1. I love the back cover blurb – it sounds like a fun book. What genre would you classify it?

Thank you, Liz. Meow Mayhem is in the cozy genre of mysteries, mostly, but it’s a little longer and has a couple of side stories, most notably the romance between Ivy and True, and between their cats.

2. What was your inspiration for the story?

This probably sounds a little crazy, but a newspaper article about creating hypoallergenic cats sparked an idea for a new novel, though I later didn’t delve as deeply into that aspect of the story. At the time I was also covering the demise of small city downtowns for a newspaper. Small, local businesses were dying because of the influx of big-box stores drying up generationally-owned restaurants and dime stores and so forth. I live in a small community and would hate to see that happen. And, so, how do those concepts go together? Write a grant to allow breaks for smaller businesses to move into a community, invite people you know and trust to help, and voila. Mythical Mayor Conklin invites two of his cat-show buddies to move to his town.

3. A move can be a big change in a person’s life. Your hero and heroine both move to Apple Grove. Have you ever made a big move?

My biggest move was when I graduated from college, got married, and moved to a new town where I didn’t know anyone, had no job, there was a huge recession at the time and hiring was at a standstill. I’m kind of reticent, so just going up to strangers and introducing myself was my own personal torture.

4. How did they/you cope with the move?

Ivy had an established business, plus she was friendly with Mayor Conklin who invited her to move to Apple Grove specifically to help the town crawl out from under its death throes. To that end, he was willing to help her all he could. They had things in common, like their love of exotic cats. True Thompson, the love interest, was in a similar boat, and although he was sort of giving up a lot by moving to Apple Grove since he already owned a chain of successful coffee/book stores in Chicago, he was a friendly, outgoing businessman who was determined to do whatever it took to win over Apple Grove-and Ivy.

5. Can you give us a little hint as to the mystery in the book?

Continuing from the above question, poor Ivy and True were rather devastated to find their friend, Mayor Conklin, not able to carry through with all of his promises to work with their businesses due to his unseemly death—from complications of cat scratch fever, and that the multi-million dollars of grant money he’d gotten to help Apple Grove was missing.

6. Tell us a little more about your publisher, Whimsical Publications.

I found Whimsical through some acquaintances, one of whom was Anne Patrick. I connected with her to ask about the company. I’ve some really good experiences with small indie publishers, and some less than good experiences, so I always teach others to not be afraid of indies, but to take care and make sure you check several aspects of a company, such as cover art, book quality and prices, contract info, and always, always, always find a recommendation to talk about the experience of working with the company. Anne had good things to say. In my case, I’m not looking to stay strictly within a certain market, so although I write more for the inspirational side, Whimsical is not one of the ACFW-approved publishers, so that means my marketing has to be more creative.

7. This is your sixth novel. Do you think they get easier or harder to write as you go on?

To write – definitely easier. When I was first learning to write I was so caught up in the “write by committee” aspect of critique groups and partners, and trying to learn all the little fads and follow everybody’s advice whether they’d been experienced published authors or not. It was much harder to unlearn those things, and now that I have practiced and studied and taught, but still learning, those aspects of story, character arc, plots, themes, and genre attributes, how and what to research, I can write toward the goal right away, instead of getting caught up in messy mistakes that have to be sought and destroyed and replaced in a manuscript.

8. What other projects do you have in the works?

That first mystery with Barbour, now called The Last Bequest, was re-released with a new publisher last September. MuseItUp picked up the entire series, and released the second book, The Map Quilt, last year, and has the third book, The Newspaper Code, scheduled for sometime later this year. I am also in the process of final edits on Healing Grace, a novel about a woman who can visibly manifest one of the gifts of the Spirit, but at great cost to herself – that’s due out in April. My agent is shopping one of my more favorite manuscripts about a woman who has end-stage cancer and gets caught up in an unethical stem cell study. I also have a story in an anthology of turn of the twentieth-century romances that take place in larger cities; we just started sending that out. I have others as well…we have to keep moving, don’t we? One of my favorite projects is working with writers through the Wisconsin Writer’s Association, where I am the editor of the literary magazine, Creative Wisconsin. That’s hardly even like work for me—except the week where I’m frantically laying it out, trying to make everything look pretty and fit together, before sending it to the printer. Good thing I like puzzles.

Thanks so much for having me here, Liz, and my very best wishes with your upcoming projects as well.