Hello mystery and coffee lovers. My name is Alexandra Walters and I am the creation of mystery author Lorie Ham. She thought I might enjoy sharing with you a little more about myself and the little town of Donlyn where I live. So, in the spirit of good coffee why don’t we start with the NoName Café, the place where everyone in Donlyn ends up at some point during the day.

The Café first showed up in Murder In Four-Part Harmony. We needed a place to hang out and solve murders while being nourished, and a coffee shop of some sort seemed ideal, especially with Donlyn being a small town. It was decided that the best place for it would be downtown. The NoName was modeled after a combination of a diner/coffee shop that used to be in downtown Reedley, California (the town Donlyn was modeled after) called Maureen’s, and the Diner in the Andy Griffith Show. It has a nice homey fifties diner sort of feel to it. Something that has seldom been mentioned in following books is that connected to the Café was a little bookstore. Not sure if Lorie just forgot about it, or decided it wasn’t relevant to any of the other stories.

The Café’s name came about in a very odd way. While writing the first draft of Murder Lorie didn’t want to take the time to name the coffee shop, so just typed No Name Café. Well the name stuck and went on to not only be the place to meet in Donlyn, but has become a place online to find book reviews, author interviews and good coffee at http://www.lorieham.com/

Here is an excerpt about the NoName from the new book, The Final Note, coming in October of 2009:

The NoName Café was the place to go in downtown Donlyn. Not only did you find good food and a pleasant atmosphere, but at some point during the day almost everyone passed through the NoName. Early morning you’d find the local farmers, mid-morning local businessmen taking a coffee break, and lunchtime you often found the housewives enjoying lunch out before the kids got home from school. In the afternoon, the school kids would come by for the best milkshake and fries in town, and at dinner you could see almost anyone. So where better to hear what was happening in town?

Red haired waitress Missy Callahan is the face of the NoName, always there to scurry up and serve myself and anyone else who walks through the door. She is also a fountain of information about everything and everyone in Donlyn. Not that long ago her life was changed with the arrival of a baby boy named George.

While NoName serves standard diner food, it also has a drink created by my boyfriend, private investigator Stephen Carlucci. The drink is called OrangeUp and is a combination of orange juice and 7Up. As far as I know, Donlyn is the only place in the world that serves this drink.

If you want to go to the NoName Café you have to content yourself with going there in the books and online, as you can no longer find it’s counterpart in downtown Reedley, but you can find numerous small town café’s and diners that come close such as the Main Street Café on G Street (Main Street), or the Pub. You can also find other familiar Donlyn haunts like Valentino’s Italian Restaurant (which actually exists not only in Donlyn but in Reedley as well) on G Street. Just off G Street, you can find the Reedley Opera House, which was the inspiration for Donlyn’s Moonlight Café.

Well that’s it for this time around folks, hope you enjoyed the inside info. I need to get back to solving the latest murder in The Final Note, but I’ll check back soon. In the meantime, you can enjoy the NoName Café book reviews and author interviews on the website, and enjoy the Café in the other books in the series.

Oh yes, one more thing, check back soon, Lorie said she’s going to try and put up a few picks of the inspirations for some of these places.

Happy reading and good coffee,
Alexandra Walters, gospel singer and amateur sleuth