Yep, I'm rounding out my visit to Bandera, Texas & the Silver Spur Guest Ranch by heading to the coast to visit another friend in Rockport. Tomorrow I'll be Louisiana bound but today I'd like to introduce you to Ms. Kate Flora, a fellow Five Star Author....
Award-winning mystery and true crime writer Kate Flora is the author of 14 books, including the true crime story Death Dealer and the novelAnd Grant You Peace, both forthcoming in the fall of 2014. Her book Finding Amy (true crime), co-written with a Portland, Maine deputy police chief, was a 2007 Edgar Award nominee. Kate’s other titles include the Thea Kozak mysteries and the starred-review Joe Burgess police series, the third of which, Redemption, won the 2013 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction.
A former assistant attorney general in the areas of battered children and employment discrimination, Kate is a founding member the New England Crime Bake conference, a founder of Level Best Books where she worked as an editor and publisher for seven years and has served as international president of Sisters in Crime. When she’s not riding an ATV through the Canadian woods or hiding in a tick-infested field waiting to be found by search and rescue dogs as research for her books, she can be found teaching writing at Grub Street in Boston.
Find out more about Kate and her work by visiting her website: www.kateflora.com
Something I've realized as I'm in libraries and bookstores this fall promoting two new books, is how the processes of writing fiction and nonfiction are intertwined. For writing the true story of a murder, looking over the investigator's shoulders in Death Dealer, I can use the skills I've developed over twenty years of writing crime fiction: how to make the storytelling dramatic and compelling, how to organize the material so the reader can see the investigation vividly, how to show the real characters in a way that the reader can visualize them and come to care to care about them, and how to incorporate research about police training and experience in a way that doesn't slow down the pacing of the book.
What I've learned from spending so many hours talking to detectives to write the nonfiction deeply informs the way I approach my fictional detective in my Joe Burgess police procedural series. From the way they've let me into their lives, I can give my fictional character a deeper and more complex personal life, including the challenges that police officers face in balancing the bad things they see and the bad people they deal with, and still remaining available to their families. I've also got a stable of experienced cops to go to when I need to write a scene involving guns and bad guys, that hopefully will make it more vivid and authentic to my readers. It has been a fascinating process, realizing how writing in the two different arenas challenges me and helps me to become a better writer in both.
Death Dealer
Death Dealer is the true story of a police investigation in Miramichi, New Brunswick, into a resident’s mysterious disappearance. It pulls readers directly into a tense and complex, real-life search as cops and cadaver dogs painstakingly make their way through scarce evidence and forbidding terrain to uncover the victim’s body and bring a killer to justice.
Death Dealer can be purchased at Amazon in Print and for Kindle.
And Grant You Peace
This 4th book in the Joe Burgess mystery series finds Burgess pulled inadvertently into a case rife with religious tensions after finding a woman and a baby locked in a closet inside a burning mosque. His search for answers leads him to discover an abduction kit including body bags, handcuffs, rope and a shovel for his own family and to face the prospect that the “normal” life he’s begun to reestablish may be coming to an explosive end.
And Grant You Peace can also be purchased at Amazon in Print and for Kindle.
Well friends hope you enjoyed this spotlight! Check back weekly for new Tuesday Treasures, Thursday Thoughts and of course, Saturday Spotlight.
Until next time....take care & God Bless!
PamT
Death Dealer is the true story of a police investigation in Miramichi, New Brunswick, into a resident’s mysterious disappearance. It pulls readers directly into a tense and complex, real-life search as cops and cadaver dogs painstakingly make their way through scarce evidence and forbidding terrain to uncover the victim’s body and bring a killer to justice.
Death Dealer can be purchased at Amazon in Print and for Kindle.
And Grant You Peace
This 4th book in the Joe Burgess mystery series finds Burgess pulled inadvertently into a case rife with religious tensions after finding a woman and a baby locked in a closet inside a burning mosque. His search for answers leads him to discover an abduction kit including body bags, handcuffs, rope and a shovel for his own family and to face the prospect that the “normal” life he’s begun to reestablish may be coming to an explosive end.
And Grant You Peace can also be purchased at Amazon in Print and for Kindle.
Well friends hope you enjoyed this spotlight! Check back weekly for new Tuesday Treasures, Thursday Thoughts and of course, Saturday Spotlight.
Until next time....take care & God Bless!
PamT
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