Carole Nelson Douglas

Photo Credit: Sam Douglas

Blogging at Fresh Fiction

Carole Nelson Douglas | Midnight Louie
October 27, 2008
Some folks find black cats and October 31 unlucky, but not me. Halloween was always the most significant holiday on my personal and professional calendar  Read More...

The author of more than 50-novels-mainstream, mystery, fantasy, science fiction and romance/women's fiction, Carole Nelson Douglas was an award-winning journalist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press until moving to Texas in 1984 to write fiction full time. In fact, she "found" Midnight Louie in the classified ads in 1973 and wrote a feature article on the real-life alley cat long before she began writing novels or Louie returned as a feline supersleuth with his own mystery series and newsletter, Midnight Louie's Scratching Post - Intelligencer.

Carole the child loved the Sherlock Holmes stories, but the adult found something missing: strong women. That literary lack drives her multi-genre odyssey: "I began Amberleigh, my first published novel, in college because I was fed up with the wimpy heroines of then-popular Gothics," she says. "Since then, I've merrily reformed the fiction genres, reinventing women as realistic protagonists. Of course, creating true women means creating true men as partners and co-protagonists. I like writing popular and genre fiction because it's so influential; it forms attitudes that shape society." Many Douglas novels have received awards and appeared on various bestseller lists; her mystery short fiction appears in numerous anthologies, including The Year's 25 Best Crime and Mystery Stories, '93, '94, '95, '96, '98, '01, '03 and '05.

Carole and her husband Sam Douglas reside in Texas with four adopted felines, including the shaded-golden Persian, Secret and Amberleigh, a tortie adopted from the neighbor's roof. Their first all-black cat, Midnight Louie, Jr., was acquired by virtue of a squeaky meow from an animal shelter concrete floor during Carole's first Midnight Louie Adopt-a-Cat tour of Texas. Audrey is a calico feral they fed for several months before trapping and spaying her. She's now safe indoors, where she's gradually taming. Carole found Xanadu, a species-confused chow-mix dog, dumped as a four-month-old puppy at a four-way stop sign near an elementary school,who has since found her inner cat .

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