1--What is the title of your latest release?
TO CATCH A STORM
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A physicist and a psychic reluctantly team up to solve two missing persons cases during an ice storm in Iowa.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I drove through an ice storm in Iowa once and it was so bad they shut down almost every road in the state. I passed hundreds of car accidents and semi-trucks overturned in ditches. The experience stayed with me for so many years that I realized I had to set a book in that storm.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely, although I’m less sure if they would hang out with me.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
This book has two protagonists, so I’ll cheat (this will become a theme) and answer the question twice.
For Eve, the physicist: style, grit, love.
For Jonah, the psychic: reclusive, haunted, desperate.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learned so much about both physics and psychics, but one story that really struck me was about the Titanic. It was one of the most well-documented cases of mass psychic phenomena. So many people had visions and premonitions about the ship sinking before it set sail on its one and only voyage. One man consulted two psychics who both told him not to buy a ticket, but he did anyway and became a casualty of the disaster. Another woman watched the Titanic sail away from port and screamed to her husband that everyone on board would die. When you look at psychic predictions, they don’t stand up to close scrutiny, but stories like this still make my spine tingle.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
If something better occurs to me in the moment, I’ll revise as I go, but I don’t backtrack to prior scenes until I’ve finished the draft because I don’t want to lose the momentum of the story. I make notes to go back to later and keep writing forward.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I don’t know if it’s a foodie indulgence, but guacamole is the best food ever invented. Like, it’s not even close. Crème Brulé is in second place, but it’s a distant second, basically a participation trophy next to guacamole’s stunning victory over all other food.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
My office is a small room that holds an adjustable height desk, a chair, and a tiny couch. It’s sprinkled with books and trinkets, a few dead plants, a cello I don’t know how to play (but keep telling myself I will learn), and a window that overlooks a birch tree. There’s a quote on my desk right now by John Steinbeck: “An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions.”
10--Who is an author you admire?
I’m in awe of Kelly Barnhill and the way she can marry the fantastic and the mundane to create worlds that feel both limitless and familiar. Her prose is absolutely spellbinding.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES by Sue Monk Kidd changed my life, but not because of the story. I don’t remember that much about the book itself. Reading it, though, was the first time I had an absolutely clear sense of what the author was doing, how she constructed and executed the narrative. It was like discovering the recipe for your favorite meal and feeling, for the first time, like you might be able to cook it yourself. That book gave me a glimpse behind the curtain and started me on my own path to becoming an author.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
The moment I remember clearest is when I first got my agent. I received her offer of representation right before Thanksgiving weekend, when I was going to be hosting the holiday for the first time. I didn’t have time to sit and process the fact that I was now an agented author—there was too much to do—but I remember vacuuming my house while tears ran down my face. I was so overcome that I had reached this monumental step and knew my life as a writer would never be the same.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
My favorite books cross genres and pull out the best of each type of narrative. Cheating again, I know! But give me a speculative crime novel or an alternate history romance-noir, and I’m 100% on board. I love exploring the liminal spaces between the tropes.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
That’s a hard one so I’m going to—you guessed it—cheat.
Best thriller: THE FUGITIVE
Best documentary: BLACKFISH
Best melodrama: NOW, VOYAGER
Best family drama: HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Best masterclass in filmmaking: BARBIE
15--What is your favorite season?
Fall, hands down. It’s got the best holiday—Halloween—the best color palette, and the best clothes. It’s darker and cooler than summer, so you can stop feeling guilty for staying inside and reading.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
For the past few years, my brother and I have held Hot Ones competitions around my birthday. If you haven’t seen the YouTube show, you basically eat progressively spicier hot sauces until you question all your life choices and want to rip your tongue out. It’s fun.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I can’t recommend the novel PROPHET by Sin Blaché and Helen Macdonald highly enough. A wildly entertaining speculative noir adventure with a giant beating heart at the center of the story. If you’re tired of <insert genre here>, read PROPHET and you’ll remember exactly why you fell in love with books.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
You’re thinking Mexican, right? Because of my favorite food? But I’m throwing in a twist to say Japanese. Ramen, bento, robata, sushi—there’s so much precision, beauty, and thoughtfulness in Japanese cuisine. It always feels like more than just a meal.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
Read, walk, travel, and explore. Or sometimes just lie on the couch with a cat.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
TO CATCH A STORM is the first in a series, and book two will be hitting shelves tentatively next August.
In this brand new series from national bestseller Mindy Mejia, a physicist and a psychic reluctantly team up to solve two missing persons cases during an ice storm in Iowa.
When her husband’s car is found abandoned and on fire—in the middle of a rainstorm—Eve Roth becomes the police's number one suspect. After all, her husband was suspended from the University of Iowa for inappropriate conduct with a student, and who else but an atmospheric physicist could incinerate a car in a downpour? But Eve has no idea why her husband disappeared. She's desperate to find him, both for herself and her beloved, disabled father-in-law.
Jonah Kendrick appears on their doorstep with a theory. He’s seen Eve’s husband, bound and bleeding in a barn. Claiming to be a psychic detective who dreams of the lost, Jonah has helped find missing people his entire life. He dreamed about a young woman trapped in the same barn months ago, and she’s still missing.
As a firm believer in the laws of nature, Eve rejects anything to do with psychics, but their investigations soon collide. As the temperature drops and Iowa turns to ice, Eve and Jonah race across the state to discover what happened to the people they’ve lost. But the truth is more deadly either of them expected, and the physicist and the psychic must learn to believe in each other if they want to escape this storm alive.
Small Town | Thriller [Atlantic Monthly Press, On Sale: August 1, 2023, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780802162007 / eISBN: 9780802162014]
Mindy Mejia is a CPA and a graduate of the Hamline University MFA program. Her debut novel, The Dragon Keeper, was published by Ashland Creek Press in 2012. She lives in the Twin Cities with her family, and is the author of Strike Me Down, Everything You Want Me to Be, and Leave No Trace.
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