New York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst - A Review & Excerpt

 Review

NEW YORK: GIVE ME YOUR BEST OR YOUR WORST
Photography and Editing by Elizabeth Crowens

NEW YORK: GIVE ME YOUR BEST OR YOUR WORST is a small coffee table book showcasing varied views of New York City in both photographs and words. Eleven writers give differing views of NYC with their words, in flash fiction, reflections, and poetry. Editor Elizabeth Crowens also tells stories of the city with her photographs.

The stories are quite different, although each has the same concept. With so many different voices, you're sure to find something that appeals to you. My favorite was The Fishmonger by Barbara Krasnoff while I also enjoyed Micaela, Whose Apartment Never Changes by R. J. Koreto and The Great Scutini by Tom Straw. What was most captivating, however, was the photography. So many wonderful photographs, each a story unto itself, each adding to the story that is New York City.

NEW YORK: GIVE ME YOUR BEST OR YOUR WORST is an interesting compilation that truly gives off a New York City vibe, for better or worse.

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New York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst

Presented by: Elizabeth Crowens

October 25 - November 19, 2021 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

An Anthology and Celebration of the Big Apple

I'm an unabashed, unapologetic lover of New York City, my hometown, and New York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst is right up my dark, deserted alley. New York's at its best when you sneak up on it, glance at its sideways, or let it glance sideways at you. The pros and photos in this collection all show New York's best, even when they purport to be showing its worst; in NYC, that's how we roll. A fine addition to your New York bookshelf, a collection to savor.
~ SJ Rozan, best-selling author of The Art of Violence

Book Details:

Genre: Coffee Table book of Photography with Short Stories
Published by: Atomic Alchemist Productions, LLC
Publication Date: Oct 25, 2021
Number of Pages: 150
ISBN: 1950384136, 9781950384136
Purchase Links: Amazon | BookBaby | The Mysterious Bookshop | Goodeareads

 

Read the Intro:

It is daunting to be asked to say something about New York City that hasn’t already been said with more eloquence than I could muster. As with many of the writing gigs I’ve accepted without carefully considering the consequences, I suppose I would have been better off letting someone else tilt at this windmill. With all due respect to Don Quixote, here goes.

My initial inclination was to do something about how New York City, because of its geography, is fated to be a place of stark contradictions: of churning and yearning, of inclusion and exclusion, of acceptance and denial. Unlike other cities, New York cannot expand outwards, only upwards. While that sounds great and may make for glorious postcards of a majestic, everchanging skyline to send to the folks back home, it leaves out New York City’s most valuable commodity—its people.

I could have written about the unknown or unseen New York, the scores of little islands—some populated, some not—in Jamaica Bay, in the harbor, in the East River, in the Hudson. Places like Ruffle Bar. Ruffle Bar? Google it. Places once home to psychiatric and typhoid quarantine hospitals. Buildings abandoned or demolished. Islands whose only residents are the dead buried there and forgotten. Interesting, certainly, but again it would have left out the thing that makes New York City what it is.

As a crime fiction author who sets much of his work in New York—largely in Brooklyn and Manhattan—I have done countless panels and interviews about the city. My friend and award-winning colleague, Peter Spiegelman, says that setting is the soil in which you grow your characters. He is so right. Ask any author worth his, her, or their salt, and they will tell you that a book that can be set anywhere isn’t much of a book at all. A book must be of its place. So too must a person.

New York City isn’t one place. It is a thousand places, ten thousand places. And because it is all those places, its people are different neighborhood to neighborhood, sometimes street to street. Certainly, house to house, apartment to apartment. Do we shape the place or does the place shape us? Instead of doing an overview, a sort of general discussion of this question, I think it better to talk about one place—Coney Island—and how it shaped one person—me.

I grew up in the shadow of Coney Island Hospital, about a mile or so away from the amusement park. I was right on the border of Brighton Beach, Gravesend, Sheepshead Bay, and Coney Island. I could explain how each of these neighborhoods differ, how, for instance, Sheepshead Bay is, for all intents and purposes, a fishing village. But no, not here, not now. At one point in my life or other, I have claimed to be from all these places. Yet it is Coney Island that resonates.

When I was four, my dad—a bitter, blustery, and angry man—was diagnosed with an aggressive bone sarcoma which he battled to a standstill for thirty plus more years. After his initial round of surgery and treatment, he was instructed to not do any activities that might jar or adversely affect his leg. Yet on summer Sundays, he would tell my mom that he was taking me for a car ride. We took car rides, alright, straight into Coney Island.

He would put me on the kiddy rides, take me to Nathan’s Famous, buy me pistachio soft serve. Then, in one of the few acts of true defiance I ever saw from him, he would get on the carousel and grab for the brass rings. On one of these Sundays, he pointed to the Parachute Jump. The “Jump” rose into the air two hundred and sixty feet. All orange steel, it looked like a cross between the Eiffel Tower and the skeleton of a giant umbrella.

“When that ride opened up,” he said, “my best pal Charlie and me got on it. The parachute dropped a few feet and then … nothing. We were stuck up there for forty-five minutes just hanging in the air. It was great.”

Of course, by then, the Parachute Jump, once part of Steeplechase Park, had been closed for years, its parachutes and rigging long gone. That day, those days, have stayed with me ever since. And when, as a teenager, I would go back to Coney Island with my friends, get high and ride the Cyclone, I would always look up at the Parachute Jump. It came to symbolize my dad to me. Mighty, impressive, but abandoned, and powerless. I loved my dad because I could see past his bluster. He let me see past it. All because of those few Sundays in Coney Island.

As if by osmosis, Coney Island began imposing itself in my work. My series character, Moe Prager, worked in the Six-O precinct in Coney Island. Scene after scene in the nine Moe books take place there. Even twenty-plus books later, in my new series, I cannot escape the gravity of Coney Island. It calls to me in a way I cannot explain other than to say it is romance in the way the Romantic poets understood it.

In my Edgar Award–nominated short story “The Terminal,” I wrote this:

“…He liked how Coney Island displayed its decay as a badge of honor. It didn’t try to hide the scars where pieces of its once-glorious self had been cut off. Stillwell Avenue west was like a showroom of abandonment, the empty buildings wearing their disuse like bankrupted nobility in frayed and fancy suits. He had come to the edge of the sea with the other last dinosaurs: the looming and impotent Parachute Jump, the Wonder Wheel, Nathan’s, the Cyclone.”

I could never have written those words in that way had I grown up in Washington Heights or Rego Park. New York City poets and writers are shaped by their families, yes, but shaped as much by where as by who. That is the magic of New York. This book will shine a light on the rest of that magic. By the way, my children and I have slightly different tattoos of the Parachute Jump: My son and I on our forearms; my daughter on her triceps. In those tats my dad and the Coney Island that was will live on.

***

Introduction from New York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst by Reed Farrel Coleman. Copyright 2021 by Elizabeth Crowens. Reproduced with permission from Elizabeth Crowens. All rights reserved.

 

 

About New York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst:

Writer and photographer, Elizabeth Crowens is one of 500 New York City-based artists to receive funding through the City Artist Corps Grants program, presented by The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), with support from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) as well as Queens Theatre.

She was recognized for New York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst, her photo-illustrated anthology, which brought her published book along with ten other authors to Mysterious Bookshop in Lower Manhattan at 58 Warren Street on Monday, October 25, 2021 at 6:30 p.m. for an in-store event and author signing along with a simultaneous Facebook Live presentation and recording for Jim Freund’s WBAI program Hour of the Wolf.

Author contributors include:

• Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of over 31 award-winning mystery and thriller novels, including the Jesse Stone series for the estate of Robert B. Parker. Called a hard-boiled poet by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan.
• Charles Salzberg, former magazine journalist, crime novelist of the Shamus Award-nominated Henry Swann series, founding member of the New York Writers Workshop.
• Tom Straw, Emmy and WGA-nominated writer-producer, credits include Nurse Jackie, Night Court, Grace Under Fire, Whoopie, and the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Crime novelist under the pen name of Richard Castle.
• Randee Dawn, Entertainment journalist for Today.com, Variety, and the Los Angeles Times. Co-editor of Across the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles and The Law & Order: SUV Companion, and speculative fiction writer of the upcoming Tune in Tomorrow.
• Barbara Krasnoff, Reviews Editor at The Verge, over 45 published short stories, Nebula Award finalist, author of the “mosaic” novel The History of Soul 2065.

• Steven Van Patten, TV stage manager by day, horror writer by night. Co-host of the Beef, Wine and Shenanigans podcast, winner of several African American Literary Awards.
• Triss Stein writes mysteries that all take place in Brooklyn.

• Marco Conelli, former NYPD detective, consultant to Mary Higgins Clark, and Silver Falchion award-winner for young adult mysteries and the police procedural Cry For Help, taking place in The Bronx.
• R.J. Koreto, historical mystery writer focusing on New York during the Gilded Age.
• Richie Narvaez, award-winning mystery author of Hipster Death Rattle, Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco, and Noiryorican.
• Elizabeth Crowens, over 25 years in the entertainment industry, member of the International Cinematographers Guild as a Still Photographer (Imdb.com credited: Sheri Lane), award-winning writer of novels in the Hollywood mystery and alternate history genres. Recipient of the Leo B. Burstein Scholarship by the NY Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Editor and photographer for New York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst based on her Facebook Caption Contests. elizabethcrowens.com, @Ecrowens on Twitter, and Elizabeth Crowens on Facebook!

 

 

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The Joys of Researching the Gilded Age - Guest Post & Giveaway

I'm pleased to welcome R.J. Koreto to Cozy Up With Kathy today. R.J. writes the Alice Roosevelt Mystery series. THE BODY IN THE BALLROOM is the second book in the series and was released last month.

 

The Joys of Researching the Gilded Age

 by  R.J. Koreto

Fun Fact: It is widely believed that the Manhattan Cocktail was invented in the late 19th century by Jennie Jerome—the American-born mother of Winston Churchill. Her first cousin was William Jerome, the Manhattan District attorney who later prosecuted the deeply disturbed millionaire Harry Thaw. In the most famous crime of the day, Thaw murdered architect Stanford White for having an affair with Thaw's young wife, the stunningly beautiful Evelyn Nesbit. Mr. Jerome has a cameo in "The Body in the Ballroom." He was a leading Republican figure, like Theodore Roosevelt, father of my protagonist, Alice Roosevelt. In my book, Alice visits a reporter at the New York Herald Building, a Gilded Age gem--designed by Stanford White!

This is my fifth turn-of-the-century historical mystery, and researching these books sends me along wonderful journeys like above. I stop writing to look up one item, and the next thing you know, I've spent an hour along byways of Gilded Age New York, or Edwardian London. I send my sleuths into a taxi in 1902 New York—yes, there were motorized taxis, but they were mostly electric, not gas. Could New Yorkers make phone calls—absolutely, but there was no dial; they had to go through an operator.

I had to figure out where my sleuths, the outrageous Alice Roosevelt and her wry bodyguard, ex-Rough Rider Joseph St. Clair, would send the culprits they caught. Manhattan's city jail is called the "Tombs." Did that term go back to their day? Yes—the original "Tombs" got the name from the 19th-century Egyptian Revival style of the first building on the site. It’s long forgotten, but the name lingers on. (Apparently no one really missed it—Charles Dickens, during an American tour, wrote how much he disliked it.)

In another chapter, Alice and St. Clair track a suspect to a church. What kind of church? New York was home to residents of all kinds of religions. The Catholic community had already built its magnificent St. Patrick's Cathedral, which was of particular interest to the city's large Irish population. But New York also had a fair number of African-American Catholics, and they had their own church named St. Benedict the Moor, after an early African saint.

I was raised in New York and I don't remember a time when I wasn't eating a wide variety of foods from the many immigrant groups that came into New York. When did these various foods arrive in New York, so my characters could enjoy them? It was fun to send Alice and St. Clair to a Lower East Side restaurant where they discover an exotically delicious preserved meat called pastrami. Alice also delights in a potato snack popular in Jewish neighborhoods, called a knish. They were still new in New York. In my previous Alice book, "Alice and the Assassin," St. Clair embarrasses Alice when he tries to dig in to a feast of Chinese food, but there is no cutlery in sight—just a pair of sticks.

But as much as I wanted to send Alice out for pizza, the first pizzeria in New York didn't open until 1905, several years after this book takes place.

Even shaving required research. Safety razors were still new; Mr. St. Clair probably took care of his own barbering needs with a straight-edge razor. (These aren't toys; a hipster friend of mine tried using one and nearly took his ear off.) But what if he wants to "dress to impress"? In the 19th century, rum from the Caribbean was distilled with leaves and berries of the West Indian bay tree for an early aftershave preparation called bay rum, still available today. Mr. St. Clair splashes some on in the final scene of my novel, and a jealous Alice Roosevelt deduces he is spending the evening romancing a special woman. Many things change—but not everything!

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The Body in the Ballroom

by R.J. Koreto

on Tour July 1-31, 2018

Synopsis:

President Teddy Roosevelt’s daring daughter, Alice, leaps into action to exonerate a friend accused of poisoning a man just about everyone hated.
Alice Roosevelt, the brilliant, danger-loving daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, has already risked an assassin’s bullet to solve one murder. She never expected to have to sleuth another, but she’d never pass up the opportunity, either. Anything to stave off boredom.
And such an opportunity presents itself when Alice is invited to a lavish ball. The high-society guests are in high spirits as they imbibe the finest wines. But one man, detested by nearly all the partygoers, quaffs a decidedly deadlier cocktail. An African-American mechanic, who also happens to be a good friend of former Rough Rider-turned-Secret Service Agent Joseph St. Clair, is suspected of the murder-by-poison, but Alice is sure he’s innocent and is back on the scene to clear his name.
From downtown betting parlors to uptown mansions, Alice and Agent St. Clair uncover forbidden romances and a financial deal that just might change the world. But neither Alice nor her would-be protector may survive the case at hand in The Body in the Ballroom, R. J. Koreto's gripping second Alice Roosevelt mystery.

Book Details:

Genre: Historical Mystery
Published by: Crooked Lane Books
Publication Date: June 12th 2018
Number of Pages: 304
ISBN: 1683315774 (ISBN13: 9781683315773)
Series: Alice Roosevelt Mystery #2
Purchase Links: Amazon  | Barnes & Noble  | Goodreads 

Read an excerpt:

President Roosevelt and I were just finishing out talk when A moment later, the office door opened, and Mr. Wilkie, the Secret Service director, walked in. I stood to greet him.
“St. Clair. Glad to see you’re back. Very pleased with the way it went in St. Louis.” He turned to the president. “Have you spoken to him yet, sir?”
“Yes, and he’s agreed.” Wilkie looked relieved, too.
“Very good then. If you’re done, sir, I’ll take St. Clair to her. My understanding is that arrangements have been made for Miss Roosevelt to leave tomorrow afternoon.”
“Exactly. We’re all done then. St. Clair, thanks again. And I’ll be up in the near future, so I expect to see you again soon.” We shook hands, and I followed Mr. Wilkie out the door.
“Is she smoking on the roof again, sir?” I asked. That’s what happened the first time I met Alice in the White House.
He grimaced. “No. My understanding is that she is in the basement indulging a new hobby of hers. But you’ll see.” He led me downstairs, and that’s when I heard the unmistakable sounds of gunfire. Mr. Wilkie didn’t seem worried, however. “Miss Roosevelt somehow got hold of a pistol and has set up her own private firing range in a storage room. We launched an investigation to figure out how Miss Roosevelt obtained such a weapon but were unable to reach a formal conclusion, I’m sorry to say.”
No wonder they wanted me back.
And just as when Mr. Wilkie had sent me to get Alice off the roof, he once again cleaned his glasses on his handkerchief, shook my hand, wished me luck, and departed.
I heard one more shot, and that was it. She was probably reloading. The sound came from behind a double door at the end of the hallway. I carefully opened it, and she didn’t notice at first.
I watched her concentrating on the pistol, her tongue firmly between her teeth as she carefully focused on reloading. It was an old Smith & Wesson single-action, and she was damn lucky she hadn’t blown her own foot off. She was shooting at a mattress propped against the far wall, and from the wide scattering of holes, it was clear her marksmanship needed a lot of practice.
“A little more patience, Miss Alice. You’re jerking the trigger; that’s why you keep shooting wild. And that gun’s too big for you.”
It was a pleasure to see the look of shock and joy on her face. She just dropped the gun onto a box and practically skipped to me, giving me a girlish hug. “Mr. St. Clair, I have missed you.” She looked up. “And I know you have missed me. They say you’re back on duty with me. We’re heading to New York tomorrow, and we’ll have breakfast together like we used to and walk to the East Side through Central Park and visit your sister Mariah.”
I couldn’t do anything but laugh. “We’ll do all that, Miss Alice. But I’m on probation from your aunt, so we have to behave ourselves. You have to behave yourself.”
“I always behave.” She waved her hand to show that the discussion had ended. “Now there must be a trick to loading revolvers because it takes me forever.”
“I’ll teach you. Someday.” I made sure the revolver was unloaded and stuck it in my belt. Then I scooped up the cartridges and dumped them in my pocket.
“Hey, that’s my revolver,” said Alice. “It took me a lot of work to get it.”
“You’re not bringing it to New York, that’s for sure, Miss Alice.”
She pouted. “I thought you’d relax a little after being in St. Louis.”
“And I thought you’d grow up a little being in Washington. You want to walk into the Caledonia like a Wild West showgirl? Anyway, don’t you have some parties to go to up there?”
“Oh, very well. But promise me you’ll take me to a proper shooting range in New York and teach me how to load and fire your New Service revolver.”
“We’ll see. Meanwhile, if you don’t upset your family or Mr. Wilkie between now and our departure tomorrow, I’ll buy you a beer on the train.” That made her happy.
We walked upstairs as she filled me in on White House gossip.
“Oh, and I heard you were in a fast draw in St. Louis and gunned down four men.” She looked up at me curiously.
“A little exaggeration,” I said. I hadn’t killed anyone in St. Louis, hadn’t even fired my revolver, except for target practice.
“You didn’t kill anyone?” she asked, a little disappointed.
“No. No one.”
But then her face lit up. “Because your reputation proceeded you, and they knew there was no chance of outdrawing you.”
“That must be it,” I said.
“But look on the bright side,” she said, still full of cheer. “New York is a much bigger city. Maybe you’ll get a chance to shoot someone there.”
***
Excerpt from The Body in the Ballroom by R.J. Koreto. Copyright © 2018 by R.J. Koreto. Reproduced with permission from R.J. Koreto. All rights reserved.

Author Bio:

R.J. Koreto has been fascinated by turn-of-the-century New York ever since listening to his grandfather's stories as a boy.
In his day job, he works as a business and financial journalist. Over the years, he’s been a magazine writer and editor, website manager, PR consultant, book author, and seaman in the U.S. Merchant Marine. He’s a graduate of Vassar College, and like Alice Roosevelt, he was born and raised in New York.
He is the author of the Lady Frances Ffolkes and Alice Roosevelt mysteries. He has been published in both Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. He also published a book on practice management for financial professionals.
With his wife and daughters, he divides his time between Rockland County, N.Y., and Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Catch Up With R.J. Koreto On: Website , Goodreads , Twitter , & Facebook !

 

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This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for R.J. Koreto. There will be 3 winners of three (3) Amazon.com Gift Cards. The giveaway begins on July 1, 2018 and runs through August 1, 2018. Open to U.S. addresses only. Void where prohibited.

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Death at the Emerald: An Interview and Giveaway

I'm pleased to welcome R.J. Koreto to Cozy Up With Kathy today. R.J. pens the Frances Ffolkes Mystery series. DEATH AT THE EMERALD, the third book in the series, will be released November 7th.

Kathy: The Frances Ffolkes Mystery series takes place during Edwardian times. What drew you to this time period?

RJK: To begin with, I've always loved the British series Upstairs/Downstairs. The way the series showed the intimate and yet removed relationships between the upper-class family and their servants was fascinating and instructive.

As I researched the Edwardian period, I also realized what a period of change it was, even if it wasn't always seen at the time. Manners and customs were very much 19th century, but the telephone and railroad had shrunk the world, women were agitating for the vote, and rigid class boundaries were starting to blur. From my 21st century viewpoint, I like portraying this last gasp of the old order, before World War I wiped it away.


Kathy: In DEATH AT THE EMERALD Lady Frances Ffolkes and her loyal maid Mallow become immersed in the glamorous world of Edwardian theatre. Are you a fan of the theatre? What makes Edwardian theatre so special?

RJK: I've always loved theater, and growing up in Manhattan, I was introduced to Broadway as well as smaller venues from childhood.

Edwardian theatre was much like the Edwardian era—a time of change. There was old-fashioned Music Hall (like American vaudeville), comedies and melodramas. The musical theater became the ancestor of the musical comedy we still enjoy today. But there was also George Bernard Shaw, with his stunning portrayals—and attacks—on the comfortable world, and his plays are still relevant a century later.

The Edwardian theatre was also important as a training ground for future movie stars: Edmund Gwenn, famous as Kris Kringle on "Miracle on 34th Street," was in the original cast of Shaw's "Major Barbara." Gladys Cooper had a distinguished career in Edwardian theatre, and years later played Henry Higgins' mother in the film version of "My Fair Lady." She even starred in an episode of The Twilight Zone.


Kathy: The twosome also get involved in the new sensation of moving pictures! Is there much documentation about the movies of this time?

RJK: A lot has survived of these old movie days, and although technology has changed the stories we love have not. Action films ruled: Most people don’t know that a greatly shortened version of "Ben Hur" was filmed in 1907. Firemen were put into robes as charioteers, with their horses pulling the chariots. This film is still available.

The first feature film made was a Western—"The Story of the Kelly Gang." It was screened in 1906, and didn't come out of Hollywood—but Australia. It was a huge commercial success, and much of it survives.


Kathy: Lady Frances Ffolkes meets George Bernard Shaw. I'm a huge Shaw fan and would have loved to have met him. Are you a fan. I admit to a partiality toward PYGMALION as I once was Eliza Doolittle! Do you have a favorite Shaw piece?

RJK: I also acted in Shaw in school—a short farce he wrote called "PASSION, POISON, AND PETRIFICATION. Eliza Doolittle remains one of his greatest and best-known characters. PYGMALION came out a few years after DEATH AT THE EMERALD takes place. Eliza Doolittle came from a poor Cockney family—just like Frances's maid, June Mallow.

Major Barbara is another great character in one of my favorite Shaw plays, and I loved weaving my fictional Lady Frances into the story of that play, as a friend and possible muse of Shaw's. Lady Frances would've been familiar with the play.


Kathy: What first drew you to cozy mysteries?

RJK: Cozy mysteries are deceptively complex. You pick up a good one, and it looks light and simple, but they are actually cleverly crafted: they need to be, to keep the tone sweet and even humorous in the midst of death. Although plot is important, the great thing about Cozies is the characters, and in the best Cozies, you remember the characters long after you've forgotten the plot. We take memorable characters for granted, but they're hard to create. As a genre, the Cozy mystery gives us wonderful characters, and for me, creating characters is the best part of writing a novel—certainly the fun part.


Kathy: Do you write in any other genres?

RJK: I jump around. I think of my Lady Frances books as "historical cozies," but I have another series imagining Alice Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's daughter. It's humorous and character-based, but it may be a little too action-packed to be a cozy. I have a character who has only appeared in short stories: Captain Edmund Winter, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. I describe him as "an adrenaline junkie with anger-management issues." And I recently experimented with "noir," in a short story centering on a young deputy sheriff, a murdered millionaire, his new mistress, and his jealous wife.

It’s fun to try different characters—and different genres. It keeps me from getting bored.


Kathy: Tell us about your series.

Lady Frances Ffolkes, daughter of a wealthy aristocratic family, leads an unconventional life in Edwardian England. She lives on her own, with her maid and sidekick June Mallow, and is an active suffragette while also solving murders.

My other series features Alice Roosevelt, the real-life wildly unconventional daughter of Theodore Roosevelt. That series is narrated by her fictional bodyguard, an ex-Rough Rider with whom she has a love-hate relationship.


Kathy: Do you have a favorite character? If so, who and why?

RJK: That's always a hard question! I do like Lady Frances—I've known women like her. But I have a particular soft spot for her maid Mallow, who has made so much of herself and has grown so much in the books. I like Frances' patient suitor Hal very much—my wife says that's because I based him on myself, and she might be right.


Kathy: Did you have a specific inspiration for your series?

RJK: People asked me if Lady Frances is based on anyone: she went to Vassar College, as did I, and I knew lots of young women like her. My younger daughter is at Vassar now—and there are still plenty of Lady Frances students!


Kathy: What made you decide to publish your work?

RJK: I've been working for years on getting published. At first, I wrote mostly for emotional reasons. I'm a financial journalist, and it was relaxing to write fiction at the end of the day. But then I thought, hey, maybe I could actually get this published.


Kathy: If you could have a dinner party and invite 4 authors, living or dead, in any genre, who would you invite?

RJK: Let's imagine I could revive favorite writers! Isaac Asimov, the sci-fi king; Rex Stout, of the Nero Wolfe series; Georges Simenon, who wrote the Inspector Maigret books; and Agatha Christie—of course!


Kathy: What are you currently reading?

RJK: Speaking of Rex Stout—I just found a Nero Wolfe book I hadn’t read yet, at a second-hand bookstore. Enjoying every page.


Kathy: Will you share any of your hobbies or interests with us?

RJK: Aside from writing, I like spending time with my family—I have a wife and two grown daughters. My wife and I like walking at a local state park with Rose, our Labrador Retriever.


Kathy: Name 4 items you always have in your fridge or pantry.

RJK: Orange juice, apples, popcorn, Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies.


Kathy: Do you have plans for future books either in your current series or a new series?

RJK: Lots of plans! In addition to my other series and short stories noted above, I sometimes revisit my first novel, as yet unpublished, featuring "Ted and Penelope." It's a sort of homage to Agatha Christie's "Tommy and Tuppence" mysteries, with the repartee between a young couple. I had a short story with them in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

I'm also planning a sort of mystery saga: an English police constable investigates a crime in the 1880s, and feeling there has been a miscarriage of justice, keeps investigating it as he rises through the ranks into the 1920s.


Kathy: What's your favorite thing about being an author?

RJK: Looking at the characters I've created, and seeing them come to life chapter by chapter.

I also like signing books.


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