In Guest Authors

Guest Post: A Second Chance at My Dream Job – Crime Novelist

One of my favorite authors, Caitlin Rother, graciously contributes to Colloquium again today!

Her second work of fiction, Hooked, was recently published, and that is cause for celebration for readers who enjoy engrossing and credible police procedurals featuring fascinating, multi-layered characters. Caitlin has long been recognized as one of our best contemporary true crime writers. But many readers may be surprised to learn that her talent also extends to crafting compelling crime fiction.

As she explains, the first book she ever wrote was actually a work of fiction. Naked Addiction was released in 2007 (and re-issued in 2014) after a grueling seventeen-year journey to publication. It served as the prequel to Hooked and also features Detective Ken Goode, who is joined in the new book by Katrina Chopin, an investigative reporter.

Caitlin’s dedication to her fictional characters and story, as well as her determination to make her dream a reality, have paid off. Both Naked Addiction and Hook are riveting, superbly crafted fictional tales.

A Second Chance at My Dream Job – Crime Novelist

by
Caitlin Rother

I thought my dream had come true when I got my first novel, Naked Addiction, published nearly twenty years ago. But sadly, the early versions of Hooked, which I started writing in 2008, were rejected. Multiple times.

The advice to “write what you know” doesn’t come out of nowhere. I knew how to write and tell a story, but at that point I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

I will always be grateful for the generous critique that uber-bestselling crime writer Michael Connelly gave me on an early version of Naked Addiction, which features Detective Ken Goode as an undercover narcotics detective who is working his way toward becoming a full-time homicide detective. Michael told me I didn’t know enough about police procedures, and it showed. But I did know how to write and build compelling characters, a skill that couldn’t be learned. So, he gave me a wonderful blurb that I will always cherish, but more importantly, he offered guidance on how to fix the plot and improve the book overall. I took his words to heart and kept rewriting.

Ultimately, it took me seventeen years to get Naked Addiction published. It came out two years after the release of my first book, a true crime titled Poisoned Love, in which toxicologist Kristin Rossum steals drugs from her lab at the county medical examiner’s office, poisons her husband, and then stages a suicide scene by sprinkling red rose petals over his body.

At that early stage in my career as an author, I’d been an investigative newspaper reporter for nearly twenty years, but my beat was government and politics, not crime. So, I didn’t really know how a detective thinks or talks, which was necessary to write a successful series of crime books, especially one in which the protagonist is a man. Sure, I’d read a lot of detective novels, thrillers, and mysteries, I’d quizzed men on how they think, and I’d even had a couple of homicide detectives do beta reads of my novel.

But fiction writing didn’t come naturally to me. It was a struggle, because until I covered the Rossum case, I’d never seen a homicide case all the way through, not even close. Sure, I’d worked hard to learn my creative writing craft, taken workshops, attended conferences, and joined critique groups, but something was just, well, missing.

After Poisoned Love was published, a whole new world opened up to me. I’d always dreamed of being a full-time author, but I still wasn’t ready to quit my job as a newspaper reporter yet. Once I got my next narrative nonfiction book deal, I had another in the hopper, and my first novel was under submission, so I was ready to take that risky jump. After two more nonfiction titles came out, Naked Addiction was my fourth book to be published. I was on a roll. Or so I thought.

But even after writing three nonfiction books about real homicide cases, the sequel to Naked Addiction, originally titled Dopamine Flood, just wasn’t coming together. My first try was rejected by publishers and later, a rewritten version was rejected by my next agent.

“Open a clean file and start over,” he said.

Ouch.

Part of the problem, I told myself, was that I was writing true crime books, and although I wrote them like suspense novels, using fiction storytelling techniques, they still weren’t novels because I had to follow the facts, no embellishment allowed. Promoting them and teaching writing courses kept me too busy to really spend the time figuring out what I was doing wrong.

But I’m stubborn and determined. I did start over with a clean file, and I did a complete overhaul. I showed subsequent versions to readers, other authors, friends. Some liked the book, but it was still not good enough. One said it started in the wrong place; another said it had too many subplots, and worse, one said it felt like dead words on the page.

I did more revisions until I thought it was ready to send out again. I had a new agent by then, one who I thought had more faith in me and was more supportive. He thought the book had something, enough to keep working on it, but he, too, said it still wasn’t there yet. He gave me some helpful suggestions, so back to the drawing board I went.

Most people would have given up, started on a new novel, or focused on something that came easier to them. But not me. After another major revision, I sent the latest version to a new set of beta readers, and this time I got a positive, enthusiastic response from all of them. It was alive!

Hooked is that version, and just like my first novel, it took me seventeen years to get published. I always believed in this story, and I loved the characters. I just couldn’t let go of it. It’s not in my DNA.

For any aspiring authors reading this, the lessons here are twofold. The first is to remember that being a published author, and remaining one, requires great resilience to rebound from rejection. The second is that you not only need to learn your craft, you really do need to know your subject matter. The earlier versions of my characters had parts of me in them, or people I knew, and some were informed by characters in books I’d read or had seen in movies. But it took more than twenty years before they were based on the knowledge and experience needed for them to have verisimilitude.

After writing fifteen books, most of them about real homicide cases, I’d now read, listened to, and watched a zillion detective interviews with suspects. I’d also read a zillion investigative reports in which the detectives explained what evidence they’d found and why they thought it was important. I’d interviewed those guys myself and listened to them testify in court. I finally knew how those guys talked and how they thought. I knew how they conducted their investigations, what they did, and in what order.

So, Detective Ken Goode grew out of all of that, but he also has evolved personally since he appeared in Naked Addiction, which is the prequel to the “Katrina & Goode” series. Because, although Hooked takes place only a year later, we both grew up a bit over the past seventeen years it took to get this book right. The other main character, investigative reporter Katrina Chopin, and her relationship with Goode have evolved too.

I’ve been asked if Katrina is really me, and the answer is no. I was told a long time ago that I had to make her different than me, because she needs to do things that I can’t and wouldn’t or she wouldn’t be a compelling character. So, she is her own person, even though we’ve lived or worked in a couple of the same places and we’re both strong-willed, determined investigative reporters who are willing to take risks to get what we need.

Before Hooked was accepted for publication by Thomas & Mercer, I’d already finished the sequel, Staged. Unlike its predecessors, the first draft poured out of my fingers and onto the page in less than two and a half months, so fast that I literally injured my wrists and had to slow down the revisions I completed five months later. Book number three and four in the series are finished as well. So, I hope you’ll stick along for the ride, because I think I finally know what I’m doing.

Meet Caitlin

Caitlin Rother was an only child who entertained herself “by reading stacks upon stacks of books and using my mind as a stage where characters talked to each other.”

She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and earned her master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. In high school and college, she explored journalism but opted for a career in public relations with a San Francisco cruise line. Eventually, though, she was compelled to choose the “balance and objectivity of newspapers over the positive spin world of PR, marketing and advertising, . . . ”

It was not until the late 1980s that she joined a writing workshop in Northampton, Massachusetts, in her quest to write more in-depth, creative stories while toiling as a reporter with the Springfield Union-News. The series of short stories produced in that workshop eventually evolved into her first novel, Naked Addiction.

As an investigative journalist, Caitlin was drawn to “complex and dramatic stories – the most bizarre or tragic deaths and the public figures whose questionable actions evoked my investigative curiosity.” She wrote about Michael Jackson’s original molestation charges and addiction to painkillers, the lifestyle of the Heaven’s Gate cult and strippers’ laundered political contributions to San Diego City Council members, and developed expertise in addiction (alcohol and methamphetamine, suicide, mental illness and the family dynamics and pharmacology involved).

She expanded a series of news stories about the Kristin Rossum murder case into what would become her first true crime book, Poisoned Love.

In 1998, Caitlin was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the Union-Tribune. Her story about a depressed teenager who died after lighting himself on fire behind a Walmart store won three awards in the annual Best of the West contest. Her journalistic honors also include a Best Feature award from the Associated Press News Executives Council and Best News-Feature award from the Los Angeles Press Club.

In 2006, she contracted to draft her second non-fiction book and, in a risky leap of faith, left the security of her position with The San Diego Union-Tribune behind.

Today Caitlin is also the New York Times best-selling author of Poisoned Love. Lost Girls, Dead Reckoning, and Then No One Can Have Her. Additionally, she penned A Complicated Woman, one of three entries in Greg Olson’s Notorious USA series, and authored Hunting Charles Manson with Lis Wiehl. Her other books include Deadly Devotion/Where Hope Begins; My Life, Deleted; Body Parts; Twisted Triangle; I’ll Take Care of You, the story behind the love triangle murder of Newport Beach multimillionaire inventor Bill McLaughlin by his fiancée, Nanette Packard, and her NFL-playing lover, Eric Naposki, and Death on Ocean Boulevard. Caitlin’s most recent true crime book, Down to the Bone, about the McStay family murders, was released in 2025.

Caitlin is now focused on writing a fictional crime series that was actually launched with Naked Addiction in 2007 (which was re-released in 2014). The second installment, Hooked, was just published and will be followed up with Staged on June 16, 2026.

A sought-after speaker, Caitlin has made more than 250 television, radio, and podcast appearances on 20/20, People Magazine Investigates, Crime Watch Daily, Australia’s World News, and various Netflix, Investigation Discovery, and Lifetime programs. She helps aspiring authors as a book doctor and writing/research/promotions coach and consultant. In her spare time, she sings and plays keyboard in a trio with her partner.

Connect with Caitlin via her website, or on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, Threads, or Bluesky.

To purchase autographed copies of Caitlin’s books, email her directly: crother at flash dot net.