Twenty years ago this month, SACRED COWS was published.
I still remember getting the phone call from my agent. I was at work at the New Haven Register, putting together the weekly Car & Truck section (yes, I was the Car & Truck editor, but that's another story), when Jack called to tell me I'd won the Sara Ann Freed Memorial Award and Mysterious Press/Time Warner would publish my first novel.
I entered the manuscript in the competition named for Sara Ann Freed, a longtime editor of mysteries who had died in 2003 after a battle with cancer. She'd edited Marcia Muller, Margaret Maron, James Patterson, and Kate White, among others. Mysterious Press, her imprint now run by Kristen Weber, had decided to publish a debut novel in her name. Jack had been shopping the manuscript around, but so far had only gotten rejections. When I asked him if I should submit it to the competition, his response was, "Well, it won't hurt." It certainly didn't.
SACRED COWS was my first book featuring the tough-talking and self-deprecating Annie Seymour, a 40-ish newspaper reporter for the fictional New Haven Herald. She was so tough talking that I received many emails through the years from readers who wanted to wash her mouth out with soap. But that's who she was, and once she was firmly on the page, nothing would change her. In the pages of SACRED COWS, I also introduced her on-and-off police detective boyfriend Tom Behr; private detective Vinny DeLucia; and her nemesis, newbie reporter Dick Whitfield. I also brought my readers into New Haven, the city I was born in and have lived near and worked in most of my life.
I remember seeing the Publishers Weekly review of the book while on vacation in San Francisco. We were in an Apple Store, and I was toying around with one of the desktop Macs. A simple search put a grin on my face:
A phone call summons New Haven, Conn., crime reporter Anne Seymour from a beer-fogged sleep to cover a breaking story at the start of Olson's spirited debut, the winner of the first Sara Ann Freed Memorial Award. The dead body of a Yale undergrad lies at the foot of a luxury high-rise condo. Anne faces the usual stonewalling by the detective-on-the-scene—which smarts a little extra as he has recently vacated her bed. Dogged by a pesky fellow reporter, Anne struggles to keep her byline to herself, while she's warned off the case by her boss, her cop boyfriend and the university higher-ups. The plot thickens when she learns that the student was a high-priced escort, as is the next young female Yalie found murdered. A slave to her hormones, the smell of garlic and her driving ambition, the spunky, imperfect Anne is an engaging protagonist. Several other well-realized characters, some bovine humor and an amiable sense of the Yale/New Haven community round out this enjoyable first. Agent, Jack Scovil . Mystery Guild Featured Alternate . (Sept.)
It was the first book review I'd ever gotten, and I felt as though I'd finally arrived. Fifteen years of trying to get published (SACRED COWS was not my first effort) had been vindicated.
SACRED COWS began my writing career. There were four books in the Annie Seymour series, and the fourth, SHOT GIRL, was a Shamus Award finalist. My fourteenth book, A DEFIANT WOMAN, will be published in March, and while I have loved my other series characters (Brett Kavanaugh (Tattoo Shop Mysteries), Nicole Jones/Tina Adler (Black Hat Thrillers), and Hank Tudor's wives (Modern Tudor Mysteries), Annie Seymour will always hold a special place in my heart. She was the culmination of my dream of one day becoming a published author. That I have 14 other books under my belt now is beyond all the expectations I had back in 2005.
And because of Annie, I became part of the mystery community. I've traveled all over the country to conferences and events where I've met readers, librarians, bookstore owners and other mystery writers who have expanded my world so much and have been so important to me both professionally and personally.
Twenty years, and it all started with Annie Seymour (named after Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, Henry VIII's second and third wives. It was inevitable that I'd be writing about them eventually).
While SACRED COWS is no longer in print, it's still out there as an ebook and possibly still in libraries somewhere. If you're reading this and you haven't met Annie yet, I'd love it if you "met" her. She's great fun—and a reminder of what newspapers used to be.
The funny thing is, I was the first winner of the Sara Ann Freed Memorial Award. I am also the last. Mysterious Press never sponsored the contest again.
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