I'm pleased to allow Betty Hechtman to take over Cozy Up With Kathy today. Betty writes the Crochet Mystery series. KILLER HOOKS is the fifteenth book in the series and was released this week.
By
Betty Hechtman
I don’t know about you, but for me where a book takes place is a big part of the story. I don’t like it when a city or area is mentioned once and other than an occasional street name thrown in, there is nothing more to let you know where the characters are.
Because I feel that way, I set my stories in places that I know well. The Crochet Mystery series takes place in Tarzana, California, which happens to be where both I and amateur sleuth, bookstore worker and crocheter Molly Pink live. The houses I write about are real places most of which I have been inside. It is always a weird feeling to see the inside of a place where I have been spending a lot of time in in my imagination. One of the Crochet Mystery plots centered around a huge house being built right behind Molly’s. It was based on what was actually going on behind my house. I had a good idea what the inside of the house being built would look like because despite it super high cost, it was being built from plans like a tract house. In other words, the houses would have slightly different designs, but basically the same layout. And thanks to a real estate website that showed houses for sale, I was able to see the inside of a house with a similar layout online. When the house behind mine was finished and went on the market, I was rushed over to the first open house. I couldn’t wait to see the inside of the real place where so much drama had taken place in my imagination. The real estate people left me to wander the interior by myself. Little did they know when I looked at the balcony off the master bedroom, all I could think about was that was where the murder in my book had happened.
Tarzana is in the San Fernando Valley and is really a community in Los Angeles, rather than a separate town and is situated at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains. It is one of the smaller Valley communities and has mixture of houses on twisty streets leading to the open space of the mountains and areas like Molly’s (and mine) that are on level ground. We have orange trees in our backyard left from when the whole area was an orange grove. I love the closeness to wilderness. I can be standing in line at a busy grocery store and five minutes later be walking in the Santa Monica Mountain surrounded by mysterious canyons and brush covered hillsides.
Ventura Boulevard is the main street that runs through Woodland Hills, Tarzana, Encino and points east. I admit to creating my own version of the stores in the Tarzana section for my books and making it sound a little more small townish than it really is.
It’s easy for me to describe Molly’s house, since it happens to be where I live. In KILLER HOOKS, the 15th Crochet Mystery, a lot of the action takes place at Molly’s house as it has become the center for her family. More than once I have looked at one of the couches in my living room expecting to see Molly in conversation with someone, and I can almost hear Molly’s mother and her singing group the She La Las practicing their routine.
Molly and I share a kitchen though I didn’t give her the weird stove set up that exists in the real room. Someone redid the house with more concern for look than practicality. The stove top is level with the surrounding counters and has cabinets above it. Instead of a hood and exhaust fan, there is a mechanism that comes up from the back of the stovetop that has an exhaust fan with a questionable ability to keep the heat off the cabinets above the stove.
Shedd & Royal Books and More, the bookstore where Molly works and the Tarzana Hookers meet is based on a Barnes & Noble that was in Encino and closed years ago. But it is still alive and open in my imagination.
The Writer for Hire series has a totally different location, but also one I am very familiar with. It takes place mostly in the South Side Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park where Veronica Blackstone lives in a three-story walk up that is over a hundred years old. She inhabits the apartment I grew up in and still have. When I look at the black leather couch in that living room, I picture Veronica talking to her boyfriend Ben, or I see her trying to relax by sipping chamomile tea and crocheting. I can’t walk into the dining room without picturing her writers’ group gathered around the table.
In SENTENCED TO DEATH, the fourth Writer for Hire Mystery, which is coming out in paperback in October, the plot involves a house tour. I chose interesting houses that I had been inside when I was a kid. They are all different styles and I added a few touches of my own like an elevator and a secret passage. I was able to see what the insides of the houses look like now thanks to those online real estate sites. It was a strange feeling to see spots in the houses that I had been in and had memories connected to. I always wonder if there are somehow shadow vibrations of all that went on in a particular location.
And my Yarn Retreat series takes place at a slightly sinister hotel and conference center on the tip of the Monterey Peninsula. Cloudy skies and lots of fog add to the moody atmosphere where not everybody who checks in, checks out. I was just up there recently soaking up the atmosphere and looking at the wind-swept cypress trees that always make me think of someone running away with their hair trailing after them.
There are no generic landscapes in my books and I like to think that the plots couldn’t take place anywhere else other than where I had set them.
Betty Hechtman is the national bestselling author of the Crochet Mysteries, the Yarn Retreat Mysteries, and the Writer for Hire Mysteries. Handicraft and writing are her passions and she is thrilled to be able to combine them in all of her series. Betty grew up on the South Side of Chicago and has a degree in Fine Art. Since College, she has studied everything from improv comedy to magic. She has had an assortment of professions, including volunteer farm worker picking fruit on a kibbutz tucked between Lebanon and Syria, nanny at a summer resort, waitress at a coffee house, telephone operator, office worker at the Writer’s Guild, public relations assistant at a firm with celebrity clients, and newsletter editor at a Waldorf school. She has written newspaper and magazine pieces, short stories, screenplays, and a middle-grade mystery, Stolen Treasure. She lives with her family and stash of yarn in Southern California. See BettyHechtman.com for more information, excerpts from all her books, and photos of all the projects of the patterns included in her books. She blogs on Fridays at Killerhobbies.blogspot.com, and you can join her on Facebook at BettyHechtmanAuthor.
Killer Hooks: A Crochet Mystery by Betty Hechtman
About Killer Hooks
A Crochet Mystery Cozy Mystery 15th in Series
Setting - California Beyond the Page (September 18, 2023)
Paperback: 230 pages
When a baby girl is dropped off on Molly Pink’s doorstep, her life is thrown into disarray as she is putting together a troublesome author event at the bookstore where she works.
The author is a demanding former Hollywood columnist whose book is filled with upbeat stories, but who wants to promote a true crime podcast she is about to launch based on the dark side of what she left out of her columns.
At the same time, Molly’s son has asked her to investigate a potential investor in his production company. The baby, who happens to be Molly’s estranged granddaughter offers her an opening into an elite mommy group, a member of which is the wife of the person Molly is to investigate.
When the columnist dies suddenly, Molly finds herself in the crosshairs of an unfamiliar detective who considers her the prime suspect. Molly recruits the help of the Tarzana Hookers to help with all.
About Betty Hechtman
Betty Hechtman is the national bestselling author of the Crochet Mysteries, the Yarn Retreat Mysteries, and the Writer for Hire Mysteries. Handicraft and writing are her passions and she is thrilled to be able to combine them in all of her series. Betty grew up on the South Side of Chicago and has a degree in Fine Art. Since College, she has studied everything from improv comedy to magic. She has had an assortment of professions, including volunteer farm worker picking fruit on a kibbutz tucked between Lebanon and Syria, nanny at a summer resort, waitress at a coffee house, telephone operator, office worker at the Writer’s Guild, public relations assistant at a firm with celebrity clients, and newsletter editor at a Waldorf school. She has written newspaper and magazine pieces, short stories, screenplays, and a middle-grade mystery, Stolen Treasure. She lives with her family and stash of yarn in Southern California. See BettyHechtman.com for more information, excerpts from all her books, and photos of all the projects of the patterns included in her books. She blogs on Fridays at Killerhobbies.blogspot.com, and you can join her on Facebook at BettyHechtmanAuthor.
Website: https://www.BettyHechtman.com
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