Kelly Rey | Blame It on the Bears

What do you call a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? Well, I think we all know the answer to that, with apologies to my lawyer friends out there. Most of whom, by the way, have great senses of humor. As long as the joke’s not on them.

The Jamie Winters mysteries are set in a personal injury law firm for a good reason. Those who have ever written or thought of writing anything have heard the adage "Write what you know." I know some oddball attorneys. I worked as a court reporter for a long time, and anyone who watches TV knows court reporters are those funny silent people who type on that funny silent machine and don’t get noticed by anyone except for the occasional angry deponent who tries to bash a lawyer over the head with that machine. True story. (And he kind of had it coming.) That job gave me a front row seat to a lot of drama and heartache and conflict and comedy.

Somewhere along the course of twenty-plus years, I decided I’d heard enough, and that writing about lawyers would be more fun than working with them. Soon after that, Jamie Winters was born into a world populated by some really eccentric people. And I learned I was right.

Writing has always been part of my life, from the time my Grammy started gathering my brothers and me into her bedroom at night after dinner to tell us one of the ghost stories she’d written. She encouraged me to write my epochal second grade opus, A Scary Adventure, which featured a family with two fun-loving kids who seemed to venture into bear caves on a daily basis. I’d like to share a scene with you now. You might want to sit down for this.

“That night, Mr. Downs went to the cave, with only a knife and a flashlight. He went in the cave. A gigantic bear looked at him. “He has thousands of teeth,” thought Mr. Downs. “He’ll be hard to fight.” He got ready. The bear watched silently. He wanted to run, but had to fight. Kim and Jack were worrying. Their father looked at the bear. He looked back. The bear got ready to fight. Mr. Downs went far in the cave. The bear stood still. He was trying to find out why he was moving. The bear growled. He seemed to say, “Why are you moving? Come on! Fight!” In an hour, the fight was over. Mr. Downs had won!”

With a knife and a flashlight. It doesn’t get more alpha male than that.

I remember having fun writing A Scary Adventure, and I’m having fun writing now. And I hope whatever you’re doing in your life, you’re having fun, too. Thanks for spending some time with me.

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About Kelly Rey

From her first discovery of Nancy Drew, Kelly has had a lifelong love for mystery and tales of things that go bump in the night, especially those with a twist of humor. Through many years of working in the court reporting and closed captioning fields, writing has remained a constant. If she's not in front of a keyboard, she can be found reading, working out or avoiding housework. She's a member of Sisters in Crime and lives in the Northeast with her husband and a menagerie of very spoiled pets.

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About MOTION FOR MALICE

From bestselling mystery author Kelly Rey comes the second laugh-out-loud installment in her Jamie Winters Mysteries …

Psychic medium Dorcas Beeber is brash, obnoxious...and dead. Unfortunately for legal secretary Jamie Winters, she arrives at the psychic's studio for a reading only to find the victim apparently killed by a blow from her own crystal ball. And things only get worse when Jamie suddenly finds herself the prime suspect in the murder. It's clearly a setup, but Jamie's only clue to the real killer's identity is a black SUV parked near the scene of the crime.

Desperate and running out of time, Jamie enlists the help of her landlord's eccentric teenaged niece, Maizy, as her unlikely sidekick to help wade through the pool of disgruntled clients, a family with divided loyalties, a creepy ex-boss, and incriminating news reports to find the real killer...before Jamie's future includes a jail cell!