RHYS BOWEN: One of the things that’s good about our Jungle Reds blog is that we can introduce new writers to our followers. I am doing this today: her name is Karin Fitz Sanford, she lives close to me in the wine country I enjoy visiting so much, and her first book was due out on Christmas Day (bad timing?) but has now been put back to early January.
Her conversation with her book club echoes the questions many of us writers have been asked. So welcome Karin:
KARIN:
Thank you, Rhys, for the invitation to write on Jungle Red Writers’ blog. It’s such an honor.
%20(resized).jpeg)
When I mentioned to my book club group that I’d be blogging about my first mystery, THE LAST THING CLAIRE WANTED, these smart, funny, and irreverent women had, as usual, plenty of opinions and pointed questions: “Explain why you wrote a mystery.” And, “Did you base your characters on anyone you know—like us, for example?” And ominously, “Aren’t you afraid of getting sued?”
After a while, tired of taking notes, I threw up my hands and said, “Fine, you take over.” And so they did. What follows, in a Q&A format, are questions they thought my target audience—readers like them and, hopefully, readers of this blog—might find interesting. Here goes:
BOOK CLUB: Why write in the mystery/crime genre?
KS: Because at least ninety percent of the books I read are mysteries and police procedurals. Part of their attraction for me is that mysteries have their roots in mortality plays, as my editor Harriette Sackler says—they’re tales of bad behavior being punished and wrongs being mostly righted. So they’re satisfying in that sense, and also, so much of the writing is wonderful, easily comparable to any genre. It’s hard to top an opening sentence like Ben Hecht’s in his “Crime Without Passion” story: “Mr. Lou Hendrix looked at the lady he had been pretending to love for the past six months and, being a lawyer, said nothing.” It just made sense to write what I read and love.
BC: Your female protagonist is an ex-FBI agent turned estate liquidator. Why that career?
KS: When my mother passed away a few years, our family hired an estate liquidator to sell and auction off valuables to settle the estate. While she was working with us, it occurred to me that she had incredible entree into all kinds of family secrets. An estate services professional overhears private conversations. Finds journals and money. Understands family dynamics. I thought the career would be ideal for a protagonist, and as far as I know, it’s has never been used before.
BC: Why write your first book now—at this late stage in your life?
KS: Well, I never! I’d always promised myself I’d write a mystery when I retired and had the time. So now that I’m at that “late stage of life,” as you so kindly remind me, it was now or never. One of our book club selections, “Old in Art School” by Nell Painter, was a great inspiration: Here’s a sixty-something woman, a leading art historian and writer, going back to art school with twenty-somethings to learn how to paint, an entirely new craft—with no fear of making a fool of herself. A big advantage of age.
Even though I spent over thirty years writing professionally, I had never tried my hand at fiction, and what surprised me was the steep learning curve. But learning a new craft is exhilarating, especially at an older age when there’s little to lose or prove.
BC: Did you expose any of our dark secrets about our hometown, Santa Rosa, California?
KS: My book is entirely a work of fiction. But that said, Santa Rosa may look like an all-American hometown—movies like “Pollyanna” and “Shadow of a Doubt” by Hitchcock were filmed there—but it has all the colors of a modern city: prosperity, poverty, crime, honest people, bums. And my book reflects that. As for characters, they’re a mix and match of many people I’ve known. Except for Claire; she has a lot of my mother in her.
Karin Fitz Sanford, a former advertising copywriter, was born in New York but grew up in Northern California’s Wine Country, the setting for her debut novel, THE LAST THING CLAIRE WANTED. Having run her own award-winning ad agency for over twenty-five years, she now devotes herself full time to writing her second mystery in the WINE COUNTRY COLD CASE series. When she isn’t writing, Karin can be found hiking, reading, traveling, babysitting the grands, or binge watching Schitt’s Creek and Chicago P.D. She lives in Northern California with her husband.
“With vivid and gripping characters, an intricately woven plot, and a history that sticks its claws in you and doesn’t let go, Karin Fitz Sanford leaves readers with something truly remarkable. A brilliant debut!”
—Amanda Jayatissa, ITW Thriller Award-winning author of My Sweet Girl and You’re Invited
THE LAST THING CLAIRE WANTED
Her FBI career imploded. Her marriage crumbled. Now 32-year-old Anne McCormack is finally getting her life—and new estate-sales business—on track, and she needs to keep it that way. But when she stumbles on a clue that leads her to a prominent Wine Country matriarch, Claire Murray, she can’t say no to the dying woman’s plea to solve her young son's decades-old murder.
Together with her retired detective uncle, Anne juggles personal troubles with family drama to overcome roadblocks to solving the case—including Claire’s skittish adult children who aren’t talking. But others in town are talking, and what they say leads Anne from swanky hotels to a sex-offender trailer park—and into a twisted maze of blackmail and obsession as she races to find a killer who’s on the loose and out to take down the rest of the family.
Available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com in early January 2023. Fitzsanford.com
RHYS: Who doesn't love a visit to the Wine Country? I think this book has reminded me it's time for a little tasting!
