Tracy Weber is the author of the award-winning Downward Dog Mysteries series featuring yoga teacher Kate and her feisty German shepherd, Bella. Weber loves sharing her passion for yoga and animals in any form possible. The second book in her series, A Killer Retreat, was released January, 2015 by Midnight Ink.Weber and her husband live in Seattle with their challenging yet amazing German shepherd Tasha. When she’s not writing, the author spends her time teaching yoga, walking Tasha, and sipping Blackthorn cider at her favorite ale house.
From the author's Q & A with Sheila Webster Boneham at Writers & Other Animals:
Do you try to keep your characters relatively unchanged throughout your mystery series, or do you try to develop them over time?Visit Tracy Weber's website, blog, and Facebook page.
People in real life change as a result of what happens to them. Why would characters in a mystery series be any different? I can’t imagine an amateur sleuth that could be touched by murder yet not impacted by it. I don’t have an agenda for my characters, but they do transform and learn over time. Kate, in particular, has a character arc that will span at least six books, maybe more.
In my first book, Murder Strikes a Pose, Kate struggles to make peace with her father’s death and to forgive herself for her actions in his last days. As a result, she shuts herself off from the world and refuses to give herself the compassion she gives to others. She is brash and sometimes lashes out at those she loves most, at least in part because she unconsciously wants to keep people at a distance.
By book 2, A Killer Retreat, she has begun to allow people into her life, but she still has significant attachment issues and she often stumbles over her own weaknesses. By the end of A Killer Retreat she’s at the precipice of major change. In book 3, Karma’s a Killer, she confronts her darker self and starts to take steps to overcome it.
Kate would love to right all the wrongs of the world, but...[read on]
Coffee with a Canine: Tracy Weber and Tasha.
The Page 69 Test: Murder Strikes a Pose.
The Page 69 Test: A Killer Retreat.
--Marshal Zeringue