Overcoming Stress, Country Style - An Under the Radar Guest Post & Giveaway.

I'm pleased to welcome Zoe Chambers to Cozy Up With Kathy today. You can find Zoe on the pages of the Zoe Chambers Mystery series by Annette Dashofy. Under the Radar is the ninth book in the series and will be released this coming Tuesday.

Overcoming Stress, Country Style
By Annette Dashofy

I love it when I meet someone new and they ask me “what do you do for a living?”

My name is Zoe Chambers and I’m a paramedic for Monongahela County EMS in southwestern Pennsylvania. I’m also a deputy coroner. I try to save the lives of those I encounter on emergency calls, but if I can’t, I try to find why they died.

I also own a farm that needs a lot of work before I can live in the house. But thanks to my fiancé, Pete Adams, who also happens to be the local chief of police, my barn is in good repair and is home to my horse and four boarders.

Yeah. Life tends to be a little hectic.

Our work shifts at the ambulance are weird. Sixteen-hour days—actually nights, since I work from four o’clock in the afternoon until eight the next morning—plus one long weekend a month. Tack on the possibility of being called out at any time day or night as deputy coroner and you have a life some might call exciting. Others call it stressful.

In fact, a friend, who has a normal nine-to-five job, recently asked me how I handle the stress. My first reaction was “what stress?”

But then I realized, yes, I do indeed live a stressful life. Being awakened from a sound sleep to jump in an ambulance and roar down the road, lights flashing, sirens screaming, to an unknown incident does play havoc with one’s heartrate. Having drunks in car crashes take a swing at you for trying to help them (yes, it’s happened to me more than once), can raise one’s blood pressure.

I guess I do a good job of handling the stress though. For me, it’s easy. I just go out to the barn.

There’s something very relaxing about the sound of horses munching their feed in an otherwise quiet stable. I love the smell of grain and hay. And yes, I even love the smell of fresh manure and horse sweat. Only horse people “get” that. The same odor that make others wrinkle their noses is perfume to the horsey set.

Cleaning stalls, brushing the horses, filling water buckets…all of it has a calming effect on me. But the best form of de-stressing is going for a long ride in the woods. The motion of my horse’s stride beneath the saddle loosens my hips and spine as well as my mind. Loping across a wide-open field, letting my body relax into the movement, is better than any yoga or meditation class I’ve tried.

So, yes, I work two jobs—three, if you count running a small boarding facility—and, yes, my life is stressful. But when dealing with pain and suffering, when life and death becomes too overwhelming, all I have to do is pull on my Muck boots and barn coat and head out for some equine therapy.

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Under the Radar (A Zoe Chambers Mystery) by Annette Dashofy

About Under the Radar

 

Under the Radar (A Zoe Chambers Mystery)  

Cozy Mystery 9th in Series  

Publisher: Henery Press (February 25, 2020)  

Trade Paperback - 288 pages 

Paramedic and deputy coroner Zoe Chambers responds to a shooting and discovers her longtime friend, Horace Pavelka, has gunned down a man who’d bullied him mercilessly for decades. Ruled self-defense, no charges are filed. When another of his tormentors turns up dead in Horace’s kitchen, Police Chief Pete Adams questions the man’s innocence in both cases…especially after Horace and his girlfriend go into hiding.

While fighting to clear her friend, Zoe is handed the opportunity to finally learn what really happened to her long-lost sibling. What starts out as a quick road trip on a quest for answers leads her to an unfamiliar city in the middle of a November blizzard, where she finds way more trouble than she bargained for.

Pete’s own search for his missing fiancée and a missing murderer ultimately traps him in a web of deception. Face-to-face with one of the most cunning and deadly killers of his law enforcement career, Pete realizes too late that this confrontation may well be his last.

About Annette Dashofy

Annette Dashofy is the USA Today best-selling author of the Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic and deputy coroner in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. A former EMT and lifelong resident of the area about which she writes, Annette lives with her husband and one very spoiled cat on what was once her grandfather’s dairy farm. UNDER THE RADAR (February 2020) is the ninth in her series.

Author Links:

Website– www.annettedashofy.com  
Blog– http://annettedashofy.blogspot.com/  
Facebook– https://www.facebook.com/annette.dashofy  
Twitter– @Annette_Dashofy 

  Purchase Links - Amazon - B&N - Kobo -

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Zoe & the Coroner's Office - A Guest Post & Giveaway

I'm pleased to welcome Zoe Chambers to Cozy Up With Kathy today. You can find Zoe on the pages of the Zoe Chambers Mystery series by Annette Dashofy. Cry Wolf is the seventh book in the series.

Someone recently asked me why I’d wanted to work for the County Coroner’s Office. I’ve been a paramedic for a long time. My passion is to help people who are sick or injured, so what would drive me to focus on those I couldn’t save?

To be honest, I didn’t simply wake up one day and say “Hey! I want to be a deputy coroner!” I didn’t approach Coroner Franklin Marshall about the job. He approached me.

Franklin called me and five other paramedics into his office and told us he had an idea and wanted to try it out. In other words, we were his guinea pigs. He wanted hire us as deputy coroners and send us for training. Then, as first responders, when we were faced with a DOA, we could pronounce death, something we couldn’t do as paramedics.

I had mixed feelings about the offer. I’ve always claimed that no one died in our ambulance. If they went into cardiac arrest, we provided basic and advanced life support to get them to the hospital. But Franklin allayed my concerns. Once rescue efforts began, we would continue just like always. He wasn’t asking us to override our paramedic duties and instincts.

With that worry addressed, I started daydreaming about one of my favorite TV shows. You know the one. Beautiful women wearing high heels and handsome men investigate homicides, finding microscopic clues to nail killers. Heck, this might be fun. I’d get to work side-by-side with my favorite cop, Vance Township Chief Pete Adams.

Sign me up!

Two of us accepted Franklin’s offer. Three said thanks but no thanks.

The training was intense, and I passed the test with flying colors. The reality of the job, however, wasn’t what I’d imagined.

First of all, Franklin demanded we assist in autopsy from time to time. I never expected it to be a problem after all I’ve seen while working on the ambulance. But it wasn’t the sights of autopsy that got me. It was the smell. I won’t gross you out with the details. Just trust me. It was awful. And I swear, Franklin and his forensic pathologist, Doc Abercrombie, took sadistic pleasure in assigning me the most disgusting tasks. I’m pretty sure they placed bets on how long I’d last before bolting for the restroom.

Even more frustrating, Franklin never let me work the interesting cases. He kept those for himself. All he permitted me to do was call time of death on poor old folks who’d passed away, unattended, in their beds. If there was any real investigating to do, Franklin handled it himself.

In the last year or so though, I guess I’ve proved myself and passed muster. I can make it through an entire autopsy now. Not that the odors don’t still get to me, but I’ve learned to handle them. And on occasion, Franklin has allowed me to tackle a case on my own.

So, while it still isn’t like that TV show set in Vegas, I do get to work with Pete. And I find the job with the Coroner’s Office isn’t so different than my job with Emergency Medical Services. It’s simple really. If I can’t save a patient’s life, I can help find them justice.

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Cry Wolf (Zoe Chambers Mystery) by Annette Dashofy

About the Book

 

Cry Wolf (Zoe Chambers Mystery)  

Cozy Mystery 7th in Series  

Henery Press (September 18, 2018)  

Hardcover: 276 pages 

Rural Pennsylvania’s Vance Township Police Chief Pete Adams is down an officer and has been dealing with extra shifts as well as a pair of bickering neighbors, one of whom owns a machete and isn’t afraid to use it.

Golden Oaks Assisted Living is outside Pete’s jurisdiction, but a murder in the facility his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father calls home makes the case personal.

Paramedic and Deputy Coroner Zoe Chambers has been itching for an opportunity to take the lead in a death investigation. She gets her chance when her boss is hospitalized and not only assigns her to the Golden Oaks homicide but puts her in charge of the county coroner’s office.

As if she doesn’t have enough to handle, a long-lost, over-protective, older half-brother walks into her life threatening to drive a wedge between her and the man she loves.

A second dead body leads them to realize the case may have dark ties to a distant past…and if Zoe doesn’t untangle the web of lies, Pete will be the one to pay the ultimate price.

About the Author

Annette Dashofy is the USA Today best-selling author of the Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic and deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania’s tight-knit Vance Township. CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE was a finalist for the Agatha Award for Best First Novel of 2014 and BRIDGES BURNED was nominated for the 2015 Agatha for Best Contemporary Novel.

Author Links:
Website– www.annettedashofy.com  
Blog– http://annettedashofy.blogspot.com/ 
Facebook– https://www.facebook.com/annette.dashofy  
Twitter– @Annette_Dashofy  

Purchase Links: Amazon B&N Kobo 

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Country Mouse, City Mouse: A Guest Post & Giveaway

I'm pleased to welcome Zoe Chambers to the blog today. You can find Zoe on th epages of the Zoe Chambers Mystery series by Annette Dashofy. UNEASY PREY is the sixth book in the series and will be released March 27th.

 

 

Country Mouse, City Mouse: Zoe laments life in the country

By Annette Dashofy

Last summer, my house burnt down. It wasn’t really “my” house. I lived in half of a beautiful old farmhouse owned by Mr. and Mrs. Kroll, but it was the closest I’ve ever felt to being “at home.”

I guess I’m a farmgirl at heart and not simply because I have a horse. Granted, a barn and acreage with fences definitely helps with the horse part, and while the house is gone, thankfully the barn still stands.

Let me explain. I manage the horse boarding operation on the Krolls’ farm. Instead of paying me, the Krolls let me keep my horse there and charged me next to nothing to live in half of their house. Then the fire destroyed the house, leaving me homeless. But my horse still had a home and I still manage the boarding operation, so it’s okay. It’s been easier to find a couch to crash on than it would be to find a home for Windstar.

Lately, I’ve been staying with Pete Adams. My…boyfriend? That seems like a strange word for a man in his forties, especially when he’s also our local Chief of Police. But you get the idea. He’s thrilled about the current situation. Me? I do love him, but…

Am I a horrible person for wishing he lived on a farm?

That isn’t likely to happen. Until he moved out here to rural Vance Township ten years ago, he lived his entire life in the city of Pittsburgh. I think his current house in the former coal mining village of Dillard is as far out in the sticks as he’d be able to handle.

My coworkers at the Monongahela County EMS don’t understand why I complain about living “in town.” They talk about the ease of walking to the store rather than driving. Of walking down the street to a restaurant or having pizza delivered. All of which might be nice. Except Dillard’s only convenience store closed a couple years ago. The pizza shop closed last fall. There hasn’t been a coffee shop here…ever. The only “dining establishment” within walking distance is the Dog Den at the edge of town. Don’t get me wrong. I love their footlong hotdogs with the works. But I’d be just as happy to drive a few miles to get them.

What does life on the farm have that town doesn’t?

First—no neighbors. Townies may argue that’s a point against farm life but let me elaborate. When I lived on the farm, I didn’t have to draw the blinds in my bedroom to change clothes. The view from my window was miles of pasture. Horses aren’t peeping Toms.

Second—the smells are so much better. Again, my town-dwelling friends might disagree with my love of eau de horse, especially the aroma of manure, but I’ll take it over the stench of diesel and blacktop any day. In the spring, there are always flowers blooming. In the summer, there’s the aroma of mown hay. In the autumn, there are earthy scents of leaf mold and a faint whiff of burning leaves.

We won’t discuss winter.

And third—the sounds. In the country, we have spring peepers. Tiny frogs that fill the night with their cheeping serenade. We have crickets and a cacophony of insects trilling in the summer. And the birdsongs. But mostly, we have quiet. No noisy neighbors yelling or blasting music. And if I want to blast mine, there’s no one around to complain.

For the record, I only blasted my music in the barn out of courtesy to my elderly landlords.

As for walking down the street to get food? I only had to walk out of my door to Mrs. Kroll’s vegetable garden. Have you ever eaten a tomato fresh from the vine? Or had an ear of corn cooked within ten minutes of being picked? To die for, my friends.

In fact the only thing farm life lacks is…Pete.

I guess living in town isn’t so bad.

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