Kat Lawson is visiting Ascroft, eh? to tell us about Passport to Spy, the latest novel in the Kat Lawson mystery series.

Welcome, Kat. Let’s get started, shall we?

Tell us about the novel that you live inside. Is it part of a series? If so, please tell us about the series too.

Hi, my name is Kat Lawson, and I have a confession to make. I never expected to find myself working for an international travel publication, much less working undercover for the FBI. But sometimes, life takes an unexpected turn. Like when I lost my job as a fledgling investigative reporter at the Phoenix Gazette. Suddenly all those plans I had made to spend my life working at the local newspaper turned upside down when I was booted out the door due to an inappropriate workplace relationship with my boss. Him they kept. Me, they fired.

But there is no point in looking back. And the time off I had after being let go resulted in an unusual opportunity. My father, a former WW2 navigator/bombardier, approached me with a chance to travel to Hungary, where his B24 had crashed during the war, and—surprise-surprise—has recently been found by a man who’s invited my dad to come and visit the crash site. Dad can’t go…but I can.

The Navigator’s Daughter is the story of my first experience traveling overseas, and while I won’t get into all that I found on that trip, I will say the people I met changed my life. I came home with a new appreciation of who I was, and it opened a new door for me that I never would have thought possible.

As a result of my experience in Hungry, I was approached by the FBI to work undercover as a feature writer for a travel publication. I was issued a passport and assigned to cover the Christmas Market in Munich, Germany, while secretly investigating a hidden cache of stolen artwork. Passport to Spy is that story.

Does the writer control what happens in the story, or do you get a say too?

I’d like to say that I’m as much in charge of what happens on the page as my creator, Nancy Cole Silverman, but the truth is, I’m never sure about what to expect. She’s the instigator who takes great care to see that situations she throws me into are realistic, historically accurate, and frequently drop-dead dangerous.

How did you evolve as the main character?

I never expected to find myself working as an undercover agent for the FBI. I was a fledgling investigative reporter working for the Phoenix Gazette, and I figured my life and career were set. Then I lost my job—and everything else that went with it—and next thing I know, I’m working for the FBI, writing travel features about Munich, Germany’s Christkindlmarkt, while secretly investigating a cache of stolen WW2 art. Which might have been fine until my cover was blown, and a would-be assassin chased me through the Bavarian Alps.

Do you have any other characters you like sharing the story with? If so, why are you partial to them?

Unfortunately, I’m not always the best judge of character. I’m a single, forty-year-old woman, and I travel alone, which means I invariably pick up a friend or two along the way, and sometimes I’ve found myself at the mercy of strangers. Some of them good. Some not so much. But I’m a quick study, and despite some close calls, for the most part, I’ve picked up a few tricks and come out unscathed.

What’s the place like where you find yourself in this story?

I like that I never know where I’ll be sent next or the next assignment. I discovered that I’m as comfortable on the road as I ever was when living at home. 

Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about you and the book?

Nancy doesn’t like me to brag, but I was the conduit she used to solve the puzzle of her father’s missing plane and the time he was Missing-in-Action. In fact, The Navigator’s Daughter was loosely based on Nancy’s real-life experiences, finding her father’s flight log and diary after he passed. I’m proud I was able to help her reconnect with her father’s past and work out the mystery of the time he was MIA.

Thank you for answering my questions, Kat, and good luck to you and your author, Nancy Cole Silverman, with Passport to Spy, the latest book in the Kat Lawson mystery series.

Readers can learn more about Kat and her author, Nancy Cole Silverman by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook, and Goodreads pages.

The novel is available online at Amazon 

About Nancy Cole Silverman: Nancy spent nearly twenty-five years in news and talk radio, beginning her career in college on the talent side as one of the first female voices on the air. Later on the business side in Los Angeles, she retired as one of two female general managers in the nation’s second-largest radio market. After a successful career in the radio industry, Silverman retired to write fiction. Her short stories and crime-focused novels—the Carol Childs and Misty Dawn Mysteries, (Henry Press) are both Los Angeles-based. Her newest series THE NAVIGATOR’S DAUGHTER, (Level Best Books) takes a more international approach. Silverman lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a thoroughly pampered standard poodle.