Magpie Maggie Takes the Wheel (Longhorn Trucking Mysteries) by Katherine H. Brown | Book Review and Author Guest Post

Hey, everyone!

My name is Katherine H. Brown but you can call me Katie. I am thrilled and humbled to be here today and thankful for bloggers who are willing to share their platform to enable authors like myself and my books to make new friends in the reader world.

I love to read cozy mysteries, fantasy, fairy tale retellings (might be slightly obsessed with those), and Christian historical fiction (Julie Klassen, Kasey Stockton two of my favorites!). Just as I love and adore reading in multiple genres, I dabble in writing a few genres as well.

Around six years ago, I published a couple of funny kids’ books that followed a little girl on funny misunderstandings and antics from kindergarten to 5th grade, one story for each grade. One of them was actually dedicated to my first-grade teacher and called Fingernails of First Grade because we had a teacher with the longest fingernails that we had ever seen that didn’t hesitate to pinch ears for kids who wouldn’t behave LOL!

Eventually, I knew that I wanted to pursue writing something a little more than children’s books because while the stories came easily, I am no artist and I couldn’t do any illustration but couldn’t afford to work with an illustrator either. As I debated on where to begin my second leg of this author journey, I dived into the world of cozy mystery. Of course, I grew up on Nancy Drew and eventually found Joanne Fluke and Jana DeLeon, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to write in one of my favorite genres and take amateur sleuths on a hunt for clues and villains.

Ironically, when I read, I absolutely refuse to check the blurb or read ahead; I love to be surprised along the way. What I didn’t expect was to carry that particular habit with me into the writing world. That’s right. I hate to know the ending! Let me tell you, that certainly makes it awkward when you are trying to direct a character toward solving a crime or a murder. Sometimes I even try to do a general plot and pick a villain, but two out of ten times the villain changes on me in the middle of writing the book! Never boring, that is for sure.

Prior to my Longhorn Trucking Mysteries, the most recent writing adventure I embarked on was into the steampunk world. Now, while this is a wildly popular and growing genre, I realize that there are still a ton of people who aren’t exactly sure what steampunk is, so I’ll tell you. Steampunk is basically historical fiction but with technology (steam-powered or sometimes clockwork mixed in) that is more advanced than what the time-period truly had at that time. For my own steampunk, I used 1850s Victorian London as a setting but with more gadgets and inventions and made-up steam and clockwork devices than probably existed. It is so much fun!! I think I can tell that I may have to spend even more time writing steampunk mysteries in the future because it is somehow my most popular series which completely shocked me. The first book, A Spoonful of Gunpowder, was inspired by Mary Poppins and recently I entered it into a book to film contest to see if it had the bones for becoming a screenplay. Complete with steam-powered flying umbrella, I would jump up and down celebrating if this book ever came to life on screen.

I find that the part of writing that I enjoy the most is the character creation. I love to delve into their daily lives, the nitty gritty and the boring, and make their world my world. The character relationships, friendships, worries, and favorite foods all become a high focus for my novels and novellas so that, I truly hope, my readers get to know them like friends and enjoy spending time with them.

Margaret Cumberland, AKA Magpie Maggie, is a character that is almost the opposite of me in every way which is both hard and fun to write. She is a slightly spoiled woman who has never worked for her money, shops a lot, takes family for granted, and lives the city life. All of that comes crashing down around her ears when her father’s death and directive in his will shuts down her cash flow, dictates a job and a deadline in order to inherit, and tosses her into a run-down trailer in a rural little community outside of the big city. I have loved opening her up and have only just begun to peel back the layers of who she is and who she can become through this series but for now it is shaping up to be fun!

Thanks for letting me share a little about myself and my process. I know I rambled a bit but I wanted to let you get to know the real me and how I work, let you see the reader, mom, and author that you are supporting if you read, download, or even just repost a little picture of my book cover for your friends and family to see and perhaps become interested in for themselves. I hope y’all have a wonderful day and enjoy the remainder of the blog tour! Thank you to every participant for helping me along on this exciting author journey.