I’m interviewing Kim Kash today, author of Ocean City Lowdown, a blend of mystery and crime. Welcome, Kim, and thank you so much for answering my questions!
Author Interview
1) How long have you been writing?
I can’t really remember when I started writing, but I’ll never forget the day when my high school English teacher said to me, “You can really write.” That felt like more than a compliment; it was like marching orders, you know what I mean? I heard that as, “This is who you are. This is your role in the world.”
2) What is your favorite genre to write?
My Jamie August series falls into both the mystery/adventure and the chick lit categories, and I love the intersection of those two—for reading and for writing. It’s very satisfying to write adventure stories where women are smart and resourceful—and not forever being tied to the railroad tracks (literally or metaphorically) by the bad guy and waiting for rescue. It’s fun to be among the many authors these days who are populating the mystery and adventure genre with strong, interesting women.
3) Which genre have you never tried before, but would you like to try out?
Guilty secret: I’d love to write a book about home organization and management—a kind of latter-day Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. On the other hand, Cheryl Mendelson already covered that territory in her marvelously encyclopedic Home Comforts (which I read from cover to cover.) I am often distracted from my writing by thoughts of what’s for dinner, or better ways to organize the pantry. Ridiculous. It’s bizarre that the heroine of my series is an impulsive junk-food addict whose home life is practically nonexistent.
4) Please tell us about your book.
Ocean City Lowdown introduces Eastern Shore Maryland reporter Jamie August, who has a talent for unearthing more than her editor wants and a weakness for Ravens jerseys and sparkly underwear. She is assigned to cover the grand opening of a big new housing development in Ocean City, Maryland. But instead of writing about wrap-around porches and rattan furnishings, she uncovers kickbacks and payoffs, blackmail and murder. Jamie’s tenacity, smarts, and sheer recklessness—plus some smokin’ striptease dance moves—can get her out of some tight spots, but are they enough to save her from a psychopathic arsonist and two generations of corrupt real estate tycoons?
5) Which character was your favorite, and why? Which character was your least favorite, and why?
How can I pick a favorite character from my own book? Hmm. I suppose it would have to be Jamie’s best friend Tammy. A blond rocker chick with a mouth on her, Tammy is the sexiest librarian in Ocean City. If you ask right, she’ll do research in exchange for meatball subs. Probably my least favorite (to write, anyway) was Will, the sexy firefighter that Jamie falls for. It was tempting to write the story the old-fashioned way, with the handsome boyfriend rescuing our beautiful heroine, but as you know, that’s not how I do things around here. So Will’s story had to go in a different direction.
6) What was the hardest part about writing your book?
Writing the Jamie August series is work, to be sure, but it’s also fun—and so I tend to treat it like a hobby, dropping it to the bottom of the pile whenever any other work comes in. As a result, both Ocean City Lowdown and its sequel (due out this summer) were written in fits and starts. That’s tough when you’re putting together a mystery, and trying to lay out clues in an orderly fashion. I’m getting better about thinking of the Jamie August series as a legitimate slice of my work life, so hopefully my work will be easier and more efficient in future.
7) What is your writing routine? Are there things you absolutely need to start writing?
I don’t have much of a writing routine (to my detriment; see above.) I usually write while sitting on the couch, and I tend to do better when my black cat is asleep next to me, his head wedged against my leg.
8) How long did it take you to write your book from start to finish?
I started making notes for Ocean City Lowdown in 2008 and 2009. At that time, I was writing a Tourist Town guide to Ocean City Maryland (http://www.amazon.com/Ocean-City-Marylands-Seaside-Tourist/dp/0976706466/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8), and I thought, wow! This place needs a good mystery series. I checked around, but found that very little fiction seems to have been set in Ocean City, Maryland. I’m a mystery junkie myself, and I’d just done a ton of research on the city (as well as spending plenty of time there at our family’s vacation house). So I decided to try my hand at an Ocean City mystery. Then, in late 2009, my husband took a job in Saudi Arabia, so the book got put on hold as we moved overseas and began adjusting to expat life. I finally finished the novel in 2012.
9) Can you tell us about your editing process?
I write a draft. I go back and read it, aghast. I revise. I send the revision to a wonderful, brutal developmental editor. He’s a film editor, so he “sees” the action and knows how to pick apart what works and what doesn’t. I revise again, based on his notes—and maybe again. Then I send the manuscript to a line and copy editor, who looks at word choice, consistency, grammar, spelling, that kind of thing. I’m rabid about quality control.
10) Is this book part of a series? If so, how many installments do you have planned?
Ocean City Lowdown is the first in the Jamie August series. The second installment, Ocean City Coverup, is due out this summer! I anticipate that the series will continue with at least one additional book. Beyond that, who knows?
11) Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
Write! And take your career seriously. Schedule your fiction writing like you would any other work project. (If only I took that piece of advice to heart!) Also, work with professional editors. Don’t take any shortcuts or cheap out on the editing process. Please! Particularly if you are an Indie author like me, it is critical that you not publish until at least two other sets of eyes have meticulously examined your book. Indie publishing is becoming more acceptable, but we have a long way to go. Plenty of people are still under the impression that indie authors are all a bunch of illiterate hacks clogging up the market with our unedited, unreadable drivel. Don’t do that. Make your work impeccable.
12) Why should everyone read your book?
If you’re looking for a funny, quirky mystery with a smart but by no means flawless heroine, Ocean City Lowdown—and the upcoming Ocean City Coverup—is for you. One reviewer said, “If ever a gal needed to carry a fire extinguisher in her purse, it is Jamie August. This fiction offering from Kim Kash has it all: Mystery, suspense, comedy, bad accents, bad boys (and, on a related note, some very bad judgment), mixed with a healthy dose of the absurd. It’s a quick read, if only because you can’t wait to find out what will happen next.”
13) If you could meet three authors, dead or alive, which authors would you choose?
I’d like to meet Erle Stanley Gardner, author of the Perry Mason books (and many more), which were some of my father’s favorites. The pulp style of his book covers (and others of the era) was an inspiration for the Jamie August series covers. Mason claims to have been thrown out of law school for “slugging a professor.” Fast forward a generation or two, and I’d love to meet Sara Paretsky. She’s credited with transforming the detective genre with her series featuring the hard-boiled Chicago detective V.I. Warshawski. The V is for Victoria. Finally, it would be a really smart move to have a sit-down with Nora Roberts. Like me, she’s from Maryland. Unlike me, Roberts has published over 200 novels, earned more than John Grisham and Dan Brown, and spent nearly 900 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Plus—here’s the thing that melts my heart—she and her husband own an independent bookstore in a small Maryland town.
14) What inspired you to write your book?
Ocean City, Maryland is a place like no other. On a summer night on the boardwalk, grandmas rub shoulders with bikers, teenagers, young families, and even the yachters who moor their boats in front of any number of superb restaurants at the harbor. Skee Ball and video game emporiums sit side by side next to bars, t-shirt shops, and all-you-can-eat crab joints. Game booth barkers shout over the rap and classic rock blaring from the carnival rides. Nobody would describe OC as classy. If you’re from anywhere in the mid-Atlantic region, you’ve probably been there—and you likely have some crazy teenage memories tucked away. Somebody had to write about this place!
15) Are you working on something at the moment? If so, can you tell us more about it?
Ocean City Coverup is the second installment in the Jamie August series. In this story, our Maryland Girl’s horizons are radically widened as the action moves from Ocean City at the height of summer madness, to Jamie’s hometown of Baltimore, all the way to the penthouse apartment of a Dubai oil mogul. Jamie puts her heart, her life, and her summer weight loss plan at risk as she hustles to save a spoiled heiress from Russian mobsters—and fit into her new leopard-print bikini.
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