Kate Millholland lives in Chicago, but Gini Hartzmark, creator of the mystery books featuring the corporate attorney, lives in Phoenix.
The distance and difference in scenery do create challenges when writing. But Hartzmark gets around any difficulties by going back to her former home city four times a year to visit, to walk around, to see what's changed.It's only been recently that the author, who moved here two years ago with her husband and three children, has felt at home in the valley.
"I spent a year and a half feeling like Alice in the rabbit hole," said Hartzmark, laughing. "For me, moving out here was a real shock. It just never occurred to me that I would ever live in Arizona and own a cactus."
Her first home here had desert vegetation.
"Here I was, looking at orange trees out the windows, cranking the air-conditioner to cold, putting up pictures of Chicago in the wintertime.
"I didn't want to leave Chicago, ever."
Her current home does look Midwestern. Ranch in style, it has large front and back yards. Delicate white narcissus, white and lavender alyssum and other more typically Midwestern flowers bloom on her front porch, reminding her of the Windy City.
There are glimpses of Lake Shore Drive, buildings lit up at night, Lake Michigan and the University of Chicago, near where Millholland lives, in Hartzmark's latest book, "Bitter Business" (Ballantine Books, $21). It came out this past fall in hardcover, following two other books, "Principal Defense" and "Final Option," which had been released in paperback by Ivy Books.
The author spent 10 years writing "Principal Defense." Upon acceptance by Ballantine Books, she found herself with a contract that called for a second book, due in 11 months.
"When I wrote my first book, I had a Nike poster on my wall that said, `Just Do It,' " she said.
She used the same analogy for the second but did find it more challenging than the first.
"Your second book is the hardest. You're afraid you've used up all your best stuff in the first book. You're afraid you can't do it again."
Now, in the midst of the fourth book, the Nike poster has been replaced by a photo of the economist Milton Friedman, whom Hartzmark has met and considers a great writer.
"His picture is up there to remind me that when (the writing) is not going well, it's because I'm trying to force it," she said.
On another wall of her office is a bulletin board with magazine pictures of faces, faces that remind her of her characters. On another wall, books - her own, an anthology of poisons and their effects and other reference books - share the shelves with her collection of rock music.
She plays the music loud - her office is soundproof - while writing.
Hartzmark, 39, has wanted to be a writer since she was 10. The turning point toward mysteries was the children's classic "Harriet the Spy."
At 13, she started reading mysteries voraciously, consuming those by Arthur Conan Doyle. Another year, she read all of Agatha Christie's books.
But because her father wanted her to go to medical school, she put off her writing career. While in high school, she took as many science classes as she could and interned at a medical examiner's office.
She saw an aspect of life most kids her age didn't: Grieving parents whose kids had died from overdosing on drugs.
The experience stuck with her, even though it didn't discourage her from a medical career.
But calculus did.
Hartzmark then turned to law school, with writing still in the back of her mind.
Eventually, after getting married and becoming pregnant with her first child, she decided to write a book.
All her experiences, such as working in the medical examiner's office, keep coming back to her. Perhaps someday they'll become part of a book.
"Nothing you ever do in your life if you're a novelist is for nothing."
Silhouette focuses on the arts and entertainment community in Arizona.