People often ask where ideas come from. For this one, I got nuttin'. I haven't even got a memory of when I thought, "I should write this down." Somehow, somewhere, I got the idea for a detective from the Afterlife who'd go back to the world and solve your murder so your soul could rest. Like I said, no idea where it came from.

I wrote it down, but at the time I was under contract for some historical mysteries I'd begun. (More on that next time.) While I was shilling--I mean promoting--those in New Orleans, I met a couple who were head of a small publishing company. As we stood around and talked all afternoon, waiting for sales, I told them my idea. They told me to query them when I got home. They ended up taking on the project.

The moral to this story is that going where book people are can be worthwhile. I don't know what I would have done with this book if they hadn't been enthusiastic about it, but it became a four-book series that some readers still consider best of all my work, since it's so different.

The other thing I learned, however, is that small publishers don't have the means to really launch a book. My first publisher wasn't huge, but they did have connections with just about every library in the country, so when they published a new book, it was seen. They also had connections with the big reviewers of the time, so I got reviewed in big publications that readers consult. While my second publishers worked hard for me, and while they got me some gems (I got Best Novel of the Year from one organization and a review in the New York Review of Books,) their limited size meant their authors didn't make much of a splash in the larger pond of publishing. Eventually, I went off on my own.

The Dead Detective Agency: Tori wakes up dead. It takes her a while to accept that, but once she does, she wants to know why she was murdered at twenty-something. She has flashes of how it happened, but WHY? As she learns how things go in the Afterlife (which for a time is kind of like a cruise ship), she's told there are detectives who will go back and find out what happened. Tori definitely wants Dead Detective Seamus to investigate for her, and not only that--She wants to go with him.

This e-book is available here for free.