Today Cate Conte is visiting Ascroft, eh? to tell us about Witch Hunt, her first novel in the Full Moon mystery series.
Welcome, Cate. Let’s get started, shall we?
Tell us about your novel. Is it part of a series? If so, please tell us about the series too.
Thanks for having me! My new book, Witch Hunt, is the first in the Full Moon Mystery Series, featuring crystal shop owner Violet Mooney, who discovers that she’s a witch.
Here’s a blurb about it:
Murder isn’t always crystal-clear . . . especially when the prime suspect discovers she’s a witch.
Violet Mooney owns The Full Moon crystal shop in quaint North Harbor, Connecticut. Still grieving her beloved grandmother’s recent unexpected death, she takes comfort in her fat orange cat Monty and her work. Not everyone in town is thrilled with her business, however. When disagreeable town councilwoman Carla Fernandez picks a fight over Violet’s “voodoo shop,” the two have a very public confrontation. Of course, when Carla turns up dead, Violet gets little sympathy from the police as suspect #1.
But the shock of two policemen showing up at her door pales in comparison to the sudden appearance of her estranged mother Fiona and a surprise sister, Zoe. What Fiona reveals will rock her world and her sense of self—and reawaken her long-dormant mysterious power. Good thing. She’s gonna need it . . .
Where did the idea for the mystery that is central to the story come from?
I used to be a reporter in a past life, and I saw firsthand the nastiness that occurred at the local level relating to business and politics. It always fascinated me, and I saw an opportunity to couple that here with a common but wildly inaccurate belief that things like crystals and other metaphysical practices are “bad” or “evil” or “voodoo.” The set-up of the mortal murder happens when local councilwoman Carla Fernandez accuses Violet very publicly of operating a voodoo shop – and she later winds up strangled in the local fountain, with Violet as the prime suspect. Of course Violet didn’t do it, but it was a nice way to tie the two ideas together.
Is there a theme or subject that underlies the story? If so, what prompted you to write about it?
There are a lot of themes in this book! In most of my books, I tend to explore family relationships – especially mother/daughter relationships, and that is true in this case as well. Violet and her mother have been separated for 27 years, so there’s a lot to unpack in that relationship and I’m looking forward to seeing how it evolves over the series.
I also wanted to touch on the idea of power, and how the quest for it can lead people astray and potentially cause a ripple effect of ugliness throughout the world, which is an element in the magickal world Violet winds up inhabiting.
How do you create your characters? Do you have favourite ones? If so, why are you partial to them?
I like to take traits, habits, physical appearance and other quirks from people I know and blend together into my characters. They all also have a (small) bit of me in them – for instance, the protagonist of my Pawsitively Organic Mysteries (by my alter ego Liz Mugavero) featured an animal loving, coffee drinking protagonist. While those two traits clearly mirror mine, Stan Connor was also tall (not me), long (also not me) and a gourmet pet food chef (definitely not me).
Violet is also a coffee drinker, as is Maddie James in my Cat Cafe Mysteries, and they both also love animals. And I definitely share Violet’s love of crystals.
How do you bring to life the place you are writing about?
I like to take real towns and fictionalize them – meaning, I keep elements of the real place but change it up to suit the needs of the story. And I change the names, too. I find it’s not so great to murder someone in a coffee shop and use the same name as your favorite coffee shop – they tend to not let you back in when you do things like that! So by building off of what already exists, it helps me capture the feeling of the place when I’m making other things up.
What research do you do to provide background information to help you write the novel?
It really depends on the story. For this book, I’ve done research on witches and crystals my whole life – but I still spend a ton of time researching lesser-known stones and their healing properties so when readers are in the store with Violet they feel like they are learning something. For past books I’ve done things like work in a funeral home, tour a dairy farm, and spend time in Newport, RI (definitely the most fun!).
Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about the book?
I had a ton of fun writing it and I hope you do reading it! I love magic and witchy things and being able to incorporate all that into a book is really a dream come true.
Thanks for answering my questions, Cate, and good luck with Witch Hunt, the first book in the Full Moon Mystery series.
Readers can learn more about Cate and her writing by visiting her website and her Facebook, Goodreads and Instagram pages. You can also follow her on Twitter.
The novel is available at the following online retailers:
About Cate Conte: Cate is the alter ego of Liz Mugavero. Liz is the author of the Pawsitively Organic Mystery series from Kensington Books, the first of which was an Agatha nominee for Best First Novel. Cate is the author of the new Full Moon Mysteries for Kensington and writes the Cat Cafe Mystery series for Minotaur Books. As you can imagine, her canine and feline rescues demand the best organic food and treats around. She is a member of Sisters in Crime National, Sisters in Crime New England, Mystery Writers of America, and the Cat Writers’ Association. She currently lives in Connecticut.
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Die a Yellow Ribbon is the ninth book in the Pecan Bayou series. When I wrote it, I wanted it to be part Amazing Race and part It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I wanted to write a great summer read where the characters of my little Texas town are running around in the heat trying to find a plastic pecan spray painted gold.
amateur detective to a Lake Tahoe ski resort to help her friend Tess clear out her family’s cabin for sale. An epic High Sierra blizzard hits, and they’re snowbound. Maggie, who lives in the Mediterranean climate of the San Francisco Bay Area, is out of her depth. Things go downhill when they stumble on a body frozen in a drift.
About Mary Feliz: Mary writes the Maggie McDonald Mysteries featuring a Silicon Valley professional organizer and her sidekick golden retriever. She’s worked for Fortune 500 firms and mom and pop enterprises, competed in whale boat races and done synchronized swimming. She attends organizing conferences in her character’s stead, but Maggie’s skills leave her in the dust.
Hello, I’m Charlotte Reed, and my story starts in book one of the Booklover’s B&B series, BOOKED FOR DEATH. It’s a cozy mystery series set in Beaufort, North Carolina. Fortunately for anyone who loves the setting, Beaufort is a real place that you can visit! It’s a coastal town located only a few miles (across the Bogue Sound) from the sandy beaches of Atlantic Beach and the rest of the “Crystal Coast” of North Carolina. Although Beaufort isn’t located directly on the Atlantic Ocean, it does have a natural harbor that draws boaters of all kinds. It’s also a very historic area, with homes and other buildings dating back to the early eighteenth-century.
About Victoria Gilbert: She raised in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, turned her early obsession with reading into a dual career as an author and librarian. Victoria has worked as a reference librarian, research librarian, and library director. When not writing or reading, she likes to spend her time watching films, gardening, or traveling. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers and lives in North Carolina.
The poor, beleaguered writer is obliged to see, do, think, react, and comment precisely as I would! Sometimes my views seem frightfully archaic to her, but she steels herself and writes what I want her to. However, she seems determined to encourage my friendship, such as it is, with Mr. McBrae, and he is impossible to control.
About Barbara Monajem: Winner of the Holt Medallion, Maggie, Daphne du Maurier, Reviewer’s Choice and Epic awards, Barbara Monajem wrote her first story at eight years old about apple tree gnomes. She published a middle-grade fantasy when her children were young. When they grew up, she turned to writing for adults, first the Bayou Gavotte paranormal mysteries and then Regency romances with intrepid heroines and long-suffering heroes (or vice versa). Some of her Regencies have magic in them and some don’t (except for the magic of love, which is in every story she writes).
I definitely control what happens in the story. When my writer tries to deviate from my plan, she doesn’t get very far and usually ends up deleting everything she’s written. The only one who gets more of a say than me in how the story progresses is my best friend, Bee. I’m pretty sure he’s my writer’s favorite.
About Lena Gregory: She is the author of the Bay Island Psychic Mysteries, which take place on a small island between the north and south forks of Long Island, New York, and the All-Day Breakfast Café Mysteries, which are set on the outskirts of Florida’s Ocala National Forest.
It’s a little philosophical to ask someone whether they control their own destiny, isn’t it? All I know is when something bad happens around me or I’m in the middle of trouble and struggling to find an escape, I don’t see Marc Jedel, the writer, there helping me out. He tends to sit at his computer typing all day. Although I’ve seen his office and he now has a sit-stand desk so perhaps that midnight requisition that unfolds in HIT AND MIST was based on reality? For the most part, Marc takes my notes and turns what happened to me into a more polished story. Well, actually his copy editor does all the important polishing so I’m not really sure what Marc’s role is.
About Marc Jedel: For most of his life, he’s been inventing stories. His writing skills were honed in years of marketing leadership positions in Silicon Valley. While his high tech marketing roles involved crafting plenty of fiction, he called these marketing collateral, emails and ads.
There wasn’t a really strong lesson to the book as it’s simply a clean, twisty mystery, but I do want to portray a really strong sibling bond through this series, as well as the importance of giving shelter dogs a chance.
The most recent book I live in is Murder in the Wine Country, and it’s the sixth book in the Kelly Jackson mystery series. I’m Kelly, an executive administrator with Resorts International. I originally came to the small town of Redwood Cove, located on the coast of northern California, on what was to be a temporary assignment. I took over the Redwood Cove Bed and Breakfast after the manager had what appeared to be an accidental fatal fall from a seaside cliff. It was a straightforward assignment until a crime-solving group of senior citizens, the Silver Sentinels, cried murder. Thus began my adventures in the first book, Murder at Redwood Cove. The type of mysteries I am involved in are often referred to as cozies. My author, Janet Finsilver, prefers to call them safe whodunits. What she means by that is there is no graphic violence and the main characters won’t die. They will always return.
About Janet Finsilver: Janet is the USA TODAY best-selling author of the Kelly Jackson mystery series. She worked in education for many years as a teacher, a program administrator, and a workshop presenter. Janet majored in English and earned a Master’s Degree in Education. She loves animals and has two dogs—Kylie and Ellie. Janet has ridden western style since she was a child and was a member of the National Ski Patrol. One of the highlights of her life was touching whales in the San Ignacio Lagoon. MURDER AT REDWOOD COVE, her debut mystery, was released on October 13, 2015. Five books followed with her most recent release on April 28, 2020, of book six, MURDER IN THE WINE COUNTRY. Janet Finsilver and her husband reside in the San Francisco Bay Area. She enjoys cooking, and a recent attempt to reduce the number of cookbooks in the cupboard wasn’t very successful. She’s an avid reader—of course!
