Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare, authors of Homemaker, the first novel in the Prairie Nightingale mysteries series, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today.

Welcome, ladies.

Tell us about your novel. Is it part of a series? If so, please tell us about the series too.

Homemaker is the first book in the Prairie Nightingale series. It’s set in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and centers on a divorced Gen X mom of teenagers named Prairie Nightingale. Our editor calls Prairie “a character as iconic as Bridget Jones or Finlay Donovan,” and Publishers Weekly says she’s “lovably eccentric.” Prairie grew up in a cohousing community in Oregon—a commune by another name—and she’s never shaken the habit of believing that we’re all part of a human community and have to show up for one another. While she is insatiably curious, it’s really those values that motivate her to become an amateur sleuth.

Where did the idea for the mystery that is central to the story come from?

The first kernel of this book was a conversation we had where Annie asked, “Wouldn’t a middle-aged mom who was on top of absolutely everything make a really excellent detective?” Prairie puts it this way in the book: “What she really believed … was that she noticed things because she was a mom. Because a mom had to notice everything about the entire world, every single day, and question those things, every single day, so that nothing bad would happen.” The mystery that’s central to the story grew from that premise. What kind of thing would a mom notice that other people might not? Where would her special skills and interests lead her that made it possible for her to solve a crime in a way that law enforcement couldn’t?

Is there a theme or subject that underlies the story? If so, what prompted you to write about it?

It’s probably no surprise that a book called Homemaker is preoccupied with motherhood. But this isn’t “tradwife” motherhood. This is divorced Gen X motherhood in the Midwest, with a splash of punk defiance. Prairie loves being a mother. She loves people. But she’s hungry for the kind of fulfilment that’s hard to find in that role, and we meet her at a moment when she’s ready for her life to change. This is a mystery that’s much more interested in thinking about every possible way a homemaker’s life can look than it is in validating conservative roles of mother and family.

How do you create your characters? Do you have favourite ones? If so, why are you partial to them?

The two of us are very different people, but one thing we hae in common is a fascination with people. We’re both intense people-watchers, and in our free time we listen to podcasts and watch documentaries that drive into human motivations and behavior. It’s a preoccupation! When we are creating characters, they usually grow organically from a handful of things we know about them at the outset—their function in the story, their age and occupation, that kind of thing.

We both love Prairie very much, but it’s fair to say that Foster Rosemare, the FBI agent who just happens to be the first interesting man Prairie has met since her divorce, was a character who surprised us. He’s a quiet, focused man with a lot of layers. We really enjoyed peeling those layers back as his relationship with Prairie developed over the course of the series. (We’ve written nine books in the series, though this is just the first one to be published!)

How do you bring to life the place you are writing about?

We set the series in Green Bay, Wisconsin, because it’s where we live, and we don’t see a lot of midsize Midwestern cities finding their way into fiction. One of the things we wanted to do was show the wide diversity of people and experiences in a place like Green Bay—especially because there’s a tendency, still, to think of the flyover states as homogenous when they are anything but. However, we definitely give ourselves permission to fictionalize Green Bay! We keep places we like, invent places we wish existed, and paint over real places with a scrim of fictional glitter to make them serve our purposes better.

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

This book is a great fit for readers who are looking for a nuanced, humorous cozy mystery that doesn’t shy away from deeper themes of marriage, divorce, and what it is to be a woman finding new ambition at midlife. If that sounds good, we hope readers will give it a try!

Thank you for answering my questions, Ruthie and Annie, and good luck with Homemaker, the latest book in the Prairie Nightingale mystery series.

Readers can learn more about Ruthie Knox and Anne Mare by visiting the authors’ website, Ruthie’s Facebook, Annie’s Facebook and their Instagram and Instagram pages.

The novel is available at the following online retailers:

 Amazon – Bookshop.org – Barnes & Noble

About Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare: They write critically acclaimed, bestselling mystery and romance, usually (but not always) together. They are the authors of the Prairie Nightingale mysteries and the TV Detectives mystery series. If you want more of their stories, check out their queer romances co-written as Mae Marvel, as well as solo work by Ruthie Knox (het romance), Annie Mare (grounded queer paranormal romance), and Robin York (Ruthie’s pen name for New Adult romance). Ruthie and Annie are married and live with two teenagers, two dogs, multiple fish, two glorious cats, four hermit crabs, and a bazillion plants in a very old house with a garden.