SMFS Member Guest Post: IF YOU JUST HANG ON… by Nikki Knight

Please welcome back Kathleen Marple Kalb to the blog today in her Nikki Knight personae. The book, Live, Local, and Long Dead: A Vermont Radio Mystery has new life through a new publisher and a series commitment. You can get it at the publisher, Wild Rose Press, Amazon, and other vendors. The book comes out Tuesday.

 

IF YOU JUST HANG ON…

            When it comes to writing, I’m a gila monster.

            A large venomous lizard, you ask? Well, kinda. The gila monster kills its prey by hanging on to until it surrenders. (That’s your inspirational weird fact for the day!) I hang on and keep writing characters I love until I convince everyone else to love them too…or at least give them a try.

            It’s why there’s a second Vermont Radio Mystery, LIVE, LOCAL, AND LONG DEAD, coming out this month…and why there are a lot of Vermont short stories out there, too. While I know, and really admire, writers who come up with new characters and a new “world” for each new story, I’m just not that creative.

            The basic idea of a mystery series set at a small radio station in Vermont was my first idea for a book, when I started writing fiction seriously in 2015, after my son started kindergarten. It seemed like a fun way to combine the experience of my first on-air job up there in the Green Mountains with my dark and snarky newsroom sense of humor – and finely honed appreciation for quirky crimes.
            The first version, best described as Stephanie Plum with moose and without Janet Evanovich’s skill, was a great learning experience. It was not, however, saleable, as I learned after my first agent hit a brick wall that had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the product.

            Fast-forward a couple years, after the first round of my husband’s cancer battle, and successful querying and submission with a new agent who found a home for my first few historical mysteries. And what did I want to do but go back to Vermont? This time, though, with a main character, disc jockey Jaye Jordan, who was a lot more like me: a grownup, a mother, someone who’d seen things, done things, and taken a few hits. But Vermont was still my happy place – and I’m still me, so I kept the farting moose, the snarky humor, and the quirky, diverse cast.

            My agent loved it and sold it…and LIVE, LOCAL, AND DEAD ultimately earned out. Not enough, though, and the series wasn’t picked up.  

            That might have been the end if not for the short stories.

            When I started writing shorts, I gravitated to a setting and characters I knew well, which meant Vermont and Jaye. The shorts started to sell, and every time one of them was published, a copy or two of LIVE, LOCAL, AND DEAD sold, proving to me, and anyone who might consider my work, that there was indeed a market for it.

            Not to mention the fact that I couldn’t let go.

            Gila monster, remember?

That’s why, when Level Best picked up my historical and a new contemporary series, I didn’t do the smart thing and pull everything else that was on submission. And when the Wild Rose Press offered for the second Vermont book, and the only thing I had to say was “Yes, thank you!”

And now, I’d like to invite you to my happy place, a very small radio station in a tiny Vermont town, where weird crimes seem to keep happening, with a (literally) colorful cast of locals, wicked humor, warm family moments, and of course, that flatulent moose.

Not a gila monster in sight. Except, of course, for me.

 

 

LIVE, LOCAL, AND LONG DEAD: Vermont DJ Jaye Jordan's Green-Up Day ends in murder when not one, but two, bodies turn up in an old park -- and one of them was much too close to both her ex and her current man when it was alive and bodacious. Now Jaye, with the help of a colorful (and diverse) cast of townies, will have to clear her men's names, unravel a World War II-era mystery…and get Grandpa Seymour to the Senior Prom on time. 

 

 

Nikki Knight ©2024

 

Nikki Knight is an Author/Anchor/Mom…not in that order. An award-winning weekend anchor at New York’s 1010 WINS Radio, she writes short stories and novels including the Vermont Radio Mystery LIVE, LOCAL, AND LONG DEAD from the Wild Rose Press. As Kathleen Marple Kalb, she writes the Ella Shane and Old Stuff series, both from Level Best Books. A Derringer finalist, she’s had stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, and anthologies including DEVIL’S SNARE: Best New England Crime Stories 2024. She’s Co-VP of the New York/Tri-State Sisters in Crime Chapter and a past VP of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. She, her husband, and son live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.