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Thea Kozak is back! Join us on The Journey of a Thousand Books To celebrate the publication of my seventh Thea Kozak mystery, Stalking Death, I invite you to join me on a journey exploring the unique connections between writers and readers in the 21st Century. Stalking Death takes educational consultant and amateur sleuth Thea Kozak to a small, prestigious New England boarding school, where minority scholarship student Shondra Jones claims she is being stalked by the grandson of the school's largest donor. Thea urges a full investigation, but the administration dismisses the student's claims as a bid for attention. Thea is fired-until stalking ends in one student dead and another arrested. Now, if she can survive the sinister forces active on this elegant old campus, Thea may be the only one who can separate the guilty from the innocent. Stalking Death has taken some major detours on its way to publication. I began work on the book soon after completing the sixth Thea Kozak mystery, then put it aside for other projects when the publication of Liberty or Death was delayed. But the characters and the story kept clamoring for my attention until I finished the book and sent it to my editor. From this point on, Stalking Death hit the series of roadblocks often encountered by authors, agents and editors in a publishing industry driven by bestsellers. After two years, I took Thea's fate back into my own hands and got Stalking Death back on the road to publication through Jim Huang of Crum Creek Press. It has been a long and bumpy journey so far, but I know Thea's many fans will rejoice with me in seeing her adventures continue in print. Ultimately, the fate of books and their writers lies in the hands of readers, particularly when a book is published by a smaller press with limited marketing resources. "The Journey of a Thousand Books" is the goal I have set for myself of selling a thousand books-a small number by publishing's impersonal statistics, but a meaningful achievement in the realm of personal connections. On the "Journey" pages at www.kateflora.com, I will track where the book goes and who is reading it with readers' messages and photographs. My writing career has often involved taking chances. I'm eager to discover how writer/reader connections and word of mouth can help me share Thea's story. I'm excited about taking a passionate act of my imagination out of the anonymous hands of publishers and distributors and making real connections with readers. I'm asking readers to send me pictures of themselves with their copies of Stalking Death. I'm asking my friends and supporters in the library world to send pictures of themselves and their libraries. Along with the pictures, I'm asking them to tell me a little bit about themselves and their stories. I want to explore the relationship between writers and readers, between the story I've imagined and the imagination of the reader. I'd like to know where Stalking Death is being bought and read. I'd like to know how readers make their choices and how a writer can reach them in this fast-paced and anonymous world. Please e-mail your pictures and stories to kateflora@gmail.com. I will post them all on my website as part of the book's journey. Whenever a benchmark is reached (first 100, 250, 500, etc.), I'll draw a name and award a prize.
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