Sunday, March 15, 2015

Blog Tour: Mansion of Meows by Patricia Fry (Guest Post/Spotlight)



About the Book



Genre: Cozy Mystery, #9 A Klepto Cat Mystery
Publisher: Matilija Press
Release Date:  February 2015

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Rags's documentary is scheduled to debut. The showing will take place at the investor's San Francisco mansion, where the Ivey family and film crew will stay. Of course, the mansion holds secrets and Rags is instrumental in letting the cats out of the bag.
 

Savannah and Aunt Margaret share another daring adventure and, of course, find themselves in deeper than they expected.
 

This mystery may be the most eerie in the Klepto Cat Mystery series.

Guest Post



Cats—The Author’s Pawtner


In my world, cats and authors go together and I’m not alone in this mindset. Most authors I know have a cat or two hanging around in their writing room. We read of well-known authors whose work is inspired by a special cat. And just look at all the bloggers with cats. Ever hear of the Cat Writers Association? It’s now around 200-members strong. That’s a lot of writers and cats.

            What comes first—the cat or the writing? For me, it was the cat. I’ve always loved having a cat around. I didn’t discover my passion for writing until my twenties. So what is it about cats that make them so traditionally compatible with writers? One has to wonder because no matter how much you clean, their fur still clogs up your computer from time to time. Even the most elaborate means of keeping a cat off your keyboard will fail at the most inopportune time. I have a cat that enjoys shredding checks. One of them likes to push important paperwork off my desk into a nearby trashcan. And speaking of important paperwork—if you can’t find the receipt or notes you want, look under the snoozing cat.

As the saying goes, you gotta love ‘em. As any writer will tell you, writing is a lonely profession and cats make wonderful companions. They can lighten a mood, brighten a room, and help you to see the humor in even the grimmest of circumstances. And they do all of this without uttering one meow of criticism.

            If you write about cats, you really must have cats around to keep your writings true and real.

Cats appear in nearly every type of writing—many varieties of nonfiction and fiction, as well as poetry, children’s books, memoirs, picture books and more. And many of those books were certainly inspired by the authors’ cats.

My own written contributions on behalf of the cat have been through articles designed to foster the humane treatment of cats—to help people better understand the cats’ basic needs and to introduce some unique species. My cat-related articles have appeared in Cat Fancy Magazine, Cats, ASPCA Animal Watch, I Love Cats, PetAge and others. In 2010, I took time out from my paying work to produce something that had been niggling at me for quite some time—a compilation of stories I’d collected over the years about my own cats and those of others. The end result was Catscapades, True Cat Tales. That was a satisfying venture, but not a particularly good business move.

            I know, I know, many of you cannot equate the two terms writing and business. Writing, for many, is a creative endeavor that you pursue when the mood strikes and when the cat isn’t curled up on the keyboard. But there are many, many writers who write as a business with cats as pawtners.

            Okay, so I’ve alluded to the fact that it’s next to impossible to make any money writing about cats. That was my belief. And boy was I wrong.

            In June of 2012, I gave myself a wonderful and generous birthday gift—the time and space to write a novel. Throughout my over forty-year-long writing career, I’d written only nonfiction—even when I wrote about cats. But now I would enter into a whole new world of writing. My novel, of course, would feature cats!

            With the assistance of my own three cats, Max, Sophie, Lily and my mother’s big grey-and-white boy, Smoky, the Klepto Cat Mystery series was created. I completed the ninth book in the series last month.

The Klepto Cat Mysteries are light, fun cozy mysteries full of adventure, intrigue, and a little romance. They feature Rags, an ordinary cat who just can’t keep his paws off other people’s things. Often, the treasures he finds are clues in a mystery. Follow Rags’s fascinating life path from when he and his person, Savannah were single and he roamed the neighborhood stealing everything from toys belonging to large dogs to jewelry and bathing suits. Rags and Savannah don’t stay single long. After meeting Michael, a handsome veterinarian, Savannah settles down, but the cat doesn’t change his thieving ways. Even though his kleptomaniac habit is annoying and embarrassing to his family, he has earned the respect of the local sheriff’s department and he was even asked to star in a documentary. 

All nine books are formatted for your Kindle. $2.99 each.

The first five books are also in print.

Purchase them here: http://amzn.to/1kAI8I2

Learn more about Patricia Fry here:

Follow Patricia’s blogs



6 comments:

  1. That cat looks like my parents cat

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  2. Which one, the tabby (Lily), or the cat on the book cover, Rags? Lily is my little girl. Rags was patterned after MY mother's cat.

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  3. I was the lucky winner of book 2 in the series and I am hooked. I love books and cats- a great combination.

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  4. Thank you all for stopping by my to learn more about the Klepto Cat Mysteries.

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  5. I thank everyone for stopping by.

    Thank you, Patricia, for visiting Socrates' Book Reviews.

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  6. What a pretty tabby! I love cats and books about cats. I used to tell my daughter bedtime stories about a pair of kittens; she kept telling me to write them down, but I never did. Maybe someday!

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