Tag Archive for: Multiple Series

Writing Multiple Series: featuring Kaye George/Janet Cantrell

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This is
my third interview with an author of multiple mystery series. My guest
is Kaye George who is also known as Janet Cantrell. As Kaye, she writes about Imogene Duckworthy, Cressa Carraway, and the (Neanderthal) People of the Wind. As Janet, she pens the Fat Cat cozies. Distinguished for her short stories as well as her mystery novels, Kay has been nominated for an Agatha in two categories (Best First Novel and Best Historical Novel) and served as the President of the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime. Welcome, Kaye/Janet!

How did you initially
decide to write fiction?
It wasn’t a decision. It’s something I’ve
been doing my whole life. I made up stories to go with my crayon drawings
before I could write words. In grade school I drew little comic strips and
sixth grade wrote two “novels”. I think they were about five pages each. In
high school and college, I sent short stories to magazines. I wrote short
stories for creative writing classes in college. I’ve never not written
fiction.
You have published
short stories. How did those help and continue to influence your career?
The first things I got published were
short stories. This was after I gave up on sending them to Atlantic and The New Yorker,
as I’d done for years. I decided to concentrate on novels, thinking I had a
better chance of getting them published. I initially wrote literary fiction,
but soon decided I should write what I most enjoyed reading, and that was mystery.
During the ten years it took to get a mystery novel published, online short
story markets started opening up and I started submitting. I’m still doing
that, along with the novels.
Who publishes each of
your series and how did you begin writing each series?
I’m self-publishing the Imogene Duckworthy
humorous Texas mysteries. The first in that series was the first mystery novel
I got published, but I parted with my publisher after a year. That book won an
Agatha nomination, which my publisher refused to acknowledge. That didn’t sit
well with me! After I republished the first one, CHOKE, I self-published SMOKE
and BROKE pretty quickly. STROKE is in the works.

The first mystery novel I completed and
queried (for about 10 years) is now called EINE KLEINE MURDER, published by
Barking Rain Press. In frustration over my many, many rejections, I turned to
writing the over-the-top Duckworthy series and got that published first. But I
kept coming back to my first love (not my first completed mystery novel, but
the first that I thought had a chance). The main character, Cressa Carraway, is
the successful professional musician I never was. I’ve always been an amateur,
except for some string quartet work that paid pretty well. I’m glad I persisted
and got it out there. It was a Silver Falchion finalist. The second in that
series, REQUIEM IN RED, will come out with the same publisher in April.

I got interested in reading very old
historical fiction, Roman, Greek, ancient Egyptian, and decided I wanted to
take fiction as far back as I possibly could. This was when the Neanderthal DNA
was being analyzed and more and more interest and discoveries centered upon
them. The more I learned, the more I wanted to write about them. DEATH IN THE
TIME OF ICE was the most difficult project I’ve ever done. I ended up using a
somewhat alternative historical setting, putting Neanderthals in North America.
That’s because I also got hooked by the mega-fauna (really, really big
animals!) that roamed this continent at the same time the Neanderthals were a
distinctive people. I got rave rejections for this from some good agents, who
told me they loved my book (!), but didn’t know how to sell it. One night I was
complaining on Facebook that I had gotten yet another of those rejections and
Jay Hartman, from Untreed Reads, who had published some of my short fiction,
asked to see it. And published it! That book was nominated for Best Historical
Agatha Award. The second in that series, which I’m calling People of the Wind,
is DEATH ON THE TREK and will be out in June.

Meanwhile, because I didn’t have enough
to do, I guess, I was hankering after a cozy series. I kept submitting
proposals to BookEnds Literary, an agency that places many cozy mysteries, and
kept getting them rejected. A proposal, I had learned from some experienced cozy
writers, is a detailed synopsis of the first book, the first three chapters,
and sketches for two more in the series. With each of those rejections, it was
like the characters I had created and lived with for at least a month, died. I
got wind of a series I thought I could do, based in Texas where I lived, and
wanted to audition for it, but couldn’t write yet another proposal and get it
rejected. A friend suggested I send in CHOKE instead and inquire about the
series. I did, Kim Lionetti liked my voice, and suddenly, I was agented! I didn’t
get that proposal, but she got me the Fat Cat series. The first two are out,
FAT CAT AT LARGE and FAT CAT SPREADS OUT. The third, FAT CAT TAKES THE CAKE,
will come out in April. I write that series under the name Janet Cantrell.

Did you notice that I have TWO books
coming out in April? Yikes!
How many books do you
write in a year and what is your publication schedule?
I’d like to write one a year, but have
been doing more. The Fat Cat publisher, Berkley Prime Crime, wanted a book
every nine months, so everything else went on hold while I did those three
books. As a result, the second Neanderthal book is coming out a couple of years
after the first one. The second Cressa Carraway was nearly finished a few years
ago, so it wasn’t too hard to get it in shape.
Do you write under
more than one name? If so, was that by your choice or a publisher’s request?
I write mostly as Kaye George. The Fat
Cat series is written as Janet Cantrell because the publisher owns all the rights
to that series. The initial concept was theirs and they own the series, the
characters, and the author name.
What “relationship”
do you have as author with each of your series’ protagonists?
I love all of them! They are all my
children, my creation, born out of labor and love.
Setting has an
important role in each series you write. What is your approach to developing a
setting that fuels the story and draws in readers?
I use west Texas, where I was living
when I started writing the Duckworthy series because I found much to be darkly
humorous about. It’s a harsh place with wonderful people.
I set the Cressa Carraway books in the
Midwest, where I’m from. It seems natural to set them there.
It was requested I set Fat Cat in
Minneapolis, where I’ve also lived. So that wasn’t difficult.
It was very difficult to draw the
setting for the Neanderthals. They lived before the last Ice Age, when there
was no Mississippi River. I had to do tons of research just to describe the
setting. It was all fun, though.
Is it a challenge to
keep coming up with original and inventive plots? How do you do it?
No, the challenge is to find time to
write everything that’s in my head. I had lots more ideas than I’ll ever live
long enough to write.
Since at The
Stilletto Gang we like to delve into shoes and accessories, what are your
protagonists’ favorite foot or carrying apparel? (Pictures are welcome!)
This is the hardest question! I love
shoe shopping, but my feet are hard to fit and I don’t often find shoes I can
buy. I guess that, as a consequence, my characters don’t have too much interest
in shoes.
Immy Duckworthy wears sneakers and
cowgirl boots. Cressa Carraway probably mostly wears sneakers. Well, Chase
Oliver, the Fat Cat’s owner, does, too. (The Fat Cat is named Quincy.) I guess
I’m in a shoe rut! Enga Dancing Flower wraps her feet in skins and ties them
with leather thongs when it’s cold, but she’s barefoot a lot of the time.
Kaye George/Janet Cantrell
Kaye George, national-bestselling and
multiple-award-winning author, writes several mystery series: Imogene
Duckworthy, Cressa Carraway (Barking Rain Press), People of the Wind (Untreed
Reads), and, as Janet Cantrell, Fat Cat (Berkley Prime Crime cozies). The third,
Fat Cat Takes the Cake, will appear April 2016. The second Cressa Carraway
novel, Requiem in Red, will appear in early 2016. The second People of the
Wind, Death on the Trek, comes out in June 2016. Her short stories appear in
anthologies, magazines, and her own collection, A Patchwork of Stories. She
reviews for Suspense Magazine. She lives in Knoxville, TN. http://kayegeorge.com/

WRITING MULTIPLE SERIES: Featuring Leslie Budewitz

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This is
my second interview with an author who writes multiple mystery series. My guest
is Leslie Budewitz, current President of the national Sisters in Crime and a
founding member of the Guppy Chapter of SinC. Leslie is the first person to
have won Agathas for fiction and nonfiction. Death al Dente, the first
in her Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, won the 2013 Agatha Award for Best First
Novel. Her guide for writers, Books, Crooks & Counselors: How to Write
Accurately About Criminal Law and Courtroom Procedure, won the 2011
Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction. Also, her essay is featured in Writes of Passage: Adventures on the Writer’s Journey edited by Hank Phillippi
Ryan (Henery Press), which
won Agatha and Anthony awards this year. Welcome, Leslie!

Thanks, Paula, for
including me in this series!
How did you initially
decide to write fiction?
I started writing at 4,
on my father’s desk. Literally – I did not yet grasp the concept of paper.
Fortunately, my parents were understanding, and kept me readily supplied with
pens and paper. Though while I always wanted to write, I didn’t think it was
something you could really do. But I was an avid reader, of course, and
someone was writing those books. In my mid-30s, during a difficult time, I
realized that someone could be me. I wrote the first chapter of my first novel
one afternoon in my firm’s law library. But the process of becoming a fiction
writer is a continual series of decisions – to keep writing, to work on the
craft, to learn about the business, and to persevere. So glad I did!
Now, I’m writing two
light-hearted or cozy mystery series. No graphic sex or violence, lots of
graphic food. In the Spice Shop Mysteries, Pepper Reece never thought she’d
find solace and comfort, let alone employment, in bay leaves, but running a
spice shop in Seattle’s famed Pike Place Market gives her a new zest for life –
until murder ends up in the mix.
The Food Lovers’ Village
Mysteries is set in NW Montana, where I live. After years away, Erin Murphy’s
come home to Jewel Bay, a tourist community on the road to Glacier National
Park. She remakes her family’s hundred-year-old grocery into the Merc, a
specialty local foods market and commercial kitchen used by the village
chocolatier, the jam maker, and other producers, including Erin’s mother,
Fresca, who makes pastas and sauces that Erin sells. While pursuing her passion
for pasta and huckleberry chocolates, Erin discovers a talent for solving
murder.
You have published
short stories. How did those help and continue to influence your career?
Honestly, I never thought
I could write a short story. They daunted me. How could I could tell a story in
less than 80,000 words? But I had a couple of ideas that were clearly short
stories, not novels, and when they came together, and then were published, they
gave me the sense that despite a lot of discouragement, I actually could write
fiction. At about that same time, I wrote my nonfiction book, BOOKS, CROOKS
& COUNSELORS: HOW TO WRITE ACCURATELY ABOUT CRIMINAL LAW AND COURTROOM
PROCEDURE (Quill Driver, 2011). In the process, I realized that as much as I
love helping other writers, I wasn’t through telling my own stories. And so, I
recommitted – that decision-making process again – and started my Food Lovers’
Village Mysteries.
Who publishes each of
your series and how did you begin writing each series?
I wanted to create a cozy
series and knew that food themes are popular. Mr. Right and I love to cook and
try new recipes, so I thought we had the culinary chops. The Food Lovers’
Village mysteries introduce readers to a surprising little village very much
like my own – a small town in a gorgeous setting with tremendous food, art, and
theater that delights the many visitors who have a very different idea of what
small-town Montana will be!
When I decided to start a
second series, I wanted a completely different setting. As a student at Seattle
University and later as a young lawyer, I fell in love with the Pike Place
Market and spent many happy hours eating my way through it. When I worked
downtown, I bought most of my produce, cheese, and baked goods there, along
with other treats. It’s a terrific setting for an urban cozy – a city within a
city – and readers seem to enjoy the trip as much as I do. Of course, I have to
go there regularly for research – by which I mean “eat.”
So while both series are
light-hearted, and feature women who work in food-related retail, the settings
are total opposites. I’ve worked hard to make the two women and the other
characters distinctive as well.
Both are published by
Berkley Prime Crime. And I must say, I would not have been able to make the
contacts to get the contracts without the support and encouragement of friends
I met through the Sisters in Crime Guppies chapter.
How many books do you
write in a year and what is your publication schedule?
This year is a bit of an
anomaly: By the end I will have written four books and published three. I hope
in future years to write and publish one a year in each series, giving me time
for a few more short stories and another project I have in mind.
Do you write under
more than one name? If so, was that by your choice or a publisher’s request?
No.
What “relationship”
do you have as author with each of your series’ protagonists?
Erin Murphy, the
protagonist of the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, is a lot like me in many
ways – she left her native Montana, then returned in her early 30s. She spouts
off snippets from plays and poems with little provocation. Jewel Bay, her
hometown, is a lot like the community where we live, so she lets me dive into
that theme of coming home, only to find that both you and the place have
changed more than you expected. I also get to share my love of this wonderful
state and a town that never fails to surprise visitors!
Pepper Reece, the owner
of the Spice Shop, is a Seattle girl through and through. She lets me indulge
and explore my love of the Emerald City. We both fit the “life begins at 40”
cliché, and as with Erin, I find it a lot of fun to explore an aspect of my own
life through the life of a younger woman with her own talents, quirks, and
choices.
Both love to cook and
eat, and that makes us all great companions!
Setting has an
important role in each series you write. What is your approach to developing a
setting that fuels the story and draws in readers?
It’s all about the details
– finding the right ones that create a picture and evoke a mood and flavor for
readers who may never have been to the place you’re describing or one like it.
And you’ve got to know when enough is enough – don’t describe a place unless
it’s actually important to the story. Setting a book in a real city – Seattle –
is challenging because I want to get it right, and darn it, it keeps changing,
as cities always do. Many people know Seattle – 10 MILLION people visit the
Pike Place Market every year. So I do a lot of research. I keep maps on my wall
and guides to the city close by. I read Seattle newspapers and blogs, and
consult friends who still live there.
Jewel Bay is an easier
place to write about because while it’s modeled on a real village, it is ultimately
a place of the heart.
Is it a challenge to
keep coming up with original and inventive plots? How do you do it?
Drink wine and eat
chocolate. Seriously, I can only hope that I don’t repeat myself or draw too
heavily on the conventions of the genre. Ultimately, plot comes from the
characters – what do these people want, and what will they do when they don’t
get it. The people are the heart of the story.
Since at The Stiletto
Gang we like to delve into shoes and accessories, what are your protagonists’
favorite foot or carrying apparel? (Pictures are welcome!)
Erin counts on her lucky
red boots, and Pepper her pink shoes. I don’t actually own either pair – they
are their own women, after all – but I envision Erin’s boots like these pictures.

Painting by Leslie’s friend, Bigfork artist Nancy Dunlap Cawdrey

Thanks for having me at the Stiletto Gang today. I’d be delighted to give a
copy of GUILTY AS CINNAMON and an adorable gingerbread man tea infuser to a
commenter!

  

A Montana native, Leslie graduated
from Seattle University and Notre Dame Law School. After practicing in Seattle
for several years – and shopping and eating her way through the Pike Place
Market regularly – she returned to Montana, where she still practices law
part-time. Killing people – on the page – is more fun.

Leslie
loves to cook, eat, hike, travel, garden, and paint – not necessarily in that order. She lives in
northwest Montana with her husband, Don Beans, a singer-songwriter and doctor
of natural medicine, and their Burmese cat, Ruff, a book cover model and an
avid bird watcher.

WRITING MULTIPLE SERIES: Featuring Edith Maxwell

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With this post, I’m beginning to interview authors who write multiple mystery series. My first guest is Edith Maxwell, also known as Tace Baker and Maddie Day, who writes the Lauren Rousseau, Local Foods, and Country Story Mysteries. Her newest series, featuring an 1880’s Quaker midwife debuts in April. Welcome, Edith!
Paula, thanks
so much for having me on the blog, and for asking such intriguing questions! I’m
delighted to be here again.
How did you initially decide to write
fiction?
I wrote stories
as a child and then pretty much gave up creative writing for a few decades. It
was my now ex-husband who said, when our younger son had gone off to
kindergarten and I had every morning to myself for the first time in five
years, “You like to read mysteries so much. Why don’t you write one?” Bingo. I
had a small organic farm but didn’t grow anything in the winter, so I set to
work writing a mystery set on an organic farm.
You have published short stories. How
did those help and continue to influence your career?
After I spent
about nine months writing about two-thirds of a mystery novel (which ended up
being my first Local Foods mystery nineteen years later), I reentered the paid
work force. I had a full-time job as a technical writer, with a commute, and
two little boys to raise. I couldn’t really carry a plot and all the characters
of a novel around in my head and write about them during the few snatches of
time I had to myself. Instead I started writing short stories and kept honing
my craft with those until my life opened up enough to write novels again
fifteen years later. Several of my short stories were published in juried
anthologies, and that gave my resume a boost when I proposed a cozy series to
my agent. “Just Desserts for Johnny,” which was inspired by a bad encounter
with a fraudulent press, was published in Kings River Life Magazine and then
was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story this year!
Who publishes each of your series and
how did you begin writing each series?
When I was laid
off my tech writing job, I started writing my first Lauren Rousseau mystery, Speaking
of Murder. Barking Rain Press published it almost four years later, and
then published Bluffing is Murder, too.
The Local Foods
Mysteries came about when John Talbot contacted our New England Sisters in
Crime chapter and said he wanted to work with authors to develop cozy mystery
proposals. I queried him about a series set on an organic farm (see above). We
worked on the proposal together and he sold it to Kensington within a week in a
three-book deal. After I wrote Book Three (Farmed and Dangerous), I
proposed the Country Store Mysteries to my Kensington editor. He not only
bought it, also in a three-book deal, but renewed the Local Foods series for
two more books.
I live in an
historic New England town and am a Quaker, and I felt a real calling to write a
series with a Quaker midwife set in the late 1880s. Somewhere in between other
books, I wrote the first in the series, Delivering the Truth, plus a
three-book proposal, and we sold that to Terri Bischoff at Midnight Ink.
How many books do you write in a year
and what is your publication schedule?
I am letting
the small-press Lauren Rousseau Mysteries go dormant, so I now write three
books a year. Two are on a yearly schedule, due January 1 and May 1, but the
Country Store series are on a seven-month schedule. If you think you just heard
a little scream of panic, you are correct, because the due dates sometimes get
kind of nuts. For example, in 2016 I have books due in January, March, and May.
To cope with this I write ahead and work as hard as I can. The January book, Breaking
the Chain, is all done and I’m halfway through the March book, When the
Grits Hit the Fan. And I try to remember to breathe! I did leave my day job
two and a half years ago, which is the only way I could pull this off.
Do you write under more than one name?
If so, was that by your choice or a publisher’s request?
The first
Lauren Rousseau mystery was almost accepted by Barking Rain Press when I was
reading my first Kensington contract. It stipulated essentially that I couldn’t
publish any other mysteries as Edith Maxwell, so I convinced them to let me use
a pen name, Tace Baker.
When they
offered me the Country Store Mysteries contract, Kensington said they wanted me
to use a pseudonym. Not my choice, but I wasn’t about to turn down the contract
only for that, so Maddie Day was born. Luckily, the Quaker Midwife Mysteries
are coming out written by Edith Maxwell.
What “relationship” do you have as an
author with each of your series’ protagonists?
Each of my protagonists
have traits, practices, or skills that come from a piece of me or my past. I
love resurrecting some of the things I used to do and now either don’t or can’t.
Lauren is a contemporary Quaker, a linguistics professor, and a runner, the
latter two both things I did in the past. Cam Flaherty is an organic farmer,
and now I get to be back in that world without doing all the hard work of
digging, planting, and harvesting. Robbie Jordan lives in southern Indiana
where I lived while earning a PhD in linguistics, and she’s originally a
Californian, like me. And Rose Carroll, my 1888 midwife, lets me back into the
world of pregnancy and childbirth, which I used to teach to expectant parents
in my living room. She and John Greenleaf Whittier worship in the same lovely
simple Meetinghouse where I walk to worship on Sunday mornings, and Rose lives
in my house, built 1880. I am fond of each of these gals and I get excited when
I can jump back into their lives and start a new story.
Setting has an important role in each
series you write. What is your approach to developing a setting that fuels the
story and draws in readers?
You’re right
about the importance of setting. Whether the 1888 mill town and Carriage
Capital of the World, the academic campus and coastal town of Lauren Rousseau’s
world, the organic farm and small rural Massachusetts town it’s in, or the
scenic hills of Brown County with the local dialect more Kentucky than Indiana
– they each inform the stories and govern how my protagonist acts. These are
all places I either live in or have lived in, although the town of South Lick,
Indiana is entirely fictional. Each of my series would be very different if it
were set elsewhere.
Is it a challenge to keep coming up with
original and inventive plots? How do you do it?
So far plots
have just sort of come to me, and I sure hope that keeps happening. I often
envision the victim and the murder weapon first, and then think about how I can
make that work. Sometimes I don’t know which of the several suspects is the villain
until well into first draft. I will say that attending talks by the Poison
Lady, Luci Zahray, has been instrumental in giving me ideas for murder weapons.
<grin>
Since at the Stiletto gang we like to
delve into shoes and accessories, what are your protagonists’ favorite foot or
carrying apparel?
Cam wears work
boots on the farm, of course, but when she cleans up she likes to put on her
turquoise cowboy boots. She carries a messenger bag decorated with
hand-stenciled crows. Robbie wears sneakers when she cooks breakfast and lunch
in her restaurant, and pairs fun ankle boots with a swirly skirt when she goes
to a party or knee-high leather boots in winter. And Rose wears simple lace-up
shoes (what we would call boots today) and nearly always has her birthing
satchel with her when she goes out (which you can see on the gorgeous cover of Delivering
the Truth – out in April!).

Thanks again
for having me. I’d be delighted to give away a copy of Flipped for Murder
to one commenter here.
Artist depiction of Edith writing with a scene from one of her novels in the background
Amazon-bestselling and Agatha-nominated author Edith
Maxwell writes four mystery series, as well as award-winning short stories.
Maxwell’s Country Store
Mysteries, written as Maddie Day (Kensington Publishing), debuts with Flipped
for Murder in October, 2015. Farmed and Dangerous is the latest in
Maxwell’s Local Foods Mysteries series (Kensington Publishing, 2015). The
latest book in the Lauren Rousseau mysteries, under the pseudonym Tace Baker
(Barking Rain Press, 2014), is Bluffing is Murder. The first in Maxwell’s
historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries series, Delivering the Truth, will
debut in April, 2016 (Midnight Ink).
Maxwell lives
in an antique house north of Boston with her beau and three cats. She blogs
every weekday with the other Wicked Cozy Authors (wickedcozyauthors.com), and
you can find her at www.edithmaxwell.com, @edithmaxwell, on Pinterest, and at www.facebook.com/EdithMaxwellAuthor.