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Family, faith and work find their way into first fiction novel |
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By Pat Norby
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Thursday, 16 April 2009 |
You would never guess what is taking place inside the unassuming split level home in White Bear Lake, where Julie Kramer, husband Joe Kimball and their sons Alex, 17, and Andrew 15, reside.
Kramer
Murder is not the obvious answer as you walk past a table littered with newspaper clippings. Mayhem is not visible in the living room; rather, it is hidden in the two well-used computers a half floor up.
And well-worn comfortable couches set the serene scene in the family
room, which overlooks a wooded backyard, waiting patiently for its
first spring campfire.
But lurking in Kramer’s mind and Mac are the seeds of stories from more
than 20 years of producing investigative reports with the WCCO-TV news
I-Team and various freelance assignments with national media.
She has turned two of those seeds into mystery novels that feature a
female heroine with Catholic roots and a hometown priest named after
Kramer’s childhood priest, Msgr. Edward Mountain.
Four generations of Kramers have attended St. John in Johnsburg,
while farming near the Iowa border over the past 120 years, she said.
Kramer has fond memories of attending a two-room schoolhouse there and
going to Assisi Heights in Rochester to visit a great aunt — a
Franciscan sister who took her bowling in the convent bowling alley.
Going back to her roots
As Kramer and her seven siblings were coming-of-age, farms and ranches
were going out of business so she went to the University (then College)
of St. Thomas to earn a journalism degree.
Although the family’s farming now is limited to renting the land,
Kramer’s mother and an aunt and uncle still live on the homestead,
where Kramer raised steers to show at the Minnesota Livestock Show and
collected bugs for the local county fair, she said.
Bits of those memories and pieces of others landed in her first novel, “Stalking Susan.” (See the book review)
“I made it up as it came along,” with subplots about Bible readings and
various relationships, Kramer said. Along the way, some people
suggested that she spice up her writing. But the thought of her two
teenage boys and their friends at Hill-Murray School reading the book
kept her from adding unwarranted violence and sex, she said.
“Sometimes a sex scene gets in the way,” she said. “Part of me thinks
that I made my heroine a widow so I didn’t have to add that.”
“Stalking Susan” did so well after its 2008 debut that Kramer’s
publisher, Doubleday, took on the sequel, “Missing Mark,” which deals
with a young man’s disappearance. It is due out this spring.
Kramer’s first novel has been nominated for awards to be presented in
late April by Romantic Times Magazine and Minnesota Book Awards. She
has also been nominated for Simon & Schuster’s Mary Higgins Clark
Award, in honor of the prolific Catholic mystery writer.
“At the time I was writing, I didn’t know that those awards existed,”
she said. Kramer’s publisher suggested entering “Stalking Susan” for
the Mary Higgins Clark Award, which requires books to feature a strong
female heroine, but no explicit sex or violence.
A novel idea
After college, Kramer briefly wrote for the Star newspaper, now the
StarTribune, before she was laid off. A friend suggested that she apply
for a job with WCCO-TV, which turned into a successful career.
Kramer said she left her demanding TV news job in 2001 to spend more
time with her sons, who then were attending St. Pius X Holy Family
School.
Freelance work quickly came her way when the World Trade Center was
attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, and NBC needed someone to help produce
local stories, she said. Although she continued to pick up freelance
work, Kramer also had ideas for a book or two.
“All journalists have a novel inside of them, and at some time you have
to put up or shut up,” she said. And news reporting provides a good
background for writing a novel, she added.
“I’ve interviewed hundreds of people on the best or worst days of their
lives,” she said. “That helped me develop an ear for dialogue.”
Kramer said she also learned to write tight, on deadline, and that
truth is stranger than fiction, noting the true story of a female
astronaut who drove across the country in a diaper with alleged plans
to kill a rival for her lover’s affection.
While producing TV news, Kramer thought it was difficult to find and write the truth.
“I’m now having a harder time writing fiction,” she said.
The one fact that she continues to bring up during interviews and
presentations or writing groups is that the Susans in the book who are
murder victims are loosely based on real murder victims whose TV news
stories Kramer helped to produce.
Susan Ginger Peterson was murdered May 17, 1981, and Susan Jean Rhneick
was murdered May 17, 1983. Both were believed to have been taken from
the University of Minnesota area. Both of their bodies were found in
Highland Park.
“It’s probably a coincidence,” Kramer said of their murders taking
place on the same day two years apart, “but in my book, I can make
things up.”
And, the real Susans’ families welcome any media coverage that could lead to finding their killers, she said.
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