Sara E. Johnson's Blog

It was exciting attending Bouchercon. Here I am with fellow debut authors:

 I loved seeing my Poisoned Pen Press editor Barbara Peters!

I was on a panel: Foreigner in a Foreign Land, to talk about Alexa Glock in New Zealand.

Molten Mud Murder was available at the book store!!!

Look who else was there? Elizabeth George and Deborah Crombie.

Today Molten Mud Murder is PUBLISHED and available in bookstores and Amazon. SO EXCITING! To read about it (and me), read Lesa Holstein’s book blog:

https://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com

I always enjoy introducing a debut author. Tomorrow, I’ll review Sara E. Johnson’s first mystery, Molten Mud Murder. Set in New Zealand, it introduces a fascinating new sleuth. Today, I’d like to introduce you to Sara.

Sara, congratulations on the release of Molten Mud Murder, your first book.  Would you introduce yourself to readers?

I live in Durham, NC with my husband Forrest and goldendoodle Beau. I love to read, write, travel with my husband (we just returned from Minnesota’s North Shore where we kayaked, hiked, and ate lots of fresh trout), walk the dog, and practice yoga. I am a former middle school reading specialist, and continue working part time helping kids read and write. 

Would you introduce us to Alexa Glock?

My pleasure! Alexa Glock, mid-thirties, is lured to New Zealand by a visiting  odontology fellowship. Never married, she is better with teeth than men. She goes geeky over duct tape evidence and doesn’t let caution tape stand in her way. The lab is her happy place, yet she feels a yearning for love and companionship that she tries to outrun. 

Before you tell us about Molten Mud Murder, would you tell us about the mud pots?

Geothermal mud pots are one of New Zealand’s coolest – well, most awesome – features. I saw my first boiling, plopping pot in Rotorua on the North Island, and I knew I had to write a mystery in that setting. The acid in the viscous mud decomposes rock. Imagine what it does to a body!

Tell us about Molten Mud Murder, without spoilers.   

A good mystery starts with a body. In this case, a tourist group discovers one half-submerged in a molten mud pot. 

Alexa barrels her way onto the scene and into the lives of Rotorua’s finest, especially Detective Inspector Bruce Horne. There’s something about his glacial blue eyes that gets under her skin, even though she’s sworn off men.

Danger lurks in “the land of the long white cloud.” The murder victim had trespassed on a sacred island forbidden to Pakeha, or non-Maori, and Alexa must follow suit. The Maori community believe the rules of tapu have been disregarded and the consequences are disaster, demonic possession, or death.

Alexa doesn’t believe in the three Ds, but when she discovers an unorthodox death threat in her rented cottage, she reconsiders. A second murder heats the case to the boiling point.  At the heart of Molten Mud Murderis an age-old debate: Is the past better left undisturbed, or unearthed? And at what cost either way?

Feel free to tell me we’ll have to wait for this next issue to be discussed in a future book. Alexa is always in a hurry. She seems impulsive, and tends to steamroll over people at times. Is this just her nature, or is there something else you can tell us about her?

Alexa lacks self-awareness, and because she has cut ties with her family and colleagues in the States, she doesn’t have a sounding board (and she doesn’t think she needs one).

Can you tell us anything about the next book in the Alexa Glock series?

I am super excited about the next Alexa Glock mystery, coming out in September, 2020. Great white sharks have been circling New Zealand’s Stewart Island for centuries. Until the arrival of shark-cage tourism, islanders and sharks left each other alone. But when a man’s shark-ravaged body washes ashore, it confirms what locals have been hashing out at the pub: cage-diving has changed the sharks’ behavior. Turned them into man eaters. Alexa, working as a traveling forensic scientist,  is dispatched to identify the remains. As she measures bite patterns, she makes a discovery that has her chumming for a different species: man.

You lived in New Zealand for a year. Where did you take visitors when they came?

Milford Sound. Milford Sound. Milford Sound. That’s how many times we went with visitors to this incredibly beautiful remote fjord on the South Island. Waterfalls, rain forest,  Mitre Peak, seals, dolphins, penguins. Did I mention rain? 

Now, for a few personal questions. If you had to recommend 5 books to a person so they could get a feel for your reading taste, what 5 would you pick?

These are five books I would (and have) reread:

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb

The Poems of Robert Frost

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Were there books you read as child that led you to mysteries? What were your favorite books as a child?

When, at ten years old, I read the storm scene in Carolyn Keene’s The Bungalow Mystery, the world around me dissolved. I was in a skiff on Moon Lake with Helen and Nancy, lightning flashing, waves crashing, about to be devoured by the storm. The blue-cloth copy I still have was given to my mother in 1942.

When I was younger, I loved my Lonely Doll Learns a Lesson book by Dare Right. And I read all the Little House books.

What’s on your TBR (To Be Read) pile?

It is a treat to answer this. I am on my 39th book so far this year. I am currently finishing Michelle Obama’s Becoming.I have found it inspirational and touching. Next up is Death of a Rainmaker by Laurie Loewenstein. I heard Laurie speak on an author panel at Malice Domestic, and her book sounded great. I am also reading Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer. Who knew colons (“little trumpet blasts . . . don’t use so many of them that you give your reader a headache”) were such fun? The audio book I am listening to next (after I finish Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb) is Denise Mina’s Conviction. I have heard her compared to Tana French, so I am psyched.  I always have a book of poetry going. I am reading Tianna Clark’s Equilibrium. Her poem “Spot in Antioch” breaks my heart. Finally, I am doing an author event with fellow North Carolinian Thomas Kies at The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona in September. I can’t wait to read his newest: Graveyard Bay.

Sara, I’m a librarian, so I’m ending with this. Tell us a story about your experiences with a librarian or library, please.

A forensic lab is Alexa Glock’s happy place. The library is mine. The Library Book by Susan Orlean has given me a greater understanding of the library’s impact and mission in society. Standing ovation! For me, a library is about the books. From the large modern Cherry Hill, NJ library my mother took me to when I was little, to the wee village library in Pinehurst, NC that I rode my bike to as a teen, to the Chapel Hill Public Library where I raised my three children, and eventually consumed every book on divorce to help me navigate a painful period, to the warm welcome we received from the Christchurch, New Zealand library we joined ( you could check out magazines and buy coffee), to my current Durham library – every time I check out a book, my heart quickens and my horizons expand.  

Posted by Lesa at 3:00 AM 4 comments:  

Labels: Author Interviews, Debut Authors, Debut Mystery, Sara E. Johnson

Molten Mud Murder comes out in less than two weeks! I asked my fabulous Poisoned Pen Press publicist Michael how many ARCs (advanced reader copies) he has sent out. Here is his response:

“Sara, our standard list runs at about 55 outlets, which is a combination of major newspapers around the country, the trade press, the mystery press, key blogs, and— in addition to that number—any regional contacts you may have instructed us to send to (whether media contacts or organizations in your region). So that means that about 120 arcs and books combined would be sent out under normal circumstances. More if local media becomes involved as well.”

And here is the result of Michael sending out ARCs (and me sending out postcards):

Greetings!

I just finished reading Molton Mud Murder. I really enjoyed it. A great read. I loved the setting, characters and the mystery. I’m looking forward to more books by Sarah Johnson. Thank you so much for sending the ARC to me.

Please pass this along to Sara Johnson. I received a postcard from her a day or so ago but I hadn’t finished the book yet. I was going to cc her in on this email, but there’s no direct contact information for her. Would you please pass my compliments on to her?

As soon as the book is available I will order it for the shop and display it on our “Staff and Customer Picks” wall.

Thank you so much again,

Deb

“Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.” Lena Dunham

Debbie Beamer, owner
Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop
6 Clouser Road
Mechanicsburg PA  

Pretty exciting!!!

The September 7 launch of Molten Mud Murder at McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington Village was a standing-room-only success!  I spoke about New Zealand, my newly published book, and my writing experiences to more than 60 family, friends, and mystery fans.

I fell in love with this bookstore while Forrest and I spent two weeks on the North Shore of Minnesota. Drury Lane Books sits half a block from icy Lake Superior.

The frothy Kaituna River, North Island 

That’s us – about to disappear.

Alexa Glock, the main character in my mystery series,  rents a cottage on the banks of this river that my husband and I survived rafting in 2014.

Hold on!

Here’s a Rotorua thermal park:

Otherworldly, don’t you agree?

Below is the mud pot that inspired Molten Mud Murder.

The Kaituna River is a beautiful green blue tumble through a fern-lined gorge in the North Island’s Rotorua area. During our 2014 visit there, Forrest talked me into river rafting, even though the course included the largest commercially rafted waterfall in the world. (I did not know that just one day earlier a rafting tourist was air lifted out of the gorge with spinal injuries.) Anyway – we survived and had a blast.

Here we are getting psyched with our German rafting companions:

The river water temperature was actually tolerable. Here we are practicing on some smaller falls:

Tutea Falls- seven meters straight down. Here we go-

Good Grief! High Five!

Time for a swim:

Later the German man almost swims again:

Towards the end we are thrust into a waterfall ‘for fun’.

Stewart Island, the location of the second mystery in the Alexa Glock series, is hard to reach – even if you’re already in New Zealand. When we tried in 2014, our ferry from Bluff was canceled twice due to extreme weather in Foveaux Strait. The 2:00 ferry was a ‘go’ but what a rollicking roller coaster of waves we endured. (Thank you sea sick pills!)

Maori legend claims the South Island is the ‘canoe’ and Stewart Island the ‘anchor’. This chain at the tip of Bluff reemerges on Stewart Island.

Stewart Island’s Halfmoon Bay

The remote island with a year round population of 400 reminded me of a coastal Maine town- with parrots and giant ferns.

This kaka visited us on the porch of our lodge. He hopped on a post next to Forest and then decided to hop on Forrest’s knee! Forrest flailed and the parrot failed. But how cool is it to be in a place with parrots!

We took a water taxi to Ulva Island and had a five hour guided bird and nature hike. I hope you enjoy the birds and fauna that follow.

When I first saw these birds I said, “Oh kiwis!” Ulva Island is a good place to see the rare icons. But of course they are not kiwis even though they are brown and flightless. They’re weka chicks.

The only kiwi I saw:

The feeling I got on Stewart Island was peaceful- here is this little island 20 miles from the South Island, most of it a national park and so very very alone in a large cold sea. Maine minus crowds, shops, and pretentions. A few more pix:

water taxi captain

tree bark

measuring kelp