Cloudy with a Chance of Answers follows a grieving woman as she closes out her uncle’s estate and discovers a clue to her cousin’s disappearance over thirty years ago. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?

I’ve heard that when there’s an unsolved crime that happens to a family, especially when it involves a child, they are never, ever fully able to move forward from it. There’s always that question of who did it. There’s like a cloud over their heads, figuratively. And how do people stand to live in a community where one of the citizens is a killer but nobody knows who it is? I wanted to write a book about that, but featuring a gutsy main character who never gave up hope of one day finding a resolution. The main character, Bethany, of course, persists.

Did you plan the tone and direction of the novel before writing or did it come out organically as you were writing?

The story all came about naturally, just popping into my head one day during the beginning of the pandemic. There wasn’t a crime like the one in the book in my family, thank God, but I drew on another part of my own family history with the characters of Bethany’s mother, grandmother and father. The mother and grandmother have been battling one another since before Bethany was born. The father sits on the sidelines, does nothing, and watches them go at it, and Bethany may be a child, but she constantly steps in as the family referee. That was exactly the story of my own childhood, so I knew it well. My mother and grandmother’s battles were so over-the-top and crazy that they were almost funny, and a story like CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF ANSWERS needed a lot of comic relief.

What was the hardest part about writing a mystery story, where you constantly have to give just enough to keep the mystery alive until the big reveal?

It’s a juggling act with handling all of the clues, that’s for sure! There has to be just enough information for various people to look suspicious, but it’s a question of just enough and no further, so the reader will wonder which one of the potential suspects might have done it. I love it when someone reads one of my books and then tells me they had a whole other suspect in mind for the crime. I figure that means I did my job well!

What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?

The next one is a murder mystery set in a Broadway talent agency. I used to work in one myself so I kind of know the territory there. Talk about having to juggle a lot of potential suspects! It’s a challenge and I’m having a wonderful time writing it. I’m hoping it will be available by the winter of 2023.

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