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.

SMFS Members Published in Writing the Cozy Mystery: Authors' Perspectives on Their Craft

 

SMFS list members have essays published in the recently published new book, Writing the Cozy Mystery: Authors' Perspectives on Their Craft. Published by McFarland & Company, the read is available in a variety of formats from the publisher, Amazon, and other vendors. The SMFS list members that reported their essays are:  

 

Leslie Budewitz with “Writing the World Around Us: Social Issues in the Cozy.”

 

Kathleen Marple Kalb with “...And a Colorful Cast.”

 

Edith Maxwell with “Writing Multiple Series.”

 

Publisher Description:

This book brings together essays written by a number of well-known writers of cozy mysteries, including Sherry Harris, Amanda Flower, Leslie Budewitz, and Edith Maxwell, among others, who provide insight into their approaches to writing. Topics covered include how they work with the form, develop characters and settings, and utilize the particular hook, skill or business that establishes the protagonist’s ability to solve crimes. In addition to discussing these traditional aspects of writing, several authors focus on how they have expanded the direction the contemporary cozy mystery has taken with the inclusion of more diverse characters and social issues. 

SMFS Member Guest Post: The Art of the Short Story by January Bain

Please welcome fellow SMFS list member and author January Bain to the blog today...

The Art of the Short Story by January Bain

 

Good day to you,

 

By way of introduction, I’m January Bain, a Canadian author obsessed with Story. Short ones, long ones, and all lengths in between, whatever serves the purpose. I have written so many books now, I’ve lost count. But I do have a special fondness for the short story form and have been known to pen a few in my time.

 

What makes the short story form so powerful? How can one hope to compare to someone like Hemmingway with his powerful themes, his renowned use of economy of language and understated intensity. His ability to convey deep emotion and complex human experiences in a few pages can be said to be unparalleled. But no, the same applies to other writers: Virginia Wolfe, Agatha Christie, Alice Monroe, Margaret Atwood, Edgar Allen Poe, William Faulkner, too many to mention in a short blog post.

 

What makes a story memorable, at any length, in my opinion, is the execution of a powerful idea drawing on human emotion, leading the reader through a labyrinth of a journey filled with conflict toward a destination that reveals something of the human experience. And hopefully the wisdom we discover as we read, we can draw on in our own time of need, seeing how others dealt with adversity and triumph. But it’s the powerful idea that first needs to be addressed.

 

Are there any original ideas left? Probably not very many, if any, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use your own unique viewpoint to craft stories. Each person who is compelled to write and is willing to sit down for hours on end, alone, and does so, has something to say, something to offer others.

 

I sometimes ask myself this question: Why do we write, slave over each and every word, paragraph and scene, not happy until we have come close as possible to getting across our ideas to the world? At first light, it can be ego, thinking I can write a story as least as good as the one I’m reading, then later, it’s more focused as we mature, a celebration of all that is human.

 

The hero’s journey speaks to all of us in story form, providing a road map in how to deal with life’s inevitable difficulties. Whether you care most about injustice, truth, expressing love, good versus evil, identity and coming of age, fighting for human rights or the abuses of power and corruption, story can take you on an illuminating journey of discovery and bring you closer to others in the process. It helps one immensely to realize they are not alone in this world, that others have followed similar paths many, many times before. That they have lived to come out the other side, no doubt wiser and better able to cope after being tested, showing all of us how they managed the feat. And if they didn’t survive the journey, it also teaches us something. The short story does this so well. A short, intense glimpse of another world, another time, but always applicable to the present.

 

Of course, it’s assumed that one learns the structure of a short story, scintillating prose, making your characters as real as possible, with a plot and a hook that engages readers, no different than the longer novel form, except in brevity. Celebrated authors have taken all this onboard and more, to arrive at a diamond that others can relate to. A worthwhile enterprise celebrating the art of the short story.

 

I bid you adieu and happy reading.

 

January Bain/Storyteller 

 

January Bain ©2024 

January Bain firmly believes that stories unite us, that good stories help us to discover the commonality of the human experience by supporting values, empathy and understanding. January writes with her heart, mind, and soul, hoping that her novels will touch your life, giving you moments of freedom as you fly with her to other worlds. January and her husband live in rural Canada on peaceful acreage where a variety of wildlife comes to visit regularly and expects to be fed and paid attention to.

SMFS Member Guest Post: Location, location, location by donalee Moulton

Please welcome SMFS list member donalee Moulton to the blog today...

 

Location, location, location by donalee Moulton

 

Where your characters live, work, and solve mysteries can be central to the story. Or not. I’ve discovered that that location is not a requirement or an irrelevancy. It is a spectrum.

At one end of the spectrum, location is essential. As a result, you spend time bringing that location to life, making it real, and of real interest to readers. This requires knowing whereof you write or researching whereof you write. Or both. My latest book, a historical mystery entitled Conflagration!, is based on the real-life story of Marie-Joseph Angélique, an enslaved Black woman accused of burning the lower town of Montreal to the ground in 1734. Montreal as a place and as a community is intertwined with the plot and the characters, fictional and otherwise. As a result, I had to immerse myself in a time and place that no longer exist.

Move further along the location spectrum and you’ll arrive here: the location could be anywhere. The town, island, futuristic community where your characters go about their daily lives is woven into the story but not predetermined. It’s up to you. You may choose a place that is familiar, that fits within the theme of the book, or simply resonates with you.

My first mystery book Hung Out to Die introduces Riel Brava to readers. Riel is originally from Santa Barbara but now living in Nova Scotia, which is where I live. Fact is, Riel could have been uprooted to almost any location where cannabis production is legal. (Riel is CEO of the Canadian Cannabis Corporation. He’s also a psychopath (not the nasty kind), but we’ll save that for another blog.) I chose Nova Scotia because I know this location. Less research would be required, but I also have a deeper connection to this place because it is my place. Many readers have told me how the book feels so much like Nova Scotia. That was not intentional, but it reflects a knowledge of place that goes beyond street maps, tourist locations, and Yelp reviews.

Finally, we reach the other end of the spectrum: place is irrelevant. Indeed, a specific geographical location may not be necessary. I wrote a short story called “Moist,” that for the most part takes place in the main character’s home. Where that home is situated doesn’t matter.

After the story was published, there was a call for stories for a new anthology Santa Cruz Ghost Stories. I reached out to the editor to explain that my story wasn’t really set anywhere so it could be set in Santa Cruz. She agreed. Minor changes were made (like changing Canadian spelling to American (“savour” became “savor”) and using the name of a dollar store Santa Cruz residents would easily recognize.)

Ultimately, location is about character. The two go hand in hand.

 

donalee Moulton ©2024

donalee Moulton’s first mystery book Hung out to Die was published in 2023. A historical mystery, Conflagration!, was published in 2024. It is a finalist in the 2024 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense.

A short story “Swan Song” was one of 21 selected for publication in Cold Canadian Crime. It was shortlisted for an Award of Excellence. Other short stories have been published in Black Cat Weekly, After Dinner Conversation, The Antigonish Review, and numerous anthologies. donalee’s short story “Troubled Water” was shortlisted for a 2024 Derringer Award and a 2024 Award of Excellence from the Crime Writers of Canada.

SMFS Member Guest Post: DOING GOOD AND DOING WELL by Kathleen Marple Kalb (SMFS Vice President)

Please welcome our Vice President to the blog today…

 

 

DOING GOOD AND DOING WELL

Guest Post by SMFS Vice President Kathleen Marple Kalb

 

 

            Charity anthologies are often good career moves as well as good karma.

            In the last few years, I’ve been fortunate to have stories in several, and every time, there’ve been concrete benefits beyond the pleasure of helping our fellow humans.

            First, if you’re early in your career, giving a story to a charity anthology can be a chance to work with an accomplished editor. To get their comments, and their thinking on your soundtrack for the current story, and every future project, is enough compensation right there.

            Almost all anthologies also give you an opportunity to reach new and different readers. Even if you’re a big seller, it’s unlikely followers of every other writer in the anthology will be familiar with your work. And if you’re still building a readership, it’s a real chance to widen your audience.

            That’s part of any anthology. Sharing the promotional effort is, too. Many of us don’t do as much promotion as we should (looking in the mirror here!) but if you’re out there with a bunch of other folks, suddenly the burden isn’t as heavy. It’s often a lot more fun, too.

            Charity projects, though, are special. The writers, of course, care about the cause enough to give their work and their promotional effort. Often, they’re willing to work harder because the charity is important to them.

            More, though, charity projects carry built-in goodwill that can lead to extra positive attention. Bloggers, reviewers, and others will often promote the project as a way to help the cause. Or just to make sure the writers are rewarded for doing good.

            All of that is good for the anthology and the charity.

            Sometimes, it’s good for you, too, bringing in additional readers for your other projects.

            And sometimes, you just get lucky.

            My most recent charity anthology story, “A Fatal Saint Patrick’s Day,” came out last month in LUCK OF THE IRISH.  The story involves my Irish-Jewish Gilded Age trouser diva Ella Shane, because she was the best fit for the theme. When I signed on, I just wanted to raise some money to help migrant children – and write a good story.

            As it turned out, though, the anthology came out just over a month before my next Ella Shane book, A FATAL RECEPTION, the reboot of the series at Level Best Books – due April 30th. Even better, the editors, Kate Darroch and Jessica Thompson, as well as some of the other writers, have different (and much larger) readerships than I do.

            We told some good stories, we sold a bunch of books, and we brought in a nice donation for kids who really need help. And, as it happens, I introduced Ella to lots of new readers right before the next book.

            The old saw is: “It’s better to be lucky than good,” but maybe it should be: “Look for chances to do good…and you just might be lucky, too!”

 

A FATAL RECEPTION: Gilded Age trouser diva Ella Shane and her Duke are at long last headed for the altar…but they’ll have to handle a murder, a shipwreck, a questionable Polish prince, and any number of other complications on the way. Continuing the highly-praised series featuring an Irish-Jewish Lower East Side orphan who found fame and fortune as a singer of male soprano roles, the latest installment follows Ella and her surprisingly diverse cast of family and friends through mystery and misadventure…and into the greatest challenge of all for an independent-minded woman and her Victorian swain: matrimony!

Buy at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Reception-Ella-Shane-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0CXY8T735

 

Kathleen Marple Kalb ©2024

Kathleen Marple Kalb describes herself as 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 A Fatal Reception and the Old Stuff series, both from Level Best Books. As Nikki Knight, she writes the Grace the Hit Mom and Vermont Radio mysteries. Her stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, and others, and been short-listed for Derringer and Black Orchid Novella Awards. She’s currently the Vice President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and a co-VP of the New York/Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime. She, her husband, and son live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.

Website: https://kathleenmarplekalb.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kathleen-Marple-Kalb-1082949845220373/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KalbMarple

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathleenmarplekalb/

Threads: @kathleenmarplekalb

Bluesky: @mysterymarple.bsky.social   

SMFS Member Guest Post: Luck of Shadows by Cheryl Phipps

 

Please welcome our fellow member, Cheryl Phipps, to the blog today. Her short story, Luck of Shadows, appears in the cozy mystery anthology, The Luck of the Irish: Cozy Mystery Anthology, scheduled to be released March 16^th. 

 

I’ve been writing short stories for as long as I can remember, with a break when I got married and had my 3 children. Working and raising a family while working, pushed time constraints, but I always had a story to tell at bedtime!

 

In 2001, the founder of RWNZ (Romance Writers of New Zealand) did a talk at my local library and I was hooked on writing more as well as having them published. While I write cozy mysteries alongside contemporary romance and Women’s Fiction novels these days, I still add in novellas or short stories when I can. Not only are they a change of pace and often a challenge, but they can also be repurposed down the track. For instance, I just wrote a cozy mystery for a charity anthology and fully intend in a year or so to make it into a series of novellas. Write what you love, and the length doesn’t matter! (Unless you enter a competition! 😉)

 

About my story:

All my cozy mysteries are classic whodunnits. They are clean, with the emphasis on solving a crime. I love that my heroines care for their small-town communities as well as being somewhat feisty. They never take no for an answer! 

In Luck of Shadows, through compassion and empathy Patience O’Reilly helps people to realize the biggest item on their bucket list while investigating the crime that invariably turns up. 

 

Cheryl Phipps ©2024 

Cheryl Phipps is a USA Today Bestselling author of cozy mysteries and contemporary romance with over 45 works published. Hailing from a small town in beautiful New Zealand, she loves everything bookish and is devoted to her family, friends, and one delightful, if rascally, pooch. Weaving stories that celebrate love, family, and resilience, as well as delivering a heart-racing, happy ending, with a sprinkle of humor–or complex mystery, she couldn’t imagine a different career. She also co-hosts a free popular podcast for self-published authors of all levels called the spagirlspodcast.com.

SMFS Member Guest Post: OLD STUFF, NEW ANSWER by Kathleen Marple Kalb (SMFS Vice President)

Please welcome back our Vice President, Kathleen Marple Kalb, to our SMFS blog today…

 

 

OLD STUFF, NEW ANSWER

Guest Post by Kathleen Marple Kalb, SMFS VP

 

          Plot first or characters first?

            It’s a question mystery writers are asked – and ask themselves – just about every day.

            And almost every time, my answer is: characters first. One of my favorite things about writing is creating and living with these interesting people through their adventures. The whole reason I write, and love to read, series mysteries is the pleasure of hanging out with the characters.

            Almost all my story ideas begin that way: what could only happen to my characters, and why are they the only people who could solve the crime? It might be their job, their life experience, or some quirk of their personality, but the story always begins there.

            Or I thought it did.

            Then, last December, while I was making final arrangements for my mother, the funeral director used the phrase “the custodian of the body.” It gave me the idea for a mystery set in a funeral home: an innocent person burying a loved one stumbles into a murder in the next viewing room. Before you condemn me as a hopeless ghoul, please remember that plenty of people use writing as a coping mechanism. I’m one of them.

            The problem was, this great story idea didn’t fit my usual short-story characters, a divorced woman remaking her life at a little Vermont radio station and her colorful pals. Nobody was a good fit for serious grief. The idea simmered in the back of my head for a while, until I stumbled across something related to THE STUFF OF MURDER, my new Old Stuff series.

            The main character is a widow, Christian Shaw, head of the Unity, Connecticut Historical Society. When we meet her in the book, it’s about two years after her husband’s car-crash death, and she’s worked through the initial devastation, building a new life for herself and her son with the help of found family and good friends.

            I’d never used her in a short story because the cast is so large it didn’t seem workable. 

            But if it were just Christian and the person she’d bring with her to make funeral arrangements, her mentor/father figure Garrett?

            Suddenly, the whole thing came together: step back in time to Christian burying her husband and stumbling across a murder in the next room – a murder only she recognizes and can solve because of her unique expertise with old household objects. Give her a little help from Garrett, his former state trooper husband Ed, and some obligingly nasty suspects, and there it was.

            The end result, “The Custodian of the Body,” was my first story in Black Cat Weekly – with the help of an amazing edit by Barb Goffman. (Important aside: anytime you get a chance to be edited by Barb, the answer is yes, thank you – it’s an incredible learning experience, and so valuable to have her on your internal soundtrack as you build a story!)

            And, after writing one short story with Christian, I’ve done several others – so expect to see her again. She – and I – are a little busy right now, though. Christian’s first novel-length adventure, THE STUFF OF MURDER, came out this week from Level Best Books. A fading movie star drops dead on a shoot in her little town, and she ends up using her knowledge of everything from pewter tankards to Colonial bayonets to embroidery to track the killer. If you met Christian in “The Custodian of the Body,” you might enjoy spending a bit more time in her world, and meeting everyone who was hovering just outside the edges of the short story.

            I’m still a characters-first writer, but the experience of writing “The Custodian of the Body” convinced me that when a plot is good enough, you can find characters to fit. One more way to up my writing game.

 

THE STUFF OF MURDER: When Hollywood comes to small-town Connecticut, it should be the stuff of dreams – but when a fading movie star ends up dead, a whole different kind of stuff hits the fan.  Unity Historical Society head and antique household items – stuff! -- expert Christian Shaw is on set when actor Brett Studebaker falls to his death from the pulpit in an old church. She, the “dads she should have had,” Garrett and Ed, her son Henry, who has a photographic memory and Type-1 Diabetes, and her colorful friends end up helping Assistant State’s Attorney Joe Poli in his investigation. Along for the ride: her giant tuxedo cat, Cookie, Ed and Garrett’s big red mutt Norm, and Joe’s tiny dog Cannoli! Woodworking, embroidery, old poisons, and vintage weapons all figure in the case, which comes together in a wild scene at the Historical Society on Fourth-Grade Field Trip Day.

 

Buy at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKWFXQ3S/

 

Kathleen Marple Kalb © 2023

 

Kathleen Marple Kalb describes herself as 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 Stuff of Murder, and the upcoming Ella Shane mystery, A Fatal Reception, both from Level Best Books. As Nikki Knight, she writes the Grace the Hit Mom and Vermont Radio mysteries. Her stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, and others, and been short-listed for Derringer and Black Orchid Novella Awards. She’s currently the Vice President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and a co-VP of the New York/Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime. She, her husband, and son live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.

 

Website: https://kathleenmarplekalb.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kathleen-Marple-Kalb-1082949845220373/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KalbMarple   

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathleenmarplekalb/           

SMFS Member Guest Post: YOU NEVER KNOW UNTIL YOU PITCH by Kathleen Marple Kalb (Nikki Knight) SMFS Vice President

Please welcome our Vice President, Kathleen Marple Kalb, to our SMFS blog today.

 

YOU NEVER KNOW UNTIL YOU PITCH

Guest Post by Kathleen Marple Kalb (Nikki Knight) SMFS Vice President

           

            Never be afraid to pitch.

            At SMFS Watercoolers, we hear that a lot from people like Michael Bracken and Robert Lopresti, who sell and/or edit incredible amounts of great work.

            But it applies to us ordinary hopefuls, too.

            With one very important caveat.

            Unless you’re a legend, if you pitch widely, you’re going to get a lot of rejections. I’m (mostly) okay with that. If I take a long shot and it doesn’t pay off, well, at least I have the consolation that I took a risk.

            But your mileage may vary. So, if you’re one of those folks who curls up in a pained ball for weeks over a rejection, the following advice may not be for you. If, on the other hand, you view rejection as simply an annoying and painful part of the process, ride with me.

            Submitting work is never going to hurt you.

            Well, clarifying a little: properly submitting your best work is never going to hurt you. That means rigorously following call rules and submission guidelines, and turning in clean, well-thought-out pieces that really represent what you can do.

            As long as you’re doing that – fire away. 

            Got a great story that probably fits an anthology call? Easy – send it.

            Think your work is good enough for one of the top magazines? Go ahead, take a chance.

            The absolute worst that happens is that an editor looks at your work, decides it’s not for them, and rejects it. If you’ve followed all the guidelines and you’re not doing anything stupid or outrageous (submitting a rom-com fairy story to a noir mag, say) you’re doing your job as a writer, and everyone respects that.

            Of course, in rejecting it, they’re also doing their job as an editor – so you have to deal with all of those no’s in the in-box.

            But you might also get acceptances. Or you might impress the editor with the quality of your work and your professional approach and get a personal rejection of the “I’d like to see your next piece” variety.   

            The editors I’ve asked say they don’t send rejections like that to be kind – they do it because they really DO want to see more from you. So that’s definitely a win. Or at least a move in the right direction. It’s never bad to have someone aware of and interested in your work.

            On a larger level, it’s never bad to be out there, doing good work, whether or not you’re selling to a given editor at the moment. Remember, writing is a small world, and it does you no harm to develop a reputation as a pro who does good work. At least that’s what I tell myself when I get one of those nice graceful rejections!

            And sometimes, taking a wild chance really does pay off.

            Just ask Grace the Hit Mom.

            Back in the winter, I heard about a new startup publisher who was looking for lighter mysteries, but not conventional cozies. I knew one of the editors at Charade Media, so I pitched. With the understanding that this proposal wasn’t for everyone, and if it didn’t work out, I’d be back again later with something else.

            And so, I sent off the proposal for WRONG POISON, a cozy mystery featuring an amateur sleuth who’s a suburban mom with a secret life as an assassin.  The proposal had been written for another publisher who took one look and ran screaming into the night.

            I’d even had a hard time selling a short story featuring Grace the Hit Mom. (To this day, it’s in my files waiting for a home!)

            But Charade Media said they wanted different, out-of-the-box ideas, and this definitely met that bar. So I sent the proposal, figured it probably wouldn’t go anywhere, and went on with my day.

            Except…

            They got it. They loved it. And the first Grace the Hit Mom mystery, WRONG POISON, was published July 11^th.

            Never be afraid to pitch!

 

WRONG POISON: She's a nice suburban mom and an assassin...and Grace Adair’s secret life has just become a problem. When a death at the Library Book Fair turns out to be murder – by a poison used only by Grace’s ancient sisterhood, she knows she’s in trouble. Now, she’ll need all her skills as a PTA mom and former prosecutor to find the killer and protect her friends…and their secrets. Hopefully without using her other skills. About those other skills: Grace and her sweet senior pal Madge are members of a 700-year-old order of lady poisoners, sacred to the Archangel Gabriel and sworn to remove evil men who elude human justice. Think #MeToo with untraceable poison.  Call it a cozy with a twist. You’ve never met anyone like Grace…and you’ll never forget her.   

Check it out here: Wrong Poison: Knight, Nikki: 9798987684740: Amazon.com: Books

 

 

Kathleen Marple Kalb ©2023

 

Nikki Knight describes herself as an Author/Anchor/Mom…not in that order. An award-winning weekend anchor at New York City’s 1010 WINS Radio, she writes short stories and novels. Her stories appear in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Black Cat Weekly, online, and in anthologies – and have been short-listed for Black Orchid Novella and Derringer Awards. Active in writers’ groups, she’s currently Vice President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and Co-Vice President of the New York/Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime. As Kathleen Marple Kalb, she writes the Ella Shane and Old Stuff mystery series. She, her husband, and son live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat. https://kathleenmarplekalb.com/nikki-knight