I’m excited to share a charmingly cozy and delightfully fluffy murder mystery story with Miaow: A Cat Zine. All proceeds from this digital zine will be donated to RAPS Cat Sanctuary, and preorders are open until September 5.
You can learn more about the zine and order a copy on their site here:
https://miaowzine.carrd.co/
The story I contributed to the zine, “Angus and Peaches Get Away with Murder,” is about two cats who do exactly what the title suggests, but it’s also about two pairs of humans – the two women who benefit from a wealthy man’s death, and the two freelance detectives who investigate the incident. As much as I appreciate lone-wolf genius criminals, I thought it would be fun to write a story in which every character conspires in the murder in some fashion.
The two nameless detectives are modeled on Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, whom I’ve brought forward into the twentieth century. Something I’ve always admired about Sherlock Holmes is his strong sense of compassion, which occasionally overrules his sense of justice. There are a number of cases (“A Scandal in Bohemia” is my favorite) in which he allows the person who committed a crime to get away with it if he believes this will be the best outcome. I really enjoyed writing the scene in this story where the Holmes character just kind of shrugs and says, “What are you going to do, try a cat for murder?”
What he doesn’t know is that Angus and Peaches are unrepentant fiends, and that they would happily get away with murder again. I love all cats on this earth, but I truly believe that this is the sort of creature they are. Cats are all tiny little devils, and that’s one of the many things I admire about them.
Digital Fantasy Diary 