Guest Blog by Author SHIRLEY ROUSSEAU MURPHY! [ Edited ]

[becke_davis]

Today's guest blog was written by an author a lot of you are familiar with, especially those of you who like cats. Her name is SHIRLEY ROUSSEAU MURPHY and she writes the long-running and best selling JOE GREY series.

Read on!

Shirley's website is here: http://www.joegrey.com/

Her Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/shirley.rousseau.murphy?ref=ts

You can also read more about Shirley at the HarperCollins website here.

Read more about Shirley and her cats here: http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/joegrey/cats.htm

[becke_davis]

Cat Coming Home (Joe Grey Series #16)  

Thanksgiving has come and gone, folks! No comment about the amount of turkey we cats put away, along with all the fixings, goodies that I’m sorry to say your ordinary housecat doesn’t dare indulge in without some bad consequences. We hope our four-footed friends enjoyed some other delectable treats, all safe and vet approved. Christmas will be here soon, and we wish you all the happiness of this solemn and joyous season, complete with all the best for your coming New Year. If the downturn has given you a boot in the tail, we wish for you and yours a quick recovery, a sharp and sudden brightening of life in what we hope will be a brighter New Year.

We cats and Murphy had an early Christmas present this year, folks! At the national Cat Writers Association conference at White Plains, New York, Cat Coming Homewon two top awards! That’s two, count them on your paws: CWA’s best novel of the year award, and the World’s Best Cat Litter-ary Award, sponsored by World’s Best Cat Litter. You may smile at a literary award from a litter company, but believe me, those folks make litter that’s welcome to the paws, easy on the nose, and an elegant addition to any cat’s private retreat. We thank all the folks there who made the award possible. We thank our friends at CWA, and most of all we thank that astute judge for such discerning taste.

As you know, Cat Telling Tales is now on the shelves, and so is the paperback of Cat Coming Home, both with eye-catching covers, both in time for Christmas. The aftermath of Cat Telling Tales has left us cats watching sharply for more abandoned strays in our village, though our human friends have found shelters for a great number of hungry and sick cats. Even here in Molena Point, the economic downturn saw many families abandon their homes when they couldn’t make the payments. People so desperate--and maybe so uncaring--that they packed up, hauled out, and left their little cats behind to starve or to find some stranger to care for them. It might surprise you, folks, that a lot of cats are so dependent on people that they’ve never learned how to hunt, how to survive on their own.

But our human friends dealt with that problem, rounding up strays, supplying food and a warm place to sleep and finding new homes for them. In fact, they’re still at it, their effort has become a village-wide project.

But beyond the economic crisis, and the kindness of our friends, the village saw a rash of swindles and murder early this year, brought on by the same financial stress, and we cats were right in the middle, including the foulest kind of murder. And then, to add to all that, here came a sudden drop in our usually mild weather, a February whiteout that amazed the whole village and occurred right at the moment of a grisly murder investigation--and right in the middle of a spectacular life change for our Kit, too, a surprise that has brought new dimension into our tortoiceshell’s already giddy young life, and one we hope will be everlasting.

You’ll find an article by Murphy in the new Mystery Readers Journal, in their fall issue: Animal Mysteries. (Their website is www.mysteryreaders.org.) Murphy talks a bit about writing, and of course she talks about Cat Telling Tales and about us cats and our adventures. Though I have to say she goes to great lengths to make readers believe that we speaking cats are only fiction, that we were born of myth, as she puts it. Well, but she does that only to protect our real existence, and we appreciate that. Of course you and our close Molena Point friends know the real truth of the matter.

Also. Murphy will have a guest blog up soon at Barnes & Noble's Book Club, in which she talks about us, about our lives off-screen, as it were, and a bit about how Murphy begins to shape a story. Murphy has, I must say, some intriguing comments about our unpredictable Kit, in her own off-screen moments.

Happy Christmas, folks! Happy Hanukkah, and let’s all pray together for a great and buoyant upswing from the grim turn that some of our lives have recently taken. 

Your pals, always,
Joe Grey and Dulcie and Kit, and our fellow felines-in-crime.

PS: A little holdover note from our last message: Besides our own adventures, published in ebook editions by HarperCollins, Murphy has two earlier fantasy series available as ebooks now:

• The Dragonbards trilogy: Nightpool, The Ivory Lyre, and The Dragonbards.
  
  
• A quintet in two new volumes: The Shattered Stone and The Runestone of Eresu.

And she also has brought out an ebook edition of a realistic teen novel, Unsettled, originally titled Poor Jenny Bright as a Penny. All these are published under the imprint Ad Stellae Books. 

[becke_davis]

About the Author

Shirley Rousseau Murphy grew up in southern California, riding and showing the horses her father trained. She attended the San Francisco Art institute. Shortly after graduation, she married and worked as an interior designer while her husband attended USC. "When Pat finished school, I promptly quit my job and began to exhibit paintings and welded metal sculpture in the West Coast juried shows," Murphy explains. Her work could be seen in many traveling shows in the western States and Mexico. She continues, "But when we moved to Panama for a four-year tour, in Pat's position with the U.S. Courts, I put away the paints and welding torches, and began to write." 

She has published sixteen children's books, a young adult fantasy quintet, the Dragonbards fantasy trilogy, and The Catswold Portal. "It was while working on this adult fantasy that I knew I wanted to explore further the fascinating world of sentient cats. I began to see the gray tomcat, whom I knew well in real life, as a feline detective with a brash attitude—and the die was cast. I launched into the Joe Grey mystery series. I like discovering anew with each book how the three cats... 

[becke_davis]

Cat Telling Tales (Joe Grey Series #17) 

Cat Coming Home (Joe Grey Series #16) 

Cat Striking Back (Joe Grey Series #15) 

Cat Playing Cupid (Joe Grey Series #14) 

Cat Deck the Halls (Joe Grey Series #13) 

Cat Pay the Devil (Joe Grey Series #12) 

Cat Breaking Free (Joe Grey Series #11) 

Cat Cross Their Graves (Joe Grey Series #10) 

Cat Fear No Evil (Joe Grey Series #9) 

Cat Seeing Double (Joe Grey Series #8) 

Cat Laughing Last (Joe Grey Series #7) 

Cat Spitting Mad (Joe Grey Series #6) 

Cat to the Dogs (Joe Grey Series #5) 

Cat in the Dark (Joe Grey Series #4) 

Cat Raise the Dead (Joe Grey Series #3) 

Cat under Fire (Joe Grey Series #2) 

Cat on the Edge (Joe Grey Series #1) 

The Catswold Portal 

Motherhood Is Murder 

Christmas Cats 

Wind Child The Ivory Lyre (Dragonbards Series #2) The Dragonbards (Dragonbards Series #3) Nightpool (Dragonbards Series #1) The Joining of the Stone (Children of Ynell Series #5) Caves of Fire and Ice (Children of Ynell Series #4) The Castle of Hape (Children of Ynell Series #3) The Wolf Bell (Children of Ynell Series #2) The Ring of Fire (Children of Ynell Series #1) The Song of the Christmas Mouse Medallion of the Black Hound Mrs. Tortino's Return to the Sun Tattie's River Journey Poor Jenny, Bright As a Penny The Sand Ponies White Ghost Summer Valentine for a Dragon White Ghost Summer Silver Woven in My Hair Soonie and the Dragon The Flight of the Fox The Grass Tower Carlos Charles Mystery Atlanta Style                                             

[becke_davis]

Cat on the Money  

**Cat on the Money is a novella available only in ebook form. The first 8 chapters were originally published as a serial in CatsMagazine, which was discontinued before it was complete. The entire story will remain here at this site; just click on the title. It can bedownloaded as a single printable PDF file, in addition being read online chapter by chapter.

All of the Joe Grey books, plus The Catswold Portal, are in print. If you can't find them, any bookstore can order them for you--just ask! Independent bookstores in particular are happy to provide this service for their customers.

You can see the jackets and descriptions of all the Joe Grey books in reverse order of publication, with the newest first, by clicking on "Cat Mysteries" in the navigation bar on Shirley's website (link in the first comment box).

If you have a question about the stories or about Shirley Rousseau Murphy, be sure to look at the FAQ Page to see if it's answered! Click on "Author FAQ" below.

Shirley Rousseau Murphy is not online, but if you send e-mail to her at murphy@joegrey.com it will be promptly forwarded via fax modem, as will the comments in the Guest Book.

[becke_davis]

The Joe Grey books have won ten Muse Medallion awards!

For best cat novel of the year from the national Cat Writers' Association, presented at their annual conferences.

Cat Under Fire Cat Raise the Dead Cat in the Dark Cat Spitting Mad Cat Laughing Last

Cat Seeing Double Cat Cross Their Graves Cat Playing Cupid Cat Striking Back Cat Coming Home

[becke_davis]

Cat Telling Tales (Joe Grey Series #17)  

Overview

“Joe Grey and Dulcie aren’t your ordinary feline detectives. Murphy’s raised the stakes of the feline sleuth genre.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“These Joe Grey mysteries will stay popular for many years to come.”
—Tampa Tribune

Mystery fans and cat lovers alike rejoice. The infallible feline sleuthing team of Joe Grey, Dulcie, and Kit return in Cat Telling Tales—author Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s seventeenth ingenious whodunit that once again gives readers a cat’s eye view of crime, murder, and mayhem. Already honored with nine Cat Writers’ Association Muse Medallions for her series, Murphy takes us back to Molina Point, California in Cat Telling Tales, as a suspicious fire, a tragic death, and a rash of unanticipated houseguests, both human and feline, inflame the investigative curiosity of our furry detective trio. If you’re already a fan of Lilian Jackson Braun, Rita Mae Brown, and Carole Nelson Douglas, you’ll find Shirley Rousseau Murphy’'s Tales purr-fectly wonderful!

[becke_davis]

Excerpt from Cat Telling Tales

Dulcie dreamed of medieval villages, but Joe dreamed of Debbie Kraft, her invasion bolder than any hungry coyote and then his dreams turned darker still, caught again in storm, and rage, and a strange prophetic fear. When he woke, the bright day was gone.

           The clouds were nearly as dark as his nightmare, heavy clouds hanging low above them, hurrying night along. They yawned and stretched, and smelled rain on the wind, and the wind itself had grown colder. Weather in Molena Point, which was notional any time of year, could never be trusted in early spring. One moment the sidewalks and rooftops burning hot, an hour later the streets and rooftops soaked with rain. Ever since Christmas the weather had swung from heavy storm, to idyllic spring, to days as humid as summer, only a cat could tell ahead of time what the day would bring, and this time of year even a cat might be uncertain.

           The coyotes were silent now, the cats listened and sniffed the breeze and when they detected no scent of the beasts nearby they backed down the rough oak trunk and headed home, thinking eagerly of supper.

#

           But below them in the village, high on the rooftops, tortoiseshell Kit and Misto barely noticed the weather or cared that rain was imminent, they were deep into another time, another place, as the old yellow tom shared his ancient tales. The tide was out, the iodine smell of the sea mixed with the scent of pine and cypress trees that sheltered the little shops. As Misto ended a tale of knights and fiery dragons, as if in concert with his words, the last rays of the setting sun blazed red beneath the dark clouds. And when they looked down, from the roof of Mandarin’s Bakery, a thin stray cat, a white female, slipped along the sidewalk and into the alley where they knew a baited trap waited, redolent with the smell of canned turkey. Maybe tonight she’d spring the trap and end her wandering.

           Neither Kit nor Misto moved to stop her, to scramble down and haze her away from the waiting trigger that would snap the mesh door closed and shut her inside. This stray was starving on the streets and too fearful to approach strange houses for food, she was a dumped cat, an abandoned household pet with no real notion how to hunt for her living. Her instincts to chase and catch were still kittenish, without focus, without the skills wrought by training, charming maybe, but unproductive.

           It hurt Kit that so many unwanted pets roamed the village, animals often sick, thrown away by their human families. Coddled from kittenhood in warm houses, then suddenly evicted, they had little chance to survive on their own, no notion how to snatch gophers from the village gardens or snag unwary birds on the wing. Many still lingered hopefully near the very homes from which they’d been evicted, houses standing empty now. Families without jobs, moved away suddenly, leaving the village to search for cheaper rent, cheaper food, for the possibility of work somewhere else. Families who dragged away their grieving children and left behind the little family cat, to make it on her own.

           Only the boldest cats would yowl stridently at a strange cottage door demanding to share someone’s supper, only the most appealing cats were taken in and given homes, while the shy and frightened and ugly were chased away again into the cold night.

             Some of the strays didn’t even belong to this village, they had been dropped from dusty cars stopping along the highway, the drivers tossing them out like trash and then speeding away among the heavy traffic, leaving a little cat crouched and shivering on the windy roadside. All across the state, more animals were abandoned as more houses were repossessed, or leases broken. With taxes rising, fewer customers and fewer jobs, many stores had closed in the village, their windows revealing echoing interiors furnished only with a few empty boxes left in a dusty corner. Ever since Christmas Kit and Misto, and Joe and Dulcie had watched their human friends trap the strays and settle them in volunteer shelters; sometimes one of them would entice a stray into a trap, a strange occupation, helping capture others of their kind—or, almost of their kind. There were no other cats in the village like these four.

            No other cat who carried on conversations with a few favored humans, who read the local Gazette but shunned the big city papers, who hung around Molena Point PD with an interest as keen as any cop, but an interest that no cop would believe.

            Misto was the newcomer among them, the old cat had shown up in the village just before Christmas, a vagabond who had once been a strapping brawler but was now shrunken with age, his yellow fur slack over heavy bones, his big paws worn and cracked, his yellow tail patchy and thin. But he was a wise old cat, and kind, and, Kit soon discovered, a cat who told wonderful stories. Now, as they watched the white cat below, she gave him a shy look. “Tell about the cats from nowhere. Could some of these strays in the village, that seem to come from nowhere, be the same as in that tale?”

            The old tom laughed. “These are only strays, Kit. Pitiful, lonely, scared, but not magic. Magic is for stories, just for make believe.”

           Kit nipped his shoulder. “We’re as different as the cats in the stories! And we’re not make believe. Do my teeth feel like make believe?”

             Misto swatted at her good naturedly, and licked at his shoulder. “We’re not magical, we’re just different. If those poor strays had any magic, do you think they’d be wandering hungry and lost? They’d have made something better happen for themselves.”

           “I guess.” Kit cut her eyes at him. “Tell it again anyway,” she wheedled. Above them the heavy clouds had dropped lower still, and a mist of rain began to dampen the shingles and glisten on their fur. The story Misto told came from France, he had heard it among the docks on the Eureka coast, listening to the yarns of fishermen and sailing men while pretending to nap among the coiled lines and stacks of crab traps.

[becke_davis]

Guest Blog by Shirley Rousseau Murphy,

author of the Joe Grey Mystery series

A six-month-old gray tomcat, a stray in my neighborhood, began the Joe Grey mysteries. He was a thin, forlorn young fellow of high intelligence and singular determination. Neglected by our neighbors, who preferred dogs to the staving kitten their daughter had brought home, he was fed on the floor of their garage where the big dogs ate all his food. The young cat soon found our calico’s cat door and her ever-full kibble dish, and we became acquainted—though our calico didn’t think much of the visitor. We called him Joe. The neighbors were thrilled to be rid of him. Joe thrived. Honing his already high disdain for most of humankind, and polishing his skills of cunning in getting his way, he set about laying the groundwork in my thoughts for the mystery series to come—for his starring role as Joe Grey, P.I.

When we adopted Joe, expecting him to be part of the family, our calico, Mousse, didn’t have any place in her little cat soul for sharing food or shelter with the pushy young tom, and she didn’t plan to change her mind. As much as we wanted to keep him, we began to look for another home. Joe came to us not only starving, but with a broken and infected tail which demanded a quick trip to the vet, amputation, and a short period of recovery. Photographs of the jaunty young cat with the newly docked tail charmed a friend of ours several states away, and when my husband flew up to DC on business, Joe went too, in cargo, hiding under his blanket in the cage. I missed him at once. Mousse didn’t. She was ecstatic, and life was good.

In DC, Joe settled in happily with Roger and his golden retriever, Newton; the two animals, perhaps even then, exchanging looks of mischief. The first day they were left alone, Joe knocked a full box of donuts off the top of the refrigerator, and he and Newtonshared them, greeting their humans that night with crumbs in their fur. The next night, it was bagels. Again, equal and greedy enjoyment. Dog and cat were bonded. Joe and Newtonjoined forces in a relationship that soon included four more goldens, and that entertained the growing family for many years more. All this happened long before the Joe Grey series began. Roger and golden Newton, and Joe himself, were all gone when the first book in the series, Cat on the Edge was published, and I was sorry for that.

In Cat on the Edge, Joe is simply your ordinary housecat, out for an evening stroll in a picturesque village alley, when a life-shattering event shocks him clear down to his paws. His hidden persona is suddenly awakened by human violence as he sees one man murder another with a shiny crescent wrench. Wham, the blow to the head resounds. The body falls. The killer smiles. But the effect on the gray tomcat is deep, and it is lasting: He knows he must call the cops. Suddenly he knows that he can call the cops. He knows that he can speak, and knows that he can use the phone, once he’s figured out how to dial 911, and once he’s mustered the courage to talk into the damn thing. But most of all, he wants to nail the killer. He’s mad and he’s thinking like a human, and the shock is devastating. The direction of his life has changed forever. And, more alarming still, not only has the amazing inner cat surfaced, exposing hidden and complicated talents, but he’s thinking like a cop!

Thinking with the sharp, watchful, all-seeing keenness of a dedicated detective.

That book was well received, as were the next two, and the series was launched. The idea for each adventure begins with a montage of unrelated scenes, pictures bright in my thoughts like disparate parts of a puzzle that only slowly come together to make a whole, small world. Before I ever began to write stories I was an exhibiting artist, a painter and sculptor, so by habit I have to see what’s happening before any story can begin to form.

In Cat Under Fire, I imagined flames licking up among in the green hills of the small coastal village, and then soon I saw the blaze engulf an artist’s studio; I could see the easel, the racks of paintings within. I saw the painter herself sprawled, unmoving in the licking flames.

One view connected to another until soon the plot began to take shape, I saw the household of a cranky neighbor where Dulcie plays needful kitty in order to move in and spy on the family. Often, it’s only near the end that the several threads of the story wrap themselves neatly together and I can see the conclusion. I always feel by then that somewhere beyond my ken the story existed all along, that I was only shaping into words the reality of what already existed.

In Cat Raise the Dead, the first pictures were the overgrown graves themselves within the shadowed woods, each grave concealing more than the body whose name was on the marker. Then I saw the old Spanish mansion and, within, an actress’s makeup table holding a tangle of jars and brushes, wigs and false eyelashes, and a bowl full of eyeballs that sharply startle the cat who finds them.

In Cat to the Dogs, the dogs themselves led me into the story, a pair of huge stray Dane pups with starving, bony bodies and riotous ways, their big clumsy paws overturning and crushing everything in their path. They, and a car out of control going over the nighttime cliff on the narrow coastal highway, are the beginning: Joe Grey sees the wreck while hunting in the night. He has a look at the driver, who is unquestionably dead. He discovers the cause of the wreck and he rescues the dogs, leading them home with him down the night dark highway, to be dealt with by his housemate. Humans are so much better at applying flea meds and opening cans.

Each succeeding book begins with bits of scenes and with singular characters showing me the way. Most recently, in Cat Telling Tales, I found myself in the middle of a nightmare, a dark dream with slewing rain and a battle between mother and daughter that precedes the death of one. The nightmare forces itself into the tomcat’s personal world, forcing Joe to deal with that inexplicable scene until he knows why he dreamed it. And then, into my view comes a thin young woman, conniving and grasping, and I hear her whining voice; she is someone I knew long ago and learned to avoid, a woman I never wanted to deal with. But she is no match for Joe Grey. The tomcat handles her far more skillfully than I ever did. What a pleasure for the author to watch his strong protagonist manipulate the bad guys better than the writer might ever do, what a satisfaction to watch the gray tomcat’s bold and wily authority.

Joe Grey is as real for me as was the original Joe. Just as tortoiseshell Kit is as real as her ever-loved counterpart, my own ELT, who also is gone now. When Kit first appeared in the series, she, too, was just a young thing, wandering with a wild clowder of feral cats across the green hills. Entering in Cat to the Dogs, attacking one of the huge stray pups, she brings with her much of the lore and background of the speaking cats. She brings a wonder to the stories that is all her own, which is the very essence of our little ELT. When half grown she used to chase big Canadian geese into the lake where we lived, charging after them until she stood up to her belly in mud, watching them flap away over the water. Then she would turn and wade back to the shore and home, coming in her cat door to leave a river of muddy water across the floor and smiling up at us with such deep and amused satisfaction that she seemed, even then, the very soul of what the speaking cats are and what they were mean to be.

And that is the pleasure of writing the series, that discovery and immersion in moments of wonder, that reaching out to touch a special kind of magic, that balance between Joe’s cop-wise, hard-headed reality, and Kit’s longing for the myths that their kind was born to. Perhaps that balance is a writer’s bit of enchantment, a self-made dream, in a world that is hard and sometimes ugly.

[maxcat]

Hi, Shirley, I loved your blog! I've read a lot of your Joe Grey books and have loved every one. Thanks for the blog and I too love cats. I have 3 cats, one which is a rescue kitten found at 5 weeks old.

[eadieburke]

Welcome Shirley:

I enjoyed your blog very much. I haven't read any of your books but I do have CAT ON THE EDGE in my to-be-read pile. My daughter just graduated from vet school and is working in Salisbury MD. I am taking care of her 3 cats which she rescued. Mulch Box (Mulchy) and Mr. Zerbra (Zebe) are about 20 lbs.+ each and are brothers, Blackberry (Blackie) is a smaller cat who was left out in the rain as a kitten and she nursed him back to good health. We have also adopted Abbey, a pit-bull/dashound mix who was her first spay job while attending University of PA vet school.

I hope you enjoy your visit with us.

[becke_davis]

Those of you who are regulars here know that when I post a guest blog, the authors may or may not stop in to respond to questions and comments.

Shirley is able to view this thread, but commenting here can be glitchy. She asked if I would make a note that she will be happy to answer any questions or respond to comments through her website, www.joegrey.com

Thanks! 

[maxcat]

Eadie, I'm from Philadelphia and back when I was a kid, there were no vets to go to. We had an outside alley cat that bacame sick one night and we took a taxi to the U of P vet school and they nursed him back to health. He had a urinary blockage. But it is amazing as I got to see horses that were there being cared for. That's the first time I saw a horse in the flesh! I'm so glad your daughter is a vet. We need more of them in the world.

[eadieburke]

---

maxcat wrote:

Eadie, I'm from Philadelphia and back when I was a kid, there were no vets to go to. We had an outside alley cat that bacame sick one night and we took a taxi to the U of P vet school and they nursed him back to health. He had a urinary blockage. But it is amazing as I got to see horses that were there being cared for. That's the first time I saw a horse in the flesh! I'm so glad your daughter is a vet. We need more of them in the world.

---

They have a very old classroom where they used to bring the horses and cattle into the building. My daughter took us on a tour and it definitely was an neat experience to see. I also saw a horse cadaver hanging on hooks in another classroom. Now they have the New Bolton Center near Kennet Square where the large animals are kept.

Here's some neat info:

New Bolton Center received nationwide media attention when Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro underwent surgery at the Widener Hospital for multiple fractures to one of his ankles, suffered while running in the Preakness Stakes on May 20, 2006. Dr. Dean W. Richardson performed the surgery on Barbaro. Despite the long recovery, Barbaro took a turn for the worse in January 2007 and was euthanized on the 29th of that month.

 

Dr. Dean W. Richardson was also one of my daughter's teachers. 

[dulcinea3]

Hi, Shirley! I hope you can read these messages. Thanks for your great blog, with the info on the real-life cats behind your characters, and your creative process! I read Cat Fear No Evil earlier this year, and found the premise to be enchanting and very imaginative. Cats who can talk, a woman who turns into a cat, and the murky ideas of the otherworld, all very interesting! I love the way the cats phone the police with their anonymous tips. Kit's story in this one, when her family are lost just before they are going to move to the village permanently and she will finally have a real home, was hearbreaking. But I knew it had to have a happy ending, and it brought tears to my eyes when it did. Thanks again for contributing to our board!