A Conversation with Mystery Author D.E. Haggerty

We are delighted to welcome author D.E. Haggerty 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.

D.E.'s third mystery in her Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives series is Love in the Time of Murder (October 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the chance to catch up with Dena to talk more about it.

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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to the Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives.

Photo provided courtesy of
D.E. Haggerty

D.E. Haggerty: The knitters are five crazy old women who think they're Jessica Fletcher or at the very least Matlock. I love them to bits because they are just so much fun! They say and do whatever they want and the consequences be damned! The third and final book of the series, Love in the Time of Murder, was released in October. Dee, who is a granddaughter of one of the knitting detectives, features in this book. I admire Dee so much. Life has kicked her in the teeth, but she's not giving up yet, although she may be a little put down and need to work on finding her gumption. The Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives are ready to mold her into shape and maybe find the person who murdered her husband in the meantime.

OMN: You mentioned that Love in the Time of Murder is the final book of the series. Is there a new series you're considering writing?

DEH: Oh gosh, this is a tough question. The Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives is my first series. I decided to make it into a series as the first book was very well received and a lot of readers asked what happened to the heroine's best friend from the first book and thus the second book was born. While writing the second book, I knew I wanted to try and write a third book as well so I developed the character a bit so that I could introduce her in the storyline of the second novel. If I do write another series, I will at least plot out the number of books and the characteristics of each of the main characters before I start. There's nothing quite like being in the middle of a book and realizing the character doesn't match who she was in a previous books. Major fail.

OMN: Into which genre would you place this series?

DEH: Correctly categorizing a book is much more important than I ever thought. I put the first two books of the Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives Series in the romantic comedy genre but a lot of reviewers felt there wasn't enough romance to label the books romantic. The last book of the series is a bit easier to categorize as it's not as funny as the earlier two, but it's definitely got more romance. I went with cozy mystery because the knitting detectives and their attempts at crime-solving are really the thread that keeps this series together.

OMN: Give us a summary of Love in the Time of Murder in a tweet.

DEH: Will the Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives find who murdered Dee's husband before she's sent to the slammer?

OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of your stories?

DEH: I do a lot of internet searching about even the smallest details. I'm a bit anal that way. It helps that I have a bit of experience investigating crimes as I was a military police investigator for five years. I also like to call on people I know for their personal experiences. For example, the book I'm working on now features a woman who works as a personal assistant to a millionaire. One of my friends was a PA to a CEO and I'll be bugging her to be a beta reader. My second book, Buried Appearances, is a mystery surrounding the Second World War and that research was definitely exciting! The novel takes place in the Netherlands and since my hubby is Dutch, we went to all the locations in the book. Every street mentioned in the story actually exists!

OMN: What are some of your outside interests? And do any of these find their way into your books?

DEH: I'm a total history geek and have the degree to prove it! That comes back in some of my novels. My other hobbies — tennis, running, traveling, reading — don't really feature into my books except for as a tidbit here or there about the main character liking to read or going for runs. If being addicted to BBC crime detectives can be labelled as hobby, then this hobby definitely comes back in my mystery books.

OMN: How involved were you with the cover designs?

DEH: I'm involved in the cover design of all my novels as my husband is my designer. I draw stick figures for him and somehow he understands what I want and puts it all together. This is the second cover that he's done from scratch. He shows me each version and then we discuss (read — argue) over the version until we agree on changes.

OMN: What kind of feedback have you received from readers?

DEH: I love two kinds of reviews. I absolutely adore reviews that are short and to the point, but I also love in-depth reviews that help me grow as a writer. My least favorite review is a critique about what type of book I should have written instead of what I wrote. Confused? Here's what I mean. The second book in the series features a gay man and I received one review that I didn't touch on what it means to be gay in a small town. Well, duh, of course I didn't! It's a romantic comedy/ mystery, not a treatise on homosexual rights in America.

OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?

DEH: I literally read anything I could get my hands on a child from Little Woman to Nancy Drew to my mom's Harlequin romances. I write in all kinds of genres — whatever comes to mind actually — so I don't think this had a huge influence on what genre I write. Although I've always inhaled books like they are going out of style, this didn't influence my decision to write. I have a weird compulsion to tell stories and create worlds and it's fun to boot. That's why I write.

OMN: What's next for you?

DEH: On the writing front, I'm working on a romantic comedy about 30-something Molly whose life is in the crapper. She discovers her husband fooling around with his secretary and then she's forced to leave her job to go back home and help her sick dad. She enters the dating world to spite her soon-to-be ex-husband and discovers it's not all it's cracked up to be. On the private front, things are on the move as well — or at least they should be. My husband's contract in Istanbul is up soon and we're still trying to figure out what's next. It's a teensy weensy bit scary.

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Dena Haggerty (a.k.a. D.E. Haggerty) was born and raised in Wisconsin, but thinks she's a European. After spending her senior year of high school in Germany, she developed a bad case of wanderlust that is yet to be cured. She and her flying Dutch husband have lived in Ohio, Virginia, the Netherlands, Germany and now Istanbul. They still haven't decided if they want to settle down somewhere — let alone where. Between playing tennis, running much slower than she would like, trying to adopt every stray dog within a 5-mile radius, traveling to exotic new locales, singing off tune, drinking entirely too many adult beverages, addictively watching new movies and reading books like they are going out of style, Dena writes articles for a local expat magazine and various websites, reviews other indie authors' books, writes a blog about whatever comes to mind and is working on her next book.

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

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Love in the Time of Murder by D.E. Haggerty

A Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives Mystery

Publisher: D.E. Haggerty

Delilah, or Dee as she wishes everyone would just call her already, is the granddaughter of one of the knitting detectives and her life is in a bit of a shambles. She finally manages to pry herself away from her husband's clutches, move out on her own, and start her own business. But then her estranged husband is murdered and she's the number one suspect. The Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives aren't about to let one of their own get sent to the slammer and jump at the chance to search for the true killer.

As if Dee doesn't have enough problems, the knitting detectives decide that Delilah being a widow is the perfect opportunity to find her a new man and decide to put their matchmaking skills to use. Will Dee end up in prison for a murder she didn't commit or will she be taking another walk down the aisle?

— Love in the Time of Murder by D.E. Haggerty