Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Margaret Mizushima. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Margaret, appreciate you joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

Around 1995 I was working hard as a speech pathologist in my own Medicare/Medicaid certified rehabilitation agency. I had launched the company during the late eighties, and by the mid nineties it had grown to offer multidisciplinary services to both children and adults, including speech, occupational, and physical therapies as well as social work and counseling services. By that time I was still working long hours each week and felt I was missing out on enjoying my children’s teen years.

I had stopped at the grocery store on my way home, and while I was standing in line to check out I gazed at the paperback books in the racks by the cash register. I have always been a voracious reader and I thought how much I missed getting to spend time with a good book. I had always dreamed of becoming a paperback writer, but knew that it would take years to generate a stable enough income to meet the needs of our family. Especially with two daughters who were about to enter college.

But I swore right then that I would figure out a way to sell my company so that I could have a nest egg to help subsidize my husband’s income until I could build one of my own. It took several more years to position the company for sale and find a buyer, but by 1998, I was able to accomplish my goal and start learning the art and craft of novel writing.

It took longer than I thought it would, but I took a part time job working for my husband’s veterinary clinic and continued to study and write when I could. In 2014 I finally sold my first book, Killing Trail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery, to publisher Crooked Lane Books in New York. I’ve published a novel per year with Crooked Lane, and now we have released seven books in the series. The latest is Striking Range, released September of 2021.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I write the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, and my books combine many of my past experiences and interests. The series features Deputy Mattie Cobb, her K-9 partner Robo, and veterinarian Cole Walker, and the books are set in the fictional mountain town of Timber Creek, Colorado. I grew up on a cattle ranch near Saguache, Colorado, and spent many happy times climbing mountain trails and exploring nature during my younger days. Animals and their care have always been a focus in my life, and since marrying a veterinarian (now forty years ago) animal husbandry has also been a big part of our livelihood.

Many of the veterinary scenes in my books were inspired directly by my life. While I had my own career and didn’t typically work in the vet clinic, I still assisted my husband after hours and during emergencies on weekends. Most people love to watch my husband work, and so when creating characters for my books, I decided that I needed a veterinarian as a protagonist. But I had set out to write a mystery, and while vets often solve medical mysteries, they’re usually not called in to solve a murder case.

About that time I happened to meet a retired K-9 handler who had moved from Washington to Colorado, and she invited me to watch her work with clients who were training their dogs for AKC tracking. My husband and I had trained two of our own dogs in search and rescue when our children were small, so I was immediately inspired to create a female character who handled a German shepherd patrol dog. It felt natural to fall back on a small mountain town setting, which I knew best, I ended up with a rural deputy, her dog, and a vet who work together to solve crimes in their high country community.

Each novel in my series presents plenty of action in the Colorado mountains, a plot that involves veterinary work, and clues and evidence that are in part discovered by Robo, the K-9 star of the show. If you like mysteries and animals, I invite you to give my books a read.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

There are stories told at writing conferences about authors who achieve the sale of their first manuscript quickly, therefore gaining publication within a year or two–but these stories are few and far between. Most of us worked for years studying the art and craft of fiction writing and practicing by writing manuscripts that will never be seen in print. I was one of this latter group.

I attended writing workshops and conferences at least twice per year, enrolled in creative writing courses at our local university, and wrote six manuscripts in as many years. I achieved successes along the way that kept me going: winning a writing contest here, getting a short story selected for an anthology there, and finally gaining representation by my favorite literary agent. Shortly afterward, I began facing a series of challenges in my personal life that ate away at my writing time. My creativity and output slowed and then ground to a painful halt. While my agent continued to shop my work, all we received were rejections.

I reached a point where I was ready to give up. I decided to go to one more conference, Colorado Gold sponsored by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. I’d been to this annual conference many times before and always came away inspired, so I hoped that if nothing else it would energize me enough to keep going. But at that conference, something magical happened. I met the acquiring editor from Crooked Lane Books in New York. He listened to my pitch, told me to have my agent send the manuscript, and within a few months, he offered a two book contract for the first two episodes in the Timber Creek K-9 mystery series.

That experience taught me the value of trying one last time, even if you have to repeat it over and over. You never know when that last effort will be the one to succeed.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I was fortunate to have the advice of my agent and my book publicist from Crooked Lane when I first ventured into setting up social media for my novels. First of all, I was told to pick the two social media platforms that interested me the most and focus on them instead of trying to do everything at once. I picked Facebook and Twitter, because I had heard at one of my writing conferences that Facebook seemed most effective for connecting with current readers while Twitter showed promise for connecting with new readers. Since the early days, I’ve also added Instagram.

My publicist told me to focus on my brand: five or six topics that encompass what my books are about. I chose dogs, K-9 dogs and their handlers, Colorado landscape and lifestyle, veterinarians, and country living. Rather than posting “buy my product, buy my product” over and over, I was supposed to find posts that shared more about the content of my books. If I had a new release or a discount on a book, it was important to share this information as well, but most of the time social media is not about promotion. It’s about community and sharing things about yourself and how you fit into that community.

This advice has served me well throughout the years. In the beginning I spent a lot of time nurturing my pages and profiles, more than I have time for today. But I still enjoy connecting with readers and writers and sharing what’s important to them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://margaretmizushima.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/margmizu/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMargaretMizushima
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/margmizu