About the Book
Book: Mabel Goes to the Dogs
Author: Susan Kimmel Wright
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release date: June 5, 2022
When Mabel finds herself sharing a thicket with a dead body while volunteering with canine search-and-rescue, her life has clearly once again gone to the dogs!
After losing her job at age forty-nine, Mabel thought she’d turned things around. Now, she’s doing good by volunteering and, surely, she’ll soon be a successful author, writing about her experiences. After solving two notorious, decades-old cold cases while serving as a historical society volunteer, she’s already getting invitations to appear on TV.
Her new assignment couldn’t be simpler. All she has to do is hide in the woods and let Millie the search dog practice finding her. But to her horror, Millie finds more than Mabel–there’s a dead body hiding in the same patch of brush. To make matters worse, Mabel’s maybe-boyfriend, suspended PI John Bigelow, has a dark history with the victim.
While struggling with maid-of-honor duties for best friend Lisa, a string of disasters created by handyman Acey, and a disagreeable new neighbor, can Mabel solve another murder in time to save John’s detective license–if not his neck?
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About the Author
Susan Kimmel Wright began her life of mystery in childhood, with reading. That led to writing kids’ mysteries and eventually to Medicine Spring with Mabel. A longtime member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, Susan’s also a prolific writer of personal experience stories, many for Chicken Soup for the Soul. She shares an 1875 farmhouse in southwestern PA with her husband, several dogs and cats, and an allegedly excessive stockpile of coffee and tea mugs.
More from Susan
I got stuck. When I was outlining my story for Mabel Goes to the Dogs, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next. This isn’t unusual for me, or, I’m sure, many other authors. When it happens, I have to go search for inspiration—or at least, step away from my project for a bit and do something else till a fresh idea lands in my brain.
Luckily, I soon stumbled upon the Empty Frames podcast, which explored what was, at that time at least, the single largest property theft in the world—the 1990 art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Thieves impersonating police subdued the guards and over the course of the next eighty-one minutes methodically removed thirteen pieces of art then estimated at $200 million. That dollar valuation quickly escalated to between $500-600 million. The stolen artwork including paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, and Manet, was never recovered and remains the highest-value museum robbery in history.
The museum has offered a $10 million reward and never stopped trying to find its missing art. Thirty-four years later, empty picture frames still occupy the walls where the irreplaceable, stolen paintings once hung.
The story was engrossing, and I soon started down a rabbit hole, learning more about art theft and art-theft detectives, such as Charley Hill, the subject of the book The Rescue Artist. Sadly, it’s been estimated that nine out of ten stolen artworks will never be recovered. But Hill defied the odds in managing to retrieve Edvard Munch’s famous work, The Scream, brazenly stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway on the eve of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. The Rescue Artist tells the story of the theft, as well as Hill’s wild quest to locate and retrieve The Scream.
After I resurfaced from my own odyssey through Empty Frames and The Rescue Artist, I felt re-energized and ready to write again. Every time I write a book, I learn new things, which I like to share with my readers. I always hope they’ll find them as fascinating as I do!
Interview with the Author
1. What does success look like to you as a writer?
I used to look at great literary authors like Louisa May Alcott whose work became classics—or mystery authors who’d be revered forever and influence generations after them, like Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers. And that most certainly was the sort of lofty perch I aspired to. At least, I dreamed my books would become bestsellers and win awards. But I can honestly say, I no longer aspire to any of that and haven’t in a very long time. My reward is the readers who say they see themselves in Mabel, or tell me they were reading in bed and started laughing so hard they woke their husbands up. I would never trade my precious readers who say my books helped get them through chemo or a family crisis, or are even rereading the whole series for the third time(!). No prestigious award or number one bestseller could ever mean as much to me.
2. Which character did you connect to best in this book?
Like so many of my readers, I see a lot of myself in Mabel, especially her imperfection and insecurities. It’s been wonderful to see her grow as the series has continued.
3. Which author inspired you the most?
I started writing as a child, and when I was sixteen, I read Writing Juvenile Fiction by Phyllis A Whitney. It is a wonderful writing text, especially the parts about professional attitude, persistence, and hard work. I truly believe I might never have hung on through the years if I hadn’t had her encouraging words in my head. Though Whitney was a many-times bestseller and Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster, that little textbook is my favorite of all her works. I wrote to tell her so after I published my first novel in 1992, when she was about 90, and she wrote a long letter back to me, clearly typed on a manual typewriter!
4. What is your favorite Bible verse or life verse?
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him, and He will make your paths straight.” (Prov. 3:5-6 Berean Standard)
5. Describe your view as you’re sitting in your writing chair.
I like to write in different places, but my favorite is the living room of my childhood home in the Laurel Highlands in Pennsylvania. My brother and I have kept the little house my dad built after the war, and it’s where my creativity was born, so it always feels special to write there. This time of year, I look out on huge old oaks, maples, and hemlocks. Great cinnamon ferns and lacy hay- scented fern carpet the woods floor in green waves, punctuated by boulders and goldenrod. Squirrels leap across the grass, rustling the fallen red and gold leaves as they gather acorns, and descendants of the birds my mother so loved fly up to perch on the wires and peer in at me.
Blog Stops
Babbling Becky L’s Book Impressions, October 26
Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, October 27
Simple Harvest Reads, October 28 (Author Interview)
Texas Book-aholic, October 29
Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, October 30
Artistic Nobody, October 31 (Author Interview)
Blogging With Carol, October 31
She Lives To Read, November 1
Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, November 2
Guild Master, November 3 (Author Interview)
Happily Managing a Household of Boys, November 4
Holly’s Book Corner, November 5
Fiction Book Lover, November 6 (Author Interview)
For Him and My Family, November 6
Locks, Hooks and Books, November 7
Vicky Sluiter, November 8 (Author Interview)
Giveaway
To celebrate her tour, Susan is giving away the grand prize of a $50 Amazon card and a signed copy of the book!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.
This story sounds fun!