Karen Randau is the author of the Rim Country Mystery series. Her fast-paced mystery-thrillers include Deadly Deceit, Deadly Inheritance, and Deadly Choices. Karen talked about the newest book in the series for this behind the story interview, Deadly Reception.
The challenge behind Deadly Reception
“I’ve been writing my whole life,” Karen said. “It’s how I process things. I hold a degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and spent a long career in marketing communications. I recently retired from an international humanitarian aid organization and have traveled to places like South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. Those experiences have an impact on my novel writing.”
The idea for Deadly Reception started when she was invited to participate in a multi-author series of novellas that all take place at the same New Jersey resort. “Each of us were to take characters from our own series to the resort and solve a mystery. In my Rim Country Mystery series, it was time for the protagonist’s daughter to get married, so that’s where I started. I worked my way through several scenarios about what could happen upon arrival at the resort to threaten the joyous occasion and why an entire family from the resort-haven of Arizona would go to New Jersey to throw a wedding.”
Because all seven authors in the Tawnee Mountain Mystery series were writing about the same “final destination” (the Tawnee Mountain Resort), the authors collaborated on the setting. “This was fun and gave us each a challenge to creatively work within a framework to develop our own setting. For me, having lived a lifetime in the southwestern U.S., I enjoyed learning how New Jersey comes across to a person’s senses. What does it look, smell, and sound like? How do the people think, talk, and dress? Are the stereotypes real? How is this different than my experience in the west?”
Things are not always what they seem
Karen added that things are not always what they seem in her books, which are full of intrigue and twists. “They show that good people can do bad things, bad people can do good things, and some (though few) people are beyond redemption. Deadly Reception features characters who could be the antagonist for one reason or another: the PTSD-riddled war veteran who owns a bar and offers an icy stare rather than help, the creative website builder with a crush on the victim’s wife, and the jealous first wife all have reasons to have murdered the victim. The books deals with infidelity, forgiveness, and mental illness in more than one form.”
A writer, not crazy
In addition to her writing, Karen is one of those people who has always told herself stories. Her creativity, however, came with a price. “An influential person told me when I was young that my storytelling meant I was crazy, so I kept them to myself most of my life and never thought I had the creativity to write a novel. One day decades later, my son came home from a Boy Scout camping trip gushing about a sighting I interpreted as a Bigfoot. In an instant, I had conjured up a story in my head about why only kids get to see a Bigfoot and never the moms. As I told a friend at work about my hypothesis, I asked if she thought I was crazy because I came up with ideas like that. She said she thought I had a novel in me that was screaming to get out. That set me on my novel-writing journey. It has been a tremendous relief to finally have an outlet for those stories I’ve kept cooped inside me all these years.”
Karen said she thoroughly enjoys getting to know other cultures, even when they are near to where she lives. “The diversity we have in the U.S. is both amazing and comforting. I also enjoy learning how things work. I’ve often wondered if my Google searches have tripped some kind of switch that tells Big Brother it’s time to watch me.”
