One of my my favorite things about reading is learning about the authors behind the books. Since starting this blog, I have talked to many authors and learned about their writing processes, how they finally made it big and why they do what they do. I also love learning little parts of authors lives that have nothing to do with writing. My mother-in-law loves Anne Perry. When I was looking up her latest book, I ran across a bio that said that Anne Perry and her best friend murdered her best friend’s mother when they were teenagers because one of the families was moving and the girls didn’t want to be apart. They thought that if the mother was dead, the family would take in the friend and they would be able to stay together. Crazy right?

Well AGS Johnson didn’t murder anyone, that I know of, but she did write an awesome book and has answered some questions for me to share with you.

First of all, meet AGS:

AGS was born and raised in the midwestern part of the US. She was one of five girls (imagine getting ready in the morning in that house). She spent 20 years in the banking industry before pursuing her dream of being an author. After 12 years, yes 12, of hard work, her debut book The Sausage Maker’s Daughters comes out February 7. Now if you are on NetGalley, you can go ahead and get a digital copy now. If not, I suggest marking your calendar now and carving out a little time Tuesday to go grab a copy.

Here’s my Q&A with AGS
KA: 1. So that leads me to ask, where did you inspiration for this book and this family come from?
AGS: My initial thought for writing this book was sibling rivalry, but not the garden variety, sibling rivalry taken to absolute extremes set during a time of turmoil and extremes as backdrop, because that might make the book a fun/sad/scary/exciting read, which is the point of writing — anything but boring “normalcy.”  So with that thought, what would be the worst thing sibling females on both sides of the generation gap might fight over?  A man, of course.  The family and characters grew from there over time.

KA: 2. I am in the process of writing a murder mystery series and unintentionally I have put in several of my quirks into my characters. Are there any traits in your characters that you find in yourself, or vice versa?
AGS: Oh I’m afraid I’m in each and every character, more or less.  I had to immerse myself in each one, starting with their backstories and their “contributions” to the plot.  But one of Kip’s traits was, I realized well after the fact, all mine: her hyper-sensitivity to smell. And maybe her defensive outer toughness.  And maybe Sybel’s….  Well, I best stop.

KA: 3. I see in your bio that this book was 12 years in the making and you wanted to be an author for a couple of decades before that happened for you. How did you keep up the faith to keep going and keep working on your writing and just not give up?
AGS: Honestly, I don’t know. I should have quit a hundred times, and even did walk away a few times.  But always, there was something about this story–the characters, the tough hand life can deal–that called me back and back and back.  Apparently there was something deep inside me that knew this story deserved a chance to go out into the world, and though that something waivered a few times, nothing and no one could keep me from finishing for long.  Or maybe it’s just dumb, tunnel-visioned determination to prove the nay-sayers wrong.

KA: 4. What is your writing process? I don’t know about other aspiring authors, or published authors, but it always intrigues me to know how an author gets their job done. Do you just sit down and type it out, do you make an outline, do you write the story in a notebook?
AGS: Initially, I write fast through the first draft, more like a mental dump onto the page.  Anything, everything, gets down on paper as fast as necessary, with little thought to words, descriptions, even logic. Once the first draft is done, I now know better what the story is really about and equally importantly, why it matters to me (if it doesn’t matter a lot, I probably won’t see it through the demanding process of creation). Subsequent to those realizations, I use a drafting process that through each draft focuses on story essentials one at a time, like plotting, characters, ambiance, and finally language.  There’s an excellent book that summarizes this in the most succinct way I’ve seen to date: Nancy Ellen Dodd’s The Writer’s Compass.  I highly recommend it and then you can skip grad school! But it is always essential that you have trusted readers to give you feedback all along the way.

KA: 5. My signature question is this: If your book was picked up for a movie, which actors/actresses would you see playing your characters?
AGS: Funny you should ask this as I was just asked by someone else, so I’ve been thinking about it.  Meryl Streep, the chameleon that she is, could I’m sure transform herself into the lady lawyer, Philomena Benedetti.  Would that not be killer?  Perhaps Michelle Pfieffer could play Sybel?  That young woman who just played Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams I believe?) might morph into Kip, the youngest of the sausage maker’s daughters and my protagonist.  That’s as far as I’ve gotten.  I’ll have to get up to speed on youngish actors.

KA: 6. And finally, I see you are currently working on a medical murder mystery. Any idea when that will be out for us to read?
AGS: It’s written, but it was the very first novel I wrote, again in a relatively short time, six months.  But that was years ago, and I haven’t looked at it for about 10 years, so it will need a lot of work.  Depending on how busy The Sausage Maker’s Daughters keeps me this year, a good 6 – 12 months worth of work will be required, I’d guess.  But I’m still very attached to the story, it’s still highly relevant, and I have medical experts who have offered to help by reading it for me, so I’m rarin’ to go!

Speaking of AGS new book, it is a medical mystery about a doctor who was murdered to keep his medical secrets from coming to light. I can’t wait for it!

Thanks to AGS for answering my questions and thanks for stopping in the for the Q&A.

From Goodreads.com
The sausage maker’s youngest daughter is heading for the fight of her battle-scarred life. It’s the era of the counterculture and Vietnam. But twenty-four-year-old Kip Czermanksi is nowhere near her home in California. She’s in a jail cell in her hometown in Wisconsin awaiting a court appearance in the mysterious death of her ex-lover, who happened to be her brother-in-law. Given her father is the small town’s leading citizen; Kip isn’t overly worried, at first. But the personal grudge the DA holds for all the Czermanskis is about to find a foil Kip. What follows is a wild ride through Kip’s present predicament and her past. She’ll come to regret leaving her life in LA, regardless of the good reason for which she returned, when family dynamics and sibling rivalries, magnified by her counterculture attitudes and feminist beliefs, lay Kip’s life bare before the courtroom. Distrusting her legal team, her rebellious history well known, things both personal and legal spiral out-of-control. It doesn’t look good for Kip Czermanski.

I got this book from NetGalley after being contacted by JKS Communications. Something about the description of this book, and the deceit of family it insinuated intrigued me. And boy did I get more than I bargained for.

This book is told through Kip, beginning with her arraignment for the murder of her brother-in-law and continuing throughout her trial process as she tries to make everyone see she did not kill her one-time lover. By Kip reminiscing and sharing every detail she can think of with her lawyers, we learn Kip’s past from the time she was a little girl until today, how se got where she is and what happened in her family that made her move across the country to be as far away as possible. And through that tale, you learn that Kip is not like most women in her time. She’s not the housewife who lives to take care of her family. She’s self sufficient, a feminist and a woman who will stand up for anything she believes in. I immediately felt for Kit and had an inkling that she wasn’t the monster that she was portrayed to be. So what she has a bit of a record? She was in college during a time of anti-war protests and bra burnings. But no matter what you believe, the truth comes out it in the end. Not only does the truth come out about the murder, but about more than this family is ever willing to share with the public.

I loved the mystery in this book and it didn’t need all the bells and whistles to make it a page turner. Big news in a small town. The atmosphere of the courtroom, the small town, it moved me. And although it’s not set in a time that I am completely removed from, I felt like I time travelled to get to this place, with this family and through this ordeal.

The thing that I can’t stop thinking about with this book is the family dynamic. Mrs. Czermasnski died just three years after having her youngest daughter Kip. Kip is the fourth of four girls. There’s Sarah and Sybel, Samantha and then little Kip. Kip was always the outcast, always acting out. She didn’t have a mother, Sarah left for the calling to be a nun, so her just-turned-teenager sister Sybel took over that role. Her father was working to build an empire, leaving children raising children. I can’t even imagine. I probably would have acted out too. I would feel cheated of my childhood if I wouldn’t have been able to spend it with my mom. The girls grew up going to Catholic schools and being in the spotlight as celebrities, or as close to it as you can be in the sausage industry, in a very small town. The thing that I can relate with is that this family looked like the perfect family from the outside. We all know and have seen these families. We all have secrets and we all have things that go on behind closed doors. But for the Czermanski’s, closed doors turned out to be deadly. The secrets and pain this family has are so deep and dark that they literally lead to murder. And it’s that murder that unravels this family and shows that what seems like a happy family may just be the shell of it.

But even with the secrets and anger, the pride that this family holds is amazing. Sybel is a character that I really didn’t like from the get-go. Once I heard the family’s story, I warmed up a little to her, but in the end, she is still frigid. But the one thing about Sybel is she is strong. From the age of 13, she stepped up and took care of her family. She knew they were in the eye of the public and she did her best to keep that view as civil and respectable as possible. She gained my respect for that. Who knows if I was in her shoes if I would be able to do it and keep such a demeanor as she did. The pride she felt for being a Czermanski was remarkable. She had a name to live up to, and no matter what was thrown at her, she would do nothing to spoil that name.

I have had a couple of deaths in my family in the past few months and the thing about death is, at least in my family, it brings you closer. Two of my uncles passed, on different sides of my family, and while the pain can’t be described, the bond that my families have held us together and helped get through. Yes, there are always rough spots and rough patches, but this book made me feel lucky for what I have, who I have and how well, through all the craziness, we all get along.

 It’s funny how books come to us when we need them most. In the past few months, I have read several books where death played major roles and where families needed each other to get through. But I’ve also read several books on the pride of a family name. I will be posting on this in the near future, so I don’t want to get into it too much, but this is a book that is so much more than a murder mystery. It’s thought provoking and puts perspective into what is really important in life and the roles that we play in not only our life, but the live around us.

I give The Sausage Maker’s Daughters 5 bookmarks. And stay tuned for an interview with AGS Johnson where hopefully she gives us a peak as to where the inspiration for such a heart grabbing story came from…plus I’ll share a little about her next book.

ISBN: 978-0984734108
Released: February 7, 2012
Author Website
Kari read this book for review from NetGalley and JKS Communications

Mack’s sister, Carolyn, is now twenty-six, a law school graduate, and has just finished her clerkship for a civil court judge in Manhattan. She has endured two family tragedies, yet she realizes that she will never be able to have closure and get on with her life until she finds her brother. She resolves to discover what happened to Mack and why he has found it necessary to hide from them. So this year when Mack makes his annual Mother’s Day call, Carolyn interrupts to announce her intention to track him down, no matter what it takes. The next morning after Mass, her uncle, Monsignor Devon MacKenzie, receives a scrawled message left in the collection basket: “Uncle Devon, tell Carolyn she must not look for me.”

Mack’s cryptic warning does nothing to deter his sister from taking up the search, despite the angry reaction of her mother, Olivia, and the polite disapproval of Elliott Wallace, Carolyn’s honorary uncle, who is clearly in love with Olivia.

Carolyn’s pursuit of the truth about Mack’s disappearance swiftly plunges her into a world of unexpected danger and unanswered questions. What is the secret that Gus and Lil Kramer, the superintendents of the building in which Mack was living, have to hide? What do Mack’s old roommates, the charismatic club owner Nick DeMarco and the cold and wealthy real estate tycoon Bruce Galbraith, know about Mack’s disappearance? Is Nick connected to the disappearance of Leesey Andrews, who had last been seen in his trendy club? Can the police possibly believe that Mack is not only alive, but a serial killer, a shadowy predator of young women? Was Mack also guilty of the brutal murder of his drama teacher and the theft of his taped sessions with her?

Carolyn’s passionate search for the truth about her brother — and for her brother himself — leads her into a deadly confrontation with someone close to her whose secret he cannot allow her to reveal.

This is one of many Mary Higgins Clark books that have recently filled my obsession to solve murder mysteries, start by listening to a Mary Higgins Clark book.

This, like every other Mary Higgins Clark book I have read, kept me guessing about the characters from the time the book started until the book ended. Who is the killer? Why? Who is being used as the pawn to look like the killer, but really isn’t? The more I get to know Higgins Clark as an author, because I feel like we are friends because I keep listening to her books, the more I am able to figure out her style, at least a little. In this book, I was able to figure out who the muscle was behind the crimes, but did not figure out who this person was working with. I was also able to figure out the pawn in the case, which made it easier to eliminate a few of the suspects. I should have been Nancy Drew!

While I love listening to these audio books and working my mind a little more than just listening to music on my way to and from work, I think there is a disadvantage to listening to Mary Higgins Clark’s books rather than handling them and reading them. She uses several characters in her books. When I hold a book, and am not driving while listening/reading, I can jot down notes of who the main players are in the book. While driving, that is obviously not an option. So, I find myself constantly trying to remember characters names in these books and get so caught up in the who’s who, that I feel like I miss major plot points because I can’t remember where they fit in. I’m going to have to try to figure out a system to file away these names so it doesn’t take me 3/4 the way through the book to know who the players are.

This book was a little different from the other Higgins Clark books I have read. The rest have all had positive endings. This one has a semi-positive ending that left me a little empty hearted. There was a twist in the book, more than the murder and search that I wasn’t expecting. That’s what happens when you close your mind a little while reading. Keep an open mind and you woun’t be blindsided. I know I can say that, but I can’t guarantee I’ll follow along with those words. I get a little too caught up in the books for that.

I didn’t love this book as much as the other books by Mary Higgins Clark that I have listened to, but I didn’t hate it. I wasn’t in love with the characters, although there were a couple I liked. I got angry with some of the characters and it kind of turned me off to the book. I later found out there was a reason for what the characters did, but my mini hatred had already started to grow and I just couldn’t stop it.

I give Where Are You Now? 3 bookmarks.

ISBN: 978-1416566380
Released: April 2008
Author Website
Kari got this audio book from the library

Anyway, I got some goodies this week. The first two I downloaded on NetGalley after being contacted by a publicist. I am halfway through one and hope to buckle down and finish it today. The other, I have started, but put it aside when I realized which one I needed to review first.

From Goodreads.com:
The sausage maker’s youngest daughter is heading for the fight of her battle-scarred life. It’s the era of the counterculture and Vietnam. But twenty-four-year-old Kip Czermanksi is nowhere near her home in California. She’s in a jail cell in her hometown in Wisconsin awaiting a court appearance in the mysterious death of her ex-lover, who happened to be her brother-in-law. Given her father is the small town’s leading citizen; Kip isn’t overly worried, at first. But the personal grudge the DA holds for all the Czermanskis is about to find a foil Kip. What follows is a wild ride through Kip’s present predicament and her past. She’ll come to regret leaving her life in LA, regardless of the good reason for which she returned, when family dynamics and sibling rivalries, magnified by her counterculture attitudes and feminist beliefs, lay Kip’s life bare before the courtroom. Distrusting her legal team, her rebellious history well known, things both personal and legal spiral out-of-control. It doesn’t look good for Kip Czermanski.

 
In a time of hardship and heartbreak, sometimes, reality just isn’t enough. Slipping Reality is the story of fourteen-year-old Katelyn Emerson, who, when faced with the glaring reality of her brother’s illness, rebels against the truth by slipping away into the depths of her own imagination. There, she finds the kind of support and comfort she feels she deserves. There, she does not have to feel so alone. And yet, as Katelyn’s grasp on reality begins to unravel, so too does the story of a girl who grew up too fast and fell apart too soon. Emily Beaver’s debut novel is a coming of age story that deals with the trials of young grief, insight, and growth where it’s least expected.

I also had to get a new audio book this week from the library. Although  I have fallen in love with Mary Higgins-Clark’s mysteries, I needed something different. I have listened to three of hers in a row now. So, instead, I got something fun and light. This is The Full Box by Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes. This is the complete “Full” series that the duo wrote. I listened to the first book, Full House , and really liked it and decided I’d just get the whole set and finish the series. I am almost done with Full Tilt and it is just as fun and action packed as the first book.

Did you get any goodies this week?? If so, what are they?

I honestly can’t tell you the last time I have had the stomach bug. I tend to be more of the sinus type of girl, and have gotten pretty good (if I say so myself) at detecting them and nipping them in the bud before they are fully involved (thanks to Extra Strength Mucinex).

This past weekend, my husband and I, and all of my dad’s side of the family went to a birthday party for my cousin’s little boy. He turned one, his brother helped him open presents, we played with lots of babies, it was great birth control.

Sunday went by just fine…until 4:45 Monday morning. That’s when I woke up with an upset stomach. A few minutes later, my husband tells me he also was not feeling so hot. We both took the day off. I spent the day in bed, he spent the day on the couch. I can’t watch TV when I’m sick, it makes it worse.

Monday afternoon, I found out we weren’t the only ones who got the bug. 10 others got sick from the time we left the party until Monday.

Tuesday, I woke up, feeling a little better, got a shower, tried to eat some toast and just couldn’t kick it. I had to stay home another day, so did my husband. But we weren’t the only ones. The sick total was then up to 16, including my poor little brother, who is a diabetic and immediately taken to the emergency room when sick, to keep his blood sugar in order.

Tuesday was better. I only stayed in bed half the day, was able to eat a couple of pieces of toast and a couple of bowls of soup and get down some Gatorade, a major improvement from the day before.

Today, I got up, after a night of restless sleep. My bed is normally a place of rest and comfort. I don’t have a TV in my room. When I go to bed, it’s to go to bed. I will read or knit, but it’s my sanctuary, my wind down time. But after two days in bed, it was the last place I wanted to be. But I got a few short hours and was feeling better, so I am back at work today.

But the sick toll keeps on climbing. I called my dad this morning, my morning commute ritual, and he is the latest one to catch the bug, upping the number to 20, I believe. Oy vey!

My mom says that when she took my brother to the hospital, a worker there was saying that they had to shut down an entire wing because this thing kept spreading like wildfire.

What a mess! Good news though, I have my appetite back and am munching on crackers to keep my energy up, my pal at work is getting me a Gatorade before she comes in, and the awesome winter boots I ordered were at work waiting for me when I got in. Now the question remains, are we going to have winter this year so I can wear them?

Have you been hit by the stomach bug this year?? Other than sleeping it off, what’s your remedy??