Author interviews

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Would you trade Hawai’i for Nebraska?

Kelly Brakenhoff’s amateur sleuth, Cassandra Sato, is ambitious: she wants to be a university president one day. So leaving Hawai’i and landing in Nebraska makes sense to her because it will further her career.

Kelly reads to us from the first book in the Cassandra Sato series, Death by Dissertation, and we talk about how creating a character who is a fish out of water can lend itself to interesting plot points and situations.

In the interview, I ask Kelly about her picture book for children called Never Mind. She shares what motivated her to write that book and the important issue the next book in the series addresses. (Hint: it has to do with farts.) 🙂 Below is the video she mentions where she reads Never Mind and Amy Willman does the signs for it.

This week’s mystery author

Kelly Brakenhoff writes the Cassandra Sato Mystery series including Death by Dissertation, a 2020 RONE Award Mystery Finalist, and Dead Week, “a diverting whodunit,” (Publishers Weekly).

Kelly is an American Sign Language Interpreter whose motivation for learning ASL began in high school when she wanted to converse with her deaf friends. She also writes a popular children’s picture book series featuring Duke the Deaf Dog.

To learn more about Kelly and all her books visit KellyBrackenhoff.com

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Debra Goldstein is a judge AND she’s been on the TV show Jeopardy!

How’s that for a line item on a CV?

My guest today reads from her brand new book, Three Treats Too Many, and we talk about her long-held desire to write, how publishing proved easy in the beginning and then got a little harder, and what it’s like to blank out when trying to answer the final question on Jeopardy.

In the introduction I mention staying up far too late watching the Disney Plus behind-the-scenes documentary about making the animated film Frozen 2 and how I am a sucker for any kind of show or book about what goes on during the making of a creative project.

This week’s mystery author

Judge Debra H. Goldstein writes Kensington Books’ Sarah Blair mystery series, including recently published Three Treats Too Many, 2020’s Silver Falchion finalist Two Bites Too Many and January 2019’s Woman’s World book of the week, One Taste Too Many.

Debra’s short stories have been named as Agatha, Anthony and Derringer finalists. Debra serves on the national board of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and is the President of SEMWA and is past president of SinC’s Guppy chapter.

To learn more about Debra and all her books visit DebraHGoldstein.com.

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Attention dog lovers who also love mysteries. (Or mystery lovers who also love dogs.)

A few years ago, a dear friend read my romantic mystery and said she liked it, although she got tired of hearing about the dog in the story, which made me laugh. I LOVE DOGS! In fact, I’ve even got a series of children’s middle grade novels where the main character is a dog. So it should be fairly obvious that I’m crazy for dogs and they’re going to crop up in my writing. 😉

ACF Bookens and I are cut from the same cloth that way. She loves dogs too, has one of her own, and in the excerpt from Publishable by Death, the first book in the St. Marin’s cozy series that she reads to us, there are no less than four dogs mentioned. A writer after my own heart.

In the intro I also mention another podcast you might like called Mysteryrat’s Maze. Episodes consist of mystery short stories, and first chapters of mystery novels, read by local actors. To listen to the episodes, and subscribe to the podcast, you can go to mysteryratsmaze.podbean.com, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and more. 

This week’s mystery author

ACF Bookens lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia with her dog Meander (the fictional Mayhem’s inspiration) and her young son. She loves books almost more than people, and when she’s not chasing a toddler or writing, she appreciates a good cross-stitch pattern and a British murder mystery on TV.

To learn more about ACF Bookens and all her books, visit her website.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:24 — 14.3MB) | Embed

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Oh how I love a rag-tag bunch of characters!

In this episode Catriona McPherson reads to us from Scot on the Rocks, the third book in her Last Ditch mysteries. She and I share a love of stories with a rag-tag bunch of characters. (Examples that spring to mind for me are the TV shows Firefly and Parks and Recreation, and the movie Saving Grace, to name a few.)

This is not something you find every day in mystery novels because sleuths tend to work alone or with one partner and the characters change with each book because the mystery changes. But Catriona explains how, in the case of these books, the characters moved in and stayed, much to her delight.

This Week’s Mystery Author

Catriona McPherson is the national best-selling and multiple award-winning author of 27 novels. She writes a historical detective series in the tradition of the British Golden Age, contemporary standalone psychological thrillers, and has recently begun as series of comic mysteries about a fish-out-of-water Scot in California “fighting crime and kale”.

In an amazing case of life imitating art, Catriona is Scottish but immigrated to northern California in 2010.

To learn more about Catriona McPherson and all her books visit CatrionaMcPherson.com