Kit Ehrman

My name is Kit Ehrman, and I'm the author of At Risk--a Steve Cline mystery set on a Maryland horse farm where managing a show barn can be murder. I grew up a mile from the Baltimore City line - - not a likely place for a "horse person" I suppose. I was working for the government and going to college part time when I happened to come across a copy of Dick Francis's In the Frame. Afterwards, I read every one of his mysteries that I could get my hands on, quit the government job, and went to work on a horse farm in Howard County, Maryland. I've been mucking out stalls ever since.

Well, I guess you're wondering where the writing comes in. Well, there's a lot of mental down time when you're mucking out stalls, even for me. I got into the habit of making up stories in my head. Thinking about characters and plot lines and bad guys.

There's lots of time to go through the "What if's?" Like, what if I went to work early one morning and found a bunch of horses gone? Or worse, what if the thieves were still there? What would I do? One thing led to another, and I started putting my ideas on paper. Now my characters seem more like friends, following me around wherever I go and generally making pests of themselves.

Today, I live on a horse farm in Indiana with my family. And even now, it's when I'm mucking stalls or mowing pastures that I find I'm most able to get into the story and think about what's going to happen next. At Risk is my first mystery, published by Poisoned Pen Press.