Katherine Dean Mazerov is a former news and features reporter and editor for The Denver Post, including being a member of the team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting. She has been a magazine writer, worked in corporate communications for a Fortune 500 company, and written extensively on trends, market outlook, and emerging technologies for the global energy industry. Summer Club is her debut novel, which follows newspaper reporter-turned stay-at-home mom, Lydia Phillips.
Normally, politics and parent drama, drunken soirees, and sex-capades reign at Lydia Phillips’s swim and tennis club. Now, a strange car following the club manager, a break-in at Lydia’s home, and a shocking discovery on the club grounds have Lydia dusting off her newspaper-reporting skills to unravel the mystery. Then, a body surfaces in the river, and Lydia’s life gets a whole lot more complicated—and dangerous.
Katherine Mazerov stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R and talk about researching and writing the book:
Like Lydia Phillips, I am a career journalist and a big believer in background research and firsthand information. As a reporter and magazine writer, I’ve done thousands of interviews—famous authors, police officers, crime victims and witnesses, scientists and medical experts, politicians (Joe Biden) and actors (Arnold Schwarzenegger). As an editor, I always encouraged reporters to develop sources and go to the scene of a crime or event rather than rely on the computer – or what the spokesperson provided.
Summer Club is my first novel and, coming from the non-fiction world, I never imagined embarking on such an undertaking. The story was inspired by my own experience as a volunteer board member and, later, president of a neighborhood swim and tennis club rife with whining and complaining, power plays, politics, parent drama, drunken soirees and snarkiness. You can’t make this stuff up, I kept telling myself. I’ve got to write a book.
Because I’d “lived” much of the story, I could draw on something that is even better than research—my own knowledge and perspective. I know first-hand how swim meets are run and how people cheat at tennis. I’ve seen helicopter parents and neurotic swim team moms at their worst. I’ve served on numerous volunteer boards and observed how power-hungry members use the organization to further their own agendas. These are the interpersonal dynamics and universal foibles of human nature that emerge when people are thrown together in a situation—from the PTA to the HOA, the workplace, church councils…the list goes on. Many of the personalities and events in Summer Club are amalgams of real people and situations.
While I could use my imagination to vividly enhance scenes and characters, I knew that even works of fiction must describe events in a realistic, accurate way. For example, for the pothead snack bar manager who runs her own marijuana-growing operation, I researched the provisions of the law in a state where recreational marijuana is legal.
But that is only part of the story. In Summer Club, Lydia finds herself using her own investigative reporting and research skills (also something I understand) to unravel a troubling mystery that is casting a shadow on the day-to-day shenanigans at the club. Coming up with that idea was challenging. I researched news stories and famous crime cases about drug rings, shady timeshare frauds and organized crime operations. Nothing was resonating. I couldn’t figure out how to weave those angles into the book.
A friend who had worked for a company connected to a real-estate investment scam provided the perfect solution. Investment scams are quite common and clever, often fooling savvy and well-educated individuals. Furthermore, the scenario would not require taking the reader too much into the weeds or down a rabbit hole of highly technical terms and complicated explanations that would diverge from the overall plot and tone of the book.
After “interviewing” this person extensively about what he knew and what he’d seen, I turned to the Internet, which can provide a well of background material—provided you use reliable, respected and legitimate sources. I found some basic information about how real estate investing works, as well as news stories, affidavits and court documents about real estate investment fraud cases, which I used as the basis to create the dark element of the story. I basically combined what I’d learned about real estate investing with a Ponzi scheme, embellishing it with murder and a colorful cast of unsavory characters.
I’m considering a sequel, which, again, will likely start with what I already know. And then some digging.
You can learn more about Katherine Mazerov via her website and also follow her on Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, and Twitter. Summer Club is currently available via all major booksellers.
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