Fellow Crooked Cat Books author, Joan Livingston, is on the blog today to promote her latest book, Chasing the Case, which is out now. Welcome, Joan!

Name: Joan Livingston

Book Title: Chasing the Case

Genre: Mystery

How would you describe your latest book?

New to the game, but that won’t stop her.

How did you come up with the idea for Chasing the Case?

I decided to try my hand at writing a mystery. Without sounding like a nutcase, I started writing and the story just flowed. (This is true of my other fiction.) I let the protagonist, Isabel Long tell what happened. I actually didn’t know whodunnit until two-thirds of the way through.

Chasing the Case is the first of the Isabel Long series. Crooked Cat Books will be publishing Redneck’s Revenge later this summer. I am working on the third. Here’s the link to Amazon http://mybook.to/chasingthecase.

What have you learned in your journey from fledgling writer to published author? And how do you feel you’ve grown or changed as a writer from your first published title to your latest?

I was fortunate as a child to have teachers who encouraged me to write. In college and a little beyond, I wrote poetry. Then I had a 25-year writer’s block while I mothered six kids.

I became a reporter covering the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts for a daily newspaper. It was the perfect learning experience for me, listening to the way people talk and writing it down, plus watching how they behave. Journalism turned into a career for me and helped me be a better fiction writer. But I didn’t start writing fiction until I became an editor.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that there is writing and the business of writing. Like many authors, the first comes much easier for me then the second. I’ve had two agents and let them go. I could paper a room with rejections if I had kept them. Then when email became the norm, uninterested agents and publishers just don’t respond. Or one gets that dreaded “Dear author” form email.

I self-published three books — The Sweet Spot, Peace, Love, and You Know What, plus a bilingual book for kids The Cousins and the Magic Fish/Los Primos y el Pez Mágico. (I have three adult novels and a middle-grade series that haven’t been published.) But my books didn’t generate a wide audience.

I am grateful to Crooked Cat Books for agreeing to take on this series. It also has meant learning a lot more about social media for promotion and making friends with authors around the globe.

I believe the more I write, the better I get.

How did you celebrate when you learned Chasing the Case was going to be published?

Let’s say I was pretty damn happy.

If you were speaking to someone who hasn’t read your writing before, why should they want to read Chasing the Case?

Isabel Long, the longtime journalist turned amateur P.I., is a bit of a smart ass, so she isn’t hesitant to share her opinions about anything and everything. But she’s not the only interesting character in this mystery — from Isabel’s 92-year-old mother who lives with her to those hanging out at the local watering hole to a group of gossipy old men in the back room of the store to her rough-and-tumble suspects.

What’s one piece of advice you would offer a writer who feels discouraged?

If writing is your form of creative expression, don’t give it up. Keep writing, and if you are seeking a publisher, keep searching.

Where can readers find you (website, blog, social media, etc.)?

Website: www.joanlivingston.net.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/JoanLivingstonAuthor/

Twitter: @joanlivingston

Thank you, Joan! Chasing the Case is available now!

How does a woman disappear in a town of a thousand people? That’s a 28-year-old mystery Isabel Long wants to solve.

Isabel has the time given she just lost her husband and her job as the managing editor of a newspaper. (Yes, it’s been a bad year.) And she’s got a Watson — her 92-year-old mystery-loving mother who lives with her.

To help her case, Isabel takes a job at the local watering hole, so she can get up close and personal with those connected to the mystery.

As a journalist, Isabel never lost a story she chased. Now, as an amateur P.I., she’s not about to lose this case.

Chasing the Case officially launched May 18.

Here’s the link to order Chasing the Case in paperback or the Kindle version: http://mybook.to/chasingthecase