Kathryn Casey

 

Books take months to write and more months to hit the stores; so when one comes out, it's thrilling.

 

I'm especially excited about my current effort: THE FALLEN GIRLS. It's out today, and it's a particularly satisfying debut since it's the first in a new mystery series starring Police Chief Clara Jefferies. 

 

The story in a nutshell: A Dallas detective, Clara gets a call late one Saturday while she's at the office. It's from an old friend, Max Anderson, who she once felt very close to, and he's asking her to return to their hometown, Alber, Utah. At first, Clara refuses. That town, set high in a mountain valley, holds painful memories for Clara, and she recoils at the thought of returning there - for any reason.

 

Then Max explains; he's a cop now, too, chief deputy in the county sheriff's office, and the case he's working involves someone close to Clara, a member of her own family. A young girl is missing: Clara's twelve-year-old half-sister, Delilah.

 

"Delilah has disappeared," Max says. "At least we think she has. And your family isn't cooperating."

 

A frantic rush back to Alber, where Clara's past waits to confront her, and she's thrust into a murky investigation. Clara's mother tells her that Delilah is fine, and she orders Clara to leave. Why doesn't Clara believe her? No one produces Delilah, and Clara's sister Lily pushes their mother to open up and tell the truth: Delilah is in grave danger.

 

This book was so much fun to write!

 

I love Clara and Max, Clara's complicated family made up of three mothers and dozens of siblings. The town isn't happy that Clara, who fled the town to save her own life, has returned. They want her gone. And Clara's father has died, keeping her from confronting him about the horror her life was because he failed to stand up for her.

 

Filled with pulse-pounding action, The Fallen Girls will keep you up at night, waiting to turn the next page. I so hope you enjoy it, and that you look forward to book two in the series scheduled to debut this coming fall: 2020.

 

I hope you and yours are all safe and healthy. Thank you for reading the books. It means the world to me. And welcome Clara Jefferies. I'm delighted to introduce you to the world! 

 

 

Links to buy The Fallen Girls

 

Amazon: https://geni.us/B085H87WFBCover

Apple: https://buff.ly/332rWJG

Kobo: https://buff.ly/3cK2Ofa

Google: https://buff.ly/2IvzJpV

BN.com: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-fallen-girls-kathryn-casey/1136662857?ean=9781838886028

 

Okay, writing fiction isn’t a popularity contest. That’s true. So this shouldn’t matter, right? Especially since, it’s not really possible for a character in a novel to hate anyone, including the author, right? Still, I’m beginning to wonder.

You see, Sarah’s my heroine. I’ve written three books featuring this Texas Ranger/profiler, a woman I invented sitting at my computer one afternoon after deciding against a host of other protagonists, including a crocheting grandmother and a junior league hostess. I’d been thinking about Sarah for a long time, whittling away at the block of marble trying to uncover the statue inside. Maybe, since my books are set in Texas, instead of a Michelangelo analogy, I should have said, taking a chain saw to the trunk of a fallen live oak to reveal the roughly hewn armadillo? No, that’s all just bad. Let’s just move on.

Anyway, to her delight or dismay, Lieutenant Sarah Armstrong has become my heroine, the center of my fictional world, and since 2007, I’ve literally tormented this poor woman’s life. But then she’s not alive. I know that. But to write about her, she has to be real to me and, to some extent (I’m sincerely not delusional), she is. The result is that I drive through Tomball, Texas, where I’ve planted the Rocking Horse, the ranch Sarah lives on with her mother and daughter, and I sometimes surprise myself by looking  Read More