“Write
something new” is what agents and editors told me after my second would-be
series became my second stand alone when its publisher folded. Great advice to
an author who had been orphaned twice, but what should I write?
I knew
I wanted to write something in the cozy genre, but I’d already exhausted the
two traditional/cozy mystery themes that I was most familiar with. The main
ones that were left – handicraft and culinary topics – were things I was
neither interested nor skilled in. The reality is, unlike my sister who does
everything from scratch, I buy already made arts and crafts things and I either
eat out, bring take out in, or make dishes using prepared ingredients.
It’s
not that I wouldn’t like to be more like my sister, but I never had an interest
in pursuing these things. There were always other things for me to do. For
example, while my sister shadowed my mother in the kitchen and learned to be a
gourmet cook, I timed emptying the dishwasher, setting the table, saying
“hello” to my father, and coming to dinner for when the commercials came on in
the Perry Mason reruns I watched
every afternoon. The more I thought about the contrast between my sister and
myself, the more I realized there had to be other cooks of convenience out
there.
And that
is where I came up with the idea behind One Taste Too Many, the first book of
my new Sarah Blair cozy mystery series from Kensington. Sarah is a cook of
convenience like me. Some of her recipes include spinach pie made with
Stouffers spinach souffle and Jell-O in a Can. Her twin, Emily, is a gourmet
chef who has worked in many fine dining establishments. One Taste Too Many is
the first of at least three Sarah Blair mysteries. Besides Sarah and Emily,
they feature another major character – RahRah, Sarah’s Siamese cat. RahRah
doesn’t have any magical powers, spoken thoughts, or secrets – he is simply a
cat that Sarah and readers will love because he’s the real thing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Debra H. Goldstein is the author of the Sarah Blair
Mysteries as well as Should Have Played Poker, a Carrie Martin and the
Mah Jongg Players Mystery and the 2012 IPPY Award-winning Maze in Blue,
a mystery set on the University of Michigan’s campus. Her short stories, including Anthony and Agatha nominated “The
Night They Burned Ms. Dixie’s Place,” have appeared in numerous periodicals and
anthologies including Alfred Hitchcock
Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and Mystery Weekly. A
Judge, author, litigator, wife, step-mom and mother of twins, Debra is an
involved community volunteer, MWA member, and serves as a national board member
of Sisters in Crime, as well as being the SinC Guppy Chapter’s President.
Connect with Debra on the web:
Thank you for having me as a guest today.
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