Presented by Equity Bank
When hometown girl Julie Mulhern turned to fiction, she followed the age-old dictum: Write what you know.
From her school days at Pembroke Hill to her earlier career stints as society editor for The Independent and corporate relations manager for the Kansas City Symphony, Mulhern has had a bird’s eye view of the Kansas City social scene.
When Mulhern added a dollop of 70s vintage glamour, she came up with the winning backdrop to the first of her Country Club Murders novels, The Deep End. Each cozy mystery in the series features Ellison Russell—single mother, artist, and reluctant sleuth—who has seen her fair share of bodies in the pool, the golf course, in her study at home, and her planting of hostas, much to the chagrin of Ellison’s society mother, who thinks this is all too much.
Mulhern has also written a second series, The Poppy Fields Adventures, featuring Poppy Fields, Hollywood IT Girl extraordinaire who jets off to Cabo San Lucas, New Orleans, London, Egypt, and more exotic locales where, yes, there are likewise plenty of murders to help solve.
Mulhern lives a non-murderous life with her husband in Kansas City. She has two grown daughters. When she’s not writing, you might catch her at second-hand bookstores or antique malls scouting for 70s lifestyle magazines with lurid food photos and Day-Glo shots of interior design, which she gleefully posts on social media.
As an observer of the Kansas City “country club” social scene, what are some of your experiences or observations that might have made it into one of your books? And what might you have left out?
There are scenes in my books based on actual occurrences, most recently a mishap involving cherries jubilee and Everclear. Hint: don’t substitute grain alcohol for brandy. Ever.
What does it say about me that I found hilarious a chef’s need to stop, drop, and roll?
Then, there are true stories that are too far-fetched for fiction. My readers would roll their eyes at the Peyton Place shenanigans. At the end of the day, most of the scenes in my books come from my imagination, not real life.
You like to include at least one “laugh-out-loud” moment in your books. For any aspiring novelists out there, what are your keys to writing such a moment?
The keys to writing funny? I happen to adore physical humor. And animals. There are so many possibilities with a Weimaraner who might be the smartest individual in the house. Here’s a scene from Back Stabbers:
The bookcase tilted. And fell. Hard enough to shake the house.
Max, who had as many lives as the cat he was chasing, somehow avoided being turned into a pancake. Thank God.
“Max!” I grabbed his collar.
He looked over his shoulder and grinned as if amused by my futile attempt to stop the madness.
McCallester grabbed his chance for escape. He leapt to a table covered by my palette and tubes of paint.
Unfortunately, he landed on an imperfectly closed tube of Napthol red. Paint squirted across the table and the cat ran through it.
Then the red-pawed cat made a break for the stairs.
With super-canine effort, Max pulled free of my grasp on his collar and ran after him.
They were easy to follow, McCallester left a trail of red acrylic paw prints.
I raced down the stairs with Grace at my heels.
McCallester was nothing but a blur of ginger and a trail of red paint.
Max ran so fast he tripped over his paws, completed a somersault, and never broke stride.
They ran toward Anarchy who stood at the top of the stairs.
“Grab Max,” I called (begged).
Anarchy hurled his body across the top of the stairs.
With cat-like reflexes (imagine that) McCallester changed course. McCallester leapt.
Off the landing.
For a moment, the cat hung in space. Then, he twisted, wrapped a paw around the chandelier, and hung there.
At the top of the stairs, Anarchy, Grace, and I stared in horror. Max grinned like an evil genius whose plot for world domination had just succeeded.
The 1970s—the milieu for The Country Club Murders series—was a divisive time much like the one we’re in now. What makes this period so perfect to showcase your heroine, Ellison Russell?
It’s an era that marked sea changes for women—the opportunity to take out a loan without a man’s co-signature, reliable birth control, the unsuccessful push to pass an Equal Rights Amendment. As the world changes around Ellison, she adapts. And finds bodies. Many of the books explore women’s issues while Ellison searches for a killer.
When did you know you could quit your “day job” and concentrate on writing?
In January of 2018, I had a successful series (five books and counting) and the first book in a second series ready to be published. I crossed my fingers (and my toes) and left my job. I’ve never looked back.