Margaret Mizushima writes the award-winning Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. She served as a past president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and was elected Writer of the Year by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. She and her husband recently moved from Colorado, where they raised two daughters and a multitude of animals, to a home in the Pacific Northwest.

DYING CRY – While Deputy Mattie Walker and her family are snowshoeing in a remote area, a shattering cry pierces the air, dying slowly as it echoes off canyon walls. When further investigation reveals a suspicious death, the Timber Creek County Sheriff’s team springs into action, uncovering a trail of greed that leads to a killer who threatens Mattie’s cherished new family and tests her with the most challenging task she’s faced in her duty as a K-9 handler.

What brought you to writing? I was drawn to writing nonfiction around the turn of the century, and I began with a book about intuitive communication. I planned to weave together my experience in communication disorders, from my career as a speech pathologist, and the study of the Enneagram, an ancient Sufi personality typing system. I aimed to help facilitate team building in business companies and corporations. I finished Chapter 1 and then decided to play with writing a paranormal romance, just for the fun of it. I never went back to the nonfiction book to write Chapter 2. After completing that first terrible romance manuscript, I began attending commercial fiction writing conferences to learn the how-to’s of the writing process. It took several years and several attempts at different genres until I finally produced my first mystery. That was the book that sold, and I’ve been writing the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries and publishing one each year since. Dying Cry is the tenth book in the series.

Tell us about your writing process. After my veterinarian husband retired, we moved to the Pacific Northwest to be closer to family. I’m lucky to have my own office in our new home. Each morning, I sit down with the goal of writing 1000 words. Sometimes I write more, sometimes less, but the primary goal is to write 5000 words per week. At this rate, I can finish, revise, and polish a manuscript in about six months. I work with my editor at publisher Crooked Lane Books to complete three edits and two proofreads, ensuring we stay on schedule to publish one book per year. So far, it’s worked out well.

If you have subplots, how do you weave them into the novel’s arc? I love subplots! Each book has a theme and a premise central to the first victim and crime scene in the mystery. My protagonists, Deputy Mattie Walker and her K-9 partner Robo, investigate the crime in this major plot. However, my other protagonist, veterinarian Cole Walker, also has work to do in solving the major crime, and his part of the story is woven into one of the subplots. Then, on top of that, Mattie usually has a personal dilemma that she’s working on, and that subplot is also woven in. It’s a lot of fun, and I believe it adds depth to the main plot. My challenge is to make all these plots fit the theme of the book, so they are somehow related. I do spend some time planning each book before I begin writing, so that I can create a cohesive mesh (not mess—LOL) by the time I’m finished.

How long did it take to write your first book, and then how long to get it published? It took about four years to write, rewrite, take months off in discouragement, revise, take more time off, re-revise, polish, and then polish again to complete my first mystery. Then, while I wrote something else, it took another four years for me to find an agent and then a publisher. I’m tech-phobic, so I decided early on that I wanted to go the traditional publishing route. I’m very grateful that I’ve been working with my original publishing team since 2014: literary agent Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary Management and acquiring editor Matthew Martz of Crooked Lane Books. After many rejections, these two professionals decided to take on a mystery series featuring a spunky deputy, her German shepherd partner, and an overworked veterinarian who is also the deputy’s love interest. I appreciate their support over the years.

Do you base your characters on real people? No, but it helped to have lived with my veterinarian husband for over four decades—I know that life—and to be able to shadow and interview my K-9 handler consultants. The stories they tell, and my observations, have definitely made their way onto the pages of my books. However, my dog character, Robo, was based entirely on a real dog. One of my consultants, a retired K-9 handler, worked with her German shepherd partner until they were both injured in a work-related incident that forced them to retire. The dog had been deafened in a warehouse explosion, but his handler kept him as her pet until he died of old age. The many stories she told me about her wonder-dog partner gave me characteristics for my fictional dog, and she also gave permission to use his name—Robo.

Margaret Mizushima can be contacted at: hello@margaretmizushima.com

Find her on Facebook/AuthorMargaretMizushima,
X @margmizu,
Instagram @margmizu,
and her website www.margaretmizushima.com.

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