You may remember that I was pleased as punch to be able to read an ARC of Judy Alter’s wonderful stand alone mystery The Perfect Coed. You can read all about it here.
Well, Judy has just released Desperate for Death , the sixth novel in her Kelly O’Connell series. Here is the book blurb to whet your appetite:
Just when Kelly’s life has calmed, she faces yet another of life’s puzzles. Except the pieces in this one don’t fit. First the apartment behind her house is torched, then a string of bizarre “accidents” occur to set her off-balance. Who is stalking her? Where does the disappearance of a young girl and her disreputable boyfriend fit in? And why are two men using the same name? Is the surprise inheritance another part of the puzzle? At a time when she is most vulnerable, Kelly can’t make the pieces fit. Before Kelly can get the whole picture, she helps the family of a hostage, rescues a kidnap victim and attends a wild and wonderful wedding.
Judy and I had a brief conversation about Desperate for Death and all that came before. I’m sure you’ll find Judy’s career as interesting as I did.
Here’s Judy:
Desperate for Death, released in early May as an e-book with print to follow, is my sixth Kelly O’Connell Mystery and my ninth published mystery. Pretty good, if I do say so, since I came to mysteries late, started seriously trying to write and publish them in 2011.
Before that, I was pegged as a western writer, with a special interest in women of the American West. I wrote young adult novels, novels for the Doubleday Double D Western series, and four longer novels about famous women of the West—Libby Custer, Jessie Benton Frémont, Etta Place (the Sundance Kid’s girlfriend), and Cherokee Rose (based on the life of Lucille Mulhall, the first woman roper in Wild West shows). It was fun, the research was interesting, and I had a whole stable of women in mind (from a y/a book I did called Extraordinary Women of the American West).
I’ve never figured out if I left the market or the market left me. My agent died, and I was adrift. The contracts didn’t come, and I resorted for a while to writing works for hire for companies that provided books to school libraries. I enjoyed the research and wrote about all kinds of subject—presidents, state histories, passenger ships, surgery, vaccines, international women’s rights. But I really wanted to write fiction.
I had written one mystery in the ‘90s but the agent I had by then was unable to place it—I’m not sure how hard she tried or whether it simply wasn’t ready for publication. In the years since (at least fifteen) I’ve rewritten it several times and self-published it as The Perfect Coed. My two series—Kelly O’Connell Mysteries and Blue Plate Café Mysteries—have all come from Turquoise Morning Press, but we are parting company on amicable terms. TMP is going to focus on romances, and I don’t want to write that genre.
Terrie: Will there be more Kelly O’Connell Mysteries?
Judy: I don’t know. A lot of people tell me they’re wrapped up in Kelly’s world and feel attached to the characters, so I may well keep coming up with adventures for her. Meantime, I’ve a draft of a third Blue Plate Café Mystery and about 30,000 words on a sequel to The Perfect Coed.
I’d like to go back to the American West some time—Western Writers of America has honored me with a Lifetime Achievement Award and will induct me into their WWA Hall of Fame in late June, so I feel a certain obligation to live up to that recognition. Meantime, I’m moving in yet another direction—a novel based on the life of Bertha Honoré (Cissy) Palmer, the Chicago socialite who was the first to equate wealth with an obligation to philanthropy. Her life and the causes she stood for fascinate me—her crowning glory was the work she did for the women’s movement at the 1893 Columbia Exposition.
I grew up near the grounds of that exposition, so Chicago history is in my bones, although I’ve fictionalized some of it, working in a romantic attraction I’m sure didn’t exist and embroidering such events as the Great Fire. I hope to publish The Gilded Cage in September or October. I will self-publish, because the two Chicago publishers I’ve queried indicate that the process is so slow I might be eighty-five before the book is published. I’ve decided not to wait around on agents and publishers any more.
And that’s my writing career—all over a checkered genre map.
Terrie: Thank you Judy for such a candid and entertaining conversation.
Well folks if you are not yet convinced that Judy Alter is a talented and prolific writer, just take a look at her bio:
An award-winning novelist, Judy Alter is the author of six books in the Kelly O’Connell Mysteries series: Skeleton in a Dead Space, No Neighborhood for Old Women, Trouble in a Big Box, Danger Comes Home, Deception in Strange Places, and Desperate for Death. She also writes the Blue Plate Café Mysteries—Murder at the Blue Plate Café and Murder at the Tremont House and The Oak Grove Mysteries which debuted in 2014 with The Perfect Coed.
Her work has been recognized with awards from the Western Writers of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame. She has been honored with the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement by WWA and inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.
Judy is retired as director of TCU Press and the mother of four grown children and the grandmother of seven. She and her dog, Sophie, live in Fort Worth, Texas.
To learn more or to contact Judy, you can find her website here.
Terrie
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