#SaturdaySpotlight with Kate Flora!

Good Morning Friends,

You met Kate Flora back in June for Thursday Thoughts and July for Tuesday Treasures, well today we welcome her back as she talks about going where the story leads and how two of her books came about. So without further ado, here's Kate....

Going Where the Story Leads Me

I didn’t set out to write true crime. Being a lawyer dealing with battered kids and deadbeat dads and representing the Maine Human Rights Commission, I was deeply curious about what led people to be liars and criminals. When I published my first Thea Kozak mystery, Chosen for Death, back in 1994, I was following the footsteps of wonderful role models like Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton and Margaret Maron. In true Nancy Drew tradition, I was writing about strong women who solve mysteries and saved themselves.

Fate intervened. The series was dropped. As I floundered about, trying to decide what to do, I realized that even writing an amateur PI meant a lot of contact with the police to get the details of my books right. The life they led fascinated me. I decided my new venture would be into police procedurals. With male protagonists. And what an adventure that became!

I started writing my Joe Burgess series, set in Portland, Maine, and not long after I’d started the series, my “go to” guy in the Portland Police Department worked on a real murder that he wanted to write about. That project went from my being his writing coach to becoming his co-writer, and the result was Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine, a fascinating story that involved three public safety organizations: The Portland police, the Maine state police, and the Maine Warden Service, who came in with their search and rescue expertise and trained cadaver dogs to help find the victim’s hidden body.

I thought I was going back to writing fiction, but then one of the wardens said, “Well, Kate, when you’re ready, I’ve got another one for you.”

I thought, no, never again, writing true crime is too hard and takes too long. Eventually, though, I recognized that I was fascinated by getting to be an insider, looking over the investigators’ shoulders as they told how they worked a real crime. I called up Maine warden Lt. Pat Dorian and said, “Okay, so tell me about the case.” That led me up to northeastern New Brunswick, in Canada, and another murder and another hidden body. Another body that, even though the crime was in another country, had been found by a group of Maine wardens with trained cadaver dogs who had gone up to Miramichi to help out a bunch of frustrated investigators who had been search for Maria Tanasichuk for months.

What had I said before? Writing true crime is too hard and it takes too long. Finding Amy was a 2 ½ year project. Death Dealer: How Cops and Cadaver Dogs Brought a Killer to Justice, took five, because there were lengthy appeals and two long first degree murder trials. And I couldn’t finish the book until the bad guy’s conviction was final.

There’s tremendous pressure that comes from telling the real story. So many of the victim’s friends trusted me with their confidence, and a quartet of stellar investigators shared the story, their files, and even their family dinners as I learned about the case. From the beginning, when a New York agent coldly told me that “no one is going to be interested in reading about a small Canadian crime,” I believed in the story and feared that it might never get published.

Last September, it did.

I’m learning to trust my instincts about going where the story sends me. Death Dealer has been an Agatha and Anthony finalist, and just won the Public Safety Writers Association 2015 award for best non-fiction.

Kate Flora is the author of 14 mystery and true crime books. Death Dealer, her latest true crime, is an Agatha and Anthony finalist and won the Public Safety Writers’ Association Award for Best Non-fiction 2015. And Grant You Peace, her latest Joe Burgess police procedural, won the 2015 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction.  Her other titles include the Thea Kozak mysteries and the starred-review Joe Burgess police series. Coming in 2016 will be a new Thea Kozak mystery, Death Warmed Over, a 5^th Joe Burgess police procedural, And Led Them Thus Astray, and her collaboration with Maine game warden Roger Guay on his memoir, A Good Man with a Dog. Coming this October is Beat, Slay, Love, a serial novel about the killing of famous TV chefs, by the imaginary Thalia Filbert, which she wrote with four other crime writers.

A former assistant attorney general for the State of Maine in the areas of child abuse and child support enforcement, Kate is a founding member of the New England Crime Bake and Maine Crime Wave conferences. She has served as editor and publisher of Level Best Books and as international president of Sisters in Crime. She teaches writing at Grub Street in Boston.

Find out more about Kate and her books by visiting her Website and connecting with her on Facebook and Twitter.

Wow...if you like mystery and true crime books, check Kate's out!

Chosen for Death can be purchased at Amazon in print and for Kindle.

Death Dealer is also available in Hardcover and on Kindle.

Hope you enjoyed this week's spotlight! Check back every week for new Tuesday Treasures, Thursday Thoughts and Saturday Spotlights!

Until next time...take care & God Bless.

PamT

#TuesdayTreasure: Guest post by Kate Flora!

Good Morning Friends,

Last month Kate shared some of her thoughts with us and today she wants to share something she treasures.....

My treasure for this Tuesday is not a thing but a place. Specifically, our summer cottage on the coast of Maine. I was born in Maine many years ago, lived there until I went to college, and then came back after law school to take my dream job in the attorney general’s office. But then love and life intervened, and while I continued to think of myself as a Maniac (yes, we do sometimes calls ourselves this), I was spending most of my time in Massachusetts.

Fast forward to the year 2000. For about twenty years, we had been looking for my husband’s dream house on the ocean. For most of that twenty years, the places we looked at, when we had time to look at all with busy jobs and small children, were never what he wanted. But in January of 2000, I got a call from our realtor that he was about to list a place he thought we might like.

I jumped in the car and drove to Maine, slithered down a long set of icy steps, and entered a little 1920’s cottage perched on a rocky ledge above the sea. Unlike most of the houses we’d seen, this one had a kitchen with a view. I took a dozen pictures, had them developed, and handed them to my husband, saying I’d finally found his dream house. That weekend we came to look at the house together, and he agreed.

We’re now enjoying our fifteenth summer in the cottage, and I never get over my initial delight. I’m slowly wrestling some flower gardens from the rocky Maine soil, including some plants from my mother’s garden which make me smile whenever they bloom. The cottage faces west, so when the fog isn’t surrounding us, as it has this weekend, we get to enjoy gorgeous Maine sunsets.

It’s also a perfect place to write. The days seem so long and quiet here, interrupted only by the chirping of the birds. My co-writer, Joe Loughlin, and I hashed out the complexities of our true crime, Finding Amy, sitting on the deck overlooking the lawn. I interviewed a retired Maine game warden, Roger Guay, for his memoir about resource protection and training search and rescue and cadaver dogs, A Good Man with a Dog, in this living room. I sat at the dining table and write my Joe Burgess police procedurals.

This summer, after fourteen years of writing at opposite ends of the dining table, me writing fiction, my husband doing legal work, we added a small third-floor room which will be our new office. And now, settled at my new desk staring out through a stately white birch toward a busy lobstering harbor, I have just started a new, non-series book. With the fascination of a reader wanting to know: What happens next? I am writing the story to see who this character who came knocking on my imagination is, and why he wants his story told.

Kate Flora is the author of 14 books. Her titles include the star-reviewed Joe Burgess police series. And Grant You Peace won the 2015 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Redemption won in 2013. Her nonfiction includes the Agatha and Anthony nominated true crime Death Dealer, and Finding Amy, co-written with Portland, Maine deputy chief Joseph Loughlin, which was a 2007 Edgar nominee. With retired Maine game warden Roger Guay, she has co-written a memoir, A Good Man with a Dog. Her next Thea Kozak mystery, Death Warmed Over, will be published in 2016.

A former Maine assistant attorney general in the areas of battered children and employment discrimination, she’s a founding member the New England Crime Bake, the Maine Crime Wave, and a founder of Level Best Books. She served as international president of Sisters in Crime. Flora teaches writing for Grub Street in Boston. Find out about all of Kate's releases including these last two at her website.

Wow, such a prolific author! We certainly wish Kate the best of God's blessings on all of her endeavors!

Hope to see you again soon for another Tuesday Treasure, Thursday Thoughts and/or Saturday Spotlight!

Until next time, take care & God Bless.
PamT

#ThursdayThoughts: Guest Post by Kate Flora

Good Morning!

As I mentioned Tuesday, I am on a min-vacation in Pigeon Forge, TN but as promised we have a special guest today for Thursday Thoughts!

Often, when I’m speaking at library or bookstore, someone in the audience will remark, sadly, that they always wanted to write but never got around to it and now they are too old. It gives me a chance to talk about my late mother, A. Carman Clark. Always a columnist, country-living writer, and mentor, as well as an avid reader, in her seventies, she complained to her local librarian that she couldn’t find any mysteries to read. Too many of them, she thought, were too full of blood and gore and violence to appeal to an older reader. Others featured characters who lifestyles and tastes were so lavish that they felt unreal to a frugal Maine woman.

After listening to her complaints, the librarian replied, “Well, Mrs. Clark, if you don’t like what our library has to offer, why don’t you write a mystery of your own?”

And so she did. At the tender age of eighty-three, my mother published her first Amy Creighton mystery, The Maine Mulch Murder, http://amzn.to/1N6dO2w featuring a 60-something freelance editor, a body in the sawdust shed discovered when she went to get sawdust to mulch her strawberries, and a local constable who was her long-ago first love.

I like to share this to show that if you dream of writing, it is never too late to chase that dream.

Kate Flora is the author of 14 books. Her titles include the star-reviewed Joe Burgess police series. And Grant You Peace won the 2015 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Redemption won in 2013. Her nonfiction includes the Agatha and Anthony nominated true crime Death Dealer, and Finding Amy, co-written with Portland, Maine deputy chief Joseph Loughlin, which was a 2007 Edgar nominee. With retired Maine game warden Roger Guay, she has co-written a memoir, A Good Man with a Dog. Her next Thea Kozak mystery, Death Warmed Over, will be published in 2016.

A former Maine assistant attorney general in the areas of battered children and employment discrimination, she’s a founding member the New England Crime Bake, the Maine Crime Wave, and a founder of Level Best Books. She served as international president of Sisters in Crime. Flora teaches writing for Grub Street in Boston.

http://kateflora.com

How inspiring! I agree with Kate, it's never too late to chase a dream, or build a new one! No matter what challenges you've faced in the past, God always has a great plan for your future and the 'future' begins every morning!

Something to think about!!
"Inspirational with an Edge!" (tm)

#SaturdaySpotlight: Kate Flora

Good Morning from Rockport, TX,

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