An Interview With Maureen Klovers

by Grace Topping

Reading Maureen Klovers’ delightful Rita Calabrese Culinary Mysteries set in an Italian-American community in the Hudson Valley is like taking a walk through my hometown in Pennsylvania. It’s as though she’s writing about the people I know. Rita has joined the ranks of the Senior Sleuths that have recently become so popular. It was a pleasure talking to Maureen about Rita and why she chose to write about a senior sleuth. 

The Legend of Acorn Hollow

Back Cover Copy

The locals insist that Acorn Hollow was the real inspiration for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” But is that a blessing…or a curse?

As the Hudson Valley’s best garden-to-table home cook, fiercest Italian matriarch, and most dogged reporter, Rita Calabrese has many reasons to look forward to fall. Her garden is bursting with the ingredients for chicken cacciatore, apple crisp, and pumpkin cheesecake. Her son is starring in the local community theater production. And Acorn Hollow is at its most festive as it celebrates “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which the townspeople insist was inspired by their own bucolic hamlet.

But as the fall foliage peaks, so does the drama. First, a series of mysterious accidents befall the actor portraying Ichabod Crane. While most of the townspeople are willing to chalk it up to the supernatural antics of the headless horseman, the police have a far more mortal suspect in mind: Rita’s son, Vinnie.

Then the notorious “black widow” of Acorn Hollow offers Rita tantalizing new clues about a pair of cold-case Halloween disappearances bearing the hallmarks of the original legend, right down to the smashed pumpkin by the old stone bridge. In exchange, the widow asks Rita to cater her funeral—and she’s already set an exact date.

As the clock ticks down to the appointed date, Rita cooks up a fabulous funeral feast. But she begins to suspect that the widow is cooking up something of her own, and it just might be an elaborate trap to catch a killer…

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Welcome to Writers Who Kill, Maureen.

 

Rita Calabrese is an intriguing character who shows lots of moxie. Do you know someone like Rita? What inspired you to create such a fun character?

 

Rita is very loosely based on someone I knew as a child. She wasn’t Italian, but she looked Italian, and she was a freelance journalist and fiercely protective of her three sons. As far as I know, she didn’t ever solve a murder, but if there was one person I knew who probably could have, it was this woman! Even when making chit-chat, it was likely a friendly interrogation; sometimes, she’d even whip out her notebook and take notes.

 

But the idea for the Rita Calabrese series really came to me when I was in a critique group with some very talented mystery writers and working on my first mystery Hagar’s Last Dance. At the time, I was in my mid-thirties, and my protagonist was a 29-year-old lawyer-turned-bellydancer-turned-sleuth. So there wasn’t much of an age gap between my sleuth and me, and in some ways, she was my alter ego, with her speech patterns very similar to the way my friends and I spoke. But the other writers, despite being in their fifties and sixties, were all writing about 30-year-old protagonists who were pretty and thin and had gorgeous boyfriends and cool jobs. After reading and critiquing several of those, I asked, “Why don’t you want to write about women your own age? Why don’t you write about women closer to the age of many of our readers?” They replied that 30 was the perfect age and that it was aspirational: everyone remembered when they were 30, and they were thin and pretty, and the world was full of possibilities.

But I didn’t see it that way. I was actually rather tired of reading about perfect 30-year-olds, and I thought a mature sleuth would have so much more to offer: a much deeper understanding of human foibles, a lifetime of experiences to draw on, and a stronger connection to the community gossip hotline after decades of studying, living, and working with everyone’s aunt, brother, and cousin—not to mention all of the goodwill built up from a lifetime of serving on every church, school, and town committee.

At the same time, I was studying Italian, and I wanted to incorporate the Italian language, culture, and food. It would be a little like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, except that when Rita exercised her little gray cells, she’d be speaking Italian, not French, and be whipping up some sweet potato gnocchi with short rib ragu or chocolate-dipped peanut-butter biscotti.

Rita speaks fluent Italian, which you occasionally include. Where did she get her language skills?

Her mother is from a small town in Tuscany, so Italian is her first language. She grew up speaking Italian with her mother and her nonna.

You write knowingly about Italian-American families in Acorn Hallow. Do you have first-hand experience with Italian-Americans or just have a fondness writing about them?

Sadly, I don’t have one drop of Italian blood, though I speak conversational Italian, have been to Italy many times, and often cook Italian food. So the Italian expressions that punctuate Rita’s speech and her recipes are definitely authentic (although more Italian-from-Italy than Italian-American). 

I do a lot of research. I read lots of cookbooks for inspiration, as well as the occasional memoir. I read Italian-language church bulletins from the Hudson Valley to get a sense of what is going on in the community. And I ask for advice from various Italian and Italian-American friends, including my Italian teacher.

I must pull it off pretty well because many readers have told me the book reminds them of their Italian nonna. Though I did have one reader tell me the book actually triggered very negative memories of her ex-mother-in-law. One of my favorite compliments of all time was when I was asked to speak at a book club that had read The Secret Poison Garden. As I took off my shoes in the entryway, one of the members asked if I was a new member. When I said I was the author, her jaw dropped. She said she was sure that I would be a heavyset Italian woman in my sixties with bushy black hair.

Rita faces many challenges, sometimes within her own family and from her son Vinnie. What’s with Vinnie?

I think almost every family has a “black sheep,” and that’s Vinnie. He exasperates his mother not so much because he’s truly a bad kid, but because he’s naïve and doesn’t realize how much trouble his little pranks can cause. He’s a wonderful character to write because first of all, he allows Rita access to some rather unsavory characters that turn out to be quite helpful in her murder investigations; he has a completely different network and perspective from his mother, and that comes in handy at times. But his character arc has also come the furthest in the series, and the way Rita perceives or fails to perceive his growth really says a lot about her character.

He’s also the main reason she gets into sleuthing in the first place since he’s a prime suspect in the death of the high school football coach in The Secret Poison Garden. Rita needs to put her investigative skills to use to clear her son’s name, and then, of course, once she’s got one closed case under her belt, it’s a cinch to take on some more.

In your bio, you identify yourself as a former spy. Did working in intelligence help you with writing mysteries? 

Generally, no. I was mostly behind a desk, and it wasn’t very interesting. The one time I was sent on a mission, however, I learned some very helpful lessons that Rita applies in her own unique way. First, most people will tell you what you want to know if you seem truly interested; I got an engineer working for a foreign government to draw the entire plans for the facility on a napkin by just asking questions with rapt attention for thirty minutes. I took that napkin right back to the CIA. 

Second, use people’s preconceptions about you to your advantage. I was 24 years old at the time, and two of my colleagues were around my age too. I talked my way onto one facility by just having us all show up in shirts and T-shirts; we looked exactly like young, sweaty backpackers, and that’s what they assumed we were. I told them we were stuck in town for several days because of a travel delay and rather bored, but that everyone in town had told us their factory tour was amazing. Of course, there was no factory tour. But they were so flattered (back to my first rule again!) that they agreed to give us a personalized tour. I ended up with the hardest simultaneous translation job of my life during a highly technical 90-minute tour of every inch of that facility (I was translating for the scientist on my team who actually understood what it all meant), but it was totally worth it when the tour ended with them giving us contraband samples to take home.

In the same way, Rita uses the tools at her disposal: her huge network of potential informants (basically, she knows everyone in town) and her fabulous cooking skills. She uses her homemade chocolate-dipped peanut butter biscotti like truth serum. And then, other times, when she isn’t talking to folks she knows, she can just play the sweet little old lady or the idle gossip. She’s not as intimidating as someone with a badge, so people will tell her things.

Given the challenges of promoting books in today’s publishing market, which do you find the more challenging, being a spy or a writer?

I was a spy a very, very long time ago, so I’ll go with writer.

The Legend of Acorn Hollow is the sixth book in your series. How has Rita grown over the course of the series? Or has she?

She has really embraced her second act as a journalist for the Morris County Gazette. At first, it was kind of a lark, a way to prove to her children that she, too, had dreams and aspirations. But now it’s really a career—a calling. And it’s changed the way she relates to her children and especially to her husband Sal, who is a bit of an old-fashioned curmudgeon but grows to have real respect for his wife’s work.

And then there’s Rita’s changing perception of her son Vinnie, but I won’t ruin that. You’ll have to read the series for yourself!

Rita Calabrese has joined the ranks of the Silver Sleuths. How was it writing about a character much older than you are?

Incredibly fun. It makes me really look forward to my golden years. It’s also given me more empathy for my mother’s generation and some of the tough choices they faced regarding families and careers, and a deeper, richer appreciation for the unpaid, often unsung work women of that generation did, organizing church fairs, serving on the PTA, being scout leaders, even delivering food to down-of-their-luck neighbors like Rita does. I still have a very vivid memory of a woman in our church rising to speak after Mass. It must have taken incredible courage to go to the podium and speak about something so personal to an audience of nearly 1000, but she thanked the anonymous people who had been leaving groceries for her family for the past two years while her husband was out of work. Not once did she manage to catch anyone in the act. So that became my inspiration for Rita’s sneaky deliveries of food to her neighbors.

Sometimes, when I am deeply engrossed in writing a scene, I get an odd sensation that how Rita feels in a certain scene may be the way I will feel when my daughter, now just seven, is in her twenties or thirties. So in some ways it’s like my voice from the present and the future are blending together. Of course, in twenty years’ time, I still won’t be Italian, a journalist, or a sleuth. But I will still be a proud mamma, and I will still know how to make killer biscotti!

You chose to Indie publish. What advice would you give someone facing that choice?

Spend more time marketing than I do. No one will do it for you.

In all seriousness, my most practical tips would be to join Sisters in Crime; make sure your book is the best it can be by joining a critique group; get a professional to design your cover; proofread like crazy (and have others proofread for you); and network with other authors to cross-promote.

In each book, you include “drool-worthy” Italian recipes. Where do you get most of your recipes?

I obsessively read Italian cookbooks, read Italian recipe blogs, and watch YouTube videos of tiny Italian grandmas cooking in their kitchens. 

My recipes for each book are driven by what ingredients Rita would have in her garden in the Hudson Valley during the season of the book. So, if it’s the middle of summer, I’m looking for recipes with peaches, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. If it’s fall, I’m thinking pumpkins and apples. Then I come up with Italian classics or Italian-inspired dishes that feature those ingredients. I’ll find three or four recipes as a starting point to mix and match, devise my own recipe, test it, refine it, and test it again. Most recipes go through at least three iterations before they make it into the book.

Some books involve considerably more research. For Murder Under the Tuscan Sun, I actually had a 90-minute Zoom call with the former head of the American Archaeological Institute and a Rome-based archaeologist-turned-food-and-wine-writer to determine what ingredients the ancient Etruscans had available to them so Rita could cook an authentic Etruscan-inspired recipe.

For The Legend of Acorn Hollow, it’s October, so I’ve got recipes for chicken cacciatore (using end-of-season tomatoes and peppers), apple crisp (to die for), and a pumpkin mascarpone cheesecake.

Your books are in print and electronic format. With the popularity of audiobooks, have you considered producing an audiobook version of your series?

No, it’s just too expensive and time-consuming to justify the cost. I have a demanding full-time job, am the mother of a 7-year-old, sing in a choir, and just volunteered to be the Girl Scout Troop leader, so I’m sticking to just writing my books. It’s all I have time for.

What’s next for Rita?

I’ve got three different ideas, all of which will probably make their way into a book, but I’m not sure in which order. I have an idea for Rita to travel to Sicily on an ill-fated tour (read: ending in murder) organized by her husband’s shady cousin, who has a get-rich-quick scheme to turn a crumbing villa into a glamorous seaside resort. I wrote a smashing first chapter and now am a bit unsure where to take it next. (Yes, I’m a “pantser,” not a plotter. I frequently start writing a novel without knowing who the murderer is.)

I also have an idea for a Valentine’s Day-themed mystery involving a chocolate and wine festival that turns to murder and an idea for a Christmas-themed mystery, during which Rita will get to whip up fabulous Italian Christmas cookies, plus seafood delicacies for the traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes.

What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned since you started writing?

To write with equal parts heart and humor.

Thank you, Maureen.

 

Maureen’s Bio

Maureen Klovers is the creator of the Rita Calabrese culinary cozy series, as well as a traditional mystery series featuring lawyer-turned-bellydancer Jeanne Pelletier. A former spy and middle school teacher, she has a keen sense of adventure: she's hiked through the jungle to Machu Picchu, toured a notorious Bolivian prison with a German narco-trafficker, and fished for piranhas in Venezuela. She lives with her husband, daughter, and black Lab in Arlington, Virginia, and enjoys testing recipes and speaking Italian.

 

Grace Topping is the author of the Laura Bishop Mystery Series.