Kari's Kave: Featuring Mystery Author Patricia Deuson

Today we have an exciting treat for you...Mystery Author Patrica Deuson. She's here to tell us about her road to publication, and her fabulous new mystery SUPERIOR LONGING. Take it away Patricia :-)

Queries from Africa

My path to publication began in Africa. While I began writing sporadically after our return stateside from Cairo, Egypt, I had no thoughts about where it could lead, I just did it. On our second post in Africa, this time to Niamey, Niger, I continued to write, still with no thought that my writing should be anywhere but on my computer. By the time we moved to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, I had written an entire book and decided I wanted to be published.

So I sent a lot of queries across the ocean to all parts of the US. I didn’t get a lot of answers back, but the few I did get turned me down flat. Just wanting to be published wasn’t enough. I didn’t really find this discouraging, but took it as a bit of a challenge and continued to write and query as we moved to Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. More rejections followed than ever before! Was this a good sign? By the time we got back to the states again, I’d written the second book in the series. I thought it might be easier to market because I knew more about writing and because I was now living where the action was. But no.

Then I happened upon the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest. I entered and made it to the second cut. This really didn’t mean much, but it meant something to me.

I took that second book, edited it six ways from Sunday and rewrote, rewrote, rewrote and polished and polished. I also redid my query letter. I wasn’t very good at querying and knew it, so I worked hard on that. Then I began to send it around. It would be nice to say that there were no more rejections, but there were. Lots. However, I did get 2 offers, almost simultaneously. One was for a print book and one was for an e-book. Since this was a little more than a year ago, ebooks weren’t quite the market force they are now, but even then I knew I wanted an ebook. I went with Echelon Press. Superior Longing is the second in the Neva Moore mystery series. I’m working on the 3rd now and have done quite a bit of work on the 4th.

Here’s a synopsis:

Life is what happens when you're looking elsewhere. In the mystery, SUPERIOR LONGING, looking elsewhere is also dangerous. Sierra Nevada Moore is administrator/accountant/instructor/renovator-in-residence at Cooks' Inn, a cooking school newly relocated to the central Californian coast, and ready to open its doors. But will it? Not if her boss, Linnea Addams, keeps getting in the way of the perfectly fine opening Neva has planned. It’s not like they can afford a delay, as Neva, who keeps the books, knows too well. So it’s a kitchen face-off. Until Neva gets a call that changes everything.

Paul Beeton, her uncle and only relative, has drowned. The uncle to whom she owes everything. She will go to Michigan, to the shores of Lake Superior, to see him to his grave, no matter the consequence. Neva cobbles together a plan that is almost bound to fail and leaves, intending to return quickly. But as the details of Paul's death twist and turn, her pursuit of the truth weaves thru small town politics, smuggling, and superstition as she hunts Paul's killer to where it all began, back in the family and another death in an icy lake.

Look for Superior Longing, available 9/15/11, at these fine places: OmniLit.com, Smashwords, Kindle, Nook. Neva can be found at:

Her Blog

Her Facebook page

Thanks for stopping by, Patricia! Okay, folks, let's show her the love and bring on your comments and questions.