Kate Flora writes... because we NEED heroes

HALLIE EPHRON: Kate Flora is one of those multi-talented writers who can write a police procedural one minute, switch to true crime, and then move on to one that's more traditional. She's probably the first mystery writer I met when I started to write, and she welcomed me into the amazing community of crime fiction writers. She's smart, generous, and multi-talented.

I caught up with Kate and asked her about her new books - she's got SEVERAL of them!
 

Kate Flora: Since the terrible events at the Squirrel Hill synagogue, I’ve been regularly checking the news, looking for a thoughtful and compassionate grownup to come forward and speak to us. Speak to the country. Say the words that we need to hear about who we are and why we are, and try to bring us together.

No such person has appeared. But looking for leadership, and courage, and decency and bravery has brought my thoughts around to crime writing. Why we do it, and why crime novels can play such an important part in the lives of our readers.

Some years ago, when Hallie was doing a book launch right after 9/11, she arrived shaken by an interviewer who had challenged her about whether it was right to write crime for entertainment when the world had just seen such criminal violence. Hallie’s response was perfect. She said we should all wish the world were more like the world of the crime novel, because in the world that we writers are creating, morality prevails and bad guys don’t. (My words, not hers. She likely said it better.)

In my books, I like to write heroes. Joe Burgess, in my police procedural series, is someone who gets justice for victims. Thea Kozak, in her series, describes herself as “Thea the Human Tow Truck.” She’s someone who has to stop and help the helpless, those who are broken down on the roadsides of life. I worry sometimes about whether my endings are too happy, but I like to end the books with a sense of crimes solved, order restored, and send my characters onward to fight another day.

The heroes and heroines in my new crime story collection, Careful What You Wish For: Stories of revenge, retribution, and the world made right, are a mixed bag. There are the victims’ teenaged children grappling with the mystery of their parents’ deaths. One is a teenaged soccer player forced to become the adult when her father’s death sends her mother to the bottle, who is determined to locate the car that struck her father down. There’s a confused son shocked to discover how much people disliked his lawyer dad. There’s the grieving wife, coached by her husband’s ghost, who searches for the sleazy gun dealer who sold the defective gun that killed him.

These heroines—and they are mostly women who star in these stories—are often dealing with difficult domestic situations. The man trying to poison his wife becomes his own victim. The sad new widow continues to set the traps her husband devised to keep her safe when he was on the road, and catches herself a pair of thieves. An abused wife who can’t take it any more finds a gun in an unlocked car.

Worms Crawl In, told from the viewpoint of a mother sitting in the trial of her daughter’s killer, was inspired by the real world courage shown by a murder victim’s mother I observed while writing the true crime, Finding Amy.

They may often be everyday people, dealing with the troubles in ordinary lives, but as is the case in my series mysteries, the characters in these stories become brave, become problem solvers, become inspired by the desire to do the right thing. I hope readers may find some comfort in the stories, may raise a fist and say, “Yes,” in these times when we are seeking courage and strength. All while being entertained.

HALLIE: Applauding Kate's sentiments... And wondering, despite the fact that crime fiction is about crime, are the books you read a source of comfort, courage, and strength... or is entertainment enough?

About Kate Flora:

Kate Flora’s fascination with people’s criminal tendencies began in the Maine attorney general’s office. Deadbeat dads, people who hurt their kids, and employers’ discrimination aroused her curiosity about human behavior. The author of twenty books and many short stories, Flora’s been a finalist for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Derringer awards. She won the Public Safety Writers Association award for nonfiction and twice won the Maine Literary Award for crime fiction. Death Warmed Over, her 8^th Thea Kozak mystery, was a finalist for the Maine Literary Award. Her 9th Thea Kozak mystery, Schooled in Death, was published in November. Her new crime story collection is Careful What You Wish For: Stories of revenge, retribution, and the world made right.

Flora’s nonfiction focuses on aspects of the public safety officers’ experience. Her two true crimes, Finding Amy: A true story of murder in Maine (with Joseph K. Loughlin) and Death Dealer: How cops and cadaver dogs brought a killer to justice, follow homicide investigations as the police conducted them. Her co-written memoir of retired Maine warden Roger Guay, A Good Man with a Dog: A Game Warden’s 25 Years in the Maine Woods, explores policing in a world of guns, misadventure, and the great outdoors. Her latest nonfiction is Shots Fired: The Misconceptions, Misunderstandings, and Myths about police shootings with retired Portland Assistant Chief Joseph K. Loughlin. Flora divides her time between Massachusetts and Maine.

Kate Flora juggles facts and fictions...

HALLIE EPHRON: The fall harvest of wonderful books includes a bounty from Kate Flora: two new books, one crime fiction and one true crime.

Kate, who struck gold with her Edgar nominated true crime Finding Amy, follows it up this month with Death Dealer. Then next month she follows her third Joe Burgess mystery, Redemption, which won the 2013 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction, with a new entry in the series, And Grant You Peace. 

Crime fiction and true crime. I confess, I can more easily imagine juggling cats. Kate, how do you do it?

KATE FLORA: I can’t juggle. Tried to learn years ago, thinking it might help me draw a crowd at book signings, but every time I introduced the third ball, I hit myself in the head with it. Juggling being out, I went in search of other adventures, and while I was messing around trying to learn to write cops, true crime found me.

My first true crime, Finding Amy, I co-wrote to help out my friend Joe Loughlin, who was the lieutenant in charge of CID at the Portland, Maine police department when Amy disappeared. Research led me to meet Lt. Pat Dorian who headed search and rescue. At the launch party for Finding Amy, Pat said to me, “So, Kate, when you’re ready, I’ve got another one for you.” It turned out to be a murder in Miramachi, New Brunswick.

True crime takes twice as long to write as a novel, and I have to spend years with images of real crime victims in my head. On the flip side, the research gets me away from desk into a world that is fascinating.

The story seemed compelling to me. First, the suspect threatened to harm the investigators’ families when they pressed him about his lies. They hadn’t found the victim’s body, which turned out to have been hidden in the woods. And they had only a small window of opportunity to find it when it had thawed enough to give off scent that the dogs could work on, but before bear emerging from hibernation found the body and consumed it.

It took seven years to get justice for the victim in that case, and for me to have a final ending for Death Dealer.

HALLIE: Tell us about the process you went through to write Death Dealer.

KATE: I started out by getting introduced to investigators who gave me access to the case. I spent hours reading files and doing interviews and watching videos and sitting in courtrooms. I ate a lot of Miramichi salmon drove an ATV deep into the woods to see where the body was hidden. Learned all about training of search and rescue dogs and cadaver dogs. As always, I am amazed at the generosity and openness of the people I interviewed to write this book.

HALLIE: Is there a ‘hero’ of that true story, as there is with your Joe Burgess novels?

KATE: As Joe Burgess likes to say—he doesn’t do it, his team does. In Death Dealer, it was the team of investigators who worked the case; the wardens who organized and participated in that search; and MESARD volunteers.

And then there were the friends of the victim, Maria Tanasichuk, who were terrified of the suspect yet came forward to speak on behalf of their murdered friend. The code of friendship triumphing over any code of silence.

HALLIE: What are the special challenges of making it up versus hewing to the facts?

KATE: Well, I think the challenge of making it up, in a world where our readers are often well-informed by other writers, and real world news stories, is trying to get it right.

When I was working on And Grant You Peace, the new Joe Burgess book that’s out next month, Burgess and Terry Kyle watch a young man they recognized walking down the street toward a convenience store with a suspicious bulge in his pocket that tells them he’s got a gun. I knew they were going to be going into that store, and that it was a very dangerous situation, so I e-mailed two police officers I use as resources, and called a third, and had them walk me through the scene.

That’s the challenge. Writing cops who feel credible.

HALLIE: Does one kind of writing enrich the other?

KATE:  Absolutely. What I’ve learned from all of my time with cops informs my writing when I am writing fictional cops.

When you flip that question, all of the time I’ve spent learning to reveal character to a reader, in shaping story so that it has a dramatic arc, in finding the right voice and stance to tell the story—those things have been invaluable when I’m writing a true story.

HALLIE: My hat is off to you, Kate. Years of work and a commitment to justice. And meanwhile you’re spinning out novels.

Kate will be checking in today so feel free to pepper her with questions about how she manages this true juggling act.

ABOUT Death Dealer: How Cops and Cadaver Dogs Brought a Killer to Justice by Kate Flora

When the hunters become the hunted, life for law enforcement officials and their families in Miramichi, New Brunswick, Canada, turns upside-down. It takes a months-long investigation by police, search and rescue dogs and their handlers to catch a suspected serial killer.

ABOUT And Grant You Peace by Kate Flora

This 4th book in the Joe Burgess mystery series finds Burgess pulled inadvertently into a case rife with religious tensions after finding a young mother and a baby locked in a closet inside a burning mosque. His search for answers leads him to an outlaw motorcycle gang, a fishing boat captain who may be supplementing his income with illegal activities, and an immigrant community suspicious of the police.

Dreaming, a guest post by Kate Flora

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Kate Flora is a tiny woman with a giant presence in the world of crime fiction. Kate turned to writing after a career in the Maine Attorney General's office. Her books include seven “strong woman” Thea Kozak mysteries and three gritty police procedurals in her star-reviewed Joe Burgess series. Her true crime, Finding Amy, has been optioned for a movie. She's a Goddess - a retired president of Sisters in Crime. She's one of the moving forces of the New England chapter of the Sisters in Crime. And she's a writer who continues to... dream.

 

When I was growing up on a chicken farm in a small Maine town, money was often tight. Bill collectors really did knock on the door, sometimes the phone got turned off, and there was a large hole in the bathroom floor waiting for the money to get it fixed. We stapled plastic over the windows to keep out the drafts. We grew our own food and budgeted things down to the last cent. Our refuge was books. Books and the Sears and Roebuck catalogue.

When that enormous, thick book would arrive in the spring and the fall, I could let my child’s imagination run. What would my summer wardrobe be like? With my 4-H training, I knew about mixing and matching, and I would design the perfect combination of pants and shorts and tops. My wardrobe squared away, I could turn to furnishing my someday house. What thick, fluffy towels I would want. What color sheets. What my rugs and furniture would be like. Not having too much was likely a blessing. I didn’t get to waste my time shopping, except in my imagination. It is that imagination, tuned up as a mechanism for entertainment and escape, for imagining other worlds and other lives, that has led me, as an adult, to create the worlds of my fiction

I decided to set practicing law aside and try my hand at writing mysteries when my younger son, Max, was born and I decided to be a stay-at-home mom. I bought a computer and began writing a law school mystery, A Matter of the Will. This week, Max got engaged. Next week, he turns thirty. I spent the first ten years of his life, and the first ten of my dedicated writing career, in the unpublished writer’s corner. My early years of delayed gratification, spent imagining and enjoying the possibilities, and to keep forging ahead without reward, served me well during those years.

It’s nearly twenty years since my first Thea Kozak mystery, Chosen for Death, was published, and I am still finding that those early years of learning to enjoy the possibilities serve me well. In 2007, Finding Amy, the true crime book I co-wrote with Portland’s Deputy Chief Joseph K. Loughlin, was nominated for an Edgar. I woke to find my e-mail queue jammed with congratulations. It was a wonderful moment, and I got to have the months between learning of the nomination and the night of the Edgars to bask in the honor and enjoy the recognition of my peers. I never cared whether I won or lost, just like I really never cared whether I would get those clothes or that furniture from Sears. I got to enjoy the moments and feel the pleasure.

A week ago, I got an e-mail from my friend Lea Wait, congratulating me on being a finalist for the Maine Literary Awards. A few minutes later, I got the official notice. Redemption, the third book in my Portland, Maine police procedural series, was one of three finalists. Once again, I am enjoying the moment and appreciating the fact that my book has been recognized. I’m in very good company with fellow nominees Paul Doiron and Katherine Hall Page. Both of them my friends. Both excellent writers. But right now, I’m kind of wishing I could just skip the awards ceremony in Portland on May 30^th, because I am enjoying the here and now. I’m enjoying the possibilities. The maybe a new line in my bio. Maybe a sticker to slap on the book jacket.

I’m also enjoying the certainty—that a shy, bookish chicken farmer’s daughter from a small Maine town, who devoured books from the Vose Library and dreamed of being a writer, has become one.

 You can find out more about Kate and her books at her website. You can follow her on Twitter as @kateflora, and she also blogs at Maine Crime Writers.

KATE FLORA ON LAUNCHING A BOOK

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Today our guest is our friend, SinC goddess, and very talented writer, Kate Flora, with a few thoughts on new book babies--and on her own new arrival, Redemption, the third book in her highly acclaimed Joe Burgess series.

We say, "Congrats, Kate," and a raise a virtual glass of champagne to you!

KATE FLORA: Planning a book launch is fun—and scary.

Fun, because it celebrates the end of a long, sometimes harrowing process. Writing the book. Rewriting the book until I’m sick of it. Selling the book. Rewriting the book to please my editor. And finally, long after that lovely moment when I type: THE END, those stacks and stacks of pages come back to me as a real, honest-to-goodness book with a jacket, and my picture and lovely quotes on the back.

I don’t know how it is for other writers, but for me, the day the book arrives is special. There’s that thump on the porch as the heavy box lands inside the door. The sound of a knife slitting the sealing tape. The rustle of protective paper, and finally, the new baby is revealed, rescued from the box, waved about, and taken upstairs to join the rest of the family. My new baby, Redemption, means that I now have twelve little book children.

So if all of this is so good—why should having an event to celebrate be scary? Because as any writer can tell you, book events are the most uncertain things on the planet. I can have all the advertising in the world, great reviews, and more than a dozen faithful readers who assure me that they’ll be there, and then I drive three hours to the venue and end up talking to the one staff member assigned to babysit the visiting writer. Or it can go the other way. I can drive to a small town I’ve never heard of, find a riveted audience of sixty readers, and sell every book I brought.

After a while, I think I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen good weather drag my audience away by the lure of the great outdoors and bad weather suck my audience away because no one wants to venture out in the cold. I’ve spoken to drunks, the mentally challenged, to high school students there only because they’ll get extra credit. I’ve spoken to writers really eager to pick my brain about your process, and to readers who just love my books. I’m braced for whatever may happen.

But a launch is special. It’s the book’s debut. It’s the moment when I carry on my back the weight of my belief in the power of the story I’ve told. It’s when I feel most heavily my responsibility to prove to the publisher that they made the right decision is choosing my book from the many they could have published, and when I feel the need to prove to my local bookstore that they made the right choice in giving me one of their coveted Sunday afternoon author slots. I can’t just show up and see what happens. A lot is riding on this.

So I send e-mails to the organizations I belong to. I send e-mails to my students, my fellow teachers. To my neighbors and my friends. I become a veritable chatty Cathy on Facebook. And I worry. What if this is one of those snowy days? What if it is a beautiful day? What if no one shows up?

Ten minutes to show time. I’m at the bookstore. There is a small stack of books waiting for me. A small row of chairs set up. A few people are sitting in the chairs. My heart sinks. And then, like a floodgate has opened, my friends, my neighbors, my sister writers, and my long-time readers start to arrive. The store sets up more chairs. And more chairs. And more chairs. Until they run out of chairs, and still people keep coming. At 3:00, I take a deep breath, hope my aging memory won’t fail me, and stand up.

“Thank you,” I say, absolutely overwhelmed, even though I have done hundreds of book talks over the years, wondering if this will be all I can manage. “Thank you for coming out to show your support on this beautiful day.” And I begin to tell them about Joe Burgess, and Reggie the Can Man, about fathers and sons and the threads of family, and friendship, and greed and evil that are woven through my new book.

Redemption is launched.

(PS from Debs: Kate will be giving a copy of Redemption to one of our commenters, so be sure to check in tomorrow for the winner.)