Summertime, and the livin’ is —

Busy! This has been one of the busiest summers of my life! At one point this month, I had seven books in Amazon’s top 20,000 titles. I have to say, I’m happy to pass the publishing baton to Rebecca Barrett and her new black cat mystery, TROUBLE IN DIXIE.

Back in 2015, I came up with a crazy idea for a publishing venture. I wanted my publishing company, KaliOka Press, to publish mystery novels about a black cat named Trouble. Now Trouble, who is addicted to watching shows about Sherlock Holmes, is a special kitty with the skills necessary to be a private detective. And he also—thanks to Benedict Cumberbatch, his favorite Sherlock—has adopted a slight British accent. And just so you know that Trouble has an elegant pedigree, he is the son of Familiar, the black cat detective, who was featured in 22 books written by Caroline Burnes (that would be me!)

Harlequin returned six Familiar titles to me (so far) and so in April I began to reissue the older Familiar books. FEAR FAMILIAR, TOO FAMILIAR, and THRICE FAMILIAR. And this month, on July 10, the very first Trouble book (by me, natch), FAMILIAR TROUBLE, was published. And we had a heckova Facebook book launch July 14. We had so many people commenting and vying for prizes and sharing cat stories that we broke Facebook. People couldn’t log on to comment. The circuits were overloaded. And we still had fun.

So here’s the future game plan for the Trouble books. TROUBLE IN DIXIE, by Rebecca Barrett, will be published August 14. In September, Claire Matturro will showcase TROUBLE IN TALLAHASSEE. In October, TROUBLE AT SUMMER VALLEY RANCH by Susan Tanner will center around her love of horses. And we are off to the races. We’re working on the lineup for 2018, but we have Laura Benedict slotted for SMALL TOWN TROUBLE in February for sure.

And I just got terrific news from my editor at St. Martin’s Press that they are good to go with my idea to take Trouble to Zinnia, Mississippi to work with Pluto (Sarah Booth’s cat) for a rollicking mystery. Sarah Booth, Coleman, Tinkie, and the gang will make cameo appearances. Any of you who have some clever ideas for a title that includes both Bones and Trouble (or some form of both), please email me at carolyn@carolynhaines.com I will name a character in the book after you if I use your title. Now just so you know, I mostly kill off my friends in my books. Usually a grisly death. Anything for a laugh!

If you haven’t liked the Familiar Legacy FB page, please do. We intend to keep that page very lively with cat features. Each of the Trouble books includes a photo of a black cat and a little story about the cat (they are real cats owned by real people—and their stories are fun and heart-warming). Just look in the back of each book.

STICKS AND BONES, the latest Sarah Booth story, is rocking and rolling. I get a lot of email and people claim it’s the best Sarah Booth book yet. You’d have to be the judge of that. It’s impossible for an author to judge a story that way. We have such emotional connections to the books. Yeah, writers are slightly nuts.

THE BOOK OF BELOVED and THE HOUSE OF MEMORY, the two Pluto’s Snitch books, are selling gangbusters. The series is finding a devoted audience. And you know how I love to write creepy scenes. I am in hog heaven, as we say in the South. (That doesn’t sound very appealing, does it? What would hog heaven actually be like?)

So I’ve done my work and given you plenty of books to read this summer. Now the other members of the Familiar Legacy mystery series will continue to offer delicious new Trouble stories for you. I’m going to pour a glass of wine, watch some news on TV and hit the sack.

Don’t forget to enter this month’s contest—I’m giving away two e-books of THE HOUSE OF MEMORY right here: Freebies-of-the-Month

Goodnight John Boy—from me, Buster, Lulu, Sorrow, Kinky, Karma and the rest of the critters at Casa Carolyn.

Carolyn and the critters