Jean Henry Mead's Kerrie Compton

Day 9 on the Murder We Write Blog Tour. I must say I’m excited to interview Kerrie Compton. I think it will be a cake walk seeing she is a journalist like myself. She doesn’t have anything to hide and I understand she is pretty easy on the eyes. Kerrie’s mother is Dana Logan who drives a motor home with her friend Sarah Cafferty and seem to find a lot of dead bodies along the way. Let’s see what she has to say about the latest mystery, GRAY WOLF MOUNTAIN by Jean Henry Mead. Kerrie, I’ve met your mother. Are you just like her or what makes you not quite a chip off the block?

Kerrie:  Few women like to be compared with their mothers, but I'm proud of Mom, who's sixty and still attractive and like a bloodhound in her amateur sleuth investigations. I guess I'm a true chip off the old block, both in appearance and risk taking. We share a love of adventure and bringing villains to justice--along with Mom's best friend, Sarah Cafferty. But Mom's a bit prudish when it comes to romance. Why Sheriff Grayson continues to pursue her through each novel in the series is a mystery in itself.

As a fellow journalist, you serve as a staff writer for City Magazine in Denver. What do you like most and least about your job?

Kerrie:  I enjoy writing about investigations with my mom and Sarah, such as our latest adventure, Gray Wolf Mountain, where someone shooting wolves starts killing people as well. I don't enjoy being shot at or tied up and sprinkled with ants as happened in the first Logan & Cafferty novel, A Village Shattered. Premature gray hair took up residence on my head.

Do your bosses ever get upset when you have to take time to investigate stories that they don’t seem to see as worthy? Do you have to take a lot of time off to rescue your mother?

Kerrie:  I don't take much time off to "rescue"Mom. She'd have a fit if she heard you say that. I've always managed to turn each investigation into a noteworthy story when I return to the office, even just a feature story about one of the people involved. Such as Gus Blake, an 85-year-old man who rescues wounded wolves and nurses them back to health. He's also romantically involved with a tiny 85-year-old sharp-shooting woman, which provides some humorous anecdotes. 

Are you single? Would you consider dating a fellow journalist in West Michigan?

Kerrie:  Sorry, Mitch. I'm currently engaged to an FBI agent whom I met in Murder on the Interstate. But he's always gone on assignments so I'm considering breaking off the engagement to begin a new relationship with a handsome Iraqi War veteran that Mom hired as my bodyguard.

Fine, I can keep it professional. Tell me about your latest exclusive.

Kerrie:  I've already told you about the wolf shootings, but my "exclusive" is a little known fact that wolves are being shot en masse from helicopters in Canadian provinces, primarily the Yukon Territory, to increase Caribou herds for big game hunters. They're also being killed in the Northern U.S. Rockies by gassing wolf puppies in their dens. The government doesn't seem to realize that killing off Keystone predators such as wolves and grizzlies unbalances nature. Few wolves mean big game animals increase in number and consume most of the vegetation that birds and small animals need to survive.

To hear more about this journalist and her mother’s travels in an RV, check out this website: wwwjeanhenrymead.com

 

And to learn more about Gray Wolf Mountain, check out: Amazon

Jean will be giving away a copy of her recent release, Gray Wolf Mountain, fourth novel in the Logan & Cafferty series, to a visitor who leaves a comment during the blog tour. The winner will be announced at her blog site: http://mysteriouspeople.blogspot.com/ December 12.

Jean Henry Mead is the author of 18 books, including the Logan & Cafferty series, Hamilton Kids' mysteries, Western historicals and nonfiction history and interviews books. An award-winning photojournalist, she's published domestically as well as abroad. She also served as a news, magazine and small press editor.

Mitch Malone Mondays: Jean Henry Mead

Today I'm pleased to host Jean Henry Mead, the editor of The Mystery Writers book, which features 60 authors telling secrets of writing several subgenres of mystery. I believe W. S. Gager submitted something as well but I don't want to dwell on her submissions. There are others who have a lot more to say so let’s get right to the dirt. Jean, how did you get the idea to do such a book?

I’ve been conducting interviews for many years as a news reporter, freelance photojournalist and a blogger. The interviews originated on my blog site, Mysterious Writers and my first book of mystery writer interviews was published by Poisoned Pen Press in 2010. I’ve accumulated quite a few  since then and didn’t want them to evaporate into Cyberspace.

Sometimes my sources don't want to give up the dirt. Did you have any problems getting those big names like Sue Grafton, Hank Phillipi Ryan, Lawrence Block and those other best-selling writers to give you their expertise?

I was very lucky to interview Elmore Leonard some thirty years ago, just as he was becoming famous and we both belonged to the same writer’s group. So my interview with him opened doors that were previously locked. Whenever I asked bestselling writers for an interview, I mentioned my previous one with “Dutch” Leonard. I guess they thought if he allowed me to interview him, I must be okay.

Even though W.S. Gager is in the book, please give an honest answer. This book has sixty authors. What is the most unique idea and who submitted it?

You want to get me in trouble, don’t you, Mitch? Each author is unique in his or her own way. I was shocked by my interview with Roger Smith, a former South African filmmaker and screenwriter who now writes noir novels from his native Africa. The brutality he writes about, the corruption and abuse of women and children shock readers and cause them to appreciate their lives in the U.S. There are quite a few other writers who live and write from foreign countries (in the book), including Thailand, Brazil, England, Canada and Africa as well as interesting writers here in the U.S.— like W. S. Gager.

 How did you ever manager to pull this together and give it some order?

It wasn’t easy. I happened across the writers originally on the Internet and they were all receptive to interviews. I’m glad they were because each one has a different perspective on the craft of writing, marketing and characterization. I thoroughly enjoyed our interview, as I have with writers in this country.

It took several months to get in touch with each writer and have them update their interviews. I then asked them to write an article for the book and placed each writer in an appropriate chapter representing their particular subgenre. I’ve never worked so hard on a book as this one, which is my 17^th, but it was well worth the effort. I’m very proud of the book, although I’m just the gatherer and editor.

 

Thanks, Jean, for joining me today. This is one book that every mystery writer should have on their reference shelf. To get your copy go here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Mystery-Writers-Interviews-Advice/dp/1931415358/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332511257&sr=1-2

Jean Henry Mead has published 16 books, half of them mystery/suspense and historical novels. She also writes the Hamilton Kids’ mysteries and is an award-winning photojournalist.

MWW Day 11 - Jean Henry Mead's Dana Logan & Sarah Cafferty

Welcome to Day 11 in the Murder We Write Blog Tour. Don’t forget to leave a comment to be entered to win a copy of one of my adventures to be drawn at the end of the tour. Who am I you ask? I’m Mitch Malone, crime beat reporter extraordinaire for the Grand River Journal. My interview today is a pair. Meet Dana Logan and Sarah Cafferty. Normally I would insert some kind of snide comment about the pair being widows in Jean Henry Mead’s Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense series but a little old lady called Elsie Dobson has cured me of that behavior. The pair being interviewed today travel in a motorhome finding murder around every turn. Let’s start with the basics. How did you two hook up?

Dana: We met in a San Joaquin Valley retirement village where our Sew and So club members were dying alphabetically. A dog trainer had just been elected sheriff and he was bungling the investigation so badly in A VILLAGE SHATERED that we decided to discover the killer’s identity ourselves—before our own names came up on his list. All the dead bodies made us decide to sell our homes and buy an RV to travel, but we stumble over bodies, no matter where we go.

I like my Jeep but you take your transportation a bit more seriously. You have a motorhome named Matilda? How did that happen and who is it named after?

Sarah: Dana hates the name but I christened the RV for my Aunt Matilda. She was one determined lady who bullied her way around, no matter who stood in her way. Kinda like the motorhome does on the highway. She wasn’t a bully, mind you, but people took off like scalded cats whenever she lit into them.

You two have matched wits with terrorists in MURDER ON THE INTERSTATE to killers in DIARY OF MURDER and many others. What was the scariest situation you faced?

Dana: For me it was crashing the motorhome when the killer sneaked onboard and pushed a gun into my throat while I was driving. I knew he was going to kill me so I drove into a ditch along the highway while he was standing behind me. That experience was closely followed on the fright scale by the blizzard I had to drive the RV through in Colorado in DIARY OF MURDER after my sister died in her mansion in Wyoming. Her husband claimed it was suicide but we proved him wrong.

Sarah: Don’t forget the flash flood that nearly drowned us while chased by a serial killer in MURDER ON THE INTERSTATE. And I was kidnapped by a drug gang in the Laramie Mountains in DIARY OF MURDER. They tied me to a chair and left me there to freeze to death after they slapped me around. They even left the door open so bears and wolves could come into the cabin. I guess they didn’t kill me themselves because I reminded one of gang members of his grandmother.

Dana, you have a daughter, Kerrie, who is a journalist. Do you think she would want a date with a hot crime beat reporter with a few awards under his belt? I’m quite the catch.

Sarah: (muttering to herself) You’re gonna catch pneumonia if you don’t button up your shirt, Don Juan.

Dana: Kerrie might have dated you in DIARY OF MURDER or A VILLAGE SHATERED. But she fell in love with an FBI agent in MURDER ON THE INTERSTATE, although he used her as a decoy for the homegrown terrorists he was investigating in Denver, which almost got her killed. Kerrie always seems to fall in love with lawmen, although she was engaged to a fellow journalist in A VILLAGE. He betrayed her so she hasn’t really trusted men since.

Kerrie is involved in several of these dangerous situations. Do you go in and rescue her or does she rescue you?

In A VILLAGE, Kerrie is lured into an old house by the killer and I have to rescue her with the sheriff’s riot gun. And in MURDER ON THE INTERSTATE, Sarah and I rescue Kerrie from the hospital when terrorists are blowing it up after she’s been injured in a limo accident.

But her investigative skills have helped us solve a number of murders.

What’s up next for you old ladies, err, crime fighting sleuths?

Sarah: Old ladies are we? We’re only sixty and that’s the new forty, in case you didn’t know. We can do anything younger sleuths can do, with the possible exception of scaling tall buildings.

Dana: Sarah’s right. We’re out to prove that women our ages are still desirable—

Sarah: There’s a San Joaquin Valley sheriff still chasing after Dana.

Dana: —and that women of a certain age don’t have to confine themselves to rocking chairs and bridge games. Some of us are jumping out of airplanes, climbing mountains, downhill skiing, driving RVs, and marrying younger men . . . whatever we want to do. Sixty is a great time to be alive.

As for our next caper, Kerrie’s publisher is murdered and she’s accused of the crime. I think we’ll call this one MAGNETS FOR MURDER.

Okay, okay, I get it. Thank you, you young chicks, Dana and Sarah. To find out more about Jean Henry Mead’s books check out her website at http://www.jeanhenrymead.com. Also, make sure you leave a comment. Jean Henry’s giving away one of her mystery ebooks at the end of each of her 14 blog appearances as well as three print novels at the conclusion of the tour. Be sure to leave a comment and email address to be eligible for the drawings. Her blog tour schedule is listed at: http://jeansblogtour.blogspot.com/

Jean Henry Mead has published 15 books, half of them mystery/suspense and historical novels. She also writes the Hamilton Kids’ mysteries and is an award-winning photojournalist. Jean's latest Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense novel, Murder on the Interstate, is available at:Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/6znjvsa Barnes and Noble: http://tinyurl.com/3vxzppy