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Hidden Rooms, the debut mystery by Kate Michaelson

Author Interview + Book & Author Info + Author Pet Corner!

Read a terrific guest post from Kate Michaelson from her Partners in Crime Book Tour! Click the link here.

Hidden Rooms by Kate Michaelson

Long-distance runner, Riley Svenson, has been fighting various bewildering symptoms for months, from vertigo to fainting spells. Worse, her doctors can’t tell her what’s wrong, leaving her to wonder if it’s stress or something more threatening. But when her brother’s fiancée is killed—and he becomes the prime suspect—Riley must prove his innocence, despite the toll on her health.

As she reacquaints herself with the familiar houses and wild woods of her childhood, the secrets she uncovers take her on a trail to the real killer that leads right back to the very people she knows best and loves most.

For readers who enjoy Deer Season by Erin Flanagan, All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers, and A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham.

To purchase Hidden Mystery, click any of the following links: Amazon, Gathering Volumes, Bookshop.org, or CamCat Books

Interview with the Author of Hidden Rooms

Hi Kate,
I’m so pleased to have you join me on my blog, congratulations again on your debut!

Hidden Rooms centers on long-distance-runner Riley. What should readers know about her?

Aside from being a distance runner, Riley is a computer forensics expert in her late twenties. Although she’s from a small Ohio town, she went away for college and then moved to Seattle afterwards.

At the start of the book, she has just moved back to her hometown in the wake of her father’s death, and she’s trying to keep her family from falling apart while also looking for a diagnosis to some troubling health issues.

Hidden Rooms also focuses on chronic illness. What drew you to that as an aspect of Riley’s character?

I know a lot of women, myself included, who have dealt with complex diseases and had trouble finding a clear diagnosis and treatment. When I began having health problems, I realized that if I was going to find answers, I would need to act a lot like a detective as I went from specialist to specialist and tried to put the larger picture together. It struck me that this journey to find the truth about one’s own health could work well as part of a mystery. 

In addition to the inherent mystery of poorly understood illnesses, not being able to find a diagnosis while feeling chronically ill can lead to a lot of self-doubt. This is key to Riley’s experiences in Hidden Rooms as she’s often unsure whether she should trust her instincts or if, as some doctors have implied, she’s ‘making too much’ of things.

Hidden Rooms is set in the Midwest. Tell us about the environment and how it impacts the characters and the story:

When I began writing, I knew I wanted to depict the area of rural Ohio where I grew up. I love mysteries that transport me to another place, but it has also meant a lot to me on the rare occasions when I’ve encountered books that depict life in the rural Midwest, like Erin Flanagan’s Deer Season. 

The town of North Haven is fictionalized, but it’s a tight-knit community like my hometown. Riley and her brother Ethan also represent a lot of relationships I see in small towns between people who have chosen to stay where they grew up and those who have gone away. I think there can be envy on both sides of this dynamic because the people who stay in their hometown maintain those close friendships and family ties, but the people who leave experience a greater variety of people and places. We see this tension in Riley and Ethan’s relationship when Riley moves back to North Haven after years of living elsewhere.

Tell us about your journey to publication:

When I began writing Hidden Rooms, my goal was simply to finish the novel. Though I’d written poetry and nonfiction for a long time, I was new to writing fiction. I learned so much from a local critique group and from online Sisters in Crime workshops and classes. 

About a year later, once I had a polished draft, I began querying agents, which writers know can be a very long process. A couple of months into my querying journey, I attended New England Crime Bake where I met a number of agents and editors who requested my manuscript. I also met another author, Marcy McCreary, who told me about her publisher, CamCat Books, and what a great experience she’d had with them. 

Soon after attending the conference, I received the Hugh Holton Award from MWA Midwest for one of the best unpublished mysteries by a Midwest writer. This was such a boost to my confidence and definitely bolstered my query letters. I ended up receiving offers from an agent and from CamCat Books around the same time. I was lucky to have two good options, but I ultimately decided to go with CamCat after talking to several authors who had nothing but great things to say about the publisher.

You hold a PhD in Educational Psychology, what does that entail and how do you put that into practice as a curriculum designer?

Educational psychology is the study of how we learn and includes everything from  social-emotional components and motivation to cognitive processes. I specialized in studying how students determine what is true when confronted with multiple news sources.

After completing my degree, I worked for a curriculum development company to create educational materials to teach media literacy.

What are you working on now?

Right now I’m querying a humorous standalone mystery called Resting Sad Face that follows a professional mourner in Florida who gets drawn into the suspicious death of a real estate developer she’s hired to eulogize.

I’m also working on the sequel to Hidden Rooms, which kicks off with human remains being found in a farm field that Riley’s family used to own.

Words of Wisdom for Aspiring Writers:

There’s a popular quote from Ira Glass about how when writers and artists first start creating, there’s a gap between their taste and what they desperately want to create versus their abilities. I know I put all kinds of work into my early drafts and then realized it still wasn’t what I wanted it to be. My advice is not to get discouraged at this point. Keep learning the craft, read others whose writing you admire, and keep revising and writing.

Writing good fiction is not an innate ability. It’s something that takes practice, so keep going until you’ve told the story you meant to tell.

Author Pet Corner!

I love any opportunity to talk about my pets!

My husband and I have two rescues, a cat named Zelda and a black lab mix named Maizy. We love them both, but Maizy is such a character that I had to include a fictionalized version of her in my book. We adopted her from the local animal shelter when she was a year old. She had lived as a stray before that and was practically feral. On top of that, she had more energy than any dog I’d ever seen.

Even though she was a hard-headed handful who destroyed everything in sight, she was also incredibly fun and loving. In Hidden Rooms, Riley has a black lab mix named Bruno. He’s a bit calmer than his real-life counterpart, but shares some of her quirks—including being quite the accomplished digger.

Kate Michaelson, debut author of Hidden Rooms

Kate Michaelson’s debut novel, Hidden Rooms, won the 2022 Hugh Holton Award for best unpublished mystery by a Midwest writer and will be released by CamCat Books on April 30, 2024. She holds an MFA in poetry and a PhD in Educational Psychology, and her articles, short stories, and poems have appeared in academic and literary journals. 

As a curriculum developer and technical writer, she has created educational content on everything from media literacy to cybersecurity awareness. In her free time, she loves doing anything that takes her outdoors and away from her laptop.

She is active in Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers Debut Authors Program, and organizations that support those with disabilities and chronic illness. She lives in Toledo, Ohio with her husband, a dog, and a cat that runs the show.

Learn more about Kate by following her on social media: Website, Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook, and BookBub.

Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell

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