Hello All!

Last year I was invited to be part of a Blog Tour for a Book Called “Hot Pursuit“, the first  in the “To Catch a Thief” series. I immediately fell in love!!

Continuing throughout the year, I joined Kaitlyn as the rest of her series unfolded and just got better and better! Check out my reviews if you happened to miss them.

Hot Pursuit

Stolen Goods

Off the Grid

Now, I’m here with Kaitlyn to pick her brain a little on her process while writing this wonderful series!

Thank you so much for joining me, Kaitlyn!

Do you enjoy baking in real life?

Yes! When I was little, I loved baking with my mom. I have so many wonderful memories of baking cookies for Christmas or pies for Thanksgiving or treats for school. It’s one of the aspects of my life that I infused into Jo’s character a little—the nostalgia for those times.

I rediscovered a love for baking a few years ago when I found out I had celiac disease and needed to follow a gluten free diet. It can be difficult to find really amazing GF treats, so I started making my own! I try to only bake around the holidays or for parties, otherwise I’d be eating cupcakes every day. Lol! I have a serious sweet tooth!

I also have a soft spot for baking competition shows—I watch them all! I LOVE the holiday-themed ones on the Food Network, and I’ve been binging the Great British Baking Show on Netflix. My obsession definitely inspired how the three girls began their online friendship!

Did you come up with the intertwined stories of all 3 books at once? Or did the first one inspired you to write the other 2?

I’m a sucker for a series, so I always knew I wanted to write more than one book. When I started writing Hot Pursuit, I knew Jo’s two baking friends, Addy and McKenzie, would be the female leads for the next two books, so I had their characters very mapped out. I also knew I wanted Thad to be the leading man for book two. Leo was the biggest surprise! I wasn’t sure who the hero of the third book would be, but as I wrote his character into Hot Pursuit, I just fell in love with him and knew he would be a great balance to McKenzie.

Every book is still a surprise though! I had rough ideas for books two and three while I was writing Hot Pursuit, but by the time I actually began writing them, those plot ideas changed a lot. I couldn’t be happier with the end result! I really love how the stories as a whole came together. J

Do any of the characters or relationships mirror your own life? Or was it all just from your own invention?

I think all three of the female characters draw on different parts of my personality, which is something I find with a lot of my main characters! Jo is a lot sassier than me, lol, but she has my creative drive. Addy is a goody two-shoes who is easily lost in a day dream, very much like me, but she’s more timid than I am. And McKenzie is my inner New Yorker J I can definitely be a hard*ss like her, haha, but I like to think I’m a bit softer around the edges.

I love writing characters I can relate to, yet also live vicariously through. I think George R.R. Martin is the person who wrote, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,” and writers even more so.

Why write these novels under the pseudonym Kay Marie when you were already a known author under your name?

I write young adult fantasy under my other name, Kaitlyn Davis, and I write adult romance under the name Kay Marie. There are so many reasons to use a pseudonym, but I’ll try to boil it down into two main ones—for my readers, and for my business/brand.

For my readers: Books for teens and books for adults come with very different expectations on content—at least, I think they do. My young adult books are cleaner, with little to no cursing and kisses that fade-to-black quickly. They’re also fantasy tales, with magic and dragons and vampires. My books for adults are all romantic comedies, with more steam, more cursing, and no magic. Since the two genres can be quite different, I like to use two different names, so my readers know right away what to expect. A lot of my fans like to read my Kaitlyn Davis books and my Kay Marie books, but a lot only prefer the Kaitlyn Davis books or only prefer the Kay Marie books, so I think they appreciate the clear distinction between the two.

For my business: Not every fan of contemporary romance also likes young adult fantasy, and vice versa, so for my business, I think it’s cleaner to keep them separate in the retail market. On Amazon.com for example, if someone reads a Kay Marie book and clicks to visit my author page to read more of the same, all my contemporary romances are there together and easy to access. If that person is also a fan of young adult fantasy, my author description includes information about my other books and a link to my Kaitlyn Davis page. Keeping the two genres separate also helps with things like also-boughts, marketing, and advertising.

Some people keep their pseudonyms secret, which isn’t what I do. If someone is a fan of my writing style, I want all my books easily available to them! Having the pseudonym just helps categorize my writing by genre.

What inspired you to move from YA to adult?

I’ve always wanted to write both! For as long as I can remember, my favorite things to read have been young adult fantasy books and adult romantic comedies/chick lit. I just can’t get enough! My favorite authors when I was younger were Tamora Pierce, Meg Cabot, Sophie Kinsella, JK Rowling, Lynne Ewing, and the list continues. I’ve always bounced between these two genres (in movies and television too), so writing both of them was a given.

It’s also quite fun to be able to switch things up. Jumping between genres keeps my creative juices flowing and helps prevent burnout, because I’m always working on different sorts of projects and stories and characters.

Who is your favourite love match from your novels?

Eek, so tough! All three pairings were so much fun to write, and they’re all so different! Nate and Jo were probably my favorite build-up, because the cat-and-mouse aspect of their relationship was so entertaining. Addy and Thad were the most romantic of the bunch—the

Grand Canyon scene and all their artistic conversations were so dreamy to write! And then Leo and McKenzie might be my favorite HEA, because I really feel like in each other they found a sort of healing no one else could’ve provided. But, I love them all!!

Pick up a copy of Kaitlyn’s “To catch a Thief” series, and check it out for yourself!!

Hot Pursuit

Stolen Goods

Off the Grid

And, check out Kaitlyn’s other books on her website!