Guest Blog Post on MM Good Book Reviews

Hello, everyone! I’m Amy Spector. Some of you probably know me—more of you probably don’t—but I’m thrilled to be here today on MM Good Book Reviews to share a little about myself, my newest book, and some background on how That Rat, Carter Janson came to be.

When I write, more often then not, a little something of me slips onto the page, but never more so than with this book.

That Rat, Carter Janson takes place in Illinois, Chicago mostly, with some stops in some of the more seedy places. That’s just one of the many ways a little of my own experiences can be glimpsed in the book.

My first trip to Chicago consisted of an all-night drive, a delivery van, 4000+ pounds of printing press motor, and a boyfriend I had to drag kicking and screaming. Not even the prospect of the two of us alone in a hotel room—we both had roommates—seemed to make him any happier! Quite frankly, I should still be insulted! Why I married him, I’ll never know. I assure you it had nothing to do with sexy bangs and combat boots. 

Chicago has an amazing art community and museums that you could spend your life wandering and never grow bored. It also has some places that you might be better off avoiding completely.

On that first trip—a 24-hour emergency run for my employer to get a printing press motor repaired—the giant, burly man with a thick German accent I had been sent to see, gave the two of us directions to a Days Inn he said was nice and in a decent area. Well, Chicago is huge, and very shortly we had gotten hopelessly lost. We called our burly giant from a phone booth—yeah, a phone booth, this was before I even had a cell—told him where we were, and his exact words were Get the hell out of there. LOL

Since then, I’ve visited Chicago nearly a dozen times. Spent hours in its museums, eaten too much of its pizza, shopped and have even gotten to see a Christmas parade from its streets. So when Dreamspinner Press announced their States of Love series, there was really only one state I wanted to claim, and I knew exactly the story I wanted to write. Well, almost. There were certainly some tweaks along the way, and that former boyfriend with the sexy bangs and combat boots? He helped a little too.