Jennifer. J. Chow, News

Meet the New Chick!

We’re so thrilled to introduce you to the brand new Chick on the Case! Fab author Jennifer Chow has moved into the coop and will be blogging in rotation on Fridays! She pens the delightful Sassy Cat Mysteries. We’ve grilled (oops, never say grilled about a chick!) ASKED Jennifer a few questions, so you can get to know her a little better.

Jennifer, have you ever had a fangirl moment with a favorite mystery author?

I must say I was prescient. Before she even wrote Searching for Sylvie Lee, I was a fangirl of Jean Kwok. I remember giving her my first indie book and signing it. My hand trembled so much, I bet the dedication is illegible! Also, I recently saw Tess Gerritsen at a conference, but I was too gobsmacked to even introduce myself.

Jen's author crush jeankwok
Jennifer having a fangirl moment with Jean Kwok

Your Sassy Cat Mystery series has a talking cat named Marshmallow (who’s adorable!). May we ask, why a talking cat? And have any cats, dogs, ghosts or such every spoken to you? Details, please!

I picked a sassy cat because I can have so much fun with felines—they’re mysterious and have great cat-titude! (I was also a big Garfield fan growing up.)

I’ve never encountered any talking animals or ghosts, but I used to think toys could speak—and listen. As a kid, I carried a stuffed pig around everywhere, but I made sure to hide him away whenever we ate pork!

How do you usually procrastinate when you should be writing?

I get sucked into the big black hole of social media.  Other times, I’ll find random chores to do. Oh, look! It’s time to dust my rock collection!

Tell us three things about yourself our readers might be surprised to know. 

  1. My first pet was a chicken. Yep, being a Chick was meant to be! (Note: We KNEW it!)
  2. The enemies-to-lovers trope really reflected how I fell in love with my husband.
  3. Growing up, our family owned a restaurant (all-you-can-eat Chinese food!).

Bio:

Jennifer J. Chow grew up on a steady diet of Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, and The Three Investigators. She also has very fond memories of reading Agatha Christie with her mom.

She traveled across the country for college, but missing her family—and the sunshine—returned to California. Likewise, after a brief professional foray into social work, she circled back to writing. Her first stories explored untold secrets and hidden family drama. Since then, she’s naturally gravitated to the mystery field.

Jennifer now writes the hiss-terical Sassy Cat mystery series. She’s also published the Winston Wong Cozy Mysteries under J.J. Chow. Her short fiction has been featured in Over My Dead Body!, and she isrepresented by Jessica Faust at BookEnds Literary.

Jennifer lives in sunny SoCal, where she nurtures her inner sass for channeling into books. Visit her website at www.jenniferjchow.com.  You can also connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

Latest Book:

9781984804990_MimiLeeGetsaClue_FCO_mech.indd

MIMI LEE GETS A CLUE

Mimi Lee is in over her head. There’s her new Los Angeles pet grooming shop to run, her matchmaking mother to thwart, her talking cat Marshmallow to tend to—oh, and the murder of a local breeder to solve…now if only Mimi hadn’t landed herself on top of the suspect list. 

“Chow smoothly mixes intrigue, romance, and humor. Cozy fans will have fun.”—Publishers Weekly

(Read more about her books on the Meet Jennifer page!)

Please help us welcome our newest Chick in the comments below! And if you haven’t subscribed yet, now’s a great time to start. Just click the button on the top right side of this page and let the fun begin!

 

68 thoughts on “Meet the New Chick!”

  1. Welcome, Jennifer, to the Chicks!

    Besides the (grilling), I see from your bio that you grew up on Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew. I also loved reading both of them before moving on to the Golden Age of mystery authors as a tween/teen. But who are the Three Investigators?

    The Sassy Cat mysteries sounds like a lot of fun and I am looking for to reading about Mimi Lee and Marshmallow.

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    1. Thanks, Grace! The Three Investigators was a short-lived series, originally called “Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators.” Supposedly, the creator had worked on a few anthologies attributed to Alfred Hitchcock. The three pre-teen boy sleuths solve odd mysteries, like one with a whispering mummy.

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  4. Welcome to the coop, Jennifer. Your stories sound so fun. A talking cat? Really? A talking cat! This might get my daughter reading mysteries! I need to check you out.

    Why did you pick the name Marshmallow?

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  5. Welcome, Jennifer! Great interview, except for your answer to the “three things” question. Not sure how you can write something like “The enemies-to-lovers trope really reflected how I fell in love with my husband” and then not give us the details.

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    3. Haha, Marla! Here’s a little bit more: My husband first thought I was too social, while I didn’t like how he kept making jokes (especially in a group setting when I was trying to say something). Eventually, we got to know each other beyond these initial impressions, and now we’re happily married!

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  6. Hi, Jennifer! Great to have you here. Looking forward to reading your books. As a crazy cat dad, there are never enough books involving felines. Cheers!

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  8. A thousand welcomes to Chicks, Jennifer! We’re so thrilled to have you join us, and greatly appreciate your many talents and sparkling personality (not to mention your anti-grilling stance). I’m glad you were a Three Investigators fan. I used to work with a really nice guy who wrote them.

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  9. I’m SO EXCITED you’re here, Jen! I also want to know more about your pet chicken. Why? How? Where? Name? Did you take her for walks? Give her baths? Did she fetch sticks? Terrorize neighborhood cats?

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    1. Thank you so very much, Becky! Actually, I had three pet chickens! We raised them up when they were little chicks. I grew up in central Cal, and there were areas that were quite farm-like, so getting chicks was pretty easy. We had two hens (Goldie & Brownie–I was a kid, so the names weren’t super original) and a rooster (Stanley). No walks, baths, etc., but I’m sure Stanley scared the neighborhood cats with his crowing!

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  10. Well, I know what I’ll be doing on Fridays from now on! And while I’m a dog person, sassy cats have their own appeal.. But actually, you had me a the pet chicken. The enemy/lover/husband thing is intriguing too.

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  11. Welcome, Jennifer!! We are so thrilled to have you join us! And I want to know more about that frenemies to love relationship with your husband. 🙂

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  16. Welcome, Jennifer! Thrilled and honored and so happy that you’ve joined us. ❤️

    (I wouldn’t mind having a Marshmellow sidekick…he is a hoot!)

    Would you please tell us about the non-mystery books you’ve written too?

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    1. Thank you so much, Cynthia!
      (Non-mystery books? Sure! THE 228 LEGACY is multicultural women’s fiction, but it does deal with one family’s personal secrets and a whole massacre kept under wraps for decades in Taiwan. I’ve also written some YA: DRAGONFLY DREAMS, historical & has the teen ghost protagonist battle against family drama from the beyond; “Moon Girl” in the STEM anthology, Brave New Girls: Tales of Heroines who Hack, about two girls going to the moon in a private shuttle.)

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  17. SOOO excited to have you as a new Chick, Jennifer! I love your Winston Wong mysteries, and am now looking forward to reading about the sassy cat, as well! My Jack Russell mix, Ziggy, loves sassy cats, so perhaps I’ll read the new book to her.

    Kinda jealous how some of you had pet chickens growing up. (And we’re only just learning this, Kathleen?!) Now I’m thinking we might need to adopt a real live Eggatha Chickstie for a Chicks mascot…

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    1. (Thanks about Winston.) Yes, please read to Ziggy! (I had the best time reading to a dog at a local library event–back when we could enter libraries. Pet therapy & reading = the best!)

      Eggatha Chickstie would be an amazing mascot.

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    2. Aaand…I had a pet chicken for a week. Her name was Wanda and I rescued her from–no joke–a sidewalk in Brooklyn. She probably fell off a truck on the way to a poultry market. I made a home for her out of a cat carrier in the basement of our building until I could find a bird rescue that would take her. They all said no. I even put her in her carrier in a little red Radio Flyer wagon and my kids and I tried to give her to the zoo in Prospect Park. They were HORRIFIED about the idea (germ possibility). They gave me a to-go bag of special food for her, though. Finally drove 2.5 hours to some old guy named Farmer Roy out on Long Island.

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    1. Thanks for reading, Mark!
      Okay, I seriously have a lot of rocks around me. My backyard landscape is basically a coating of stones. And, actually, I’ve always been a rocks and minerals fangirl. (I was a science nerd in school.) Someone I know also goes mining, so I have a few samples lying around my home.

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  19. Jennifer, so excited and proud to have you join us in the coop! So, do you like to cook and do you have recipes from your family’s Chinese restaurant? If so, the Chicks will be dropping by your house for dinner soon!

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    1. Thank you, Vickie! I do like to cook (but this three-meals-a-day routine is getting a little bothersome). The thing about Chinese food recipes is that they’re hard to pin down, quantity-wise. Relatives would always say, “Add a little soy sauce here” or “Fill this water in the rice pot up to your knuckles.”

      (You Chicks are welcome to drop by anyway!)

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