Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, JUST THE NICEST COUPLE? Mary Kubica: I loved the idea of writing about a missing husband for a change. Many books in this genre – my own included – deal with missing women and missing wives, and I wanted to flip the script and see what it looked like from the other side.   Jen: What was the most challenging part of alternating points of view by chapter? Mary: I’ve always written from multiple points of view, but I don’t write my books in the same way that someone reads them. Just The Nicest Couple, for example, has two narrators: Christian, whose wife believes she was the last to see Jake Hayes before he went missing, and Nina, a woman whose husband didn’t come home after work one night and is desperate to find him. I started with Christian’s story and wrote it almost in its entirety before going back to the beginning and picking up with Nina’s storyline. I’ve done this for all of my novels. I love this method because it allows me to form a clearer picture of the character and to make his or her voice more distinct. One…

Jennifer Vido: For readers new to the Campers & Criminals Cozy Mysteries, please share with us the premise behind this quirky and highly addictive series. Tonya Kappes: Thank you so much for having me! I’m excited to share all about Mae West and the Laundry Club Ladies with your readers. Mae West is a high society socialite from New York who loses everything after her husband is convicted of a Ponzi scheme. The only thing to her name is a run-down camper van and a run-down campground set in the middle of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. A far cry from her glitz and glamour social life. In her mind, she’s going to drive that awful camper van to Kentucky and sell the campground, but she realizes once she gets there, that’s not going to be the case. The campground is run down and in much need of renovations. Not to mention the nasty mucky lake where she was standing. Not too long after she shows up, the FBI rolls into the campground, accusing her of hiding her husband now that he’s broken out of jail. She informs them that they better find him before she does because…

Jennifer Vido: For readers new to your brilliantly inventive and deliciously witty metaseries, please give us a quick overview of the three previous titles—The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death, and A Line to Kill. Anthony Horowitz:  A private detective – Daniel Hawthorne – has decided to hire an author to follow his investigations and write them as books. The idea is that they’ll split the royalties 50/50. I’m the author he chose and I have to say it hasn’t been easy. Hawthorne’s first case involved the murder of a lady hours after she had arranged her own funeral. Then he investigated the death of a divorce lawyer bludgeoned to death with a wine bottle. On our third outing, we were invited to a literary festival on the island of Alderney. There had never been a murder on the island until we arrived.   Jen: What inspired your new release, THE TWIST OF A KNIFE? Anthony:  The Twist of a Knife tells what happened when a play of mine – it was called Mindgame – opened in London. It was savagely reviewed by a critic called Harriet Throsby and the next day she was stabbed to death at her…

Jennifer Vido: How did your real-life experiences inspire your new release, THE WIDOW? Kaira Rouda: My husband, who had never run for political office before, was elected to congress in 2018 when he upset a 30-year incumbent. The two years we spent serving the country and learning about Washington, DC, inspired the story for The Widow. I also learned about the tradition of The Widow’s Mandate, where spouses step in and fill out the remainder of their husband’s term if they die in office. Statistically speaking, for women who aspire to serve in congress, the best husband has been a dead husband. That’s a great premise for a suspense writer.   Jen: What impact do Jody and Martin Asher have on the political landscape in DC? Kaira: They are senior members of the house, although Martin’s power has been slipping of late. Jody is still the queen of the spouses, and she knows it. She is very concerned that Martin’s behavior is going to ruin everything.   Jen: What happens with Martin that might threaten the couple’s future in politics? Kaira: Well, Martin is most likely having an affair with a young staffer. Jody doesn’t care about the affair, per…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, THE REWIND? Allison Winn Scotch: We were about a year into Covid, and I hadn’t written anything since the pandemic hit. I wanted to write something joyful and fun, a relief from everything that we’d endured. I hadn’t written a romcom in a long time, so I was pitching my friend on ideas, and she told me this was the one. I have always loved digging into the past and the road not taken, so while it wasn’t an easy book to write in the thick of it – mostly because of the complicated logistics of juggling three different timelines – it really was a joy to complete.   Jen: What brings former college sweethearts Frankie and Ezra back to their alma mater? And, how do they feel about seeing each other again? Allison: They head back to Middleton, their college, for the wedding of two friends, and they are nervous and anxious and full of both dread and anticipation but know they must show up all the same. So they do. And then it all goes wrong.   Jen: How has Frankie’s life changed? And Ezra’s? Allison: Ah, great question. Ezra’s has…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, THE MOST LIKELY CLUB? Elyssa Friedland: A great story from my mother. Some cool guy in high school did something not so nice to her – basically used her to get her to do his work for him – and then totally ditched her. Fast forward about eight years and my mom is married and a homeowner. She calls to have her windows washed and who shows up to do it… Mr. Cool Guy, not so cool anymore. I love this story. She tells it to my kids when they are upset about something that happened in school. It shows that it can be quite uncool to peak in high school and that we never know how people will turn out.   Jen: Four childhood friends—Melissa Levin, Priya Chowdury, Tara Taylor, and Suki Hammer—reunite at their twenty-fifth high school reunion. How have the ladies fared over the years?  Elyssa: Overall, the women have fared well in that they are healthy, have their basic needs met and have supportive people in their lives. But each of them isn’t satisfied in one way or another, often in several ways. They feel overwhelmed, like their full…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, A DREADFUL SPLENDOR? B.R. Meyers: I was eight years old, and home sick from school one day and my mom let me watch the local channel’s afternoon movie, The Pit and the Pendulum (she was a big Vincent Price fan). The last five minutes of that movie terrified me — but in a fun way. And even though I’ve seen most of his other movies (House of Wax is stellar!) that first trip to the Medina Castle in The Pit and the Pendulum was the seed that eventually led to me write A Dreadful Splendor many years later. Never underestimate the power of television! The story started much the same way most of my book ideas come to me, in the form of a certain scene, a tiny vignette that keeps replaying in my mind. I ask myself: Is this the beginning, the middle, or the end? And who is telling the story? The more questions I ask, the more layers get added and slowly the premise becomes clear. For A Dreadful Splendor it was the final séance scene complete with a fake spiritualist and rigged tricks. Then I wondered; What would happen…

Jennifer Vido: What’s the inspiration behind PLEASE JOIN US? Catherine McKenzie: Several years ago, I received an invitation to a vague women’s organization. They wouldn’t tell me who recommended me, or give me the name of anyone who belonged, but promised that I’d be “surprised” by the members. They had to “experiences”— four-day retreats in Idaho and California, I think. I was seriously considering going until I mentioned it to my husband. He was convinced it was a cult. I was convinced it would be great book research. I didn’t go, but the idea stuck with me and that was the genesis.   Jen: What’s happening in Nicole’s professional life that’s causing her angst? Catherine: Nicole’s almost forty and she’s a partner, but it’s still not good enough. She’s done everything everyone asked of her for the last twenty years and she’s still on shaky ground. She lost a big client and her “points”, i.e., her annual share of profits, have been cut. She feels like she’s going backwards and is desperate to reach the goals she set for herself.   Jen: Why does the idea of joining Panthera Leo appeal to Nicole so much? Catherine: I think Nicole went…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, THE MAKING OF HER? Bernadette Jiwa: Writers are often asked where they get their ideas. You’ll sometimes hear a writer balk at the question, but I’m not so sure that it’s a bad one because every book has a backstory. THE MAKING OF HER is inspired by a true story, one that I wanted to rewrite long before becoming a writer. A dear friend of mine was given up for adoption in England by her unmarried Irish mother in the 1960s. Her parents returned to Ireland, got married, and had more children. My friend reunited with her parents in the 1990s, but her siblings still don’t know she exists to this day. Like many Irish families back then they were torn apart by a legacy of shame and secrecy. I also wanted to preserve something of my Irish grandmothers’ stories lest we forget the plight of women of their generation. Without access to contraception, both grandmothers gave birth to eleven children. They had too many mouths to feed, and there was never enough of anything to go around. Their bodies, their hearts, and their souls took a hammering. Some women, like my grandmother,…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your debut novel, THE TRUTH ABOUT BEN AND JUNE? Alex Kiester: My most organic writing happens when I explore my fears, and at the time I began my novel, my biggest fear was the ambivalence of entering into parenthood. In most capacities, I know what I want from my life, yet I’ve never known whether or not I want kids. And as this is one of the biggest decisions anyone can make ambivalence about it can be terrifying. Over the years, I’ve dealt with this fear like any writer would—by pawning it off onto my unsuspecting fictional characters. The book originated as one simple scene between a husband and wife who have just discovered the woman is pregnant and are deciding whether or not to have the baby. While these characters later became my protagonists, Ben and June, they started as nothing more than the two conflicting sides of my brain. Eventually, I decided they were going to have the baby, and the rest of the book snowballed from there.   Jen: How would you describe Ben and June’s relationship? Alex: At the start of the novel, Ben and June’s relationship is broken. For many months…