Why do you write the genre that you write?
I first started reading Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers as a teenager, and they whetted my appetite for smart-yet-not-gory mystery novels where the character development is as important as the puzzle. Then, years later, I discovered Diane Mott Davidson: Really? There are mystery novels centered around food? As a result—having been an avowed “foodie” since childhood—when I set my sight on writing my own novel, it was a no-brainer that it had to be a culinary mystery.

What’s the quirkiest quirk one of your characters has?
My protagonist Sally Solari’s best friend from law school, Nichole, works up in San Francisco as an immigration attorney. When she’s in “professional mode” (her term), Nichole can act as proper and lawyerly as the best of them, but “skate punk” is her true native tongue, and when off work she loves to sport fire engine-red Converse high-tops and pepper her language with words like “awesome,” “dude,” and “sick.”

Tell us how you got into writing?
I’ve been writing extensively for almost as long as can remember—first, with term papers in high school, later drafting literary criticism as an English major in college. But it wasn’t until after receiving my undergraduate degree, when I started a New Wave rock band and began penning songs for the group, that writing became a true vocation for me. Each song was a little story—one of heartbreak or mystery or undying love—so much more fun than cranking out dry essays about the use of figurative language in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales! It took over twenty more years (during which, as an attorney, I found myself writing dry, legal briefs), but I was eventually able to go back to stories and pursue my dream of writing fiction, and began work on what would become Dying for a Taste, the first novel in my Sally Solari culinary mystery series.

What jobs have you held before, during and/or after you became a writer?
Oh, boy. In the seven years between graduating from university and starting law school, my jobs certainly ran the gamut: waitress, day care teacher, lead singer/songwriter/rhythm guitarist for a New Wave rock band (okay, so that didn’t really make any money), glueing porcelain roses onto backings to make jewelry, and working at a diaper service (don’t ask), to name a few. But then once I became a lawyer, the jobs grew far more mundane: intern at the public defender’s office, then research and appellate attorney for a civil law firm for twenty years.

Where do you write?
Always at my desk at home. I can’t handle the distractions of a coffee shop or any place with ambient noises and goings-on around me.

What is your favorite deadline snack?
Does coffee count as a snack?

Who is an author you admire?
I have to pick just one? Okay, then—so as to not omit any of the myriad amazing contemporary writers I know and adore—I’ll go with someone from the past: I still am a huge admirer of Dorothy L. Sayers, and how each of her Lord Peter mysteries brings us into a new, different, and fascinating subculture of 1920s and ’30s England.

What’s your favorite genre to read?
Besides mysteries (duh), my other favorite genre is science fiction—the more nerdy and sciency the better. But I also love to read food memoirs (see next question).

What are you reading now?
Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci. Someone left it in the Free Little Library that we maintain at our home, which was a happy occurrence, as I’d been wanting to read the book. It’s a lovely memoir.

What is your favorite beverage to end the day?
I don’t have it often, but a nightcap of Calvados (a French apply brandy) is a delightful way to end the evening.

What is next for you?
I have a brand new series debuting this April—the Orchid Isle Mysteries, set in Hawai‘i, where I live half time. In the first book, Molten Death, Valerie Corbin, a retired caterer, comes to the Big Island with her wife Kristen in search of rest and recreation following the loss of her brother and her own brush with death.

Then Kristen’s surfing buddy, tattooed local boy Isaac, suggests something far more exciting than merely hanging out on the beach: a hike out to the active volcanic flow. But when Valerie alone witnesses a body being blanketed by the hot lava and no one else believes her, she becomes consumed by the mystery of the body in the lava, determined to discover what happened. Thrown into a Hawaiian culture far from the luaus and tiki bars of glossy tourist magazines, Valerie soon begins to fear she may be the next one to end up entombed in shiny black rock.

Where can we find you?
My author website is lesliekarstauthor.com. I also blog with the fabulous Chicks on the Case at chicksonthecase.com, and Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen at mysteryloverskitchen.com.

Now to have some fun . . .

Chocolate or vanilla
Vanilla

Cake or ice cream
If it’s moist, then cake. Otherwise, ice cream—preferably caramel swirl.

Fruits or vegetables
Vegetables

Breakfast, lunch, or dinner
Dinner

Dining in or dining out
Oof. This one’s hard. I do love to eat out, but only once in a while, or it gets old.

City life or country living
In between the two—town living.

Beach or mountain
Beach

Summer or winter
Summer

Short story or full-length novel
Full-length novel

Extrovert or introvert
Extrovert. (Though I do need my alone time.)

Early bird or night owl
Early bird

And even more fun . . .

What’s your favorite movie?
True Stories, a delightfully wacky film by David Byrne of the band Talking Heads that came out back in the 1980s.

You are stranded on a deserted island. What are your three must-haves?
If food and beverage aren’t included, then: water, bread, and cheese. (And I’m assuming shoes, long-sleeved white shirt, and sun hat don’t need to be specified.)

Otherwise: books (if only one is allowed, perhaps the collected works of Shakespeare, which should keep me occupied for a while); a dog to keep my company; and a fully-stocked cocktail bar—with ice!

My bio:
Leslie Karst is the author of the Lefty Award-nominated Sally Solari mystery series and Justice is Served: A Tale of Scallops, the Law, and Cooking for RBG. After years waiting tables and singing in a new wave rock band, she decided she was ready for a “real” job and ended up at Stanford Law School, then returned to school to study culinary arts, all the while working as an attorney. Now retired from the law, Leslie spends her time cooking, cycling, gardening, observing cocktail hour promptly at five o’clock, and of course writing. She and her wife split their time between Santa Cruz, California and Hilo, Hawai‘i.