Author Nikki Knight – This Thing We Do & New Release: Live, Local, and Long Dead  #Mystery #CozyMystery #wrpbks #Hobby #Career #Passion

 Please help me welcome today’s guest, Nikki Knight…

This Thing We Do

“You do this because you can’t do anything else.”

            My first news director, at KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh, said it to me a couple decades ago at the job interview.

            He meant, radio is the only business that would make you happy.

            He was right about me. And I was right about the main character in LIVE, LOCAL, AND LONG DEAD when I gave her the same line.

            While Jaye Jordan is a DJ and station owner, and I’m a New York City news anchor, we both came up through local radio, and we both love it.

            If you didn’t grow up with a local radio station – and a lot of people don’t now – I’m sorry for you. We live in better and healthier communities when we start the day with a familiar voice telling us about what’s happening in town, not just major news stories, but local events. Everything from the fender-bender by the plaza that’s delaying the school buses to the fundraiser for the food bank. The kind of things a national news network, or the TV station in the big city up the road, would never have time or energy for…but matter a lot in a small community.

            Just a typical day at a small local station.

            It’s important on a typical day, but it’s life-or-death in a disaster.

            In theory, when a small radio station is sold and handed over to a satellite feed – usually talk, but sometimes music or other programming – it’s still able to broadcast emergency information for its town. The automation should be able to take transmissions from the Emergency Alert System and send them on to the community. But that’s a big SHOULD when the water is rising or the ice falling.

            And even if the automation does what it’s supposed to do, there’s no live person at the station. No one to take calls from local authorities with warnings, no one to broadcast information about available services. And no one to offer a friendly voice on the battery powered radio that may be a family’s only connection to the world for a while.

            I’ve been that voice, during hurricanes in New York and winter storms in Vermont. And, other than raising my son, it’s the most important thing I’ve ever done. If you’re alone in the dark, you need someone to tell you how long it’s going to last, who’s going to help you, and that you’re going to make it. A confident, informed, and professional voice.

            And a local one.

            Jaye Jordan has the same experience, and the same deep bond with her work and her community. It’s not just a marketing slogan that she calls WSV “Your Hometown Station.”

            Everyone deserves one.

            Jaye’s love for local radio, and mine, shines through LIVE, LOCAL, AND LONG DEAD. And we’re thrilled to welcome you to our hometown station.

GIVEAWAY: One random commenter wins an e-ARC of LIVE, LOCAL, AND LONG DEAD.

In LIVE, LOCAL, AND LONG DEAD, DJ Jaye Jordan returns to look into not one but two murders – one involving her ex and her new man– and get Grandpa Seymour ready for the Senior Prom!

Excerpt:

“It looks like a body in there, Chief.” Sadie’s words left room for doubt, but her voice did not.

“I’ll take a look.” Chief George handed the rock to me because I was closest, and his face hardened from fun day out to on-duty.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get more serious, it did.

I felt something strange and sharp on the underside of the rock through my work gloves. I looked down at it.

It looked back at me.

Well, it would have if there’d been anything in the smooth, empty eye sockets. It seemed to be grinning, a perfectly imperfect smile with a little chip in one of the front teeth.

“Chief?” I asked. “I think we have another problem.”

I figured it was the worst moment of the day.

Famous last words.

Maybe half an hour later, everyone was standing around waiting for the M.E. and the Staties, and whoever was responsible for skulls, and I was still holding the poor thing. By then I had noticed the jagged hole near the temple and come to the conclusion whoever it was had not left this earth easily or willingly.

Chief George had been in the building, and he came out carrying a large, expensive purse…still in good shape, metallic leather, a brand that would have cost me a month’s salary in New York, made even more costly and special by the name engraved on a brass plate on the side. It was below the status logo, so it must have been the name of the owner: Jecca.

“I think I knew her.”

It would have been bad enough if I’d heard one voice saying it in a tone that left no doubt as to how they’d known her.

But it was two. The worst possible two.

David, no surprise, really…and Will.

I looked down at the skull. It was probably a grave sin to break heads with an actual head.

Buy link: Live, Local, and Long Dead – The Wild Rose Press Inc

About the Author:

Nikki Knight describes herself as an Author/Anchor/Mom…not in that order. An award-winning weekend anchor at New York City’s 1010 WINS Radio, she writes short stories and novels, including the Vermont Radio and Grace the Hit Mom Series. Her stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, online, and in anthologies – and been short-listed for Black Orchid Novella and Derringer Awards. Active in writers’ groups, she’s served as Vice President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and is currently Co-Vice President of the New York/Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime. As Kathleen Marple Kalb, she writes the Ella Shane and Old Stuff mystery series. She, her husband, and son live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.

Website:  https://kathleenmarplekalb.com/nikki-knight

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NikkiKnightAuthor

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/NikkiKnightVT

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathleenmarplekalb/

Other: YouTube: NIKKI KNIGHT’S RADIO STORYTIME – YouTube