If you have found a book under my name called Lady Mystery Series Book 1, Conspiracy at Sea, this page is for you. It is not for sale by me, it is on sale by Amazon against me unpublishing it and me personally asking them to remove it, and Steamy Vacation is not a rewrite of it. They are two different books. Here is the honest version.

Conspiracy at Sea started life as two books.

The first was a murder mystery on a ship, set in Boston, Chelsea. Around 40,000 words, self contained, and the mystery closed at the end of it. I still think that draft was good.

The second was a separate book, set on the island.

I was advised to combine them into one, and I did. That decision broke it. The mystery now had to stretch across both halves of a much longer book. It could not be the main event during the eight days on the island, because the island had a story of its own taking over, and by the time everyone got back to the ship I had to wrap the whole thing up fast. It came out at 120,000 words, and I edited it more than thirty times, well past the point where editing helps anything.

By the end, the advice had come full circle. I was told I should split it back into two books, which is exactly where it had started. I could not face undoing the whole thing all over again. So I published it precisely as it was, and I stopped.

I do not mean I stopped working on that book. I mean I was done. I was not going to write another one.

Then two things happened.

Friends read it and gave it five stars. I do not think they did that because they were my friends. I think they meant it. But they also told me something true, along with my sister is that I am a romance writer, not a mystery writer.

And one reader, D.J., left the only public review it ever got. Three stars, December 2025.

“Overall I enjoyed this book, but it needs a strong editing. Examples are in the first few chapters the descriptions became boring. I read about the smells of the environment way to much. Starting around chapter 5 the author started to get in a groove and story moved faster. I do wish more/clearer detail about the murder mystery that was the ‘purpose’ of the cruise was more detailed and not rushed through. A strong editing would also shorten the number of pages and concentrate on the characters and story line.”

She was right, and so were my sister and friends. The opening dragged. I over described everything, down to how the air smelled. And the mystery got rushed, exactly as she said, because of that decision to fuse two books into one.

And that review and my friends who pushed me not to stop are the only reason there is a second book at all. A stranger spent her time telling the truth about a book nine people had bought, from someone she had never heard of, with nothing to gain by bothering. I had quit. That put me back to work. Since the 3.0 review it appears to have gotten a 5 star at GoodReads. I didn't look back, I started over. 

So I did not edit Conspiracy at Sea. I wrote a different book.

I kept the characters, because I loved them, and I kept the Lady Mystery name. Everything else is new. The ship became a yacht. Boston, Chelsea became Boston Harbor Landing. The murder mystery is gone completely. What took its place is a romance carried by suspense, secrets surfacing around a family and a town nobody has even made it home to yet.

That book is Steamy Vacation. It is 61,000 words.

Nine beta readers read it. All nine told me they loved it, and all nine independently named the same problem: pacing. So that is what I went after. I made every change they asked for except two, both of them Boston slang inside a Boston conversation in a book set in Boston, and anyone from there would read those lines the way they were meant. Those two stayed.

Conspiracy at Sea is unpublished. I withdrew it everywhere I was allowed to. Amazon will not remove the listing because copies still exist in the world and they want to sell the last book they have, it no longer appears in my account at all, there is one copy they printed that did not sell, I can’t do anything to it. If you see it for sale,  I would rather you kept your money.

I am not embarrassed by it. It taught me what kind of writer I actually am, and one honest review about it is the reason I did not stop.

The reason for the decrease in donation from 20% to 10% is I honestly did not know how expensive it was to self publish.

The book is still fully functional. Scroll down for your interactive links if you own the book. I kept the domain name, website, and interactive experience those 9 people paid for, not because I had to, but because I stand behind everything I do.

If you found that one first, start here instead.

LINK: Steamy Vacation, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H2PFHWV5

Gigi Kingston