Please welcome Thomas Kies!

by Rick Blechta

Type M for Murder has a new member! We are most pleased to welcome Thomas Kies. Tom will begin work next Monday and alternate weeks with our delightful Aline Templeton. Please be sure to visit on Monday, July 30th to read Tom’s inaugural post!

In the meantime, here’s some biographical information he’s provided.

Thomas Kies

Tom Kies has wanted to be a mystery writer since he was a little boy, cutting his teeth on every John D. MacDonald novel he could get his hands on. But real life got in the way – working for newspapers and magazines for 30 years and raising three children. So his dream of being a novelist took a back seat.

Tom’s current day job is as the President of the Carteret County Chamber of Commerce on the beautiful coast of North Carolina. At night and on weekends, he writes about murder. His Geneva Chase series starts with Random Road and six naked bodies found hacked to death on an island. Written from the first person point of view of a female alcoholic reporter, Tom says, “I didn’t start out writing as a woman and, frankly, it’s a challenge. But she’s such a snarky smart ass, she gets to say things I wouldn’t dare and that makes her a hell of a lot of fun.”

His second book in the series, Darkness Lane opens with an abused woman torching her sleeping husband. When the police arrive, she’s drinking wine and watching the firemen vainly attempt to douse the fire. “I’m just toasting my husband,” she says.

Concurrently, a fifteen year-old high school student vanishes. The two plots appear to have nothing to do with each other but as Geneva chases down leads, she finds that they are dangerously related.

Tom’s given workshops for various state writers groups as well as the NC Writers Network Fall Conference. Working on Graveyard Bay, he lives on Bogue Banks, a barrier island with his wife Cindy and Lilly, their shih-tzu.