Bees are a fascinating motif in your series--and for some of the covers and in your titles.  Other than their part in some plots, are bees a theme or symbol in your work?

Bees make for interesting sub-plots both in The Beekeeper's Apprentice (15 years old!) and in the new book The Language of Bees.  In Beekeeper, the subtitle--"On the Segregation of the Queen," plays on the way in which Russell is kept apart, and in TLOB, I use the idea of the hive to explore the bonds of family and community.  I find it interesting that Conan Doyle credited Holmes, that most solitary of men, with an interest in beekeeping.  

Your website (www.LaurieRKing.com) has a unique article and press release about your "15 weeks of bees" program.  Can you explain this promotion?

It began as a way of celebrating fifteen years in print for The Beekeeper's Apprentice, and spread out to include the new book with the link of the title.  Bees being the theme, I played on them where and when I could.  For example, The Language of Bees includes "excerpts" from the Sherlock Holmes book, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture.  When we looked around for a place to forge a reciprocal relationship, Heifer International's beehive project came to mind, so we set up a page for donations (www.heifer.org/laurierking), where donors will not only get a chance at naming a character in the next book, they'll get a gorgeous booklet of those Holmes quotes.  Then when a printmaker approached me about doing a short-short story for him to illustrate, I jumped at the chance to do one on--yes: Sherlock Holmes and bees.  Plus, I'm using that broadside (which turned out beautifully, by the way) to encourage people to buy the new book from Independent booksellers, drawing from those who send me a receipt from an Independent.  (http://www.laurierking.com/?p=2614 )

Booklist's review called your series "uniformly superlative" and praised "a kaleidoscope of patterns that periodically locks into a place to reveal a clear but ominous vision..."  Can you explain the "ominous vision" referred to?  An outlook or voice of the author or of a key character?

I hope they were referring to a building sense of tension.  At any rate, that was what I was aiming for, the kind of story where one suddenly catches a glimpse of something dark in the undergrowth, but when one looks more closely, it's gone...or is it?

You have written well-received stand-alone mystery novels as well as your series.  Do you prefer one format over the other and, if so, why?

I greatly prefer having a change from one year to the next, since the idea of being limited to one set of characters would make me crazy.  I'd probably end up doing nasty things to the characters, just to get back at them.  I love doing the Russell and Holmes stories, but two in a row is my limit.  And the same for the Martinellis.  Standalones, well, standalones are just too much work for one a year, so I like to alternate those, as well.  I've been so very fortunate with Bantam, that my editor supports me in what I want to do.

What's on the drawing board for your next book?

The Green Man (2010) will be the second Russell in a row, continuing with a few of the plot points from The Language of Bees.  Some of the same characters and some new--one of the new guys I'm having a tremendous time with.  And after that, I'm playing with the idea of returning to the cast of Touchstone.  I'd intended that as a standalone, but a couple of the characters grew on me.

The Language of Bees (April 28): http://www.laurierking.com/?p=1866
web site:  http://laurierking.com

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Karen Harper has been published for 25 years. She is the winner of the 2006 Mary Higgins Clark Award.  A former college and high school English instructor, Harper currently writes contemporary suspense for Mira Books and historical novels for Putnam. She and her husband divide their time between Columbus, Ohio and Naples, Florida.