1. Where did the initial idea for A Murder of Crows come from?
There’s an adorable little wine town a short distance outside of Portland, Oregon, called Carlton, populated by enthusiastic residents who run a host of chic businesses. One day, the first sentence (The morning Lodge Johnson died, I was an angry dog looking for a hand to bite.) popped into my head and I knew a body was going to show up among the rows of grapes out there.
2. Which part of the publishing process was the most surprising?
Oh, wow. I sort of ended up finding a tiny publisher out of the UK who turned out to be sort of a cross between traditional and a self publisher. I guess I’d say the sheer variety of choices surprised me.
3. If you could give yourself any piece of advice before you started writing, what would it be?
Read. Read a lot. Reading helps to define what style a person is most drawn to. I think it helped me shape my writer’s voice.
4. Plotter or panster?
Whole-hearted panster. I tried plotting and outlining, before and even after. I hated it. For me, the story unfolds. It seems to have control rather than the other way around.
5. Quiet room or noisy room when you’re writing? How quiet do you need it? What sort of noise?
Quiet, very quiet. As someone who spent her career recording what everyone in the room said, exterior noises always draw my attention away. Now I have an office that looks out onto a couple acres of trees and brush, and the largest distractions come in the form of herds of deer or coveys of quail.
6. Your writing area/desk: a place for everything and everything in its place or if anyone ever straightened it, you'd never find a thing?
Well, I tend toward being a neatnik, but I fail at it. Piles seem to appear and, since I don’t want to take the time away from writing to find another place for them, they often stay on my desk. However, I can find almost everything on it.
7. What is your current pop culture obsession (book, TV show, movie, webcomic...)? What are the rest of us missing?
I'm pretty traditional here. Probably Blacklist. I mean, watching the dynamic between Red and Lizzie is simply irresistible.
The bloated body of a local winemaker is discovered in a vineyard a few miles outside Carlton, Oregon’s premier grape growing region. Private eye Cade Blackstone seems to be drawn to the murder investigation, although the police aren't too pleased with his involvement. Nor is his client, who has hired him to find her missing granddaughter. As he digs into the dead man’s past, Cade grows increasingly horrified at what he’s learning. And the more he learns, the more important it becomes to find the runaway, if that’s what she is.
About the Author:
Kate Ayers spent much of her career as a court reporter in the Pacific Northwest, taking up the writing of mysteries in just the last ten years. She’s the author of A Murder of Crows and A Walk of Snipes.Kate lives in Oregon with her husband of over three decades and her slightly imbalanced dog.
Visit her website: www.kateayers.com
Email her at kate@kateayers.com
Follow her on Facebook at Kate Ayers, Author
1 comment:
This sounds like a goodie!!
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