Thea Kozak series, book 1

Kate Flora: As I’m coming into the end zone on the latest Joe Burgess police procedural–and probably because it’s fall, which is always a time for reflection–I’ve been thinking about the peculiar journey my work has taken since my first mystery, Chosen for Death, was published back in 1994.

In 1994, my writing rhythm was to write for nine months and then promote for three. That’s all history now, since writers have to do most of the promotion and the promotion cycle, much due to social media, never slows down. Back then, though, I was very happy writing my Thea Kozak series and expected that would be my writing career. That was derailed when the publisher abruptly dropped the series after book six, Liberty or Death.

That publisher’s decision, once I recovered from my despair, led me in a new direction. Because all mysteries with homicides involve the police, and because Thea had gotten involved with a Maine state trooper, I was spending a lot of time with police asking questions. So it seemed natural that the next step would be to write a police procedural. That brought me up against the question: I know how to write strong women but how do I write a trio of middle aged male cops? It was an adventure that led me to Playing God, my first Joe Burgess mystery.

But somewhere along that path curiosity about the difference between mystery and thriller had led me in a different direction. What would it be like to write a book that was not a who dunnit/why dunnit but a race against time. Will the good guys prevail before the bad guys kill a child? Who are the bad guys and what are their motives? All of that wondering–and wondering is what we’re always doing–led to my first multiple viewpoint book, Steal Away. In order to give the book its best chance, and put some distance between my series mysteries, Steal Away was published under a pseudonym, Katharine Clark.

I loved writing it, but, at least for me, when you write series characters they become friends. I found when I ‘d finished it that I was curious about what my characters were up to, and wrote another Thea. My agent for Steal Away, though, wasn’t interested in series mysteries and wanted me to write another thriller. I started writing a second thriller, a political thriller, working title Spring Break, about a college student on spring break who discovers everything she’d taken for granted in life wasn’t true. Her boyfriend betrays her. Her mother is attached and in a coma. And her beloved father reveals that her real father is a politician running for president. My agent wasn’t excited about the book, the relationship ended, and I went back to series mysteries.

But of course, another detour lay ahead. Research for the Joe Burgess procedurals led me to the Portland, Maine police department. Then Lt. Joseph Loughlin became my go-to guy for information about police procedure. And a few years into our friendship, Amy St. Laurent was murdered and Joe wanted to write about the case. I became his writing advisor and eventually his co-write on a true crime, Finding Amy. Writing that book was an amazing experience, one that led me to say that the previous years of writing had been preparation for the honor of telling Amy’s story. But writing true crime, and living with a real homicide victim in my head for years, was too hard. I was glad to be able to return to fiction.

The writing years went on. At some point, I took another detour into thriller writing when a newspaper headline about yet another teacher who’d had an affair with student caught my eye. I thought–what if I flipped the script? What if the teacher is innocent but the student is obsessed with her? What if he proposes the affair, she turns him down, and he sets out to destroy her? That eventually became Teach Her a Lesson, published last year by Encircle. But that book went through about twelve years and a dozen writes before it was finally published.

Meanwhile, though I was happily alternating between Thea and Joe, I realized that writing true crime had been a very different, immersive experience. That it had forced me out of my office, away from my desk, and made my timid self go and talk to people (read cops) who could tell me the real story of a real crime. I realized that, intimidating as it was, I missed that adventure and the challenge of figuring out how to tell a true story. So, following up on warden Lt. Pat Dorian’s comment at the Finding Amy launch, “When you’re ready, Kate, I have another one for you,” I called him up and found myself immersed in another story. That led to multiple trips to Miramichi, New Brunswick, friendships with some wonderful police officers, and a second true crime, Death Dealer.

Once again, despite the warmth and generosity of those officers and those in the Maine warden service, I was glad to leave the real behind and return to the world of imagined crime. More Thea. More Burgess. A swerve into a non-mystery, Memorial Acts, that still lives in the drawer. And then, again under the guise of helping a non-writer tell his story, I ended up in a retired Maine game warden’s green pickup truck, driving around the dirt roads near Moosehead Lake. While I held a tape recorder, his wife sat in the back seat with a shotgun, Roger Guay, the warden who, with his dog, had found Amy’s body, told stories of his 25 years in the Maine woods.

Once again, I was stepping out of my comfort zone to help someone tell an important story. I hadn’t known how to write series mysteries. I hadn’t known how to write thrillers. I certainly hadn’t known how to write true crime. Now I was learning how to write memoir. The result was A Good Man with a Dog.

My agent told me that I should stick to writing one thing and build a platform as that writer, but I’ve always thought a writer should write what she’s compelled to write. What she’s drawn to.

And now, many years after I first tried to follow up Steal Away with another triller, that book, now titled Burn the Diaries and Run, will be published by Encircle in October, and I’m thrilled. Here’s the blurb:

Jenny Cates thought her life couldn’t get worse after her boyfriend’s betrayal. But when her mother is attacked, and she discovers the man she thought was her father isn’t, Jenny is thrust into a deadly game. On the run from two ruthless politicians—one who wants her dead, the other who wants to use her—Jenny must rely on her own strength to survive. Armed with her mother’s secret diaries, she’s determined to expose the truth and destroy the campaigns of the men hunting her down.