I love kolaches.Ī few years back, I decided to write another book of my heart between other projects. I was always enchanted by the sweep of rolling hills, the vintage Texas farmhouse, the rich Czech and German history of the area, and of course, the fabulous food like kolaches. The first book was nominated for an Agatha Award, and the series turned out to be my first publisher’s top-selling series.īut as much as I loved the East Coast, I always wanted to write about Texas, too… specifically a farm owned by friends of my family, and which we’d visited for years. Shortly thereafter, characters I have come to love leapt to life on the page, and the rest is history.

I created the Gray Whale Inn on Cranberry Island, Maine. My parents visited an inn in California called the Lost Whale Inn, and their dreamy descriptions sparked my own fictional world. When we visited some friends on Little Cranberry Island in Maine, I knew I’d found my location. I grew up spending my allowance on Nancy Drew books, graduated to Agatha Christie books in junior high, and read through the entire cozy-mystery section of the bookstore from high school on. I knew I wanted to write something capturing those experiences, and after a while, I started thinking mystery would be the way to do it. They have lots of words like “yaffle,” which is an armload of dried fish, in case you were wondering. Newfoundland is hard to get to, and I didn’t feel I had a grasp of the dialect. I was hoping to capture some of that wonderful feeling and experience on the page, but I didn’t know how to do it at first.

I have fond childhood memories of climbing the island’s granite boulders, picking wild blueberries, making steamed puddings in my grandmother’s kitchen, and going out to fish on the cold, cold water at six in the morning with my grandfather. It’s set in Cranberry Island, Maine, and is in many ways an homage to Pool’s Island, Newfoundland, where I visited my grandparents every summer (many of the names in the book are surnames from that part of the world). My first series, the Gray Whale Inn mysteries, starts with Murder on the Rocks, which also happens to be the first book I ever wrote. I love creating a cozy, warm world for my readers to escape to when everyday life just seems too glum for words. Hi! I’m Karen MacInerney, and I’m the author of several mystery series, including the Agatha-nominated Gray Whale Inn mysteries and the Dewberry Farm mysteries.

Murder on the rocks by karen macinerney