Monday, August 19, 2013

Please Welcome Mystery Author Kate Eileen Shannon

Omnimystery News: Guest Post by Kate Eileen Shannon
with Kate Eileen Shannon

We are delighted to welcome mystery author Kate Eileen Shannon to Omnimystery News today, courtesy of Great Escapes Book Tours, which is coordinating her current book tour. We encourage you to visit all of the participating host sites; you can find her schedule here.

Kate's debut mystery Social Insecurity (CreateSpace; March 2013 trade paperback, and ebook formats) introduces PI Brigid Kildare and we asked Kate to tell us about her new series.

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Kate Eileen Shannon
Photo provided courtesy of
Kate Eileen Shannon

When is a series not a series? When it is a serial. Let me explain.

I have always been a big fan of mysteries. Cozies in particular. But I always just picked up what was on the "new" shelf at the library. Once in a while I would check if there were any other books by that author at my branch and get them as well. (I have a book a night habit.)

But then I discovered the Cozy Mystery List. I started ordering entire series through the library using the interlibrary loaning. And I love reading an entire series. But what makes a series book work as a stand alone is a lot of backstory repetition. Which can get boring when you are reading the series one book right after the other and I ended up skimming large sections. I don't need to hear Suzie Sunshine is divorced from her jerk of a husband and now dating the wonderful cop she met back in book one over and over and over again. I have a good memory. And I think most really avid readers do as well. I know the repetition is something that is complained about in a lot of the reader and writer groups I belong to. But it is seen as a necessary evil. Why? These people complaining about it obviously don't need it so why is it necessary?

So I decided to do something different as well as stop insulting the intelligence of the reader. Historically, many books were written as a serial, a chapter a week in a newspaper or magazine. Amazon is putting some books out that way now. You pay once and get a new chapter every week, automatically, on your Kindle. So I decided to make the whole series a serial. You get a whole book each time but it is one continuous flow. There will be a warning on the first page of each book from two onward. So this series is a serial and you need to read it in order or there will be a lot you don't "get". You won't be able to pick up say book seven, never having read one through six, and have as much of an understanding of what is happening as someone who had read all the books from the beginning.

I'll give you an example. Brigid Kildare is an amputee. In Social Insecurity there is a scene where there is an explanation of the different prosthetics, artificial legs, she has and why as well a brief mention to another character later in the book about why she is an amputee (birth defect). These things will not get repeated in every book. They will never be repeated again. So if you haven't read book one and just happen to pick up book three, Dying Over Spilled Milk, and you come to a scene where Brigid is running, trips, and she goes one way and her leg goes another … you would be a bit confused/shocked. It's different and I will just have to see how well it is received.

Thank you so much for having me here and let me just mention the second book, Meditated Murder, will be available shortly. Visit some of the other stops on the tour and be sure to comment at each stop to increase your chances of winning one of the books. Be sure to leave your email address. I'll be announcing the winners on my blog one week after the tour closes, on September 9th.

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Kate Eileen Shannon is a Writer, Artist, and sometimes Real Estate Agent — as she says, "a purveyor of ephemera and bagatelle". Trifles. Little things. Here today, gone tomorrow. In other words, a little of this, a bit of that.

She has had three husbands and two children; lived in Ireland, Rhode Island, and Florida; owned a brake repair shop, an art gallery, a farm, and a boat building business; been a Realtor, a title examiner, a real estate closer, and a government employee which led her straight to being unemployed, laid off, made redundant.

Kate is currently living in Rhode Island overlooking the water and a lighthouse; with her husband, Dick Thomas (who won't let her have a cat); where she spends her time painting, drawing, and of course working on the next book in the Brigid Kildare mystery series, Meditated Murder.

For more information about the author and her work, please visit her website at KateShannon.com or find her on Facebook and Twitter.

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Social Insecurity by Kate Eileen Shannon

Social Insecurity
Kate Eileen Shannon
A Brigid Kildare Mystery

Brigid Kildare is not your typical hard boiled private eye. But she doesn't pretend to be. No matrimonial. No child custody. No bodyguard or surveillance work. No process serving. Brigid is strictly data. Asset searches, background searches, computer security, pre-employment screening, and basically any type of records research is what she deals in. And you really could not expect anything else. After all, your average five foot tall, blue eyed, blond (one friend describes her as looking like a Christmas tree angel) is rarely the person you would send out after a bail jumper. Oh, and there is that whole one leg thing — ADA aside, most people don't think of an amputee as the go to person for a security job.

Professional PI Brigid Kildare turns amateur sleuth when old ladies in the Federal Hill area of Providence start to go missing and she can't get the police to believe her. As her assistant and long time friend, Kevin, puts it: "Honey, if an old lady like Jessica Fletcher can do it, a one-legged PI and her gay PA can do it too!" Brigid solves the mystery, along with an odd cast of friends and family, but not before four old ladies have died, she has caught the eye of a handsome Providence detective, and she discovers that not everyone who is close to her is what they appear to be.

Amazon.com Print/Kindle Format(s)  BN.com Print/Nook Format(s)

18 comments:

  1. This sounds like it will be good, would love to win a copy , but even if I don't I will be buying one. I am like you, I like series and try and getvthe entire series frim my library.

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    1. Well good luck. Visit the different stops on the tour and you'll get more chances.

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  2. Interesting idea. I guess you'll find out how well this works.

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    1. The funny thing it is an old idea, just went out of vogue. Recently, I've noticed several people also doing it. It seems 50/50 readers liking it/readers hating being left hanging.

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  3. Congratulations on a great way to produce a series. It's always a problem deciding how much backstory to include in each new entry in a series, and the repetition probably does make the story less entertaining for the reader. Good luck with your series.

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  4. Sounds like an interesting book. It also sounds like you've had an interesting life. I love cozies and sometimes I use the interlibrary loan, too, and can then get books from other libraries within my state (Ohio).

    catbooks72(at)gmail(dot)com

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    1. Not sure how interesting, but it's been different! I love that interlibrary loan. And you know, most of them go out of state - even out of the country when necessary.

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  5. Sounds interesting, I'll have to put it on my must-read list.

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  6. I grew up in the days when you went to the movies every Saturday to watch the next chapter of a movie. I was an early age geekette. I loved Flash Gordon and that group. I'd love to win your book and grow into this series.

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    1. Good luck to you Nora. Stop by some of the other tour stops to get more entries.

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  7. Great blog post! I LOVE the "Christmas tree angel" description of Brigid! That conjures up all sorts of fun things she'll be able to get away with as a PI. :)
    I'm off to buy my copy of Social Insecurity, so no need to enter me in the drawing. Thanks, Kate!

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  8. Not sure how I like the idea of a 'serial' as opposed to a series. I may be a little different than most readers -- although I do like to read as many of the books in a series as I can, I do NOT read them one after the other. I can't afford to buy all the books in a series, and I can't always find them in the library [small town, not a very big library - and NO bookstores]. So, the timing of reading the books must vary. And, I have rather varied tastes in reading, so I like to go from a mystery, to a romance, to maybe something else -- whatever my mood is at the time.
    This won't stop me from reading this first book. Looking forward to it.

    donna(dot)durnell(at)sbcglobal(dot)net

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  9. Love the cast. I like to read series in order but this one I would just jump on. Thanks for the giveaway. Judy Dee

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  10. Sounds interesting. Thanks for the giveaway chance

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  11. Sounds like a great read. Thanks for the giveaway, though I never win these things. Will have to add it to my must reads

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