Read and Buried Book Tour with Erika Chase: A Conversation with Siamese Cats Brie and Edam

           Okay, we all know that cats can’t talk but for now, let’s put that all aside and perhaps you two, Brie and Edam, would be willing to answer some questions and maybe give us some cat insights into life in Ashton Corners. I know there’s a way to do this, if you just give it a try. By the way, I’m talking to the two very regal, very spoiled Sealpoint Siamese cats, Brie and Edam from the Ashton Corner Book Club Mysteries, written by Erika Chase.

            Let’s start with a question about Erika and maybe that will loosen up your tongues. I see, they’re both a lovely shade of pink. Now pull them back in and listen up. Is she kind to you? Your author, I mean?

            Brie looks at Edam who seems to be pondering the question. Eventually, he rises from his sitting position, goes into an elongated stretch, then flicks his tail as he speaks. “She’s bossy and she doesn’t give us enough sleuthing to do but aside from that, she’s okay as far as authors go.”

            “I do agree,” Brie says and then starts licking her right paw. “You know, cats have that sixth cat sense which puts us in the enviable position to know it all. If she’d ask us to help her, she’d solve all these murders in the flick of a cat tail.”

            “Right,” Edam chimes in. “Even though we’re house cats and don’t get out in the world, in fact she won’t even take us to the book club meetings but I hear that Molly Mathews has an old Southern mansion to meow for, where was I…oh, yes we don’t get out much but we hear all about it. Lizzie shares all. She talks to us as if we were her cohorts…but she doesn’t listen when we reply.”

            Brie swats at Edam. “That’s not entirely correct. She does listen but then she gives us a treat or brushes our silky fur. Her problem is she just doesn’t talk cat.   But I, for one, am happy to stay put. Our Lizzie has had too many close calls for my liking. Sometimes I think she should stick to her job as a Reading Specialist with the school board.”

            “Hiss on that. I like a touch of danger in my life, the thrill of the chase, the adrenalin charge of the pounce. So, we’re not right there but at least we hear about it.”

            “Hiss right back at you!”

            Uh, thanks you two. I think that about covers it. I see you’re on the cover of Read and Buried and also on the new Cover Story which is out in August. Enjoy brush with fame.

            “It’s purrrfectly delightful,” Brie drawls as she stretches out in the patch of sunlight.

 

An Ashton Corners Book Club Mystery, #2
Publisher: Berkley
Released: Dec 4 2012

Hosting an award-winning novelist is quite a Christmas coup for the Ashton Corners Mystery Readers and Cheese Straw Society. But when he’s murdered in Lizzie Turner’s house, she’s got a holiday homicide on her hands...

For their very first guest author event, most of the book club members can’t wait to pull out all the stops in Southern hospitality. But for Lizzie, Derek Alton is nothing but trouble—from his massive ego to his smarmy moves. When he’s found murdered in her living room, it seems someone decided that this womanizing writer would be better off dead than read.

After suspicion falls on Lizzie’s friend, she and her fellow book club members discover that Derek wasn’t who he pretended to be. Cracking this case means going up against Lizzie’s boyfriend, police chief Mark Dreyfus, and unearthing a novel’s worth of nasty secrets. And as they get closer to uncovering Derek’s scandalous final manuscript, someone hiding in plain sight is out to write finis to Lizzie’s sleuthing for good...

Buy Links: Book Depository | Amazon | B&N

About the Author:

Erika writes the Ashton Corners Book Club mysteries for Penguin/Berkley Prime Crime. In a parallel life Erika Chase is also known as Linda Wiken. A former mystery bookstore owner (Prime Crime Books in Ottawa, ON, Canada), Linda is also a short story writer. She is a member of those dangerous dames, The Ladies’ Killing Circle.

Her short stories have appeared in the seven Ladies’ Killing Circle anthologies (three of which she co-edited), and in the magazines Mysterious Intent and Over My Dead Body. She has been short-listed for an Arthur Ellis Award, Best Short Story, from Crime Writers of Canada.

Before life in the world of mystery, she worked as an advertising copywriter, radio producer, journalist and community education worker. Besides writing and reading mysteries, her other passion is choral singing and she is a member of two choirs.

She shares her house with Keesha and Mojo, her two Siamese cats. Actually, they allow her to live there.

Connect with Erika Chase: Website | Facebook | Twitter