Cozy Up With Kathy: You’re Not Alone

Sunday, February 21, 2016

You’re Not Alone - Guest Post & Giveaway

You’re Not Alone

By Clea Simon

Don’t we all feel alone sometimes? Like we’re the only ones in the world, abandoned by everyone? And at such times, isn’t a nice cuddly cat the best companion?

That’s the idea I started with when I began to write “The Ninth Life,” my new mystery and the first in my Blackie and Care series for Severn House. Only I realized early on that my story, about a girl named Care and the big, black cat who adopts her, wouldn’t be your usual cozy. No, not like my Dulcie Schwartz mysteries (the latest is “Code Grey”), Care isn’t a bookish academic. Nor is she a tough girl, like Pru Marlowe (who comes back in “When Bunnies Go Bad” next month). No, Care is really alone – she’s an orphan who has run away from her foster home and is living on the streets when she sees a bedraggled cat drowning in a storm drain and rescues him.

What happens next will change both their lives, as Care and Blackie work to unravel the mystery of what happened to Care’s protector and mentor, and Blackie seeks to understand how he ended up in that storm drain in the first place. It’s a darker adventure than any I have written before, and both Blackie and Care will face violence at times. In places, it’s downright scary.

I should say at this point that you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to give away my ending – and I hope “The Ninth Life” surprises right up to its dramatic conclusion – but you can rest assured that I will never kill or seriously injure my heroine or her feline companion. I wouldn’t have a series if I did that and, besides, I don’t have the heart for that kind of book.

But I do think that we’re up for a good adventure, right? That without a little bit of darkness and threat, the happy resolution won’t feel earned. And besides, what could bond a girl and her cat closer than to face down danger together – side by side, supporting each other when both feel the most alone.

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