Betsy Allen Hollywood Mysteries

Step into the Golden Age of Hollywood with The Betsy Allen Hollywood Mysteries.

Set against the glamorous, high-stakes backdrop of 1930s Golden Age cinema, The Betsy Allen Hollywood Mysteries follows fifteen-year-old Betsy Allen, a sharp-witted backlot insider who knows the ins and outs of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer better than anyone. Raised in the shadows of soundstages, sound booths, and set pieces where her father works as an assistant director, Betsy has a knack for spotting details others miss. But when real-world dangers threaten the studio’s biggest stars and dark secrets surface from the silver screen's forgotten past, Betsy finds herself putting her movie-magic knowledge to the ultimate test.

Combining classic mystery, high-stakes suspense, authentic historical detail, and an ongoing personal quest to uncover the truth about her own family, this thrilling series proves that behind the glitz and glamour of Tinseltown lies a world full of danger, secrets, and deceit.

Fifteen-year-old Betsy Allen has grown up among the illusions of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where her father directs crowd scenes and movie magic is just another manufactured mirage.

She never expected to save Mickey Rooney’s life.

When a driverless car barrels straight for Hollywood’s brightest young star,

Betsy shoves him clear—and stumbles into something far darker than a studio prank.

Anonymous threats. A gun hidden among the props. A mysterious Phantom

haunting the deserted backlot with a glowing, skull-faced grin. And a package addressed to a woman who has been dead for eleven years—

Betsy’s mother.

In the world’s greatest dream factory, someone is running out of patience. And Betsy Allen is running out of time.

Reflections on Publishing and Amazon KDP

By Jack Cleveland • September 8, 2026

It's been a whirlwind these last few days as I continue to navigate the uncharted territory of self-publishing on Amazon KDP. I have learned a lot, and can share some of my successes and failures that I have encountered thus far. First, let me thank each of you who have expressed excitement over the publication and release of my first novel. Many of you have ordered either a print copy or an eBook, and I am so grateful for your support. It is humbling, to say the least. Never in my wildest dreams would I believe so many would support my little story as you have. So thank you, thank you. Publishing on the Amazon KDP platform has been fairly easy, but at times extremely frustrating. Luckily, I had hired a book designer who prepared the necessary PDF files to upload into the KDP platform, and along the way created a nicely formatted copy for both the paperback and hardback copies. In addition, she took some extra time to find the best way to also create a fairly good looking eBook. I have found a couple of small errors from my original manuscript: a misplaced comma and quotation mark, a paragraph not indented, and one continuity error that probably the most astute reader would only pick up on, and I am hoping to reload the corrected manuscript at some point in the near future with my designer's help. Those of you who get the initial run with the mistakes will have a true first printing. Congratulations! I so appreciate my book designer and cover artist Lauren Schooley for all of her help. She has been amazing. When you publish on Amazon KDP, you wind up doing a lot of waiting to receive updates on royalties and units sold. As originally set up, I was able to allow for pre-orders for the eBook copies, but I did not see a way to do the same for print copies. As a result , the several who pre-ordered the eBook received their copy either late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. This was great from my end, because I could see how many units I had sold so far, and also started to see some placement on Amazon's category rankings. Unfortunately, as of this writing, I still have not seen how many print copies have sold so far. This is because Amazon does not mark an order as sold until it has been packaged and sent for delivery. Because my book is Print-on-Demand, the process is longer. As of today, I have no sales reported yet for print copies because of the process. This has been frustrating to me: I don't know how many copies have actually sold nor do I have accurate ranking information. Nonetheless, it's exciting to know so many of you have ordered and some have even read the whole book on their Kindles or in their Kindle app. I feel so supported and loved. I am filled with gratitude. If you haven't ordered yet, here's a link to my author's page on Amazon. You can order your copy there or right here on this website. https://www.amazon.com/author/jackcleveland

2 Days Until Release!

By Jack Cleveland • September 4, 2026

We are two days away from publication! "The Secret of the Sinister Specter" will be available for ordering this Sunday, September 6th on Amazon. Here is a link to my Author's Page on Amazon which should have all three formats available: https://www.amazon.com/author/jackcleveland The book will be available for immediate download for your Kindle library, and available for ordering in paperback and hardback. Please consider giving a review after you have finished the book. Reviews help authors on Amazon quite a bit.