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Hello Booktalkers,

my name is Manu Wirtz. I was born in 1959, and I´m living in the west of Germany, in the romantic landscape of the volcanic Eifel. I´m a professional graphic designer and have worked for many years in marketing and advertising. In addition to my profession, I write cat-crime novels. Up to now 3 novels and a short stories have been published in Germany. Now I´ve started to translate my short stories into English language.
I am living with her husband and my cat Jule on an idyllic horse stud in Western Germany. For more information see http://www.manuwirtz.de

Welcome to the community!

"Cat Crime" novels? Cats commit crimes?

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It's interesting how cats and crime novels seem to go together. I used to adore The Cat Who... books by Lillian Jackson Braun. I keep meaning to start that series over from number one. Her protagonist is such a well fleshed out guy, too. Not perfect, a little grumpy, but ultimately very pleasant. I also read the ones by Rita Mae Brown, but I didn't grow to love them like I loved Braun's books.

Chris, cat crime novels are where the cat helps SOLVE the crime, obviously! Different authors address this in different ways. In Braun's books, the cats always end up doing something that tips the "detective" (he's a journalist, actually, named Qwilleran) off and helps him figure out the crime and who did it. For example (spoilers!),

Spoiler

I think it was the first book, The Cat Who Saw Red, wherein his cat is fixated on a red vase that his friend apparently made for him. Later you discover that the vase is red because when it was fired in the kiln, a body was in it, which gives a very beautiful, distinct red colour to glazing. So it turned out the his friend was dead and her husband had disposed of her body in the kiln she was firing pots in, and then he had delivered the vase from the kiln which she had promised to Qwilleran to make it seem more like she fulfilled her obligations and then ran away, rather than just disappearing.

Another sort of cat crime novel is like in Brown's books, wherein the animals can talk to each other and know things the person (I think she's a vet?) doesn't know because they witnessed things when she wasn't there/didn't see/whatever. So the animals try to find ways to make their owner know what happened, since they can only talk to each other and not her.

Which kind of cat crime novel do you write, Manu? And welcome to BookTalk!

This is fascinating. I really had no idea that cat crimes books existed.

Theomanic wrote:Which kind of cat crime novel do you write, Manu? And welcome to BookTalk!

Thank you all for the warmly welcome.

My novels are located in the volcanic Eifel in the west of Germany, a landscape with little villages, farms and many crime-authors. Hillesheim, where I live, is called the capital city of crime-stories.
Jule is a normal house-cat, but very curious. She is the detective in the stories. Jule uses her extraordinary senses and she is a good networker (with other cats).

I´ve started the translation with a short-story "Schrödinger´s Cat" (not a Jule-novel) for to look, how much work it is and how difficultly to publish with Amazon KDP. Now I´ll start with the next translation.

I've heard it's a good idea for writers to publish their short stories on Amazon for Kindle. Sometimes people just want a short little story! If you had any time left over, I bet you would have people clamouring for you to translate their work into German.

lol
My English is not enough for the linguistic nuances. I've got help from a Native Speaker, born in New Zealand, and living in Germany. She is English-teacher at school, she helped me with the correction.
But I can tell you a group on facebook with German authors, who publishes their books in English. They are searching for US or UK authors to share experiences and maybe work together. https://www.facebook.com/groups/German.US.Books/