Hello!

Today, Once Upon a Crime Books presents 7 Minutes in Book Heaven, the podcast where we interview LGBTQ authors about the new books they have coming out for us to love and cuddle up with.

Visit them online: onceuponacrimebooks.com

Once Upon a Crime Books is an independent bookstore specializing in mystery fiction. Located in Uptown Minneapolis, you can shop in their store Monday through Saturday 11am – 5:30pm. Or, visit their website! There, you can browse all of their books, from new releases to classic mysteries.

In this new episode, Once Upon a Crime Books introduces us to Katrina Monroe and her new novel: Through The Midnight Door which is available to buy in paperback in-store, or on their website, and it is also available as a digital audio book.

Katrina Monroe is the author of They Drown Our Daughters, Graveyard of Lost Children, and Through the Midnight Door. She lives in Minnesota with her wife, two children, and Eddie, the ghost who haunts their bedroom closets.

Buy Through The Midnight Door

Visit Once Upon a Crime Books in-person or buy online: https://onceuponacrimebooks.com/book/9781728248264

Buy Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister: https://onceuponacrimebooks.com/book/9781633048010

Connect with Katrina Monroe

Website: katrinamonroe.com
Instagram: @authorkatmonroe
Newsletter: katrinamonroe.substack.com

Credits

Presented by: Once Upon a Crime Books
Host/Founder: J.P. Der Boghossian
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Theme music: Summer Mood by lesfm

Transcript

Note: This transcript was auto-generated through speech recognition software by our podcast recording service Riverside.fm. It may contain errors. Timestamps may not be accurate based on editing out of non-essential information such as re-starting a question, drops in internet connection during interview, etc. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that’s not on the page. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

[theme music]

J.P. Der Boghossian (00:10.094)
Welcome to 7 Minutes in Book Heaven, the podcast where we interview LGBTQ authors about the new books they have coming out for us to love and to cuddle up with. I’m your host, JP Derboghossian. Today’s episode is presented to you by Once Upon a Crime Books. Once Upon a Crime Books is an independent bookstore specializing in mystery fiction. Located in uptown Minneapolis, you can shop in their store Monday through Saturday, 11am to 5 .30pm, or you can order through their website.

You can browse all of their books there from new releases to classic mysteries. What I adore about their website is their recommendations tab. So if you’re in the mood for espionage or psychological thrillers or action thrillers, or you want to read books by writers of color or queer authors, you can get full recommendations for each of those categories and more on their recommendations tab. Go to their website is once upon a crime books dot.

On today’s episode, Once Upon a Crime Books introduces us to Katrina Munro and her new novel Through the Midnight Door, which is available to pre -order in paperback in -store or through their website and releases officially on August 13th. Hello Katrina!

Katrina Monroe (01:56.459)
Hi, how’s it going?

J.P. Der Boghossian (01:57.934)
It’s going very well. Thank you so much for joining us here today. So how our podcast works, I have seven questions for Katrina and we’re going to spend approximately the next seven minutes in this virtual studio talking about through the midnight door. So Katrina, are you ready? Okay, I will set the timer and here we go. Question number one.

Katrina Monroe (02:15.883)
I am ready.

J.P. Der Boghossian (02:23.342)
Please describe through the midnight door as if you’re sharing it with your celebrity crush and telling us who that special person is.

Katrina Monroe (02:31.115)
So I struggled with this one a little bit, but I’m gonna just dive right in. My celebrity crush has always been and always will be Lena Headey, but like the imagine me and you version of Lena Headey, I have a thing for loose, always will. My wife thinks it’s stupid, but whatever. So if I were describing my book to her, I probably would just not speak. I would just stare stupidly into her beautiful eyes and not get anything out, but for the sake of the question.

through the midnight door is, it’s what I call my love song to sisters. It’s about these three sisters who are really close when they’re young and then something happens to them. They’re like running through these abandoned properties in a town loosely based on Gary, Indiana. And they go into this house and they open these mystery doors and they experience horrible things behind the doors, but they never share it with each other. So that one event forces them to kind of fall apart.

I suppose and then as they get older one of them dies in the house and then the other two are left with this whole and this horrible relationship that they have to try to mend all while trying to solve the mystery of what happened to their younger sister. So that’s my book.

J.P. Der Boghossian (03:45.582)
Wow. That is… wow! Talk about plotting. Congratulations!

Katrina Monroe (03:52.619)
Well, I mean, we’ll see again. It’s, of all the books that I’ve written, I think this is the one that’s closest to my heart. I have two younger sisters who I’m very close to, so they were with me the whole way.

J.P. Der Boghossian (03:55.854)
Ha ha!

J.P. Der Boghossian (04:06.99)
That’s amazing. Well, congratulations on that. So question number two, what is a sentence from a novel or an essay or a poem or any other book that every time you read it, it gives you all the feels?

Katrina Monroe (04:08.587)
They’re great. Thank you.

Katrina Monroe (04:21.867)
So this one, I want to preface a little bit with being a little bit ironic because I am a writer, but this one punches me in the face every time I read it. It’s from If We Were Villains by M .L. Rio. And the reason it punches me is because though I am a writer, I’m great with the words on the paper, but the communication can’t do. So the quote is, for someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.

J.P. Der Boghossian (04:46.222)
Oh.

Katrina Monroe (04:48.203)
so that one just it’s this book it’s a mystery novel but it it dirks you quite a few times and you don’t expect it it’s a really good book.

J.P. Der Boghossian (04:57.134)
Wow. Would you mind reading that again?

Katrina Monroe (05:00.523)
Sure, for someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.

J.P. Der Boghossian (05:07.95)
I’m gonna put that on a mug and drink from that mug every single day because…

Katrina Monroe (05:11.531)
Truly, see? This is what I’m saying. You go, wow, yeah, dang.

J.P. Der Boghossian (05:17.422)
Right? Oh, I like that. I like that. Okay, question number three. What do you feel is the best sentence you wrote in Through the Midnight Door?

Katrina Monroe (05:19.627)
It’s a good one.

Katrina Monroe (05:29.771)
Okay, so I have several tabbed, so I’m just gonna turn to a random one. I think it’s a good one. Well, because you know how it is when you write, you’re like, this is good, this is good, this maybe, I don’t know. I’m gonna cheat a little bit because they’re very short lines, but there’s a couple lines. It’s like a dialogue thing.

J.P. Der Boghossian (05:40.174)
Mm -hmm.

Katrina Monroe (05:49.131)
What was in your rooms? Claire asked. In mine there was nothing. Meg said, cutting her off. There was nothing. Yeah, Esther said, nothing. Yeah, Claire thought. Mine too. The muscles in her belly rippled, making room. It seemed Claire’s nothing was coming home with them.

Katrina Monroe (06:09.675)
I like the chills.

J.P. Der Boghossian (06:10.158)
I like that. Yeah. Ooh, chills indeed. Congratulations on that.

Katrina Monroe (06:16.65)
Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it.

J.P. Der Boghossian (06:18.958)
Okay question number four, what is the best scene in a mystery or crime book that you have ever read?

Katrina Monroe (06:27.851)
So this is the first one that jumped into my head, so this is what I’m gonna go with. And it is kind of the opening kind of plot setting up scene in Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Jillian McAllister. It’s probably the best mystery I’ve read in a very long time. And basically this woman wakes up, or she’s, it’s like the middle of the night and she’s getting ready for Halloween. She looks out the window and she sees her son kill someone. And then she wakes up the next morning and it never happened.

J.P. Der Boghossian (06:54.126)
Oh, dang.

Oh.

Katrina Monroe (06:59.019)
Like she starts the day over and it becomes this like, groundhog day of…

she knows this is the day that her son is going to kill someone and throughout the book she gets progressively a day behind. So she’ll be like two days behind or three days behind trying to figure out what is leading up to her son killing this man in the middle of their driveway. And so that first scene where you know that she wakes up and it’s the day before and you go what what just happened? It is really good it’s a really nice setup. Yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian (07:09.262)
Oh.

J.P. Der Boghossian (07:27.502)
Wow.

Seriously, tell us the name of the novel again and the author?

Katrina Monroe (07:34.123)
It’s Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Jillian McAllister.

J.P. Der Boghossian (07:38.862)
Write that down. Oof.

Katrina Monroe (07:40.043)
That’s it’s good. It’s really good.

J.P. Der Boghossian (07:43.086)
Seriously? Wow, okay, uh, making me think here. Question number five. What are your favorite smells to write about?

Katrina Monroe (07:49.195)
Hahaha!

Katrina Monroe (07:54.635)
So I write primarily.

horror and supernatural thrillers. So the smells I write about are not ever pleasant. So it’s always bodies and blood, a lot of rust smelling things. One thing that I had a good time trying to describe was this like house in through the midnight door. And one of the things I tried to figure out what is an abandoned house smell like? And is it is it dust? Can you smell emptiness? Do you do you smell the cold? And it was

J.P. Der Boghossian (08:23.342)
Yeah.

Katrina Monroe (08:28.125)
really fun exercise in trying to figure out, you know, how do you describe that? So I would say trying to figure out how to describe a house, an empty house, is probably my my recent favorite thing.

J.P. Der Boghossian (08:41.582)
And how did you describe it? Musty?

Katrina Monroe (08:44.235)
Um, musty, like you can you can smell the emptiness, like the absence of anything. What like what does nothing smell like and it just it fills your nose and you you have a hard time breathing it because there’s nothing to breathe but the empty air and it’s I don’t know it was very hard to do. If I could hunt down the scene I would but.

J.P. Der Boghossian (08:53.134)
I don’t know.

J.P. Der Boghossian (09:03.438)
No, that is, but it definitely, I can see that or smell that as it were, that that is a smell. Ooh.

Katrina Monroe (09:08.779)
Yeah, it really is. And it’s especially disturbing. I tried to talk about how if you walk into a house, it’s an empty house, but a house that someone has lived in, you can still smell the ghosts of them being there. But in this particular house, there’s nothing. So it’s just off -putting by how little scent there is.

J.P. Der Boghossian (09:31.214)
Katrina, I love that. Smell the ghosts that were still living there. Oh my gosh. Woo. You got so many things for me to think about after today’s episode. Okay, question number six. When it comes to writing mystery, what is the worst writing advice you’ve ever received?

Katrina Monroe (09:33.611)
Thank you.

Katrina Monroe (09:40.907)
I wear tart.

Katrina Monroe (09:55.371)
So I’ve been lucky that I haven’t gotten too much bad advice except for in the very beginning of my writing journey. I attended one of these like online seminar classes. This was like 15 years ago. And the woman who was teaching the class, she asked us to like submit like a couple of paragraphs of just like a random scene. And so I did and I wrote something about…

someone’s heart beating out of their chest. And she just, she reamed me for that because she was like, no, someone’s heart couldn’t literally beat out of their chest. Like she, she made it so that, or she made it seem like hyperbole or metaphor was wrong. And I, I sat with that for a while and I’m like, that makes no sense. I was so confused. And so now as kind of like a petty revenge, there is so…

J.P. Der Boghossian (10:32.206)
Hehehehehe hehehe he

Katrina Monroe (10:44.587)
books are walking metaphors now, so it’s just it’s all metaphor and it makes me feel good about it.

J.P. Der Boghossian (10:50.862)
Well, they apparently didn’t read like any Edgar Allan Poe.

Katrina Monroe (10:55.179)
They read… I’m convinced she read nothing. I don’t know. I wish I could remember who this woman was, but I have no idea. I put her out of my head. Probably rightly. Yes. For sure.

J.P. Der Boghossian (10:58.958)
Uhhh…

J.P. Der Boghossian (11:05.134)
Well, they know who they are, so. All right, well, question number seven, promote yourself. How do we connect with you and follow you on social and pre -order your book?

Katrina Monroe (11:19.947)
Yeah, so my book, you can preorder pretty much anywhere. I would definitely recommend Once Upon a Crime Books. They’re one of my favorites in the Twin Cities. Or any other, any of your, you know, local indie book sellers, obviously. You can look on the…

J.P. Der Boghossian (11:26.478)
Yes.

Katrina Monroe (11:35.307)
The Big Evil website, they have it there if you feel the need. You’re welcome to. And then I’m on Twitter. I refuse to call it X. I’m on Twitter, AuthorCatM. I am also on Instagram, AuthorKatrinaMunroe, and then also on TikTok, though I don’t post much other than like my cat. So if you like cats, find me there.

J.P. Der Boghossian (11:39.534)
Mm -mm.

J.P. Der Boghossian (11:56.43)
I just saw the Hannah Gadsby, it came out in March, I saw the Hannah Gadsby special, where they’re saying how they will deadname Twitter for as long as Elon Musk is in charge.

Katrina Monroe (12:02.923)
Yes!

Katrina Monroe (12:08.939)
forever and ever amen yes I agree

J.P. Der Boghossian (12:13.326)
That is, yeah, so only Twitter. Okay, well, thank you so much, Katrina. You have given me a lot to think about, which is why I love hosting this podcast.

Katrina Monroe (12:23.723)
Awesome. I’m so glad. Thank you so much for having me.

J.P. Der Boghossian (12:27.182)
Absolutely. Well, this has been another episode of 7 Minutes in Book Heaven, presented to you by Once Upon a Crime Books. To purchase your next mystery or thriller and to pre -order Katrina’s Through the Midnight Door, visit Once Upon a Crime Books in Uptown Minneapolis or online at OnceUponACrimeBooks .com. My name is J .P. D ‘Abregocian, and I’ll see you next time.

This podcast was produced by This Queer Book Productions, LLC. Visit us at thisqueerbook .com to learn more about our podcasts. And until then, see you queers and allies in the bookstores.

And we’re done. I will click stop record.

Katrina Monroe (13:05.195)
Perfect! That was great!