“Standing Dead” was a finalist for the 2024 Colorado Book Award for Mystery.
Margaret Mizushima writes the award winning and internationally published Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. She serves as past president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and was elected Writer of the Year by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. She and her husband recently moved from Colorado, where they raised two daughters and a multitude of animals, to a home in the Pacific Northwest. Find her on Facebook/AuthorMargaretMizushima, X @margmizu, Instagram @margmizu, and her website www.margaretmizushima.com.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story originate?
Margaret Mizushima: “Standing Dead” is the eighth book in the Timber Creek K-9 Mystery series featuring Deputy Mattie Wray, her K-9 partner Robo, and veterinarian Cole Walker. About a year and a half has passed in Timber Creek, Colorado, since the first book in the series, “Killing Trail.” The characters have all worked together solving crimes, and they’ve learned to know each other well. Mattie and Robo are a cohesive team, and Mattie and Cole have fallen in love.
Two things inspired this book: characters and setting. I wanted to tell a story that would help Mattie get in touch with repressed memories from her childhood and bring to light how her father had been killed decades earlier. And I wanted to spotlight the acres and acres of trees damaged by pine beetles in Colorado’s beautiful forests. The story in “Standing Dead” illuminates both.
SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?
Mizushima: In this story, Mattie and her sister go to a town in Mexico to try to see their mother, but when they arrive, both she and her husband have left. A brief investigation leads Mattie to believe that they left suddenly and without leaving information about where they were going, so Mattie fears they might have been threatened or fled under duress. The night she returns home, she finds a strange note on her door saying she will find “him” in a specific spot in the forest of standing dead trees that have been killed by mountain pine beetles. She, her K-9 partner Robo, and the rest of the team go to the designated place to search, and this excerpt comes from that spot in the book.
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Each week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author. Explore the SunLit archives atcoloradosun.com/sunlit.
I selected this excerpt so that readers can see Robo and Mattie in action, searching together for a person in the high country.
SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?And once you did begin to write, did the work take you in any unexpected directions?
Mizushima: The character arcs for Mattie, Cole, and Robo and their relationships span the series, and this book fits under that umbrella. Each book in the series influences the next one as far as the character arcs go, but the mystery in each one stands alone.
I created a lacey outline before starting to write—lacey because it has lots of holes in it—but the story always takes a path of its own when I write the first draft. I typically never know details about the climax or the end of a book when I start, and this one was no different. I needed help from my police procedure consultant to figure things out, and he really stepped in to save the day. I loved the ideas he shared with me and they were so fun to weave into the story.
SunLit: Are there lessons you take away from each experience of writing a book? And if so, what did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding the subject matter?
Mizushima: There are always lessons to learn while writing a book, and authors do research to come up with a deeper understanding of their subject matter or craft. In “Standing Dead” there were two things in particular that I needed to dig into while creating the story.
First, Mattie receives creepy notes that taunt her from an unknown writer, and the investigative team sends them to a forensic handwriting expert for interpretation—so I needed one too. I consulted with author Sheila Lowe, handwriting examiner and author of the Forensic Handwriting suspense series as well as nonfiction books about handwriting and behavior. Sheila’s knowledge enhanced those written note scenes tremendously.
“Standing Dead”
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And later in the book, I needed to learn about small weapons and GPS trackers that an undercover officer might take into a dangerous situation. I’m very grateful for the information given to me by Lt. Glenn Wilson (retired and now deceased) for the many times he helped me with my books. He shall be missed greatly by family and friends.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Mizushima: I wrote this book while sorting, packing, and preparing to sell our home of 42 years. Can you imagine 42 years of collecting stuff? That’s the pile of things my husband and I had to clean up before we could put our home on the market. It took months.
I finished the edits on this book after we’d moved across country from Colorado to the state of Washington, where we rented an apartment not far from our daughter’s home while we searched for a home of our own. Finishing this book was a challenge to say the least!
SunLit: If you could pick just one thing — a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers would take from this book, what would that be?
Mizushima: Mattie’s lessons and her opportunities for growth in this series are typically family related. As someone who was separated from her birth family early in life, she yearns for a family of her own, but as the series progresses she learns that family can also be chosen and the cast of secondary characters in this series support her journey toward that realization.
I hope readers enjoy watching Mattie grow emotionally and that some of the social issues that these stories highlight touch on situations that are familiar to everyone.
SunLit: In a highly politicized atmosphere where books, and people’s access to them, has become increasingly contentious, what would you add to the conversation about books, libraries and generally the availability of literature in the public sphere?
Mizushima: I grew up in rural areas on cattle ranches where friends were few and far between, but my mother made sure that my siblings and I always had a stack of books from our local libraries. I spent many childhood hours reading about faraway places and situations that even to this day, I’ve never experienced in my real lifetime.
Without books and libraries, I would have never received this education. It’s important to read about experiences other than our own, because without information, there is darkness and ignorance, a precarious place from which to be able to relate with and understand one another in this wide world of diverse people, religions, and countries. We need our books and we need our librarians to help us learn how to navigate life and make decisions from a more educated and enlightened space.
SunLit: Walk us through your writing process: Where and how do you write?
Mizushima: My new home in Washington state has an office, something I’ve never had before. I did convert a bedroom to work in when we lived in Colorado, but a room originally dedicated as an office space? I’d not had that luxury.
To top it off, I can look out the window at a view of the beautiful Olympic Mountains, so I don’t pine quite so much for our gorgeous Colorado Rockies, although when friends post pictures of Rocky Mountain National Park, I get a pang in my chest.
I try to write 5,000 words per week when creating a first draft. I go into the office each morning and hope to write 1,000 words before I finish for the day. This might take an hour or it might take four, depending on whether or not I tap into the flow. Either way, I make myself hit that word count so I can eventually meet my publisher’s deadline. If I fall behind, it can be miserable while I work hard to catch up.
Once I’ve finished my creative words, there are other words to write: printed interviews such as this one, social media posts of my own and comments to support my fellow authors, emails to write and answer, blog posts to read and write, articles to read and write, business documents to review, research for the next days’ work…the list is endless. When you include the business of writing, being an author is a full time job.
SunLit: What research have you done to support the work in your series?
Mizushima: Two life experiences have benefitted me most for the creation of the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. I’d been a veterinarian’s wife for 42 years prior to my husband’s retirement, and though I’d never worked in his clinic as his vet assistant, I’ve worked beside him after hours countless times on emergency calls.
I’ve assisted him with surgeries, stitching up wounds, treating horse colic or other illnesses; you name it. And one thing I’ve noticed when riding with him to stable calls is that people like to watch him work. So I decided that maybe readers would like to watch Cole Walker, DVM, work too.
The other experience that has informed my work was when my husband and I took two of our dogs through search and rescue training decades ago. Little did I know that learning about canine nose work back then would help me create a fictional tracking dog for a mystery series later. I was able to observe and train dogs for ground tracking and air scenting, two of the skills Mattie’s partner Robo demonstrates. And I have many contacts and consultants who are K-9 handlers to fall back on when I have questions about narcotics detection and police procedures.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Mizushima: My latest book, number nine in the series, is called “Gathering Mist” and it came out October 8, 2024. In it, Deputy Mattie Wray accepts a mission one week before her wedding to search for a celebrity’s missing child on Washington’s rugged Olympic peninsula where she and her dog Robo encounter unfamiliar territory, danger lurking in the mist, and deadly secrets. Soon information comes to light that indicates the child was kidnapped, forcing Mattie into a desperate search to find him before he disappears forever.
Mattie, Robo, and Cole won’t move to Washington like I did, but I couldn’t resist bringing them here where conditions are so different from what they know.
Just a few more quick questions
SunLit: Do you look forward to the actual work of writing or is it a chore that you dread but must do to achieve good things?
Mizushima: I don’t always look forward to sitting down to write, but it’s not a chore either. Once I get started, the time speeds by and I get lost in the setting and the story. I love creating the setting, and it’s a way to visit the outdoors when I’m sitting at my desk.
SunLit: What’s the first piece of writing – at any age – that you remember being proud of?
Mizushima: My friend saved a story of mine that I’d written when I was about 10. It was a romance and it was full of handholding, moonlight, and spelling errors. LOL
SunLit: When you look back at your early professional writing, how do you feel about it? Impressed? Embarrassed? Satisfied? Wish you could have a do-over?
Mizushima: I have four manuscripts that will never see the light of day and one that has potential if I take time to do a lot of editing. Maybe I’ll go back to that one some day when I’m not creating new Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries.
SunLit: What three writers, from any era, can you imagine having over for a great discussion about literature and writing? And why?
Mizushima: Sue Grafton, Agatha Christie, and Edgar Allan Poe. I’d love to hear them talk about creating mysteries for the readers of their times.
SunLit: Do you have a favorite quote about writing?
Mizushima: Quote by Dorothy Parker: “I hate writing. I love having written.” And a good quote I’ve carried around with me for most of my life by Goethe: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”
SunLit: What does the current collection of books on your home shelves tell visitors about you?
Mizushima: That I read heavily in the fiction genres of mystery, suspense, and thriller, and in nonfiction areas related to death, afterlife, and Asian philosophy.
SunLit: Soundtrack or silence? What’s the audio background that helps you write?
Mizushima: Definitely silence. I have to write behind closed doors.
SunLit: What event, and at what age, convinced you that you wanted to be a writer?
Mizushima: I wanted to write seemingly my whole life but didn’t start until after I’d finished my first career as a speech and language pathologist. My first published book was released when I was 63 years old.
SunLit: Greatest fear as an author?
Mizushima: That I’ll run out of stories to tell, but so far so good. Fingers crossed.
SunLit: Greatest satisfaction?
Mizushima: When a reluctant reader or a person who describes him or herself as dyslexic writes to say how much they enjoyed reading my books. The speech therapist within me can’t help but be thrilled.
Type of Story: Q&A
An interview to provide a relevant perspective, edited for clarity and not fully fact-checked.
