Episode 4: Krista Davis

Destination Mystery

I am thrilled that my first interview with a cozy author is with the New York Times Bestselling Krista Davis. She has two delightful cozy series, the Domestic Diva mystery series and the Paws & Claws mysteries, set in pet-friendly Wagtail, Virginia. I'll be giving away a copy of her most-recent Domestic Diva novel, The Diva Steals a Chocolate Kiss, as part of my April giveaway, along with books by Lisa Klink (signed by the author!) and Steph Cha, and a $10 Amazon gift certificate. To enter, just sign up in the box on the right. Her 10th Domestic Diva mystery, The Diva Serves High Tea, will be published on June 7th. We chat about cozies - including the conversation around #SaveOurCozies, where readers are banding together to convince publishers that cozy mysteries are worth supporting. For a little more on what's going on, you can check out posts on these sites: The Cozy Mystery List Blog The Book's The Thing Any others I should link to? E-mail me at [e-mail] If you'd rather read than listen, below is the transcript of our chat. Enjoy! Welcome to Destination Mystery, a podcast for readers who love a good mystery. I'm Laura Brennan. Krista Davis writes what she knows. Like her protagonist, Sophie Winston, Krista had a gregarious Ocicat named Mochie; lived for a time in Old Town, Alexandria; and loves to entertain family and friends. Her Domestic Diva mystery series is a three-time Agatha Award nominee, and both of her series were on the New York Times Bestseller list, with Murder, She Barked, the first in her Paws & Claws mystery series, hitting the top ten. Her cozies include recipes, tips for gracious living, great characters and tremendous heart. I don’t know how she does it all. Laura Brennan: Krista, thank you for joining me. Krista Davis: Thank you so much for having me, Laura. LB: Have you always wanted to be a writer? KD: You know, I think I have. I went through periods when I did other things in life, but I go way way way back to grade school when I wanted to write and to read. And I even remember sitting in the window of my very boring house on a very boring street and thinking that books could just take you anywhere in the world and even to outer space. They could really introduce you to people that you would never meet otherwise. And I just thought they were marvelous. LB: Tell me how the Domestic Diva -- that was your first series -- tell me how the Domestic Diva mystery series started. KD: My agent suggested that I write a proposal for a different series. And when the editors were looking at that, they came back and asked, would this appeal to readers of Real Simple? Well, I had no idea what Real Simple was. So I hopped in the car right away and went to the CVS, and it was actually in the drugstore, looking at the magazine that the diva concept came to me. Real Simple in my mind is sort of the anti-Martha. It's for people who want the lifestyle, and the nice food and the nice home and all the things that Martha Stewart is about, but just not so complicated. So I was just standing there and I thought, oh, gosh, there could be two Domestic Divas, one who does things simply and the other one who just has these just incredibly difficult, wonderful things that she does. So the original idea before them was -- everyone thought it was going to go. They were very happy about it, they got good reads on it and at an editorial meeting it just was killed in like two seconds. So, I think that the editors felt kind of bad about that, because they really thought it was going to be purchased. So they came back again to my agent and said, send us three ideas and we’ll tell you which one we’re interested in looking at. Which almost never happens, but they did it. Which shows that you never know what could happen. And the one that they chose was the one that I was calling the Dueling Divas. I got the call nine years ago yesterday.