By Kathy L. Brown
I’m delighted to share that a supernatural Yuletide follow-up to The Big Cinch is headed our way in time for the winter holiday season. In book two of the Sean Joye Investigations series, The Talking Cure, a haunted woman claws her way back to reality by reconnecting with her magical powers.
What is The Talking Cure?
Committed to an insane asylum, Violet Humphrey is isolated on the Illinois prairie with only her own thoughts and a persistent new voice in her head for company. When she is accused of murder, Violet suspects her road to both freedom and recovery lies through confronting her painful past and solving the crime. Magically summoned, Sean Joye skids through an ice storm to help Violet, but can they catch the killer and defy an eldritch horror before Violet loses her tenuous grasp on reality?
“The Talking Cure is a marvelous story—an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery infused with a strong sense of the Weird… and a hearty dose of magic on the side. It’s ideal for all fans of the sinister, the surprising, and the strange.” —Cherie Priest, award-winning author of Boneshaker
How to Mix Up the Genres
As you may have gathered from Cherie Priest’s endorsement, this book can’t be pegged into one genre. While I describe my stories “supernatural noir,” this one introduced a fair amount of eldritch horror and golden-age detective fiction tropes as well.
There was a time when publishers hated cross genre; they didn’t know how to sell it. That is, they didn’t know what its bookstore section should be. But now with electronic search capabilities authors and publishers can tag their offering with all applicable descriptors. It is so much easier for readers to find the perfect combination of their favorite tropes and styles.
I see cross-genre writing everywhere (even literary fiction is getting pretty blatant with speculative elements: 3rd and 4th place on the New York Times Best Seller list this morning are a book about an alchemist and a one about dragon riders.), and us indie and small press types really love to mix up the genres. Not being pigeonholes suites our imaginations quite well.
Brainstorming Genre at Gen Con
The Talking Cure is my response to a challenge to combine unlikely genres. Picture this: It’s August 2018. The Big Cinch is a finished manuscript, and I’m slogging through the agent-finding process and thinking I need to start the next book.
Meanwhile, I go to GenCon for the first time. Of course I attend all the writing workshops I can squeeze in. Bradley P. Beaulieu makes an off-hand remark in his “Brainstorming Your Way to a Breakout Novel” talk, “…or you might try mixing up unlikely genres and see what happens.”
I have my notes from that day. After the talk, I sat in the Indianapolis Marriot’s lobby and made two long lists under the key terms: “Cthulhu” and “Cozy,” followed by what turned out to be the basic elements for “Violet’s Novel.” The big question in the margins, “How cozy? How Cthulhu?”
The cozy aspect is evident in the setting, a favorite mystery trope: a small group of people isolated in a country house at which a murder occurs. Yet while my protagonists Violet and Sean collect evidence to solve the mundane crime, a hidden eldritch agenda becomes evident.
If you would like to sample the new book, read on! As the late December darkness gathers on the prairie, so do the Elsass Institute’s Board of Directors for their annual meeting. Head nurse Carrie has arranged for a few of the more presentable patients, including our protagonist, Violet Humphrey, to attend the welcome party and demonstrate the effectiveness of The Talking Cure.
The room grew darker as the afternoon faded, with just the glow of the hearth and the lights on the Christmas tree. When a fresh contingent of board members lumbered into the parlor, the parrot squawked, and the elderly tree trimmers equally took fright. Dr. Elsass approached the new arrivals, arms outstretched. “Come in, gentlemen. Have a hot drink. There will be ‘something stronger,’ and a fine meal presently.”
Suddenly, a passing shadow blocked the glow from the fireplace, a darkness that smelled of decaying fish, sulfur, and algae bloom. Then Berta, who’d been so calm, sank to her knees, her eyes darting about, and croaked in a wavering voice, “Dagon lives. Mighty Dagon. Dagon. Dagon. Dagon.”
The bird joined in as a chorus, “Dagon, Dagon, Dagon.”
Having no idea to whom or what they referenced, I was struck for a moment with total conviction that Berta, and perhaps the parrot, knew some secret of infinite portent. I utterly believed them, the words a carillon to my ears. I took a deep breath. This wouldn’t do at all. I’m sure it was just what Carrie had been worried about, one of us crazy people acting crazy at the normal-people party.
The Talking Cure will be available from Literary Underworld by mid-December 2025!
KATHY L. BROWN lives in St. Louis, Mo. and writes speculative fiction with a historical twist. Her
hometown and its history inspire her fiction. When she’s not thinking about how haunted everything is, she enjoys hiking, crafts, and cooking for her family. Montag Press published the first novel in her Sean Joye Investigations book series in 2021. Follow her social media platforms: Instagram at kathylbrownwrites, Facebook at kbKathylbrown, and Twitter at KL_Brown. The Storytelling Blog lives at kathylbrown.com. Her novel The Big Cinch is currently available from the Literary Underworld.