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Live From Leavenworth—Sloan Krause Mysteries Q&A · Reality Writes

• 0:05
  Ellie Alexander: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to a special edition of Reality Writes live from Leavenworth, Washington.
• 0:13
  Ellie Alexander: I am author Ellie Alexander.
• 0:15
  Ellie Alexander: This is the podcast where we talk about all things bookish, writer-ish, and today beer-ish?
• 0:20
  Ellie Alexander: And I'm here with the Tech Guy.
• 0:23
  Speaker: Yeah, uh here in Leavenworth doing some research.
• 0:26
  Ellie Alexander: What?
• 0:28
  Speaker: Always got to do the research.
• 0:30
  Ellie Alexander: What does your research involve?
• 0:31
  Ellie Alexander: So let's back up and tell our darlings that yesterday I had a book signing at A Book for All Seasons, which is the most incredible independent bookstore in Leavenworth, Washington, actually, like on the planet, if you're really asking.
• 0:44
  Ellie Alexander: And uh while I was working so diligently, uh, such hard work to have to meet readers and sign books.
• 0:52
  Ellie Alexander: You, on the other hand, were doing what?
• 0:54
  Speaker: Um, I was investigating the local businesses.
• 0:58
  Ellie Alexander: Oh, really?
• 0:59
  Ellie Alexander: And what would those businesses entail?
• 1:01
  Speaker: Breweries.
• 1:02
  Ellie Alexander: Oh, okay, good, good, good.
• 1:05
  Speaker: All the breweries.
• 1:05
  Speaker: No, there are actually two here that are my favorites.
• 1:09
  Speaker: Uh and readers of the Sloan Krause series may recognize them.
• 1:12
  Speaker: Icicle Brewing, um, uh, which is uh Der Keller in the Sloan Krause Mysteries, and then Blewett, which is a newer brewery.
• 1:23
  Speaker: Well, I mean, it's been open for years now, but it was newer than Icicle, and it was it is Nitro come to life.
• 1:31
  Ellie Alexander: It's so cool.
• 1:31
  Ellie Alexander: I know.
• 1:32
  Ellie Alexander: I when I first started writing the series, that brewery did not exist.
• 1:36
  Ellie Alexander: And I had obviously created Nitro as a pure figment of my imagination.
• 1:40
  Ellie Alexander: And then fast forward a few years later, we show up and here it is in real life.
• 1:45
  Speaker: I know, and we were blown away.
• 1:46
  Speaker: It was uh it was kind of it was uh it was late fall, uh, it was cold out, and we were walking around on uh the in the town, and we just came across it and went inside.
• 2:00
  Speaker: And while we were sitting there looking to the menu, I just kind of started looking around and I said, I think this is nitro.
• 2:07
  Ellie Alexander: Are we at Nitro?
• 2:08
  Ellie Alexander: How did that happen?
• 2:09
  Speaker: And it it looks exactly like you wrote it.
• 2:11
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 2:12
  Speaker: So I know.
• 2:13
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 2:13
  Ellie Alexander: Which is incredible.
• 2:14
  Ellie Alexander: So on this episode, we want to give you a little bit of the sights and sounds of Leavenworths, talk about what it's like to actually be on a book tour doing a book event, and then how I always try to weave in research for that too.
• 2:27
  Ellie Alexander: And the Tech Guy helps by giving hit me his notes on his beer tasting.
• 2:32
  Ellie Alexander: Um, and I also want to uh answer some of your most burning Sloan Krauss mystery questions because let me tell you, darlings, I get feedback far and away more about Sloan and when and if she's ever coming back than anything else.
• 2:47
  Speaker: Yes, uh, I can attest the messages come in very often.
• 2:52
  Speaker: Um people are very insistent that they want another Sloane.
• 2:56
  Ellie Alexander: Which I love.
• 2:56
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
• 2:56
  Speaker: So let's start, let's start by asking the question that everybody wants to know.
• 3:00
  Speaker: Is there gonna be another Sloane Krauss mystery?
• 3:02
  Ellie Alexander: There is gonna be another Sloan Krauss mystery.
• 3:04
  Ellie Alexander: You're hearing it her here first, darlings.
• 3:07
  Ellie Alexander: The issue is I don't know when, which is the sad teaser.
• 3:11
  Ellie Alexander: And I'm honestly not trying to be a tease about it.
• 3:14
  Ellie Alexander: It's just it's structural.
• 3:16
  Ellie Alexander: Like part of my vision is that we would probably re-re-release the entire series so that it's all like in one format, as we've talked a lot about on this podcast.
• 3:27
  Ellie Alexander: Publishing in general is switching up so much in terms of mass markets going away.
• 3:31
  Ellie Alexander: In fact, at the book signing yesterday, there was still a juicy little stack of Death on Tap and Mass Market.
• 3:36
  Ellie Alexander: I'm like, how did you find these?
• 3:37
  Ellie Alexander: Should I just take them all home with me?
• 3:39
  Ellie Alexander: And they're like, no, we want them.
• 3:41
  Ellie Alexander: Um, so there's that vision.
• 3:43
  Ellie Alexander: And once that process happens, then I will release book seven.
• 3:47
  Ellie Alexander: But part of being here, especially in the springtime, is my vision for book seven will pick up where the shorts last left off, which will be spring in the village.
• 3:57
  Ellie Alexander: It will involve some kind of wedding festivities.
• 4:00
  Ellie Alexander: That's my little teaser on what the content will be.
• 4:05
  Ellie Alexander: For long-term Sloan fans, you know what I'm talking about.
• 4:08
  Ellie Alexander: But the other thing is I think it's important if you're writing about a real place, or even if you're writing about a fictional place, but you're taking pieces of the real world to come see it at different times of the year and experience it in different seasons and different um levels of busyness for a place like Leavenworth, where it's so festival-centric.
• 4:28
  Ellie Alexander: We've been here for the last few days.
• 4:29
  Ellie Alexander: It's it's spring, everything is so lush and green.
• 4:33
  Ellie Alexander: You were literally playing the sound of music.
• 4:36
  Speaker: Right.
• 4:36
  Speaker: We were walking down the street yesterday.
• 4:39
  Speaker: Uh, you can, for those watching, you can see the Maypole behind us in the center of the square.
• 4:44
  Speaker: And it was just amazing.
• 4:46
  Ellie Alexander: No, they're piping in the sound, and we're like, is this real?
• 4:49
  Ellie Alexander: Bird song everywhere, blooms.
• 4:51
  Ellie Alexander: It does feel like you are living a scene from the sound of music.
• 4:56
  Ellie Alexander: So there's that piece, and also the rhythm and flow of what's it like to be in the village when it's just kind of a quiet Saturday weekend versus, you know, maybe Mayfest or Oktoberfest or one of the big festivals.
• 5:08
  Ellie Alexander: So I always love to do that, even if I'm not specifically working on a book at that point in time, just to take copious notes and pictures and videos that I can reference back to when I am then deep in the throes of writing a first draft.
• 5:23
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:23
  Speaker: And it's been really interesting being in Leavenworth this time.
• 5:26
  Speaker: We've been here many times.
• 5:28
  Speaker: Um, Leavenworth's getting a glow up.
• 5:30
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah, it is.
• 5:31
  Ellie Alexander: Woo!
• 5:32
  Speaker: Um, yeah.
• 5:33
  Speaker: I mean, the the just the uh the unit, the the wood that we're sitting underneath right now, all of this uh whole rooftop uh section here, this patio overlooking the main square is all brand new.
• 5:47
  Speaker: They're doing construction on the main boulevard in front of all the shops along the main thoroughfare there, and it's gonna be this gorgeous stamped concrete that looks like bricks.
• 5:57
  Speaker: Um, we were talking at the new welcome center uh just yesterday, uh, where we saw Death on Tap.
• 6:04
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah, they're featuring Death on Tap at the Welcome Center in Leavenworth.
• 6:07
  Ellie Alexander: Like, how amazing is that?
• 6:09
  Speaker: Yeah, but they told us that they're doing a bunch of improvements along the main boulevard where they're adding in new trees and uh pedestrian paths and everything.
• 6:17
  Speaker: It's just it it is the Leavenworth was amazing before, but it is continuing to uh add the features and all the bells and whistles.
• 6:26
  Ellie Alexander: The pro for me is also just getting a really like hyper local focus from writing because wherever we're going, whether it's at the welcome center or at the bookstore, or if we're talking to our server at Blue Wit Brewing last night, I'm trying to pick up all those little tidbits of insider information.
• 6:45
  Ellie Alexander: And the tech guy gets um irritated at me at some point because I'm almost like, who do you want to kill off?
• 6:50
  Ellie Alexander: Right, where should I hide a body?
• 6:52
  Ellie Alexander: Like I'm already thinking that this concrete that they're building, I mean, somebody could, yeah.
• 6:57
  Ellie Alexander: I'm just saying I'm I'm not making any promises, but it's a possibility.
• 7:02
  Speaker: No, every shop we're in, every restaurant we go to, uh the the eventually the the conversation leads to murder.
• 7:10
  Ellie Alexander: I know.
• 7:10
  Speaker: Uh, which is great when you're you for the person that you're talking to, but I'm standing behind just watching the people walk by that are just picking up on sentences in the conversation and and don't like they they don't know the context from the beginning that she's a mystery author, that she's talking about killing people fictionally, everything.
• 7:28
  Speaker: So there are some eyes like you know, as as people are walking by, they're just like, Oh, can't you hear what she said?
• 7:35
  Speaker: You know, and it's just it it is pretty hilarious.
• 7:38
  Speaker: But um surprisingly, on this trip, no one was willing to give anyone up.
• 7:43
  Speaker: They it sounded like for the most part that everyone coming to Leavenworth from a tourist perspective has been pretty lovely with all the uh employees and workers here, which is really good to hear.
• 7:54
  Ellie Alexander: It's great to hear, except it's not so great to hear from a mystery lady perspective because I need the juice.
• 7:59
  Ellie Alexander: Um but this tracks back for any darlings who are writers, and I talk about this a lot when I'm coaching new writers or in my mystery series masterclass course, which is just I know it's hard to put yourself out there, especially as a newbie writer, potentially, and I remember that feeling too.
• 8:14
  Ellie Alexander: But bring a notebook, bring your phone, bring whatever, just take notes furiously once you're finished with the conversation.
• 8:20
  Ellie Alexander: But if you ask people, they are usually so willing to share their stories.
• 8:25
  Ellie Alexander: They want to talk about the places they love, they want to give you little insider tips about other places to go visit or potential little out-of-the-way nooks and crannies that you might be able to use in your story setting.
• 8:39
  Ellie Alexander: So it's always worth asking, I think.
• 8:42
  Speaker: Definitely.
• 8:43
  Speaker: Well, and and you get um, I think the like the absolutely the local perspective.
• 8:49
  Speaker: Yes.
• 8:49
  Speaker: Which you no matter how many times you visit a place, you can't you can't learn all of that.
• 8:55
  Speaker: So you have to you have to pick the brands of the people uh if they're willing and talk about murder.
• 9:00
  Ellie Alexander: And talk, yeah, just do a little murder chat.
• 9:03
  Speaker: Um, do you want to talk about what brought us here uh on this particular trip?
• 9:08
  Speaker: Uh in terms of a book for all seasons and what they've done.
• 9:11
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah, this is another thing, and we've done a variety of podcasts about the importance of indie bookstores and what so important champions they are of writers and books in general, but a book for all seasons, which I reference, which is here in the village, has been shelving my books since the very beginning and they connect readers literally from all around the world.
• 9:32
  Ellie Alexander: I get so many DMs, emails, messages from readers who in like the East Coast, New York, Florida, you name it, who were like, I was in Leavenworth, Washington for vacation and went into a buffer all seasons and found your book, and now I'm obsessed with Sloan, uh, which is such a gift because this is a very tourist-centric town.
• 9:51
  Ellie Alexander: So it's a really fun feature for them to have Death on Tap as a little souvenir.
• 9:59
  Ellie Alexander: They talk about like readers come in, and because it's a cozy escape, I think people are looking for vacation reads.
• 10:05
  Ellie Alexander: But Death on Tap still, it was originally published in 2018, is still their number one bestseller, um, which is just incredible to me.
• 10:15
  Ellie Alexander: Um it's such a gift to get to have those connections with the bookstore and with the readers and put it all together.
• 10:22
  Speaker: So yeah, they were uh that you were talking with the owner of of a book for all seasons, and they just told you, like, oh, by the way, they had hit a milestone in sales for the book, and it was like, well, we had to go to Seattle anyway, so we'll head over to Leavenworth and meet up at a Book for All Seasons.
• 10:42
  Ellie Alexander: How did you do?
• 10:43
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 10:44
  Ellie Alexander: Okay, I promised I would answer some of your Burning Sloan questions, and um, in addition to the number one question, which is when and if Sloan will ever come back, I often get asked about the shorts.
• 10:55
  Ellie Alexander: I wrote three Sloan Krause short mysteries.
• 10:58
  Ellie Alexander: So these are all like little novellas.
• 11:01
  Ellie Alexander: You can read them individually.
• 11:03
  Ellie Alexander: They do line up in terms of the timeline with the rest of the books in the series.
• 11:09
  Ellie Alexander: The main question I get asked about the novellas is are they in print?
• 11:13
  Ellie Alexander: And the answer is yes.
• 11:15
  Ellie Alexander: We put together a print collection a couple years ago.
• 11:18
  Ellie Alexander: So originally they were published as ebooks because you cannot do a print copy of a book that a novella that's like, I don't know, 25,000 words.
• 11:27
  Ellie Alexander: You get this like tiny little comic, right?
• 11:30
  Speaker: I mean, you can do a print version, but the the problem is that bookstores don't want to stock something like that because it's too small.
• 11:39
  Speaker: Um, second, uh readers would be uh upset about the cost of that because at a certain point the the uh cost of printing a book you can only go so low.
• 11:52
  Speaker: Right.
• 11:52
  Speaker: You know, it there's a minimum, there's a minimum cost to do that, and it just doesn't make sense to do one at a time.
• 11:59
  Speaker: So we did all three together.
• 12:00
  Speaker: And if you look at the the uh books online, you'll see that I believe that there are books 5.5, yes, 6.5, and and maybe 6.6.
• 12:11
  Speaker: Now I'm gonna have to look that up.
• 12:13
  Speaker: But anyway, if you look that the the 0.5 uh uh means that it comes in between five and six, six point five means it becomes between six and eventually seven.
• 12:24
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 12:25
  Speaker: So um, so if you want to read everything in order, that's what you need to look for.
• 12:30
  Ellie Alexander: And like everything else in the series, each book can be read as a standalone.
• 12:34
  Ellie Alexander: The same goes true for the novellas, but if you've been following Sloan's story arc all along, there are some little nuggets of subplot and backstory that go woven in.
• 12:43
  Ellie Alexander: The collection of shorts in print is available at bookstores.
• 12:49
  Ellie Alexander: So if you search for the first pour, right?
• 12:54
  Speaker: Five.
• 12:54
  Speaker: First pour.
• 12:56
  Speaker: Oh, first pour.
• 12:57
  Speaker: I thought he said, First four.
• 12:59
  Speaker: We're talking numbers and I got confused.
• 13:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 13:01
  Ellie Alexander: I forgot what I titled it.
• 13:02
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
• 13:03
  Ellie Alexander: Um, if you search for the first poor either on my website or you know, you can buy a signed copy from a book for all seasons.
• 13:09
  Ellie Alexander: They are out in print.
• 13:10
  Ellie Alexander: So you can definitely do that.
• 13:12
  Ellie Alexander: The other question I get asked all the time about Sloan is audiobook.
• 13:16
  Ellie Alexander: When is audiobook coming?
• 13:18
  Ellie Alexander: Are they ever going to be available in audio?
• 13:19
  Ellie Alexander: The first few were available in audio.
• 13:22
  Ellie Alexander: The way audiobook rights work is that the publishing houses sell those separately.
• 13:26
  Ellie Alexander: So I have no control because they have to go out and sell those rights.
• 13:30
  Ellie Alexander: And sometimes they sell them right away and the books come out.
• 13:33
  Ellie Alexander: And then because this series got canceled at book five by the publishing house, and then we picked it up.
• 13:39
  Ellie Alexander: We haven't reached out for audio for book six and for the shorts yet, because again, I want to re-release the whole package with a book seven.
• 13:52
  Ellie Alexander: So audio will eventually be coming.
• 13:54
  Ellie Alexander: When book seven comes out, it will be like boom, here you go.
• 13:58
  Ellie Alexander: You can have all the Sloan back, full catalog, print, ebook, and audio.
• 14:03
  Speaker: Is Sloan gonna end at book seven?
• 14:05
  Ellie Alexander: I don't think so because I have quite a few ideas of things that need to happen after that.
• 14:10
  Ellie Alexander: She's just really like come into her own.
• 14:13
  Ellie Alexander: We were walking by her little cottage earlier this morning.
• 14:16
  Ellie Alexander: Like, I have had pages and notebooks of ideas of where I would love for the series to go next.
• 14:24
  Speaker: That's amazing.
• 14:25
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:25
  Speaker: I mean, okay, well, what other questions do readers constantly ask you about Sloane?
• 14:31
  Ellie Alexander: Readers constantly ask me why Leavenworth.
• 14:33
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:34
  Ellie Alexander: Uh, and this is why, right?
• 14:36
  Ellie Alexander: It is the quintessential, beautiful Bavarian village.
• 14:39
  Ellie Alexander: We are literally right now surrounded by mountains, as far as you can see.
• 14:42
  Ellie Alexander: The sky is crystal blue.
• 14:44
  Ellie Alexander: There's a little tiny touch of snow left on the peaks, green hills.
• 14:49
  Ellie Alexander: Yesterday we went on a walk around Blackbird Island, which, if you've read the series, you would be familiar with, darlings.
• 14:55
  Ellie Alexander: There were bear warnings.
• 14:56
  Ellie Alexander: We saw the evidence of where a bear had slept the night before.
• 15:00
  Speaker: Uh, we saw bear prints.
• 15:01
  Speaker: We saw bear prints.
• 15:03
  Speaker: That was cool.
• 15:03
  Speaker: Um we saw deer, which is funny because I mean, having lived in Ashland, we saw bears all the time, but it is fun to think about them being in this area.
• 15:13
  Speaker: We saw deer swimming.
• 15:14
  Ellie Alexander: We saw deer swimming in them when Ashley was.
• 15:16
  Speaker: That was the first time we ever seen deer swimming, but we saw them crossing the channel.
• 15:19
  Speaker: That was that was really cool.
• 15:21
  Speaker: Never knew.
• 15:22
  Ellie Alexander: Never knew.
• 15:22
  Ellie Alexander: Um, I think just because there is such a light, festive, cozy, fun atmosphere here in the village, it just makes sense to me to set a cozy here.
• 15:32
  Ellie Alexander: And when we first came, I was immediately like, I have to set a series here.
• 15:37
  Ellie Alexander: Uh, the second thing that uh is always on a list, or I guess we're probably at number five or eight or something by now, uh, is Am I a Brewer?
• 15:46
  Ellie Alexander: Have I ever brewed beer before?
• 15:48
  Ellie Alexander: The answer to that is no, absolutely not.
• 15:51
  Ellie Alexander: The tech guy dabbled in home brewing for many years.
• 15:54
  Ellie Alexander: And when I was first sketching out this series, that was the inspiration was watching you do that process.
• 16:00
  Speaker: Yeah, and it was, I mean, it was a great hobby.
• 16:02
  Speaker: It was super fun.
• 16:03
  Speaker: We don't have the space now in California, but um the wherever uh our next adventure takes us, I'm hoping that it has space to get back into it because it was fun.
• 16:14
  Speaker: Uh brewing beer mixes like science and art and creativity, and and then the end result is amazing because you get to drink it.
• 16:25
  Speaker: So um uh as long as you uh do a little research and and and and a lot of practice, um, you can generally make some pretty good beer.
• 16:36
  Speaker: And I had two or three that I were my go-to recipes.
• 16:40
  Speaker: Um, my favorite of all was uh Rainbows and Unicorns IPA, um, named by Sky Guy, actually.
• 16:48
  Speaker: Or son named that one.
• 16:50
  Speaker: He didn't drink the beer at the time, he just named it that.
• 16:53
  Speaker: Um uh and I I did have a lot of fun.
• 16:57
  Speaker: That was that was a lot of fun to be brewing while you were writing the series.
• 17:00
  Ellie Alexander: Absolutely.
• 17:01
  Ellie Alexander: The tag-along question that I get to that all the time is do I need to be a fan of beer in order to enjoy the series?
• 17:08
  Ellie Alexander: And the answer to that is absolutely not.
• 17:11
  Ellie Alexander: Beer, yes, of course.
• 17:12
  Ellie Alexander: Um, Sloane runs a small brewery, so it weaves its way into the series.
• 17:17
  Ellie Alexander: But I have heard from so many readers over the years that are like, I despise beer.
• 17:22
  Ellie Alexander: I never want to drink a beer.
• 17:23
  Ellie Alexander: This is my favorite series.
• 17:24
  Ellie Alexander: Like, because it's so much more about this, about a little touch of Bavaria, it's about the outdoors, it's about the food that weaves into beer, and then it's also, you know, really like a family saga.
• 17:36
  Ellie Alexander: And Sloan's a really strong female lead character.
• 17:40
  Ellie Alexander: I love writing her.
• 17:42
  Ellie Alexander: This is not a spoiler, but at the very beginning, we learn that she and her husband are um in the process of getting a divorce.
• 17:49
  Ellie Alexander: But I love writing that it's not, I mean, yes, of course, there's angst involved with it, but it's not this awful, contentious kind of thing.
• 17:58
  Ellie Alexander: And and part of her growth arc is finding her way back to a friendship with her husband.
• 18:03
  Ellie Alexander: So um I just I love all aspects of writing about Sloane, and beer is just one of those, that you don't have to be a beer fan to enjoy the series.
• 18:12
  Speaker: You don't, yeah, you don't have to know anything about making beer, you don't have to, you don't have to drink beer while reading the books, although it's it's recomm I would recommend it.
• 18:20
  Speaker: Um but uh no, that question always surprises me actually because I know for a fact that you have bake shop mystery readers who do not bake.
• 18:31
  Speaker: Sure, absolutely.
• 18:32
  Speaker: But no one ever asks, do you need to be into baking or like pastries in order to read the bake shop mysteries?
• 18:38
  Speaker: So I think that there is definitely a stigma around beer and brewing, and just it it's kind of a mysterious world.
• 18:47
  Speaker: Like people who have walked past a brewery see those big shiny tanks, and they're like, Well, that looks super complicated.
• 18:53
  Speaker: I I couldn't understand, but you don't go into the necessarily too deep in into the science.
• 18:59
  Speaker: I think you take like the writing that you do in uh the Bake Shop Mysteries and how well you describe food and the process of baking and everything.
• 19:08
  Speaker: And you do the same thing in Sloan, and it makes it really accessible to anyone and really interesting.
• 19:13
  Speaker: I mean, we've we've heard from so many readers over the years who've knew nothing about brewing, nothing about the process, don't like beer, but they love the series and they've loved learning about how beer is made.
• 19:24
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah, and I was just gonna say the tanks are great for hiding bodies, just so right.
• 19:30
  Speaker: Yeah, that's yeah.
• 19:31
  Speaker: Yeah, that may happen.
• 19:33
  Speaker: So just FYI.
• 19:34
  Ellie Alexander: Uh the other question I get asked very often about Sloan is uh if I come to Leavenworth, where should I go?
• 19:42
  Ellie Alexander: What are the places?
• 19:43
  Ellie Alexander: Um, and we touched on this a little bit with the two breweries, which are Icicle and Blewitt or Keller and Nitro, respectively.
• 19:50
  Ellie Alexander: But then pretty much anywhere you go in the village, you're going to recognize.
• 19:55
  Ellie Alexander: Um, you're gonna see the Maypole and the center of Town Square, and you're gonna be able to walk the same path.
• 20:01
  Ellie Alexander: And you can go to Blah Blackbird Island, you can walk a little farther down um the main street here, and you'll run into Sloane's Cottage, which is really a guest cottage as part of the NZN Inn, which is right across the hotel.
• 20:16
  Ellie Alexander: But as I described Leavenworth in the books, if you visit, it's gonna feel very real because it is.
• 20:23
  Speaker: It is.
• 20:24
  Speaker: And make sure that you start and end your trip at a book for all seasons.
• 20:28
  Ellie Alexander: Uh for sure.
• 20:30
  Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
• 20:31
  Speaker: But yes, uh, there's there's beer, wine, um, brats.
• 20:35
  Speaker: Brats, so many brats, broths, chocolate, lots of Bavarian food.
• 20:39
  Speaker: Um I I know we've described this a million times, but the way that that this all works, I know peop there there are a number of people who probably never heard it, but literally every building in Leavenworth is fashioned in the Bavarian style.
• 20:54
  Speaker: So even places there's a Starbucks here.
• 20:57
  Speaker: If their sign is hand-carved wood, so the Starbucks logo is in like a Bavarian style.
• 21:04
  Speaker: Um uh as we sit here recording this, we're sitting across the street from Waffett Bank, and their big sign is hand carved wood in the Bavarian style.
• 21:14
  Speaker: And the buildings are just amazing.
• 21:16
  Speaker: I mean, every building is just amazing to look at.
• 21:18
  Speaker: So many murals.
• 21:20
  Ellie Alexander: Oh, yeah.
• 21:20
  Ellie Alexander: Hand-painted murals, wood carvings, rock carvings, waterfalls, gardens, and that's just Leavenworth proper.
• 21:28
  Ellie Alexander: You can go five minutes outside of town, and then you have high alpine lakes and hiking trails and mountain biking and kayaking.
• 21:37
  Speaker: And you talked a little bit about the mountains that's being right here, but in order to truly experience it, because we've posted, I don't know, hundreds at this point, pictures of Leavenworth and video and everything, that nothing can do it justice.
• 21:49
  Speaker: That the mountains are so close to town that as we sit here recording this, they 15 minutes.
• 21:55
  Speaker: I could just walk across the street and be walking up a mountain.
• 21:58
  Speaker: I mean, it they're they're they're Right here.
• 22:01
  Ellie Alexander: It's really hard to not just like go sound of music on myself and just like spin through the hills.
• 22:06
  Ellie Alexander: Uh the last question that I get asked very often about Sloane is when should I visit Leavenworth?
• 22:12
  Ellie Alexander: And really, like, I don't think there's a bad I'm not just I'm not getting paid by Leavenworth to promote the town or anything like that.
• 22:20
  Ellie Alexander: But I don't think there's a bad time of year to visit.
• 22:23
  Ellie Alexander: In spring and summer, it's this varied lush green and blooms, and you can be outside, you put float the river, you go for a hike.
• 22:30
  Speaker: We'll we'll drop a link to the uh official Leavenworth website in the show notes.
• 22:35
  Speaker: But the one thing that you need to know about the town is that it it any time of the year there's a festival going, probably multiple festivals going.
• 22:44
  Speaker: Um and so with the exception of winter and the the lights festival, the only the only time winter it might be a bit of a challenge is actually getting here because of the snow, because it snows a lot here in Laporg.
• 22:59
  Speaker: I think what are we 90 inches a year, I think is is about what uh what they average.
• 23:06
  Speaker: So um but it makes this place even more magical when it when it does snow.
• 23:12
  Ellie Alexander: Yes, and fall is gorgeous because you have obviously all of the fall color, Oktoberfest, and then as the tech guy alluded to, winter is Christmas markets and then winter lights from December all the way through March now.
• 23:25
  Ellie Alexander: So you come and see the stars and then there's winter ice carvings.
• 23:29
  Ellie Alexander: There's really it's just it's all about what you like in terms of seasonality, but I don't think that there's a bad time that you could come visit.
• 23:38
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 23:39
  Ellie Alexander: And should they come visit?
• 23:40
  Speaker: Absolutely.
• 23:41
  Speaker: I don't want to go home.
• 23:43
  Speaker: I want to stay.
• 23:45
  Speaker: Can we stay?
• 23:46
  Ellie Alexander: Next time.
• 23:46
  Ellie Alexander: Next time.
• 23:47
  Ellie Alexander: It just means we're gonna have to come back soon.
• 23:49
  Speaker: All right.
• 23:50
  Ellie Alexander: All right.
• 23:50
  Ellie Alexander: Well, on that note, darlings, uh till next time from Sloane's little version of Bavaria.
• 23:58
  Speaker: Yeah, and and if you have other questions about the Sloan Cross Mysteries or Leavenworth itself, uh be sure to click that send over some message link in the show notes and let us let us know what what you want to know.
• 24:09
  Speaker: Uh so with that, until next time, pros.