Francesca “Franki” Amato is a tough-talking rookie cop in Austin, Texas—until an unfortunate 911 call involving her boyfriend, Vince, and a German female wrestler convinces her once and for all that she just isn’t cut out for a life on the police force. So Franki makes the snap decision to move to New Orleans to work at her friend Veronica’s detective agency, Private Chicks, Inc. But Franki’s hopes for a more stable life are soon dashed when Private Chicks is hired by the prime suspect in a murder case to find out what really happened to a beautiful young boutique manager who was found strangled to death with a cheap yellow scarf. When she’s not investigating, Franki is hoping to seduce handsome bank executive Bradley Hartmann, but most of her time is spent dodging date offers from a string of “good Italian boys”—make that not-so-good aging Italian men—that her meddlesome Sicilian grandma has recruited as marriage candidates. As Mardi Gras approaches and the mystery of the murdered shop girl gets more complicated, Franki must decipher the odd ramblings of a Voodoo priestess to solve both the murder and the mystery of her own love life.

Welcome Traci!

I see Limoncello Yellow is the first in a series (yes!). Will the next book in the series feature Franki as our heroine or will each book feature a new lead?

Yes, Franki and the gang will be back in Prosecco Pink. In fact, I plan to write at least three more novels in the Franki Amato Mystery series. Then I’m probably going to introduce a new series about an Italian teacher (if that doesn’t sound intriguing to you now, just wait!).

Franki is an ex-cop and investigator. How much research did you have to involve yourself in for this book, or do you have any hands-on experience?

Actually, I didn’t do much research for Limoncello Yellow, and that was intentional. Because Franki leaves the police force as a rookie and she’s brand new to PI work, I didn’t want her to have too much knowledge of either field. The idea is to have her skills develop over the course of the series, as would happen in real life.

Franki has a meddlesome grandma who likes to fix her up on dates. Have you ever had a tragically bad fix up, or a first-date-gone-wrong?

Oh yeah. When I was in college, this guy asked me out—I thought—to dinner. But then he took me to a party instead. That might have been okay, but the party guests turned out to be super sketchy, and there was no food to be found. So, when the police unexpectedly came and told the hosts to keep the noise down, I asked them to take me home. And they did! Needless to say, that guy never called me again.

A police escort home from a date—must have been a doozie!

How did you make the transition from Lecturer of Italian at the University of Texas to cozy mystery romance writer?

Toward the end of my teaching career at UT, I was actually working on my PhD. When I finished my degree in 2009, I was really ready for a change. Unfortunately, the only thing I knew how to do besides teach was write nerdy, yawn-inducing academic articles. So, I started writing informational articles for magazines, but that just made me feel like I was still in school. That’s when I decided that I wanted to try my hand at fiction. I immediately enrolled in an online Chick Lit course, and Limoncello Yellow was born.

Who are some of your favorite authors and what are you currently reading?

Right now I’m reading the third book in Gemma Halliday’s High Heels Mysteries series, Undercover in High Heels. Not only is Gemma my publisher, she is also the “mistress” of romantic cozy mystery. So, as a reader, I can’t resist her books, and as a writer, I can’t afford not to study her technique.

You know how us readers get greedy with our series. When will the next installment be released? Anything you can tell us about it?

Ha! As a reader myself, I completely understand the greedy thing. That’s why I’m trying to finish the next installment, Prosecco Pink, by the end of June. With any luck, it will be released in September. But the book blurb is already available on my website.

Is there anything you’d like us to know about yourself or Limoncello Yellow?

Yes! I have an Italian language and literature blog called italicissima. Strangely enough, it was actually my blog that convinced me I wanted to write my own mystery. Every time I would read an Italian mystery novel for my blog, I would start thinking about where I would set a mystery in the United States. And every time I would come up with New Orleans (I mean, I can’t think of a more intriguing U.S. city than The Big Easy!). So, when I enrolled in the online Chick Lit class, I already had a setting with some obvious possibilities for a plot, like voodoo…

I’m sold! Thanks so much to Traci for being here today, and we wish her all the success with this series and beyond!

Limoncello Yellow is now available on Amazon 

Traci is the author of the Franki Amato mystery series. In her previous life, she was an award-winning literary translator and a Lecturer of Italian at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a PhD in Applied Linguistics. But then she got wise and ditched that academic stuff for a life of crime–writing, that is.

If she’s not hard at work on her next novel, Traci is probably watching her favorite Italian soap opera, eating Tex Mex or sampling fruity cocktails, and maybe all at the same time. She lives in Austin with her husband, young son (who desperately wants to be in one of her books) and three treat-addicted dogs.

Visit Traci’s website at www.traciandrighetti.com