Best-selling Missoula authors visit local library
The Mineral County Library welcomed two special guests on July 8, authors Kat and Larry Jay “L.J.” Martin.
From noon until 2 p.m., the New York Times best-selling authors joined an eager audience of about 30 local residents for readings and book signing. Librarian Florence Evans had invited Kat to the library a couple of years ago and the event had ended up on the back-burner.
“Until Guna (Chaberek, the library’s director) decided to invite them for a meet and greet during her adult Summer Reading Program Series,” Evans said.
They were also treated to a beautiful cake featuring a picture of each of the author’s latest book jacket in the frosting, Larry’s “Revenge of the Damned” and Kat’s “Beyond Reason.” The couple owns a small horse ranch near the Sapphire Mountains in Missoula and winter in Ventura, California.
Kat, who turns 70 this month, is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara and has written more than 65 romantic suspense, contemporary and historical romance novels. Her latest book, “Beyond Reason,” is on the New York Times Bestsellers list.
A description of the book reads: “Five weeks ago Carly Drake stood at her grandfather’s grave. Now she’s burying Drake Trucking’s top driver, and the cops have no leads on the hijacking or murder. Faced with bankruptcy, phone threats and the fear of failure, Carly has to team up with the last man she wants to owe—Lincoln Cain.
Cain is magnetic, powerful, controlling—and hiding more than one secret.
While in school, Kat majored in anthropology and also studied history and was a real estate broker in Santa Barbara when she met her future husband in 1985.
“We were on opposing sides of a transaction — I represented the seller and he represented the buyer,” she said in a previous interview.
After they had become acquainted, Larry, who was also a real estate broker, asked her to read an unpublished manuscript of an historical Western he had written. The rest is history as she fell in love with the book and with the author.
On her writing career Kat said, “I’ve always loved books. I was an avid reader, with any number of my own stories rolling around in my head. Writing them down seemed a logical step.”
Larry, who said he’s been in sales all his life, has written more than 40 books. His works include westerns, thrillers, mysteries, and historicals; and non-fiction books including killing cancer (he’s a two time cancer survivor), a cookbook, a how-to book on writing, a book of cartoons, and a political thesis. Many of his recent titles have been best sellers on Amazon. He’s also an optioned screenwriter by both an independent producer and an NBC approved producer. Along with his other accomplishments, he’s also a partner and publisher with Wolfpack Publishing, LLC, with over 400 books available on Amazon and other sites.
A description of his book, “Revenge of the Damned (The Montana Series)” he was promoting on Saturday reads: “A lie can be a lynchpin for a hell of a lot worse…at times it can end in a lynching!”
When Linc Dolan returns from the Civil War to find his former commanding officer has lied to his intended about his death in battle, and then married her, it’s hell to pay. When a freak early-winter storm finds Linc wounded and sheltered in the cabin of a recently widowed homesteader and her young son, all should be fine…if he wasn’t on the run from the law. Now, Bama, a black mule skinner; Twodogs, a Crow tracker; and Dolan, find themselves an unlikely gang. Damned by decent folk, hunted by the law, and pursued by Montana’s most deadly man-hunters, they all three are wronged and seek bloody revenge.”
Kat, who also goes under the pen names of Kathy Lawrence and Kasey Marx, has sold over 16 million copies of her books and has been published in 20 foreign countries, including Japan, France, Argentina, Greece, China, Russia and Spain. Her last nine books have been New York Times Bestsellers including her popular “Against” series like Against the Mark, Against the Wild.