
Vacation Interrupted: When Time Off Turns Into a Mystery with Author Pamela Kyel
Online For Authors PodcastShow Notes
My guest today on the Online for Authors podcast is Pamela Kyel, author of the book On a Break in Charm City. Award-winning author Pamela Kyel was born and raised in Edgewood, Maryland—north of Charm City. It’s kind of a running joke that when you live near a large, well-known city, you tell people that’s where you’re from. So, unofficially, she’s from Baltimore!
She followed the drum of the Air Force for 25 years. She joined her husband on six assignments—OCONUS (Outside Continental United States), aka overseas, and CONUS (Continental United States). Along the way, they added two children and numerous pets, not counting the half-a-dozen cats that came with their house in Italy. She has traveled extensively across the states and Europe, with her favorite overseas locations being Paris and Slovenia, among stateside favorites such as Rocky Mountain National Park and Door County, Wisconsin.
Family is important to her, and nowhere is that more evident than in her Charm City Mystery Series. When you’ve lived across the world from mothers and brothers, you adapt and overcome. You create family—and they stay with you long after the career ends. Her military family resides in Virginia, Texas, and North and South Carolina—with many still on active duty worldwide.
Writing came out of their duty station in Illinois. She picked up her computer while sitting with her elementary-age child through covid classes and thought, I can write a book. And the rest is history. While her original novel will never see the light of day, she grew and expanded her confidence in what she was doing. She was good at this, and she would have something to show for it one day. In a little over three years, she’d trod the agent querying circuit and amended her goal. Now, she just needed to hold her book in her hand. It was necessary. With that in mind, she sent out three queries to small publishers, and for her, the third time was the charm. The Wild Rose Press picked up her book and offered a contract. Less than a year later, she now held all those years of hard work in her hand.
In my book review, I stated On a Break in Charm City is a cozy mystery by Pamela Kyel. This is the third in her Charm City Mystery series, and once again, Pamela does not disappoint! I love this cast of characters including Laci Duval, an investigator with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. However, she is forced to take a vacation. But if you know Laci, you know she doesn't do relaxation. Instead, she finds looking for a missing person who just happens to be NSA.
Laci is funny, clutzy, a bit socially awkward, and thinks of everyone as a type of iced tea. In this installment, we continue her journey with potential love interest, Antonio, and keep up with her best friends Sammie and Cassy, as well as Rev and, new to this series, his brother Lum.
If you like a good mystery, with twists and turns, break-ins, fires, kidnapping, computer programming, surveillance cameras, trackers, and even Russians, then this is the cozy for you!
Subscribe to Online for Authors to learn about more great books! https://www.youtube.com/@onlineforauthors?sub_confirmation=1
You can follow Author Pamela Kyel Website: https://pamelakyel.com/ FB: @Pamela Kyle Author IG: @pamelakyel TikTok: @pamelakyel LinkedIn: @Pamela Kyel
Purchase On a Break in Charm City on Amazon: Paperback: Ebook: https://amzn.to/4cNRwbp
Teri M Brown, Author and Podcast Host: https://www.terimbrown.com FB: @TeriMBrownAuthor IG: @terimbrown_author X: @terimbrown1
Want to be a guest on Online for Authors? Send Teri M Brown a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/member/onlineforauthors
#pamelakyel #onabreakincharmcity #cozymystery #terimbrownauthor #authorpodcast #onlineforauthors #characterdriven #researchjunkie #awardwinningauthor #podcasthost #podcast #readerpodcast #bookpodcast #writerpodcast #author #books #goodreads #bookclub #fiction #writer #bookreview *As an Amazon Ass
More from Online For Authors Podcast
My guest today on the Online for Authors podcast is Lizette S Tupas, author of the book Always on a Tuesday. Lizzete S. Tupas is an author and healthcare strategist whose work explores identity, resilience, and the hidden cost of competence. With more than two decades of experience in healthcare, she brings a unique perspective to the ways high-performing people navigate expectation, control, and the often-invisible work of holding everything together.
My guest today on the Online for Authors podcast is RA Consell, author of the book Stealing from Wizards: Arson. Ryan Consell is the author of the middlegrade fantasy series, Stealing from Wizards. Aside from writing, Ryan Consell is a teacher of science and mathematics, stage actor, armorer, and nerd culture activist. His work has been featured on io9, Kotaku, Boingboing, MTV Geek, ,adartlab.com and in Game Developer Magazine. He is an internationally acclaimed theorist on the science of fiction. He has consulted on such titles as The Science of Game ofThrones; spoken at events including DragonCon and Convergence, and partnered with the American Chemical Society. He employs his background in materials science and engineering to overthink fictional physics and to make science more accessible to the public. Ryan was born and raised near Toronto. He has lived and worked in Tokyo and Vancouver, but currently calls Ontario home.
My guest today on the Online for Authors podcast is Del Howison, author of the book The Survival of Margaret Thomas. Del Howison is an author, journalist, and SAG actor. He is a Bram Stoker Award-winning editor of the anthology series Dark Delicacies: Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre by the World’s Greatest Horror Writers. He has written articles for Fear.net, Gauntlet Magazine, and Writers Digest among others. Del’s short story Cul-de-Sac appeared in Weird Tales Magazine #369. His western short story The Lost Herd was turned into the premiere (and highest rated) episode, The Sacrifice, for the series Fear Itself. His dark western novel The Survival of Margaret Thomas was shortlisted for the Peacemaker Award given out by The Western Fictioneers. He has been shortlisted for over half a dozen awards including the Shirley Jackson Award and the Black Quill. Del’s retrospective short story compilation of dark tales, What Fresh Hell Is This?, was released in March of 2025 and listed by Australia’s Aurelias Magazine as one of the best books of the year. He was the cofounder and owner (with his wife, Sue) of Dark Delicacies, a book and gift store known as “The Home of Horror,” located in Burbank, California. For that 31-year effort they were awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Horror Writer’s Association. The store won the “Il Posto Nero” award from Italy and has been inducted into the Rondo Hatton Hall of Fame.
My guest today on the Online for Authors podcast is Theresa E Evans, author of the book Choosing to Die. Theresa Evans nursing career spanned fifteen years with a focus in Critical Care. She opened Stone Path Studio in 2007 where she taught therapeutic yoga and somatic movement. In 2014 she joined forces with Essential Somatics, LLC and began a 5 year journey of domestic and international travel teaching and developing program content for Clinical Somatic Trainings. In 2020 her mother died with MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying.) Choosing to Die is her first novel and was born out of the experience of supporting her mother through that process. Currently she lives in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin with her husband Pete. Her focus now is on advocating for choice through Assisted Death.
My guest today on the Online for Authors podcast is Lynne Marshall, author of the book The Extraordinary Dreams of Cynthia Peabody and Cynthia Peabody's Big Fat Fake Funeral. USA Today Bestselling author Lynne Marshall has penned thirty-seven books. She has written Medical Romance for Mills & Boon, contemporary romance for Harlequin Special Edition and digitally with TULE. Publishing independently, she writes Women's Fiction where she explores the mysteries of life through endearing characters in unexplainable situations. Or, as she likes to call it, fiction for women of a certain age plus everyone who loves their nana.