In which we say hello and farewell.

Hello, lovely readers. It’s nice to be back on the NPOV blog after my year-long hiatus. I’ve missed my time here in the blogosphere and am very glad to be back. When I was a new writer just starting out, a friend once paraphrased the quote that Ernest Hemingway made famous. “There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” And oh how correct he was. But here’s the thing about writing, the best kept secret, in my opinion. If you write and write and write and never give up, you’ll get better. It’s inevitable. Everyone’s different. Some are born with the magical innate ability to crank out gorgeous book and after gorgeous book. (Neil Gaiman, I’m talking about you!) There are others who must work at the craft to develop the art. I fall into this group, and let me just say it’s a good thing I love the work because the road to publication is a winding one.

My growth trajectory as a writer has not been a straight shot.

My first books, The Sarah Bennett mysteries, were my homage to the wonderful Gothic mysteries I used to love as a child. Remember the ACE Gothics with the women in their nightgowns running away from the castle? I adored those books. In the early 2000s I rediscovered them and scoured used bookshops for titles by Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Patricia Wentworth, Mary Stewart, and Dorothy Eden. After writing three Sarah Bennett Mysteries, I wanted to write a more sophisticated heroine. I have always had a soft spot for a classic British mystery, and the Cat Carlisle series falls into this genre. I had a blast writing Cat Carlisle. She’s reckless and irreverent. When I drop her into any situation, she’s going to find trouble. If someone tells her to be mindful of something, she’ll wind up in the middle of it.

And onto the farewell… But as much as I love Cat, I’ll be setting her stories aside for a new mystery series set in modern times that features a sixty-two year old divorce attorney, set in San Francisco, California. The first title is slated to release in late 2020/early 2021. So while the Sarah books were an homage to the gothics of yesteryear, and the Cat books were fashioned after the British mysteries that I love, this new series feels like the story I was born to tell. 

New books and where you can find me…

The third Cat Carlisle book, The House of Lies, released in March and is available as an e-book across all platforms, with the audio and paperback versions releasing in May. 

I had the pleasure of being a guest on Sarah Painter’s podcast, The Worried Writer, at the beginning of March. Stop by here and have a listen. (Link.)

And that’s it from me. Happy writing and reading.