The Picker
Who Perished
A Too Good to be Threw Consignment Shop Mystery
by Kate Holmes

Information for the Press

Book Information

The Picker Who Perished, A Too Good to be Threw Consignment Shop Mystery

Published by Katydid Press, paperback, 5.5" x8.5", 272 pp, © 2004. (ISBN 0-9755886-0-5) $12.95

Contact: Katydid Press, 4376 Meadowview Blvd. Sarasota FL 34233    941-924-4142    FAX: 941-92-5902  
E-mail: sarasotakate@yahoo.com  On the web at www.tgtbt.com/wendysam.htm

When I was eight, my favorite thing to do was go to work with my mother, who defied 1950s conventions by owning her own business, two consignment shops on Long Island New York. I started out lining index cards and sweeping, but by the time I was in high school, I could run the shop by myself on Saturdays. I worked for minimum wage and all the clothes I could wear. At one time, my mother made me count how many dresses I had. I believe the number was 52. One for each week of the year. So I was cut off, cold turkey, from grabbing every cute thing in my size. I’m sure my mother’s customers appreciated it.

Eventually, after college and a stint in the real world, selling antiques, tax-sheltered annuities, and becoming the youngest assistant vice-president ever of a chain of junior sportswear shops, I opened my own consignment shop in Columbus Ohio. I had less than $900 in the bank. Mine was the first consignment shop in that city of over a million, but I started a trend. By the time I sold my shop to my manager twenty years later, there were over 35 resale shops in Columbus, including the seven that moved as close to One More Time as they could get!

While running my shop, I published a newsletter for shop owners, wrote a best-selling operations manual on the industry, served as board member and conference planner for the international trade association, and was honored to become the only recipient of the industry’s two highest awards.

I retired in 1996 and moved to Sarasota Florida. In between volunteering at a local history site and of course at a non-profit consignment shop, I do watercolor (I’m still trying to do the perfect palm tree!) and I started taking writing classes. There, a wonderful teacher, Blaize Clement, invited me to join her writing class. One day, for a lark, we all agreed to start work on mysteries. We had five wonderful, diverse mysteries going when we went to a Mystery Writers of America conference in Fort Lauderdale. I wrote Chapter 11 of a collaborative novel, Naked Came the Flamingo, for this conference, and was delighted to work with New York Times best-selling author Barbara Parker.

Blaize came home from the conference with a book deal on her mystery written in our group. My mystery, The Picker Who Perished, A Too Good to be Threw Consignment Shop Mystery, came out three months later. Our other three writers are nearing completion, Blaize continues her series, and Wendy Sam is having new adventures and meeting more Sarasota characters under my pen. What a way to write!

Professional Bio of Kate Holmes

Contact Kate Holmes
941-921-5830, sarasotakate@yahoo.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sarasota Florida- She’s a woman of strong opinions. "As a consignment shop owner, you must be like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion. Your customers deserve honesty and reality. You need to be open with them." So advised Kate Holmes, past consignment shop owner and author of a best-selling how-to manual, in a sell-out keynote speech to her industry. "Then," Kate says with a smile, "I broke my own rules. I lied and even twisted reality. And now, I have a murder mystery because I did all that!" Holmes’s first mystery novel debuted to the general public at the world's first-ever booksigning in a consignment shop, Woman's Exchange in Sarasota. 

Holmes, who has written for the resale industry since the 1980's, has just had her first fiction book released. The Picker Who Perished is a light-hearted mystery set in Sarasota featuring Wendy Sam Miller, a consignment shop owner who, when the police say her friend and picker, Ilene, died of an accidental fall, doesn’t believe it was an accident. But who would want Ilene dead? A scribbled list, several attractive men, and a slew of eccentric tropical residents lead Wendy Sam into mystery and danger. "Is Wendy Sam a perfect shopkeeper?" asks Holmes. "Well, when she isn’t out running around trying to solve Ilene’s murder, yes," she laughs. "Wendy Sam does everything I’d do, except of course, she’s younger and braver than I am."

Making the switch from writing nonfiction to writing a mystery was difficult, Holmes admits. "For years my writing had to be crystal-clear. But in a mystery, you have to fool the reader. It was hard not to tell it all too soon."

Holmes’s love of the business and her clientele is obvious in her warmly-drawn characters. "Everyone who’s read it has a favorite: Otto the lonely widower, or the Sandpiper Twins, or the sexy Henri, and they all tell me who they like best. Then they want to know who these characters are ‘really.’ But they’re no one, or everyone, I meet daily in Sarasota."

She was signing up for her first writing convention when she noted that they were asking for authors to contribute a chapter to a collaborative mystery. Her favorite author, Barbara Parker, was heading the novel. "I’m Chapter 11 in Naked Came the Flamingo. I had the honor and the horror to have my assigned chapter come immediately after Barbara’s. I was terrified to follow a New York Times best-selling author, but I learned so much from her personally. She couldn't have been more gracious, even when I threatened to muddy the waters with a ridiculous plot twist."

Holmes is retired from the shopkeeping business now, but she volunteers at Woman’s Exchange and Historic Spanish Point and paints watercolors of her adopted town. "It’s great to have a second life, and for a life-long second-hander, what could be more natural?"