Mystery author Kate Flora is back with a new interview. Today we’re chatting about her domestic suspense, Teach Her a Lesson.
Bio:
Kate Flora’s fascination with people’s criminal tendencies began in the Maine attorney general’s office. Deadbeat dads, people who hurt their kids, and employers’ discrimination aroused her curiosity about human behavior. The author of twenty-five books and many short stories, Flora’s been a finalist for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Derringer awards. She won the Public Safety Writers Association award for nonfiction and twice won the Maine Literary Award for crime fiction. Flora is a founding member of the New England Crime Bake and the Maine Crime Wave conferences and runs the blog Maine Crime Writers https://mainecrimewriters.com. She divides her time between Massachusetts and Maine.
Welcome back, Kate. Please tell us about your current release.
What do you do when you’re accused of an unspeakable crime and know you’re innocent, but the evidence against you is so compelling? High school English teacher Alexis Jordan thinks her biggest problems are a case of burnout after six years and her suspicion that her husband is having an affair. Things take a sudden, unexpected turn that threatens to end her marriage, wreck her career, and destroy her life when Evan Palmer, the student she’s coaching for the school play, makes a pass at her and she turns him down. Alexis doesn’t realize that Evan is obsessed with her—an obsession that’s involved going through her house while she’s at work. He’s been building toward this moment for months.
When she gently rebuffs his subsequent attempts to initiate an affair, he’s enraged. He retaliates by confiding to his volatile and protective mother that he and Alexis have been having an affair. And he has the evidence to prove it.
While the administration investigates, Alexis tries to live a normal life. But, as she quickly discovers, there is nothing people love more than a good scandal. It is more entertaining to believe the worst. She’s prepared to tough it out, even after the principal and his assistant quiz her about her sexual activity with Evan and about his intimate knowledge of the patterns of her sheets and her bra size. Her protests that she has no idea how he knows these things seem like lies.
When Alexis refuses to go on leave and demands a hearing, Evan and his mother go to the police. She is arrested, taken from her classroom in handcuffs, charged with statutory rape. Out on bail, she’s badgered by a bitter reporter looking for the scoop of his career. Increasingly, the stigma of her position isolates her. She begins to suspect that Evan, frustrated by the slow pace of his legal revenge, is contemplating a faster one of his own, but no one believes her. Unable to leave town because of the criminal charges, and knowing the police won’t come if she calls, Alexis must face her tormenter alone.
Excerpt from Teach Her a Lesson:
He checked his watch and shook his head. “You said thirty minutes, right? We’ve only got a few minutes left and I need to talk with you about something.”
Looking up, she saw he’d come around the table and was standing quite close, his face terribly serious. Was he about to confess to some crime? Had he been at the Rinaldis’ party? Maybe taken something and didn’t know how to give it back? He slid into the chair beside her. “This is so important I don’t know how to begin.”
She waited. Usually, if they were determined to speak and you kept quiet, students managed to get the words out.
“I know…” He swallowed. “I know you probably think of me as just another awkward high school boy.”
He pulled his chair closer to hers, leaning back and hooking his thumbs into the elastic waist of his oversized shorts. “I mean, I don’t blame you for thinking that way. Why wouldn’t you, right?”
Did he have an erection? She looked away, embarrassed for him, as his hand came out of the elastic, slipped quick as a snake across the tabletop, and grabbed her arm.
“Evan. Don’t!” She tried to pull away but his fingers tightened, holding her there.
“Listen,” he said. “Let me say this. I think we could be something to each other, Mrs. Jordan. I’ve seen the way you look at me. The way you smile. I know you don’t think I’m just any student. You think I’m special.”
Embarrassment stung her face.
He bobbed his head. “You know I’m special. And I know you’re lonely. Your husband doesn’t appreciate you. You aren’t getting what you deserve at home.”
What on earth was he talking about? He didn’t know anything about her marriage or her husband. Shock clenched her chest as she tried again to pull away.
His grip was too strong.
He flattened his hand out, caressing her arm from her wrist to her shoulder, an unfocused, almost blissful look on his face. “Mrs. Jordan, I could be someone special to you. I’d like to be, if you’ll give me the chance.”
“Evan. No. Stop that!” She jerked her arm away and stood. She’d been hit on before. High school boys got crushes. But she’d never been cornered like this. Or touched. He was standing, too, physical and aroused, backing her toward the corner of the room farthest from the door, his brawny 6’ 2” looming between her and the door.
What inspired you to write this book?
I like to “flip the script” on news stories or imagine what might be behind them. The headlines are full of shocking stories of teachers who have seduced their students. What if it were the reverse, a student obsessed with a teacher who has created a scenario in which the teacher welcomes his attentions? What happens when he makes his move, she resists, and his bruised ego means he wants to destroy her?
What exciting project are you working on next?
Amusingly enough, after nearly forty years of writing dark stories, I’m working on a romance about a teacher (yes, another teacher, this time kindergarten) who, after being ghosted by her boyfriend, gets a dog from the shelter and discovers that her new pet is a match-making dog. The story is called Unleashed Love, and like my character, I am in love with Jocko.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Probably after I’d published three or four books, I stopped writing “lawyer” in the space about profession and instead wrote “author.”
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I’ve been writing full time for many years. It used to be five to ten hours a day, depending on deadlines and how intensely the work was holding me captive. In my seventies, I’ve slowed down a bit and often write only 3 or 4 hours. I am still, though, sometimes found staring at the frozen peas in the grocery store when an idea about how a scene needs to be revised strikes me. I joke that I should have a label like Paddington Bear that reads: Please Look After This Author, Thank You. If Found Staring at the Peas, Please Send Home. There’s little I love more than being deeply into a story when it is flowing.
Despite being advised by my agent to stick to one thing and build a platform, it fascinates me how my writing, over the years, has been tugged in different directions. I started out, as many of us did, (I call us the Nancy Drew generation comes of age) wanting to write strong women who rescued themselves. That became my Thea Kozak series. Years of interviewing police officers to get the crime scene and investigative details right led to my Joe Burgess police procedurals. It was through a police lieutenant I met doing research for that series that my attempt to help him write about a very compelling crime he was investigating led me to my first true crime, Finding Amy, which was an Edgar finalist. That, in turn, led me to the Maine Warden Service, and one of the wardens who’d been teaching me about Search and Rescue send me up to Canada to explore another true crime, which became Death Dealer.
Then I went in a new direction, memoir, when one of the wardens who was on searches for the missing victims in both cases was retiring. Everyone told him he told great stories and ought to write then down, but he didn’t know how, so he turned to me for help. I found myself in a green pickup truck driving dirt roads in Maine, holding a tape recorder, while every turn in the road sparked a new story. His memoir became A Good Man with a Dog: A Warden’s 25 Years in the Maine Woods. That was a fascinating adventure. My final nonfiction project was another collaboration with my police lieutenant, by then a retired Deputy Chief, on a book about police shootings from the police point of view: Shots Fired. I find writing nonfiction much harder, but the opportunity to spend so much time in the public safety world has definitely enhanced my ability to write procedurals.
When I’m not writing, I’m always very involved in the mystery-writing community. I was a founder of both the New England Crime Bake and the Maine Crime Wave conferences. I’ve been national president of Sisters in Crime and am current president of the New England chapter. I’ve read four times for the Edgars. I run a blog, Maine Crime Writers, for other Maine writers. When I’m not writing or supporting the writing community, I love to garden, (although my back sometimes disagrees) and cook and of course, read. I joke (as many of us do) that my cause of death will be being crushed by a falling TBR pile.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
Oh dear! A quirk? I’m not sure I have one. I do have a very bad habit, though. When the writing gets tough and I can’t figure out how to move forward, I tend to sneak over to Ebay and look at shoes. I’m awfully fond of shoes but such a thrift store junkie that I can’t stand to pay full price.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A writer. We lived on a farm in a small Maine town, and I loved to read. I’ve always loved the way a compelling story can transport me from this world in to the world of the book and thought that it would be wonderful to be able to do that. It helped that my mother was a writer. She wrote country living articles, and cooking articles, and edited the home and garden page at the local paper. She also, and this makes me so proud, published a mystery, The Maine Mulch Murder, when she was in her eighties. When she died, she was working on the sequel, The Corpse in the Compost, and I edited it and published it in her honor.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Oh, perhaps a million things. I taught writing for many years and my favorite course was one called: I’ve Always Wanted to Write, But… It was a course designed for the many, many people who dreamed about writing but had been damaged or discouraged by teachers or others along the way and stopped trying. I used to say it was the course that put Bandaids on their wounds. One thing I learned, from my ten years in the unpublished writers’ corner was this: Only you get to decide that you’re a writer. Along with that, unfortunately, comes this truth: When you’re dealing with publishing, you need to have the hide of the alligator. You have to nurture your love of writing in the face of a lot of discouragement. I guess I am a cheerleader for those who dream.
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