Katherine Hall Page – Faith Fairchild Mysteries

Agatha Award winning mystery author Katherine Hall Page celebrates a special anniversary with the 25th book in her Agatha Award winning Faith Fairchild Mysteries Series, The Body in the Wake. Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and in today’s Binge Reading episode Katherine talks about how a decision to sit down and write a mystery novel while on holiday in France years ago led to a remarkable second career, how the pandemic is affecting her stories, and about the cookbook that won an Agatha Award for best novel nominated for nonfiction. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: How a holiday in France made her a writer Her important first career as an educator How Faith has evolved as a character Why having ‘moral compass’ matters Her award winning mystery cookbook How one book grew into a 25-book series Where to find Katherine Hall Page:  Website: http://www.katherine-hall-page.org/bio.html Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katherinehallpage/ Katherine in Forbes magazine: What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. But now here’s Katherine. Jenny Wheeler: Hello there, Katherine and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. Katherine Hall Page: Thank you so much for inviting me, Jenny. I’m absolutely delighted. It’s been a dream to go to New Zealand, and this is almost as good. Jenny Wheeler: The next best thing. I think you’re in Massachusetts, are you? Katherine Hall Page – Agatha Award winning mystery author Katherine Hall Page: I am outside of Boston in Massachusetts. Normally we live four months of the year in Maine, especially since my husband retired about six years ago, but because of the pandemic, we never left Massachusetts.  We are in a very lovely spot, very wooded and beautiful. We did miss going to Maine by the water, but this has been not a bad place to hunker down. Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. The latest book you’ve written in your Agatha Award winning series is set in Maine, and a number of them have been set in Maine over the years. It’s a really special book because it’s a silver anniversary book, it’s the 25th in the series. That in itself is pretty amazing, isn’t it? Introducing Katherine Hall Page Katherine Hall Page: It is really and when I think about it, at times it seems as if it’s gone quite fast. Then when I look back, the first book wasn’t published until I was 40. I didn’t write the first book until I was 38 and my husband took a sabbatical. We were living in France, and I had a two-year-old who was in a lovely daycare there, but I had this whole other career, so I consider myself lucky to have had two careers that have meant so much to me. But this 25th has been one lovely thing after another. People have been wonderful. The Body in the Belfry – the first Faith Fairchild mystery by Katherine Hall Page Jenny Wheeler: You’ve won a lot of awards for them over the years, and we will go into that a little later, but Faith Fairchild is the name of your amateur sleuth. She’s a minister’s wife and a caterer. When you were starting out you were on holiday in France. Did you ever expect it would take off like this and be such a lasting thing? Katherine Hall Page: Absolutely not, and with no false modesty, I assumed I was writing this one book. I certainly didn’t think I was writing a series. It wasn’t until I met the legendary Ruth Cavin, an extraordinary editor at St. Martin’s, who, when she died at 92, was still working away. I was so lucky to have her as my first editor. How one book grew to a series The first word I got was through my agent. She said, Ruth wants to know when she can expect the next in your series. That is honestly the first time I really thought it was going to be more than one book. I felt, well okay, two books, but then it turned out to be 25 and a bunch of other adventures. Jenny Wheeler: This one is called The Body in the Wake, and one of the things that strikes me looking over them is that obviously writing over that period, the character develops and changes her life. There are big changes that go on in her life. Their son, Ben, who was just a baby in the early series, is now in this book away at college. I wonder if that reflects what’s been going on in your own life. Is there a certain parallelism between what happens to Faith and what happens to you? Katherine Hall Page: I think it’s probably true for most women, and men too. In the beginning books, she’s quite young. I started writing in real time. After a while, after the books began to number four, five, six, I realized if I kept writing in real time, she would be much too old, so the children are aging more or less in real time, but she isn’t. In fiction do whatever you want And again, as Ruth Cavin said to me, when I thought it might seem hard to believe and also hard to believe she was finding all these bodies, Ruth said, Katherine, it’s fiction, you can do whatever you want. That would seem obvious, but it was very freeing, and so I realized I could slow down her aging. In the beginning, one of my closest friends said, I really love the book, but I’d like as a friend her next-door neighbor Pix Miller much more, because Faith Fairchild is spoiled. The Body in Bouillon by Katherine Hall Page – #3 in the Faith Fairchild Mysteries She’s moved from Manhattan after a glitzy career as a caterer there and she’s in this small, New England town, complaining where is her Bloomingdale’s and she can’t get a good haircut and different foods and so forth. She doesn’t like New England boiled dinners and she seems a bit spoiled and she’s all concerned with different clothing brands. In the beginning, she is like that but as time goes by, she certainly has changed. I think having children, marriage, work experiences, for everybody changes us in many ways and as we get older, hopefully, a little of that sharpness gets honed off and she has mellowed. She’s much less judgmental. A character with ‘moral compass’ She really is not me. I always say, she’s much taller. We don’t resemble each other at all, but inevitably she has my sense of humor. She has what I would call a moral compass. Although I heartily dislike what I call soap box mysteries, where an author has a point of view about either a political issue or something, and then rams it down your throat. Which is not to say that there isn’t a very strong message. I think we can all agree that murder is the most heinous crime you can commit against another human being and there have been issues over the course of the books that made sense to address. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} But I think at this point in her life, because she’s going to become an empty nester very soon with Ben away and Amy in her last year of high school, her life is going to change and who knows, maybe she’ll change careers. That’s what happens to all of us, I think. Highlighting opioid crisis Jenny Wheeler: I’m interested that you mentioned the soap box message because there isn’t a soap box message in this book at all, but you do tackle very subtly the issue of the widespread use of opioids. You reflect that concern, that they have penetrated right into the very lowest community levels of small-town life in America. Have you done this quite often – highlighted an issue you think is of concern to communities like the ones you’re writing about? Katherine Hall Page: Yes, with The Body in the Wake, because where we live in Maine is rural, it’s an island, there’s a bridge where there’s an island and a number of years ago I became aware of the problem. The Body in the Bonfire – a book which examined racial prejudice in the Faith Fairchild series of mysteries by Katherine Hall Page. People think of it as an urban problem, that this is just the main streets, this kind of thing, but the more I learned about it and became involved, particularly with some groups dealing with it, one wonderful group, Island Health and Wellness, I learned a startling fact. It’s addressed in the book and that is on the island the largest number of heroin addicts were young mothers with children and their husbands were fishermen. It’s a fishing community, so they had money – although heroin is cheaper than a pack of cigarettes. But they didn’t have a life of their own, they were either stuck at home with small children or the children were at school and they were literally lost and being lost to us through overdoses, through all sorts of things. Addictions and cyber bullying I became very caught up in all of that and with what was being done to address it. I ended up doing more, I wouldn’t call it publicity, but panels and other things all across the State of Maine on the whole problem of addiction. There is so much shame involved with people feeling that you should be able to do it yourself, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, stiff upper lip, you can help yourself. There was a lot of that going on. The other book was a book that had to do with the whole problem of cyber bullying. This was a number of books ago now, I’m trying to think which one was that, because it involved Ben when he was in Middle School. Instead of making him the target, I made him be involved in the bullying. The “someplace else” books This was the very beginnings, it was my space even before Facebook was big. He was joining with the bullies rather than be the target himself, and that whole notion of how kids get pulled into this – that was definitely a message I wanted to talk about. The Body in the Sleigh – Katherine Hall Page a Faith Fairchild mystery. I also addressed an issue of racial injustice I felt very strongly about. I alternate the books between Aleford, Massachusetts, a totally fictitious town close to Boston, with what I call the “someplace else” books. You said I had set them in other countries, so those are the “someplace else “books, and then the next one they’re back in Aleford. This was addressing the problem again of targeting anyone who is different, and I feel very strongly about that. Jenny Wheeler: On the lighter side of things, Faith is a caterer and you often include recipes. In this particular book, and we’re talking about The Body in the Wake, you have got summer holiday dishes because that’s the season that the book is in. Incorporating food into stories You’ve got things like Chilled Pea Soup and Blueberry Buckle. I was very interested in the fruit shrub. I hadn’t heard of fruit shrub before, but apparently it’s a drink that was very popular in colonial days and has now come back as something that’s quite hot at the moment. That was fun, and you’ve got a recipe for that. It’s a mixture of fruit, sugar, and vinegar, I believe. Katherine Hall Page: Yes, and it’s extremely nice if you add a bit of vodka or gin to it too. It has become very popular, it became a very chic cocktail – still is. Bars are not open now, but it’s like a lot of things, what’s happened in terms of food. We go through these cycles. Remember when quiche was such a novelty, and everybody was all excited about that. In the 1950s in New Jersey where I grew up, my mother’s dinner party special was a kind of green bean casserole with mushroom soup and water chestnuts with little dried Chinese onions sprinkled on top, and now that’s become a favorite again. I’m seeing that on menus. Katherine’s ‘Julia Child’ moment My mother was Norwegian American. She was an artist, and I think it was very hard for her every night to have to get dinner for five on the table, because she had not grown up in a household where there was anything but fish – good fish – boiled potatoes and overdone vegetables. That’s pretty much what I grew up with, and it was very healthy, and we were very happy. Nobody complained. An award winning cookbook from the Faith Fairchild series… But my husband, when I met him, just couldn’t believe that there were all sorts of foods I had never eaten. He was very interested in food, and the summer after we were married, which is now 45 years ago, we went to France. He had friends, he had colleagues, and it was the Julia Child moment where we were between trains and I had an omelet and a little salad there in Paris and I thought, wow, this is amazing. What amazing food! When we got home, I thought, well, if you want to eat like this, you have to cook like this. That started the whole cooking thing. An award winning cookbook Jenny Wheeler: You’ve published a cookbook from the series called Have Faith in Your Kitchen, so that’s lovely. Is that also the book that won an Agatha Award for best novel nominated for nonfiction? Katherine Hall Page: That was the non-fiction nomination. Yes, I was very pleased. It came out in Orchises Press, down in Alexandria, Virginia. They did a very fancy, very beautiful slip-cased edition of it, and then it’s in paperback so you can spill on it and use it in your kitchen. The recipes are the hardest part of the books to write. I started putting recipes in the fourth book because people were writing to me and asking me for the recipes. I was sending them out and again Ruth Cavin said, why don’t you put them in the book, include them in the book? Culinary crime had burst onto the scene with my friend, Diane Mott Davidson. She had recipes from the start and Ruth said, put them in the book. Helping create ‘culinary crime’ I said, all right, but I want to put them at the end, so they don’t interrupt the narrative and Faith has stumbled across a badly bludgeoned body, and then there’s a brownie recipe. Let’s put them all at the end. And I have another good friend who says, wonderful book, too much food as usual. He’s not interested at all. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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them over and over again, which my husband and son particularly didn’t mind when it was the dessert recipes. But it is absolutely true that they are the hardest part of the book for me to write. Jenny Wheeler: But you obviously are a keen cook. Katherine Hall Page: I very much like to cook and I certainly have been getting a lot in during this last year. I just realized that the last time I was in Boston was March 10th, so it’s been a year. It’s been quite different, but we live in a community where we’re very fortunate to have several family farms so I can get wonderful ingredients, and it’s been a release – I think that’s the way to put it. Homage to author Agatha Christie Jenny Wheeler: Yes. It did catch my eye that in one of them, The Body in the Ivy, you pay homage to Agatha Christie. That book is modeled on the Christie classic, And Then There Were None. I wondered what prompted you to embark on that as an exercise? Katherine Hall Page: Well, when do we get to talk about binge reading? There’s nothing better for binge reading than Agatha Christie. Jenny Wheeler: I thought that might be part of it. The Body in the Ivy – homage to Agatha Christie bu Katherine Hall Page Katherine Hall Page: I began to think about it as a challenge, like how could I update this, and make it relevant. One person told me she was essentially reading them both at the same time and enjoying the parallels, but also great differences. I was in university in the 1960s, and I wanted to write a book about that particular time, and it’s a women’s college, so there’s also that aspect. I enjoyed writing that book a great deal. Jenny Wheeler: Tell us something about your creative process and has it changed as you’ve gone on? I guess you probably approached that first book rather differently than you did book 25. Gift of time turned into a book Katherine Hall Page: The first book – French friends loaned me one of those old Underwood typewriters that you see in the movies, and I just typed it out there. I had this idea in my head to write this novel and I thought, it could be a mystery. I had the character and I thought, I like to read mystery as well. Let’s see, this is my year. This is my little gift of time here because I had been applying for jobs in education after having finished that graduate degree. There was a bit of time pressure in that one. I had made notes and so forth, so I did it. in the early books I made extensive outlines. Over the years it’s changed, but not too dramatically. I start out with a synopsis of the book that goes to my editor and I’ve had absolutely fantastic editors. I list them in The Body in the Wake, in the beginning, with great thanks. An editor might say, I think this is going to need more suspense here, or they’ll make comments. Then I take that synopsis, which is like the skeleton of the book. Finding a process that works I’ve got my list of characters with descriptions, and I keep track in every chapter of the first and last line, so that every chapter doesn’t start out with, “And then Faith got up and looked out the window” – that sort of a repetitious thing. And every last line has to be one that keeps you turning to the next chapter and not going to sleep. Harlan Coben a big fan of Katherine Hall Page’s Faith Fairchild mysteries The Body in the Birches #22 I have these notebooks that are like little graph paper, these French notebooks, to keep my handwriting legible, and I keep a timeline so that again, I’m not writing something that happened during one week but I mentioned the same thing two chapters before. I have to be very meticulous about doing that. That whole process, and the process of the actual writing, starting with the second book, works for me. I cannot tell you how many drafts I have, because every day I start by going back and I rewrite what I have written the day before, so it’s a kind of a rolling draft. At the end of every chapter, I print out the chapter and get my pencil and go back, make the changes on that chapter. Then I keep going. That’s what works for me. Knowing ‘whodunnit’ at the start Once the manuscript is done, then the manuscript goes to my editor. I get a tutorial letter of comments and then we go on from there. Having this almost like a jumpstart every day, by going back and taking a good, hard look at what I’ve done – sometimes I get rid of most of it and just keep going. That’s about process for me and it works for me. I always know whodunnit. I love to hear all the different ways that writers have of writing. Robert B. Parker, for instance, would sit down every day, no outline, no nothing, write a certain number of words about Spencer and then get to the end and that was it. His book was done, and they were wonderful. Other writers need to know who did it or who the villain is, and others find out for themselves at the end. Playing fair with the reader For me, the big thing is to play fair with the reader. You can’t introduce the evil twin in the last chapter when this is someone who has never appeared in the book before or is a very obscure character. I think the mystery is very different from writing a literary novel because you’re writing on two levels. You’re writing about a real crime that has occurred, a murder, but also with the red herrings you are diverting the readers. We have all read these books where you know right away who the culprit is. It’s like parallel ski tracks in a way, that’s another way I think about it. That’s the challenge for me and it’s lovely. Jenny Wheeler: Turning to talk a little bit more about your wider career – you had a very strong career in academia and higher education before you got around to writing. You have got a doctorate from Harvard, I believe, and you had years developing adolescent educational programs. Tell us how that has fed into your books. How has that influenced your whole life? A first career as educator Katherine Hall Page: I don’t think there’s anything more important that I will ever do than those years – and I am still working with a group called the Youth Advocacy Foundation in Boston – because essentially the groups of kids I was working with and the programs developed were for throwaway kids. Many of them were from a single-parent homes. I even occasionally would have kids who had no parents, no adult supervision. They were not valued as human beings, and it wasn’t until certain laws came into effect in the state of Massachusetts and then eventually the whole country, that said you couldn’t just expel kids from school, you had to provide programming for them. That’s how it all started, with devising programs to bring these kids back to school, to address their problems of obviously self-esteem, but also substance abuse and then some horrific family dynamics. The ‘faith’ aspect in Faith mysteries I felt very much, and I was brought up in that way, that we are not here on this earth for ourselves, we are here for other people. I believe that very strongly. The Body in the Big Apple – Faith Fairchild mystery series Jenny Wheeler: Looking back to the books, Faith is called Faith, the cookbook is called Faith. You don’t push the faith thing, but there is that thread going through the whole series, the fact she’s married to a minister as well. I gather in one of the early books, you had an origin story for Faith and Tom. That was about book 20, so it took quite a long time to get to that origin story, but she had made up her mind that she didn’t want to have anything to do with parish life, but that is there in the background of the books all the time, isn’t it? Katherine Hall Page: It is. After seeing that question, I realized that book number 10, The Body in the Big Apple – a reader, a fan, gave me that title. People are suggesting titles often, and that’s great. Living in a ministry fishbowl My son came up with The Body in the Wake when I was trying to figure out what would be a good title. But book number 10 starts even before Tom. It is really the first. It’s what publishers call a prequel. I’m not sure I like that word, but it is a prequel. Faith is the daughter of a clergyman and her grandfather is clergy, and so she grew up in this kind of fishbowl existence where people who normally would not think it appropriate to comment on the way Faith’s mother was bringing her up or the way Faith and her sister Hope behave, feel quite free to comment. Over the years I’ve gotten enormous numbers of what used to be letters, snail mail, now it’s over the website, saying, yes, this is exactly what it’s like. It is like living in a fishbowl, and you have to always think about what you’re doing or how people in the congregation or whatever will respond. I wanted to play on that. The first book I wanted to write the kind of mystery that I like to read. I liked mysteries that had some humor in them, although there’s nothing funny about murder, but I liked that element. A strong female amateur sleuth Then the food, I like Rex Stout and others who had nice food.  And I wanted to have what I hoped would be a strong, female sleuth, and an amateur sleuth. I didn’t want to have to get involved with all sorts of police procedural things. The Body in the Gazebo – Katherine Hall Page’s Faith Fairchild mystery #19 Jenny Wheeler: Harlan Coben has said that Faith is one of his favorite amateur sleuths, so that’s a nice accolade to have, isn’t it? Katherine Hall Page: He is one of my favorite people and another good binge read. He is much younger than I am, but we’re both from the same Livingston, New Jersey town. It’s been a lovely friendship. He is an absolutely wonderful dear, dear man, and I think people might enjoy his books quite a bit. Jenny Wheeler: Before we get onto that, I always do like to ask authors this question. Is there one thing you’ve done in your writing career, more than any other, that you’d credit with the secret of your success? Popularity in times of anxiety Katherine Hall Page: I think maybe the continuity of being able to grow a character and to have this essentially ensemble troop. There are books where other people come in, but there are these core groups of Faith and her family and friends. I guess that’s very reassuring. P D James had a lovely quote about why this kind of novel is popular in times of great anxiety. She said it’s because it reassures people that we live in a beneficent universe. I think that’s probably what I am doing. When you read my books there is this reassurance. I read noir and I like noir very much, but at the end of the noir mystery fiction, the world is broken and can’t be fixed. In the traditional novel like mine that’s not the message. It is justice will prevail, and there’s that reassurance and continuity. I think that’s probably it. Katherine as reader Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely. Turning to Katherine as reader, we have made reference to this being The Joys of Binge Reading, and we do like to ask you a little about your own tastes and what you’d recommend for others. Obviously, the Golden Age mystery writers like Agatha Christie has been on your reading list, but what else have you enjoyed? The Godwits Fly by Robin Hyde – “rediscovered” by Persephone Books. Katherine Hall Page: I want to plug Persephone Books, which is located in London. Persephone Books started in 1999 and they publish mid-20th century women writers who were essentially overlooked or gone out of print – mostly women, although there are some men. In terms of that it is one writer they have published. Four books a year. Go to the website https://persephonebooks.co.uk. It’s a woman named Dorothy Whipple who wrote extraordinary books, and at the time she was writing them, they were quite popular. It’s almost like the way Mary Roberts Rinehart was so popular in this country and then disappeared. Those are great for binge reading – Dorothy Whipple. Persephone has also published the New Zealand writer who wrote under the name of Robin Hyde. They publish American authors, English authors, but also Australian and New Zealand – like Hyde’s book The Godwits Fly. You discover writers you had never heard of and then want to know, goodness, why aren’t they on every list? More favorite writers I do like to binge read Mary Wesley, a British writer that I always find in these times is fun for binge reading. Then I am a great advocate of certain chick lit. I like to read a British writer named Katie Ffjord. They’re just plain old good romantic comedy, very funny chick lit. India Knight is another one. Katie Fforde – good romantic comedy In this country I noticed that you had Anne Hillerman on, and then her father Tony Hillerman. (Listen to her here on the JOBR podcast.) Those are wonderful binge read books. Margaret Maron wrote a long series set in North Carolina, set in the South, with a female judge, Deborah Knott. The first one was called Bootleggers Daughter and won an Edgar for that all those years ago. Margaret is not writing anymore now, but fortunately she wrote lots and lots of them, so you can binge read Margaret Maron. Who else? As you mentioned, I do like the Golden Age ones. Oh, and Dorothy Cannell. She wrote The Thin Woman and a number with that same character. I like to follow a character. I think we all like that, we enjoy that. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. It’s interesting. I chose the name for this podcast, The Joys of Binge Reading, because a few years ago as we were getting started, with Netflix and services like Netflix binge-watching had become so popular, and people transferred those binge-watching habits through to writing, especially with digital books where you can buy the next book at midnight, if you want to. What would Katherine change? Circling back around and looking back down the tunnel of time, at this stage in your career, if you were doing it all over again, what would you change, if anything? Katherine Hall Page: I’ve been thinking about it ever since I read the questions. I don’t think I would change anything. I’m very happy that I had the opportunity. I wrote four in a young adult series, more for middle grade readers, and then I published the book of short stories. I had a great deal of freedom. I think this is one of the things particularly for women writers. I needed to have a paycheck, but I was fortunate to also be married to someone who had a paycheck and we had health insurance and all of that. I think for women writers it’s very difficult to publish if you don’t have this kind of backup. I really wouldn’t change anything in the way it’s progressed but I’m very grateful I had that kind of support and then the support of my readers, which I’m always grateful for and continually astonished by. What’s next for Katherine’s work? Jenny Wheeler: What is next for Katherine the writer? What have you gone on over the next 12 months? Are you producing number 26 in the Faith series? The Body in the Lighthouse – another book written during traumatic social times. Katherine Hall Page: It’s been very hard to write during the pandemic, and I compare it to post-9/11. I was writing The Body in the Lighthouse. It’s not that these aren’t in some ways serious books, and that book is also a bit of an invective against the kind of greedy developers who are spoiling, in this case, the coast of Maine. But I found I was really getting stuck with the writing and I decided to take a break, because I couldn’t keep up the same tone. The same thing has happened here with all of this going on. Also, I turn out to be extraordinarily busy keeping body and soul together in terms of the house and what I call foraging, taking care of my husband, and my son moved in very early on and is working remotely from home. Disrupted by the pandemic The school bus would come and take my son away and I would immediately start to work. I’d take a break to do a wash or some exotic thing, and then I’d stop work when the bus came back, so I was always on that same workday. But with this pandemic it’s been very difficult, because it’s also touching base with a lot of people and finding out how they are. We lost a family member in April in the early part of the pandemic, and then it was really difficult to write. I started to go back, and what I’m working on now is a standalone. I guess you could call it romantic suspense, but it isn’t a Faith Fairchild, and it takes place in the early 1970s. It’s about this young woman, this character, and she makes a very bad choice in terms of the person she marries. I have been working on that and now I’m about halfway through writing that and I’m actually quite happy with it, and the publisher is quite interested in it. Works in progress Then with Faith, it’s going to have to somehow encompass what everyone has been living through, so I’m going to have to think about how to do that, whether to fast forward Tom and Faith sitting and musing back over it. I’ve been keeping a journal every day about what’s been going on, even the things we’ve been eating. I thought that might be interesting to look back on that at some point. Jenny Wheeler: Yes, because your books very much are a reflection of a real community in real time, aren’t they? I was thinking about that. Some authors can ignore that COVID is happening, but the kind of narrative you have, you can’t really ignore COVID. You have to acknowledge it’s happened. Never Miss out! 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I’m not doing that. That wouldn’t feel right. Jenny Wheeler: No, that’s right. It is a bit of a challenge. I can understand why it might need a little bit of reflection before you get started on it. Where to find Katherine online We have come to the end of our time together so I’m wondering, how do your readers get in touch with you? You obviously do have a good dialogue with them. In the old days it would have been with pen and paper, but can they find you online or email now, and where can they find you? Katherine Hall Page: It’s very easy to find me. The easiest way is to put my full name, Katherine Hall Page, into your search engine or whatever you use. The very first thing that comes up will be my website, which is www.katherine-hall-page.org. It will take you there and there are all sorts of things. We need to update it, but it’s been hard to work with the web master in this time. On the contact page, you can write a novel to me, there’s no limit to the words that you can write to me, and you can email me at [email protected]. That will get me every time, that’s no problem. The joy of hearing from readers Anyone who says they just sit there –I think it was Rudyard Kipling who never took a break and just wrote endlessly all day long – but most writers I know are very happy to take a break and I love to hear from readers and have a legitimate chance to take a break. Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much for your time today. It’s been great talking and all the very best with the new work. Katherine Hall Page: And I hope you had a nice holiday. Did you go off? Jenny Wheeler: I did. I had a wonderful time. I don’t know if you know the phrase in the U S – glamping. It was basically a glamping holiday. I’ve got a caravan on a beautiful piece of land on the Coromandel coast, but I’ve got running water and power there. I’ve got a little gas cooker and a little fridge, so I’ve got enough for it not to be totally caveman, but it’s very simple. It’s fun to have a very simple life for a while, although I must admit I’m thinking of getting wi-fi there this coming year so I can work down there more often and go down there more often. But it was a very nice time. Pausing in the midst to remember The day I came back there was a terrible tragedy a little way down the coast. Somebody died in a shark attack. That was the day I came home, and I’d been swimming happily all summer. I thought, oh my gosh, I’m glad I didn’t think about sharks while I was swimming. They are rare, but it did happen. Katherine Hall Page: It still gives you pause. Jenny Wheeler: Yes, it does give you pause. It was a young woman who was killed, and I lost a son myself before he was the age of 30. It’s interesting to always have that understanding that death isn’t just for the old. It can come at any time. Katherine Hall Page: Yes. Jenny Wheeler: Although I don’t want to end on that note, really. Katherine Hall Page: No, but it informs your whole life. Jenny Wheeler: It does. Katherine Hall Page: All these pieces are who we are. Jenny Wheeler: And it makes you much more aware, I think, of just appreciating it while you have it, because you never know quite when it might not be there anymore. On that philosophical note – lovely to talk, Katherine. Katherine Hall Page: Thank you so much, Jenny, and I hope to meet you in person some day. Jenny Wheeler: That would be lovely. Katherine Hall Page: Okay. Bye bye. If you like Katherine Hall Page and the Faith Fairchild mysteries you might also like L.B. (Lily) Hathaway’s Posie Parker mysteries. also in the Agatha Christie tradition….. LISTEN TO L.B.HATHAWAY Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]