Ten Questions for Kaye George

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Kaye George’s Immy Duckworthy series, Choke, Smoke and now Broke gets better with every book. But read them in order or you’ll miss a lot of fun. Immy continues to develop her PI skills while taking an online PI course and tries to solve cases. In this novel, Immy’s house keeps getting broken into, which is only one mystery she must solve. If you haven’t read the series, you’re in for a treat. Find out why…“the bull semen has left the building.” Welcome back to WWK, Kaye.    E. B. Davis 

1. Where do you start the action in Broke and why?

Immy leaves her office to give you a taste of her all-important (to her) job as PI file clerk and sets out house-hunting with Jersey Shorr of Shorr’s Real Estate. Renting a house and moving out of her mother’s single-wide are the actions that put everything else into play, so that’s where it has to start.

Also, the old, broken-down house is almost a character. I grew fond of it.

2. How does Immy discover her new relatives? You left their characters open as if the verdict is still out. Will those characters appear in future books?

She discovers an uncle she didn’t know she had, Uncle Dewey, by finding him sleeping in the bed of the house she decides to rent. (There’s a dead body in the bathroom--Dewey’s old cellmate--and Dewey looks good for the murder.) He’s a vagrant at that point, newly released from prison. Immy is angry at her mother for not telling her that her father, who died years ago, had another brother, but Hortense never wanted Immy to know about this dark-hued ovine of the family. Dewey Duckworthy has a relative he’s lost, too, his son, and Immy sets about trying to help track him down.

In this book, Immy never decides if Dewey is a scoundrel or not. Her new cousin Theo seems more upscale (he’s never been to prison), but he is his father’s son.

Yes, they’ll both be back!

3. The supernatural plays a role in Broke. Have you ever written supernatural or paranormal before?

Not really, at least not to this extent. I’ve written some horror short stories, published in “Dark Valentine” (I sure miss that magazine), that had supernatural elements, but they were much more weird. I thought a spooky, creaky house like this needed a ghost,  especially since Halloween is coming up as the book opens.

4. Hortense plays less of a role in Broke; do you have a hard time writing her dialogue?

Are you kidding? I love writing her dialogue! It’s hard to fit nice, big words into genre fiction and this is my chance.

I set Hortense aside somewhat in this book, since Immy’s goal is to get away from home and stand on her own two feet. Also, I had some other characters that needed to take up a lot of room and Hortense is rather wide, so she moved aside for them.

5. Immy seems the loyal sort, but Ralph frustrates her. What does Immy want?

She doesn’t know what she wants. Does any woman? She wants strength and solidity, but she also wants excitement and passion. She doesn’t mind danger, or living dangerously (hence her daughter, Nancy Drew Duckworthy, who was conceived in a one-night very fun fling). Ralph gives her some of the above, but not the latter. Don’t we all want the bad guy AND the good guy, rolled into one? Too bad he doesn’t exist.

6. Does Immy pass the Missing Persons section of her online PI course?

She’s gotten all As so far, so, I’m pretty sure she will.  It takes ages to get those tests back!

7. How big will Marshmallow get?

He’s a potbelly and won’t be as big as a farm pig, but he’ll be at least 150 and could reach 200 pounds, although he’ll only stand two feet tall at the most. He should live to be 15-20 years old.

8. Are you an Elvis fan?

I wasn’t when I was a teenager and he was popular. I think I was embarrassed by him. But I grew to like him more and now adore him.  I don’t embarrass like I used to. I like the Beatles and the Stones more, though.

9. You have another new series with a small publisher. What is the series called and what is the storyline?

Thanks for asking! The first Cressa Carraway mystery will be published by Barking Rain Press in May of 2013. Cressa is a young grad student working on her masters in classical composition.  It takes place in rural Illinois, at a club where my mother used to have a cabin on a lake. In fact, I borrowed her cabin for the book.

Here’s my teaser: 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.

10. Has being nominated for an Agatha twice made a difference in your career?

It’s made an enormous difference to me! The nomination for the short story award finally convinced me that I could actually write short stories. It also spurred me into thinking I could maybe write lots of things. Maybe even get novels published. The nomination for CHOKE blew me away. I later submitted that novel for Kim Lionetti to read when I wanted her help getting a cozy contract, and it probably didn’t hurt at all that it had the nom. She took me on and I now have a contract for a three-book series with Berkley Prime Crime.

(I have a LOT of books to write right now! Maybe I should go.)

Bonus: Beach or Mountains?

Mountains! Always the mountains! When my husband and I were first married, he joined the military and, after he came home from SE Asia, was sent to Montana. We fell in love with the Rockies, and that’s where we prefer to go on vacation when time and money are available at the same time. Later we lived in southern Ohio for a while and drove to the Smokies a few times. We love those mountains, too, although they’re very different.

Thanks so much for having me here today!

Kaye wants a new reader to start her series. One commenter will receive a free download of Choke today. You can get all of Kaye’s books on Amazon.com. Here’s the link for the Broke Kindle Edition or you can buy it at Smashwords.