Some folks find black cats and October 31 unlucky, but not me. Halloween was always the most significant holiday on my personal and professional calendar. Now that my new Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator urban fantasy series is coming out, I am one happily haunted writer. Dancing with Werewolves, the first Delilah Street adventure, got a Publisher’s Weekly starred review last Halloween. The followup, Brimstone Kiss, released today, Oct. 29, and just got another PW starred review! (“Filled with kisses and kick-ass action . . . dishy writing . . . twisty plot.”) And, of course, since 1985 I’ve been intimately linked with a hunky, hard- boiled Vegas detective named Midnight Louie who was born on Oct. 31. Lucky for my husband that Louie is a cat character in my long-running mystery series named after him. Sam’s birthday is Oct. 14 and mine is Guy Fawkes Day, Nov. 5, so Halloween has always been our meet-in-the middle celebratory day. Who wouldn’t like that? Costumes, happy kids, and candy. Midnight Louie is based on a real stray cat but I gave him an Oct. 31 birthday because I figure he’s macho enough (“Sam Spade with hairballs”) to tweak his tail at superstition….

What is scarier than losing your pet? Okay, I guess I should have put that question in context. There are many things scarier than losing your pet. Losing your child or your spouse. Losing your own life. Colonoscopies. Spiders. But for me, for a period of about two months last year, I had to face one of my own particular fears. What’s worse, I had to make that fear come to life for my heroine, Theda Krakow, her pampered and beloved housecat, Musetta, and for any reader out there.You see, I was working on what became my third Theda Krakow mystery, “Cries and Whiskers,” and I wanted to ratchet up the tension and suspense. But it had to be on my terms – for my readers. And my readers love their pets. So although I have long promised my readers that I would never hurt or kill any animals in my books (humans don’t count), I needed to put Musetta at risk. I needed to have her disappear into a blinding winter storm. And I needed on suspicious phone call to hint that maybe that disappearance wasn’t entirely voluntary. So what’s the problem? Well, Musetta is based on my own…