Saturday, August 10, 2019

FEATURED AUTHOR: KATHERINE BROWN





ABOUT THE BOOK



Piper and Samantha are in heaven. Well, close. After winning a contest to raise the most money for human trafficking awareness and prevention, Piper and Sam are rewarded with a long weekend at the O Heavenly Day Spa. When mysterious notes start appearing everywhere, things get uncomfortable. When spa treatments go awry it is starting to get dangerous. A threatening message in Piper’s closet convinces Piper and Sam that they have to find out who is behind all of these disasters before someone gets hurt. Is it Broussard the stuffy concierge? Gladys, the sweet old lady who decided to join them for the weekend? When the smoke alarms go off and the spa erupts into panic, the chaos separates the friends and Piper stumbles into trouble. Will her friends be able to help her in time?



Book Details:


Title: Rest, Relax, Run for Your Life

Author: Katherine Brown


Genre: Cozy Mystery


Series: Ooey Gooey Bakery Mystery, book 1 


Publisher: Independently Published (March 1, 2019)


Print length: 280 pages


On tour with: Great Escapes Book Tours 








GUEST POST BY KATHERINE BROWN


Hey there! Thanks for letting me come say hi today. My name is Katherine Brown, and I live in Texas. I love words and weaving them together to create stories and books. I also love to read. I read fiction the majority of the time, with one or two non-fiction books thrown in every year or so. I read cozy mystery, chick lit, paranormal, witchy and werewolves, you name it. My Kindle is running out of space, and I’m constantly looking for new places to put bookshelves in my home. My husband built me several beautiful ones inset in the wall already.

Besides tons of books, my bedroom is cluttered with a ridiculous number of spiral and composition notebooks, big and small. I’m jotting down story ideas, random bits of dialogue that are witty but have no story to go with yet, poems, and about a million fun titles for books that I haven’t begun to write yet.

To answer the age-old question, yes, I’ve actually always wanted to write. Since childhood. My parents can vouch for that and they are still some of my biggest fans. My sister is only an email away and I bounce ideas off of her frequently. There are so many things I love about writing. I love telling stories that entertain people and keep them guessing. I enjoy the freedom of allowing words to flow onto the page; I don’t plan out my books down to the last detail. I barely plan the beginning, middle, and end. I do brainstorm and jot down a list of things that need to happen but then the characters take over and I am able to simply write, often being as surprised as the readers at what happens next. For example, Chef Fabio started speaking with a French accent in the book and I had no idea he would be French when I added him. It is fun, to make something come to life and rewarding when others tell me they enjoy it or ask when the next book will be completed.

One of the most difficult things about writing, for me, is deciding on the ending. I don’t even like to read blurbs because I want to be totally surprised. When I write, I find it difficult to “know” the end rather than just be surprised. I know. Weird. Still, I’ve found a happy medium of planning enough to create good storyline while still leaving enough empty space to not know all of the details. I work through the problem with my characters as we go.

Just like reading, when writing I get to be all of the characters. I can make them familiar, or I can use them to vicariously experience new things and that is thrilling. All of the fun and adventure without any of the actual pain and danger to fear. When people tell me that they don’t like to read, it is the one thing I can’t imagine.

Summer has arrived and with it a pretty big disruption to my writing schedule because of all the things we have planned. Let me share a typical work day with you. The alarm for my husband to go to work blares between 4:45 and 5 in the morning. I get up alongside him and turn my laptop on as I head to brush my teeth. For the first hour or two, I check emails and maybe update my mailing list and do business operations. Plus checking to see if I’ve earned another thirty-five cents or not. Then after taking our daughter to school, I settle in with water or green tea and a bowl of peanut butter / oats / honey / dark chocolate chips for a good three to five-hour writing session. Twenty to thirty minutes of TV while I eat some lunch, then maybe mow the yard or do other outside things. I usually push for another hour of writing or editing before it is time to get my daughter from school. With that, I’m able to get around 50,000 words in a month MOST months, though not every time. Things come up. Life happens. For the most part, it is a system that works for me and that I can be productive with. I think that my favorite book to write in my Ooey Gooey Bakery Mystery series might be book 3 Bake, Eat, & Be Buried which is now out for pre-order. One of the most fun scenes that had me laughing out loud was when Gladys shows up to the bakery with a bag of “supplies” for herself, Piper, and Sam. The things that woman found shopping online!

Thanks for letting me share a little about me today. I hope that if you decide to check out the books, that you enjoy them. I love reader feedback.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katherine Brown is a Texas girl, a lover of books, and a weaver of words. Her first official publication was of two children’s books in 2017, which has now grown into five books of the School is Scary series; however, she likes to think her career as a writer started when she sold her parents newsletters of articles about school and poetry for fifty cents per copy as a pre-teen. Married to a wonderful husband and mom of a smart, spunky stepdaughter, Katherine enjoys spending time with family and reading as many new books as she can get her hands on. Her YA series, the Ooey Gooey Bakery Mystery series, is ramping up in 2019 with book 1 released in March and book 2 was released June 1, 2019.



Connect with Katherine:

Website  

Buy the book:
Amazon