Spotlight on Kathy Carmichael

I couldn’t figure out how to get a dead body down this embankment, about 50 feet above the water.

I decided this would be a great place to dump a dead body!

I used this location, outside the city limits, for where Amy found a tarp.

While I never found an exact duplicate of Amy’s house, this one helped as a working model.

This is a photo of me visiting the Chamber of Commerce.

This made me think of Dolores’ historical home. It’s the perfect location for a séance, don’t you think?

Alfie and I parked the car on this bridge over the Verdigris River and contemplated various ways to get a dead body over the railing.

The Independence Police Department is in the basement of City Hall!

Complications in the life of an author

When my doctor first learned that I was writing a mystery novel, he suggested we go out for coffee.  Now mind you, he wasn’t suggesting a date.  No.  He wanted to go over some possible ways to off someone.


Fortunately for me, the mystery I was writing was a little less complicated than that.  For DIARY OF A CONFESSIONS QUEEN I didn’t need obscure and untraceable poisons.  I didn’t need to learn about bullet entrances and exits.  What I needed was a good body of water.


If an author is writing about an imaginary location, creating a decent body of water isn’t difficult.  But when you’re writing about a real location, it gets a bit more complicated.  Not only do you need the sizable body of water, in my case the Verdigris River, but I also needed to know what direction the water flows in and exactly where the water ends up.  Is there a dam?  Is there a lake?  Does it empty into a larger body of water?


And then there was the issue of making all of this work for my story.  The crime needed to be investigated by a city police detective, rather than the county sheriff’s office.  But where do the city lines stop and the county lines start?

I had to visit the Independence Police Department to find out.

Luckily for me, my critique partner, Alfie Thompson, came with me – otherwise, I might be serving time for contemplating murder.


When we entered the police department, my first questions were whether they had a map of the territory covered by the city police and if a murder was committed in town, would they investigate or would they turn it over to the state police?


A very tall, I mean really truly tall, police detective left his office when he heard my question and ambled over to where Alfie and I stood talking with the administrative assistant, Tammy Freeman.  He wanted to know why I wanted to know.  Alfie nudged me and said, “Explain that you’re an author.”  This is one of many reasons why it’s good to have wonderful friends.


I quickly pulled a bookmark from my handbag and explained I was working on novel.  Tammy took out a map and drew the boundaries on it for me.  What a gem she is!


Once we finished grilling the police, Alfie and I drove around the city, hunting for great places to dump a dead body.  I hope you enjoy some of my research pictures of the Independence, Kansas locations in DIARY OF A CONFESSIONS QUEEN.




To promote DIARY OF A CONFESSIONS QUEEN, Medallion Press cooked up a little fun with an Action Interview / radio play based on my book.  I had a blast recording this.  In it, I play not only myself, but also two of the characters.  Can you guess who they are?  Here’s the link to listen.  But be warned, it starts playing right away!