Kathleen Y’Barbo Interview

Q: Let me start with asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself.
A. I’m a tenth generation Texan, a proud Air Force wife, mom to four and bonus mom to seven more, and Mimi to just under a dozen small, medium and teenaged humans who live in three different parts of the world.

Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
A. As soon as I figured out this whole reading thing, I wrote. So maybe by the age of four or five? Before I was old enough to go to school, I sounded out words from my Granny’s Encyclopedia Britannica while sitting on the floor in front of her bookshelf. That love of words quickly turned to writing them down which then became stories and, much later, books.

Q: Could you give us the highlights of your professional writing career including how you got your first writing break?
A. I got my first writing break when DiAnn Mills invited me to join a group of stellar authors, all published, who were putting together a novella collection for Barbour Publishing. All she needed was a paragraph, so I put one together and sent it back to her that same day. Two weeks later, Rebecca Germany emailed to say a contract was on the way. Basically I had written eight full manuscripts over a period of four years only to get published on one paragraph that I wrote in an afternoon. Twenty-one years later, I am still writing books for Becky Germany and Barbour Publishing. Somehow Becky hasn’t aged a bit. Me, however…?!

Q: Would you tell us about your current book release THE BLACK MIDNIGHT?
A: Although I have always used actual history and real historical figures in my historical romances, The Black Midnight is my first foray into true crime fiction. Here’s a summary of the story:

Three years before Jack the Ripper began his murderous spree on the streets of London, women were dying in their beds in similar circumstances as The Midnight Assassin terrorized the citizens of Austin, Texas. Now, with suspicion falling on Her Majesty’s family and Scotland Yard at a loss as to who the Ripper might be, Queen Victoria summons her great-granddaughter, Alice Anne von Wettin, a former Pinkerton agent who worked the unsolved Austin case, and orders her to discreetly form a team to look into the London matter.

The prospect of a second chance to work with Annie just might entice Isaiah Joplin out of his comfortable life as an Austin lawyer. If his theories are right, they’ll find the The Midnight Assassin and, by default, the Ripper. If they’re wrong, he and Annie are in a bigger mess than the one the feisty female left behind when she departed Austin under cover of darkness three years ago.

Can the unlikely pair find the truth of who is behind the murders before they are drawn into the killer’s deadly game? From Texas to London, the story navigates the fine line between truth and fiction as Annie and Isaiah ultimately find the hunters have become the hunted.

Q: Where did you get your inspiration for THE BLACK MIDNIGHT?
A: Many years ago, I read an article about an Austin serial killer from the 1880s in Texas Monthly magazine. Written by Skip Hollandsworth, the article later became a book—The Midnight Assassin—which was fantastic.
I’m a huge fan of true crime books, especially stories with a Texas setting. From there, I started researching the theories surrounding who the killer might be. Then I discovered that some believed the man who killed in Austin in 1884 and 1885 went on to resume his killing spree a few years later in London as Jack the Ripper. Neither killer was ever conclusively named. From that beginning came The Black Midnight.

Q: What inspires you to write?
A. Nowadays I am greatly inspired by book contracts-lol! Seriously though, I get my inspiration from so many places. Someone might say something that resonates, or maybe it comes from a Bible verse I read that morning. Occasionally a reader will actually ask for a story, as in the case of at least one of my books that came out of a request as to what happened to a particular secondary character. Or as in the case of The Black Midnight, it came out of a magazine article I read probably a decade ago that caused me to do more research.
That’s what inspires my plots. As to what inspired me to write in the first place? That would be the sudden loss of my dad in 1993 when he was only 58 years old and I was 35. I walked out of his funeral knowing how very short life is. I promised myself I wouldn’t waste a day of the time I had left. I also promised myself I would someday write that book and drive that red convertible. Considering I had four children ranging in age from 11 down to not yet 3 and had never even met a writer much less thought about how to actually be one, that was a lofty goal. Three years later, I bought a word processor (no laptops in 1996) and a how-to book on writing. Three years after that, I got a book contract. It took a little longer to get that convertible, but in 2008 I drove a brand new red Mini Cooper convertible off the showroom floor (literally!), and the down payment came from book advances. I think my daddy would be proud.

Q: Would you share with us what you are working on now?
A. I just turned in a mystery novel set in Charleston, South Carolina that involves art theft, espionage in the rose community, and a place called Mercy Hospital to my editors at Guideposts Books. The book, titled Where Mercy Begins, is the first in a series and will release in 2021. Now I’m putting the finishing touches on another mystery synopsis that takes place in Savannah, Georgia.

Q: When you’re not writing what do you like to do?
A. My very favorite thing is to spend time with my family. My husband and I love to get in the car and drive or take road trips. They’re the best.
My second favorite thing is to read. Lately my reading is actually listening as I mostly listen to audio books, although I do also read digital books. Basically when I get a book, I buy it in both formats and switch from one to the other depending on whether I’m driving (audio) or tucked into bed beside my sleeping husband (digital on my iPad).