Today we’d like to introduce you to Kathryn Lane.
Hi Kathryn, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Hemingway once said that to write about life, first, you must live it. My journey to become a fiction writer bears out Hemingway’s philosophy. When I was growing up in a small town in northern Mexico, I dreamed of traveling the world, studying other cultures, and learning how people lived in different countries. My other goal was to be a painter when I grew up.
I married after graduating from high school. My former husband and I enjoyed a glamorous honeymoon, traveling to San Francisco, Hawaii, the Fiji Islands, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sydney. Then we arrived where I’d spend the next 3 1/2 years – the Outback of Australia on an isolated cattle station, St. Vigeon’s Station, on the Roper River near the Gulf of Carpentaria. The headquarters included a ramshackle house, a couple of sheds, a bunkhouse for the stockmen, a 4-seater plane, two Land Rovers, and a couple of trailers for hauling cattle.
A desolate place, St. Vigeon’s offered a challenging life, a sort of Crocodile Dundee lifestyle. Yet the experience taught me the problem-solving skills that later made me successful in my corporate career as an international finance executive for a major pharmaceutical company.
The cattle station was sold, and we returned to Mexico where I lived on a western movie set in the central Mexican state of Durango. The set belonged to my former father-in-law. The likes of John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Katherine Hepburn, and Ann Margret made films there. Ruby Dee, Harry Belafonte, and Sydney Potier made “Buck and the Preacher” on the set, a film that broke Hollywood’s traditions on westerns by casting African Americans as major characters. During the time I lived on the movie set, I worked as an extra, served as a Spanish-English translator, and though largely self-taught in my painting, I sold my artwork to the movie crews. I even sold a nude painting that was used in a bar scene in a Wayne film.
Despite the interesting places, people, and work that I encountered, my marriage was on the rocks. I decided my young son, who had been born in Australia, and I should move to the US and start a new life. Bringing my son into the US legally proved to be difficult. I did not have the money to hire attorneys, so I had to negotiate with US Immigration and Naturalization officials.
I had been born in the border town of El Paso, Texas, so I was a US citizen by birth, though I’d never lived in the US. Bringing my son into this country would be easy, right? I was shocked to find out that I could not automatically bring my 3-year-old son to the US under my American citizenship. I signed documents stating that if I ever took free medical benefits, used low-rent government housing, or applied for food stamps, both my son and I would be deported to Mexico. Those were different times!
We settled in Albuquerque, NM. I freelanced as a Spanish-English interpreter and translator for the US federal courts, state courts, and attorney offices. That work put a roof over our heads, and food on our table, and I attended the University of New Mexico to complete my Fine Arts degree. After graduation, I realized Fine Arts assured me of a starving artist lifestyle. What was a single mother like me supposed to do? I returned to the university and entered the MBA program. I sat for the CPA exam and passed it on my first attempt. This brought me to the attention of a CPA firm where I worked for several years.
Once my son went off to junior college, the travel lust I’d put on hold came rushing back. I interviewed at companies looking for CPAs who spoke other languages. I took a job with Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and spent the next two decades traveling for them. First, I traveled the world doing fraud audits. I spent time in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. I’d be in a location for 3 weeks or longer. I had the weekends to travel within the country I was working in. That allowed me to experience its culture and its people.
Then, I was promoted to chief financial officer of J&J Mexico. Returning to the country where I grew up was a dream come true! I loved living in Mexico City and spending the weekends traveling to the wonderful archaeological sites, historic colonial towns, and gorgeous beaches. Next, I was sent to Buenos Aires, Argentina, as VP of Finance where I spent another 5 years fascinated by the differences in cultures of the various southern hemisphere countries. Argentina was so different from Chile or Brazil, despite the shared borders. Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela had cultures that hardly resembled each other.
I was responsible for the finance function of J&J’s Latin American and Caribbean companies when I decided to take an early retirement. I left what had been my dream job to return to the arts. I’d traveled to so many locations, experienced unique situations, met fascinating people, and diverse cultures that instead of painting, I wanted to write.
Writing for me began with poetry. It evolved into short stories, and when I wrote my first full-length fictional novel, Waking Up in Medellin, I’d found my true love. Writing fiction is exhilarating. I love the research that comes into crafting a good story. I love the research so much that at times, I fall into a rabbit hole, spending hours, or even days, learning about a topic. Often all that research ends up being a smattering of words in a small scene. Yet, I must get my hands around a topic before I can credibly use it in my stories.
The travel, the cultures, and the people I learned about during my years of bouncing around the world as an auditor provide great ideas for creating characters, scenes, and plots for my mysteries. A spark of inspiration will start me on a new novel, and I fall back on life experiences to make it interesting. I also use my imagination to come up with the twists and turns that make for a mystery novel. Even the experiences I use from real life are all fictionalized.
A simple observation in nature, a stare from a stranger, a snippet of news, and a desire to research a topic can give me the spark of inspiration to write a novel. When I place my female protagonist, Nikki Garcia, in a specific country, my husband and I travel there, even if I’ve visited it before. Too many people travel and would detect mistakes if I did not research extensively online and then visit the actual locations. A good example is Barcelona, Spain. Bob and I traveled there twice when I was writing Revenge in Barcelona. Never mind that I’d visited that city about sixteen times over the years – I still had to travel there twice to get the descriptions in the manuscript right!
Since I’ve lived in two northern hemisphere countries, Mexico and the US, and two southern hemisphere countries, Australia and Argentina, I’ve had a sense of adventure that I hope my protagonist portrays in my mysteries. Did I model Nikki on myself? Not at all. Nikki came into my consciousness when I was writing short stories. She kept a presence there until I started to write Waking Up in Medellin. Now she’s like another member of the family.
The protagonist of Stolen Diary came in much the same way. She lingered in my mind until I wrote her story. And she, along with some of my readers, are clamoring for a sequel.
Writing mysteries is the most fascinating work I’ve ever done! I love what I do!!
Had I not lived life the way I have been fortunate to do, I would not have nearly as much to write about. Hemingway was correct. To write about life, first, you must live it. I must add that each author uses life experiences in fiction as it suits each one of us.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Life does not guarantee a smooth road for anyone. Yet in my case, the obstacles I’ve overcome are what has made me who I am today.
In the Australian Outback, I encountered difficult situations. I’d be alone on at the headquarters for 3 weeks at a time. My closest neighbors were 32 miles away and across the Roper River. There was no bridge over the river, so if I called on my neighbors, I’d have to attach the trailer to carry the boat to cross the river. My only communication with the outside world was a two-way radio to a government agency in the Australian Government Radio Network that was set up for isolated stations to communicate with public services, such as police or the flying doctors.
I had to order all supplies, including food, from Adelaide, a city in southern Australia. The orders were delivered six weeks later, by barge on the Roper River. This was great training for supply chains that I later encountered in the corporate world.
The scariest thing I had to deal with though, were the poisonous snakes. As a new mother, I never let my son crawl for fear that he’d encounter a snake inside the house. The snakes were some of the most poisonous in the world, so the concern was very real. As a result of not crawling, my son started walking at 9 months!
In the corporate world, I helped return financially failing affiliates to profitability. As CFO of J&J Mexico, I took this affiliate from near bankruptcy into one of the most profitable for its size. This happened over the 5-year period I was CFO of that affiliate.
As for the writing world, I write in English even though Spanish is my native language. The book market is primarily in English so that’s my chosen language for writing.
Also, in writing, I had not studied literature. I’d studied painting and art history. In the MBA, I studied accounting. And yet my books have won awards. My first novel, Waking Up in Medellin, won the “Best Fiction Book of the Year” at the Killer Nashville International Mystery Writers’ Conference. Everything I learned along the journey of life has helped me to accomplish what I’ve set out to do.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I write the Nikki Garcia Mystery Series and I LOVE what I do. I started writing poetry twelve years ago and that evolved into short stories.
Seven years I wrote my first full-length novel. At that time, I was still writing short stories that were being published. I still write poems and short mysteries, but for the past four years, I’ve written novels almost exclusively. The Nikki Garcia Mystery Series has 4 novels published and the 5th one, Rage in the Wilderness, will be published February 8, 2024. The 6th Nikki mystery which takes place in Italy, will be on the market at the end of 2024.
Each novel takes my strong, female protagonist, Nikki Garcia, to a different country:
Waking up in Medellin is set in Colombia, South America.
Danger in the Coyote Zone is set in Mexico.
Revenge in Barcelona takes place in Spain.
Missing in Miami happens in Miami, Florida, and Havana, Cuba.
Rage in the Wilderness is set in New Mexico and Colorado.
Murder in Monte Carlo happens in Italy (to be published late 2024)
Readers have suggested various locations and I’ve accommodated a couple of those requests!
My coming-of-age mystery, Stolen Diary, is set in Mexico City and Princeton, New Jersey. (This novel is a stand-alone). Backyard Volcano, a novella length included in a collection of my short stories, takes place in South Texas and the area of Mexico where the Paricutin Volcano is located – in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. Paricutin is one of the world’s youngest land-based volcanoes and it originated in a cornfield in 1943.
I do a lot of research so I can set each novel in a different location. What sets me apart from other mystery writers is that I set the novel in a foreign location that I’m familiar with. I do copious online research and visit the location as a Hollywood scout would. I want my readers to FEEL they are in that specific location, to breathe the air, to take the journey with Nikki and help her solve the crime.
What matters most to you? Why?
World peace!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kathryn-lane.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathrynlaneauthor/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kathrynlanewriter/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/KathrynLane13
- Other: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15096935.Kathryn_Lane?clear_facebook_session=true
