TODAY’S GUEST IS: Kaye George,
National Best-selling & Agatha-nominated mystery author of
EINE KLEINE MURDER, a Cressa Carraway musical mystery
WHAT TYPE OF MUSIC DO YOU LISTEN TO? I like most kinds of music, but will admit to not wanting to listen to very much rap or country. I’m a classical violinist and composer and I love rock and roll, gospel, and blues. I can’t listen to music when I’m writing since I actively listen to it, just like I read mysteries as a writer now. I’m looking for the structure of the music, listening for the harmony, figuring out how I would have written it differently—just like with mysteries.
WHAT IS THE FIRST BOOK YOU REMEMBER READING? I learned to read in first grade with the Dick and Jane reader. I clearly remember how amazed I was that those symbols could be read, that they actually meant something I could decipher. I’ve been reading like mad ever since.
WHAT DREW YOU INTO WRITING THE GENRE YOU DO? I’d been writing short stories all of my adult live, actually from high school on, and collecting rejection slips. Meanwhile, I loved to read mysteries. Many of the older ones are novellas, but people consider them novels. I decided I wanted to sell something and, since people like to read mysteries, I could sell those. Turns out I could! It just took me about ten years of studying, writing, rewriting, and collecting over 400 more rejections. Nothing to it!
When aspiring conductor Cressa Carraway arrives at her grandmother's resort home, she finds Gram dead. When Gram's best friend drowns in the same place, Cressa knows something sinister is at work in this idyllic setting.
Prologue
Stinguendo: Dying away. (Ital.)
What was that sound? A foot, snapping a twig in the woods? Ida knew she shouldn’t be swimming alone at night, but she’d been antsy all day. She needed to get her mind off Cressa's visit.
Grace usually swam with her, but Grace had taken relatives to the Quad-City airport tonight.
Besides, Ida was a strong swimmer. She knew every inch of Crescent Lake. And she thought she knew every sound. But there was that snap again. It prickled the hairs on her arms.
She stopped stroking and listened, straining toward the trees on the opposite bank, just ahead. It didn't repeat. Must have been a night creature in the woods. A raccoon out foraging?
Ida cupped her hands and pulled herself through the caress of the cool water, creating tiny ripples and almost no sound.
FIND AUTHOR Kaye George at: Website
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