Featured Interview With Kristen Houghton
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was raised in California until I was seven then my family and I moved to NYC. I love California for the weather and laid back lifestyle but find New York City a fascinating place to live for a writer. When not spending time with the made up characters in her head, Kristen enjoys ballet and jazz, spending time with her terrific husband, swimming, diving and trying to live an endless summer.
Kristen is a philanthropist and tireless advocate for BroadwayBarks, North Shore Animal League,a no kill shelter, Shelters With Heart, a safe haven for victims of domestic violence and their pets, BroadwayCares Equity Fights Aids, and St. Jude Thanks and Giving. She is also involved as an empowerment mentor for the International Women’s Health Coalition.
A California girl at heart, she and her husband, Alan reside in the New York City area which is “magical”.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
“I was always a story-teller and that’s what writers do; we tell stories. I was the little girl who could keep her friends interested for a couple of hours by telling all different types of stories. I wrote my first story, “Bobby Jones and the Little Boat” when I was nine. My imagination was, and is, very fertile and active. In high school I created a sort of soap opera and, each day during study hall, I would hand out the next part of the story. I made sure to always leave a cliffhanger of sorts with each new part to stir up anticipation. I love the magic in writing and reading a good story.
I began my dream of writing while still actively teaching Linguistics on the secondary level.
My first book, And Then I’ll Be Happy! was published in 2009. No Woman Diets Alone-There’s Always a Man Behind Her Eating a Doughnut followed in 2011, and Welcome to Hell was released in 2012. She hopes her novels will touch readers with humor and poignancy, suspense and delight.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I read just about everything. My book shelf is eclectic: everything is there from the classics by Shakespeare, Austin and Dickens, to Victorian English dramas such as John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga, up to the classic horror of Stephen King and Anne Rice. I also love The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency series and anything written by Amy Tan especially The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Reading, and writing, is my escape and my pleasure.”
Tell us a little about your latest book?
I wanted to take the ongoing scandal of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, which has been very much in the news over the past few years, coupled with the cold case of a boy gone missing ten years ago to weave a story that would become a thriller with several twists and unexpected turns. I also wanted to create a strong woman private investigator with a wry sense of humor who plays tennis to alleviate the stress in her job.
My character of Cate Harlow is very good at what she does; she’s tough, relentless, and goes by a strong “gut instinct”. At the same time, she is also very human. She’s involved with two men, her ex-husband NYC homicide detective Will Benigni who can’t understand why the two of them can’t get back together, and her current interest, the city’s top-notch, Medical Examiner, Giles Barrett.
Cate’s loyal to her best friend, upper class “lady-of-the evening”, Melissa, gives twenty dollars a week to Bo the homeless man in the hopes that he’ll buy food along with his beer, and allows herself to be slightly mothered by her part-time secretary, the prim and proper Myrtle Goldberg Tuttle. Cate’s compassionate too; she can’t say no to the sad-eyed woman who asks her help in finding her missing brother even though it has been a decade since he has been gone.
This was a work of love and passion for me and the two years it took to create flew by.
Here is an advance review and summary of FOR I HAVE SINNED
“ A masterfully woven story about the horrors of the sex abuse scandals rocking the Roman Catholic Church and the impact on both victims and their families. A missing boy cold case, three murdered priests, and a PI who finds the bizarre connection between the two.” Greg Archer, The Huffington Post
Private investigator Cate Harlow finds herself involved in two cases that seemingly have nothing to do with each other; she soon discovers they may be bizarrely connected. While working the cold case of a boy who went missing ten years ago, she receives an early morning call from her ex-husband, a homicide detective, informing her about a recent murder; the horribly mutilated body of a priest, wearing only a clerical collar has just been found off of Interstate 95 in New York. The murder is eerily similar to a troublesome and unsolved case that Cate worked on less than a year ago. The only difference between the two victims is that the second dead body has a hand-written message in Latin scrawled across the inside of the priestly collar; a message from Dante’s Divine Comedy, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” With the priests’ murders heavily on her mind, Cate’s investigation into the missing boy leads her to the august office of a New Jersey archbishop who, she strongly believes, has been hiding pedophile priests for years by transferring them from one parish to another. When Cate discovers that there may be a solid connection between the priest murders and the missing person cold case, she puts her own life on the line to not only solve her cold case but bring a pedophile to justice.
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