Talking with Linda Barnes

It's funny that the people I think I'll have the most trouble interviewing on Mystery Matters are the ones I end up truly comfortable with. Maybe it's because I write cozy mysteries with a librarian and a cat - so the idea of speaking with someone who writes about a hard-boiled, former-cop private investigator leaves me wondering where I'll ever find a heart-to-heart connection.

But that connection certainly happened right in the middle of my conversation with Linda Barnes about her Carlotta Carlyle mysteries, when Linda said, after a listener emailed a question about Carlotta's mob-connected boyfriend Sam Gianelli, "A lot of my friends are smart women who've made dumb choices about guys."

Soon after that, she said that one of her greatest accomplishments was that readers in Germany started a Big Sisters program there after learning about Big Sisters through Linda's books. In those two moments I felt Linda reach across the phone line and grab my heart. I knew we were connected as people, as women, as fellow-writers, and in that ineffable bond of reader and writer. Count me as a proud Linda Barnes fan, for more reasons than just her good books.

Friday the 13th and Biscuit McKee mysteries

I'm not a superstitious person. In fact, Friday the 13th has never posed a problem for me. Until this morning. My mystery author guest each week is supposed to call the station at five minutes before show time. Well - that didn't happen this morning, and I was left having to "wing it."


It's live radio, and I suppose I've known that something like this might happen at some point. I just wasn't expecting it quite this soon. This was only the 11th show, after all. In the two minutes I had to think about it - and then the half-minute of commercial intro, I decided to read from my own books and call the show "The Evolution of a Mystery Series." I figured I could answer a lot of the questions I get asked when I speak at book clubs and writers groups. How did you get the idea for Biscuit the librarian? and Where did Marmalade the orange library cat come from?


Luckily two listeners emailed questions -- they're both going on my gratitude list tonight! I made it through the show. Listen to it on the archive for February 13th http://www.tinyurl.com/a2f3s6 and let me know how nervous you think I sounded on a scale of one to ten.