one, I could use my natural voice instead of my stage voice where I had to project to the back row of a theatre.

So, while I was dealing with my health, I needed something to do so my brain wouldn’t eat itself. On the good days, I re-recorded my book. It wasn’t easy because I was sick and the inconsistent schedule drove me nuts, but in the end, I produced an audiobook with better audio quality and hopefully a better performance. Here are the two different first chapters.

The Good Daughter, 2020 version:

The Good Daughter, 2026 version:

The Good Daughter audiobook is (or should be) available on most retail outlets and in libraries through OverDrive and Hoopla, perhaps Libby (not sure).

New year, new ideas…I guess

Hey, it’s me. It’s been a while. How are you? I’m better. Last year was rather poopy, but things are looking up. I’ve had to put many things on hold because of my health and what ended up happening was that now I don’t know which way to go. I may be giving up on some things, keep going with other things, and starting something I never thought I’d ever want to do. So, that said, here’s a short list of what’s going on in my brain parts, all subject to change because reasons. 🙂

1. I’m not sure how I feel about writing long-form fiction anymore. When I started writing scripts for the Lacey Stocking mysteries, I finally felt like I found my groove. This seems to be a form that speaks to me; however, because not many people are clamoring for old radio style shows on YouTube, I felt like I was doing it only for myself. I’ve no problem with that concept, but a creator wants to have an audience, needs to have an audience, so I decided to end it. I miss it, but I began to realize that I don’t actually enjoy writing novels and maybe I never really did? I don’t know. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up; it just means I’m reassessing things. Sometimes it becomes clear to me that I’m not disenchanted with writing so much as I am with publishing. Maybe that is what’s really bothering me, but that’s a post for another time.

2. I’m sticking to voice acting. I’m a trained stage actor. It’s the only thing I’ve ever really loved my whole life, but when I started voice acting, stepped into the booth, I found home. This profession is hard to break into because it still is the acting profession, the entertainment industry. For now, until I get my health back and my body back into shape, I’m redoing the audio for my book, The Good Daughter. I was never happy with the quality so I’m working on a better version. Hopefully, that will give me some time to figure out my next move.

3. And now for something completely different. *deep breath* It feels almost scary to type this out, but here goes. I’m doing research on Richard Loeb, one half of the infamous Leopold and Loeb. The last book I read on the two of them, I came away with many questions about Richard and was curious about a lot of things that felt off that I wanted to dig deeper. For now, it’s research. Life has a funny way of leading you to places you never thought you’d go so who knows where this research will go.

So that’s that. Here’s to a better year than the last three but especially the last year.

Comments will turn off automatically after thirty days and because of the insane amount of comment spam I get, I may turn off comments sooner. If you wish to reach out to me, you can find me on Bluesky and on YouTube and on Instagram until I set up an official business contact.

Cleaning Things Up

Because the last few years have been hell, I have neglected my business. This past few weeks I have been busy updating and/or creating paperback versions of my books, backing up files, cleaning up my website, and so forth. Paperbacks are now done. *crowd cheers*

There’s some effery afoot at Spotify/Findaway Voices which I’m surprised more narrators and authors aren’t talking about, and to be honest, I’m not sure I understand all of it. The gist of it is, Spotify bought Findaway Voices and now the guys who owned Findaway have bought it back from Spotify and will separate their distribution. Findaway will now use InAudio or something and you’ll have to create a new and separate account for Spotify. Anyway, I don’t like this and will be ending my relationship with Findaway and move all of my audio over to Author’s Republic. I’m happy to say, I’m almost done.

**ETA**

Right after I posted this, Amazon KDP released a bulletin to all authors that the royalty rate for paperbacks would be going down if your book price is under $9.99 and if you don’t raise the price of your books, you may not get any royalty at all. Most of my paperbacks are priced well below that as they’re short. Last night, I posted on bluesky that I wasn’t going to raise my prices, but when I went to Draft2Digital, which is an aggregator site for other online bookstores, I saw that my paperback prices were already much higher than Amazon’s. In that case, I didn’t have a choice in my pricing, which bothered me because I want to make things affordable for everyone. Since I don’t sell much of anything on Amazon like I do other places, I may just leave my prices alone there for now.

Coming April 15th!

Feral : a love story

It’s about my cats.

After chasing a peaches and cream feral cat, with a mourning dove dangling from its mouth, through the yard, everything changes for Laura DiNunno.

Mourning the recent loss of her soul dog, and moving to upstate New York, she can’t seem to shake off the grief of pet loss and this little cat becomes a much-needed distraction.

What begins as innocently as throwing scraps of food out to a starving, and very pregnant, feral cat turns into feeding a small family of felines. But when tragedy strikes and two of the kittens die, the mother and her remaining babies are more vulnerable than ever. Now the broken-hearted human, who never cared for cats, finds herself in a “wild” relationship with them.

Filled with heart, this is the story of the ups and downs of a feral mom and her kittens, and the human they adopted, as they go from wild and struggling in an unforgiving landscape to mostly tame and living their best life inside.

The Leopold and Loeb Files by Nina Barrett, a review

I don’t consider myself a true crime buff, but there have been a few cases that have stuck with me over the years. Like who the hell is Jack the Ripper? Lizzie Borden? Girrrrrl, whut? Another crime was that of William Edward Hickman. He suffered from schizophrenia and during his arrest he asked if he was going to be as famous as Leopold and Loeb. This was the days before the internet so for years I was left wondering who this Leopold and Loeb was. Eventually, I found a book by Hal Higdon called The Crime of the Century and read through it quickly. Since then, I have been intrigued by these two guys.

Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, two extremely wealthy, and highly intelligent, older teens from Chicago kidnapped and murdered a boy in 1924. I’m not going to go into the details of the crime as it has been sensationalized, mythologized, and even fetishized unnecessarily. The crime itself was horrific enough that it didn’t need that kind of publicity, but ya gotta sell them papers, yeah? And books. Through the years, authors have taken many liberties and fictionalized certain aspects of the dynamics of these two and far too many readers gobble it up, thinking it is the truth.

If you’re more of a just the facts, ma’am kind of person like I am then I can’t recommend The Leopold and Loeb Files : an intimate look at one of America’s most famous crimes, by Nina Barrett enough.

From the back cover:

In The Leopold and Loeb Files, author Nina Barrett returns to the primary sources—confessions, interrogation transcripts, psychological reports, and more—the kind of rare, pre-computer court documents that were usually destroyed as a matter of course. Until now, these documents have not been part of the murder’s central narrative. This first-of-its-kind approach allows readers to view the case through a keyhole and look past all of the stories that have been spun in the last 90 years to focus on the heart of the crime.

Although I have read a few other books about Leopold and Loeb and knew the case well enough, I took my time and combed through this one slowly, mainly focusing on the mind of Richard Loeb. All those tiny post-its you see in the photo above are mostly in reference to his psychological profile. What I wouldn’t give to fall down that rabbit hole a little more. Clearly, this guy wasn’t dealing with reality and had a psychosis of some sort that the early days of psychiatry couldn’t understand like we can today or, in this case, didn’t care to understand because they confessed and the prosecution was seeking the death penalty.

To purchase the book, you can buy it from Nina Barrett’s bookstore, Bookends & Beginnings
The Leopold and Loeb Files

The Lacey Stocking Mysteries Playlist

If you’re hankering for some short detective stories inspired by the radio shows of the 40s, here’s the playlist on YouTube for the Lacey Stocking mysteries. They’re fun. You should watch / listen to them. You can listen to them on a plane. You can listen to them on a train. You can listen to them in your car. Although, you can’t listen to them at the bar.

Please enjoy. Like. Comment. Subscribe.

Lacey Stocking Mysteries Playlist

A. I. Statement

I’m a human author. I write (and have written) the words you see on the page.
I’m a human audiobook narrator and voice actor. What you hear when listening to any of the books I’ve narrated and any of the radio plays I’ve recorded is my real voice.
I have not used, and will not use, Generative AI for anything I’ve done. For good or bad, everything I’ve done is authentically me.

Signed,
A Real Human named Laura

When Things Don’t Go According to Plan

This year has been all over the map. After my cat died, I decided to give myself some space to heal and do things at my leisure. Well…life will do what it does.

I had just finished the last book I could convert to audio — it’s out now — and had written another Lacey Stocking mystery script as well as starting a kids’ book about the origin story of my feral cats when, after four years of being paranoid and careful, I caught Covid. It was the worst sore throat I ever had. My throat looked like raw hamburger and felt like I was swallowing fire. After a trip to the ER, I’m over the worst of it but still struggling with energy levels. Of course, as hot as it is right now, it’s hard to say what is the cause of my fatigue. Anyway, I’m getting back to life slowly, listening to my body and taking it easy if needed. I can’t do anything about the heat — it is really bad right now — but I can work on getting healthy and doing little things when I have the energy. Those little things add up.