top of page

Kathleen Kalb is...On the Writing Block!

Sherry Ickes
author kathleen kalb image

Before we dive, let’s take a look to see who is Kathleen (aka Nikki Knight)?


Nikki Knight describes herself as an Author/Anchor/Mom…not in that order. An award-winning weekend anchor at New York City’s 1010 WINS Radio, she writes short stories and novels. Her stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, and Black Cat Weekly, online, and in anthologies – and been short-listed for Black Orchid Novella and Derringer Awards. Active in writers’ groups, she’s served as Vice President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and is currently Co-Vice President of the New York/Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime. As Kathleen Marple Kalb, she writes the Ella Shane and Old Stuff mystery series. She, her husband, and son live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.

 

Who are two authors that have inspired your writing?

 

Hands down: Elizabeth Peters and Joan Hess. I read Peters’ Die For Love as a teenager after a steady diet of Grandpa’s classic mysteries and realized it was possible for a mystery to be smart, tightly plotted – and funny as all-get-out! Then Hess, while I was in my first on-air job…I read her Maggody series and thought: wow, I wonder if I could do something like that, only in Vermont. A couple decades later, I finally had time to try…and that’s how the Vermont Radio

Mysteries began.

 

Do you have a writing schedule, or do you write whenever you can squeeze it in?

 

I’m a working mom: I write when I have five minutes and a flat surface for the laptop. Sometimes just in my email file on the train!

 

How much is based on real life versus made up?

 

Well, I did work at a small Vermont radio station years ago…Jaye’s experience of the radio business and the need for small local stations is absolutely real. So is the general setting of small-town Vermont: there’s a real sense of community and concern for each other that you don’t see in many other places. Jaye borrows a lot from me – but in real life, I’ve been a lot luckier in life and career, and I’m a little less feisty. As for the other characters, I don’t do one-to-ones, but many take key elements from people I know or have known…or, yes,had a hopeless crush on back in the day.

 

Are there any animals in your book? If so, describe them and how involved they

are in the investigation.

 

Oh, yes! Neptune, the Boss Cat of the radio station is a big gray cat from the Bronx. In this book, he’s mainly a judge of character. If Neptune likes – or, let’s be honest, tolerates – someone, they’re probably okay. (He appears occasionally in short stories written in first-person feline and takes a more active role…one in which he had to kill someone to defend the family was made into a podcast last year!)

 

 What is Live, Local and Long Dead about?

 

Vermont DJ Jaye Jordan’s Green-Up Day ends in murder when not one, but two, bodies turn up in an old park -- and one of them was much too close to both her ex and her current man when it was alive and bodacious. Now Jaye, with the help of a colorful (and diverse) cast of townies, will have to clear her men’s names, unravel a World War II-era mystery…and get Grandpa Seymour to the Senior Prom on time.

 

ISBN: 978-1-5092-5746-1 Paperback, 978-1-5092-5747-8 Digital

first chapter sample image

Her book is available at the following locations…


 

You can also connect with her at the following…


 

Thank you, Kathleen, for sharing your time with us!

photo collage of books by kathleen kalb

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page