Kathy Hogan Trocheck may be a New York Times best-selling author of 34 novels, but she is still not immune to the anxiety induced when being back on her high school campus.
“I feel like one of my teachers is going to jump out of the bushes and give me a detention,” said Trocheck, who has written under the pseudonym Mary Kay Andrews since 2002, from the media center of her alma mater. “It’s surreal.”
Trocheck graduated from Lakewood High School in 1972, and although she visits the area with some regularity, she hasn’t been back on campus in decades. The school’s Center for Journalism Studies did not yet exist at the time she attended, but Trocheck said she took as many English and writing classes as possible to satisfy her interest in becoming a journalist. 
“I worked on the school newspaper, but we only put out four issues. And I wasn’t allowed on the yearbook staff because they said I wasn’t a hard worker,” Trocheck said with a chuckle. “But I always knew I wanted to be a writer.”
Fifty years later and it’s clear that Trocheck knows a thing or two about working hard.
She got a summer job at the then St. Petersburg Times while still in high school and attended the University of Georgia, where she majored in newspaper journalism, after graduation. While acting as a stringer for the Times, she wrote classified ads, obituaries and reported on things like small-town city council meetings. One summer, she returned home and got a position on the copy desk for the Clearwater Sun.
“I worked in the morning on the copy desk writing headlines and cutlines, and then in the afternoon, they let me write some stories,” Trocheck said. “Every job I had, once I decided I was going to be a journalist, was something to get me closer to that goal.”
At Georgia, Trocheck worked on the “collegiate daily”, which was published four times per week.
“I honestly spent more time at the school paper than I did in class,” Trocheck recalled.
After graduating from UGA, she and her high school sweetheart got married and moved to Savannah where she took her first job as a reporter for The Savannah Morning News. But it wasn’t long before she landed as a general assignment reporter for the Southeast Georgia bureau of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“I covered murder trials and beauty pageants and anything that was happening that a reporter from Atlanta didn’t want to do,” said Trocheck of her 10 years working full-time for the paper, which ultimately ended up providing content for many of her novels. “Which was great training because I did a little bit of everything.”
As she began navigating the changing landscape of the newspaper world, and once she started a family and had young kids at home, Trocheck began entertaining the idea of writing fiction. Trocheck and a group of colleagues, all of whom wanted to write a book, began meeting on Thursdays at a bar down the street from the newspaper to talk shop and dream big. Being that she didn’t have a computer at home, she would sneak back to the newspaper to write.
“Obviously, that was against company policy,” Trocheck said with a somewhat spiteful giggle. “I think if you want to be a writer, you have to be a little bit subversive.”
Her first book didn’t sell, but she says it taught her the most about how to write a book. The second one sold based on five chapters.
“So, I quit my day job and got a two-book contract in 1990,” Trocheck said of her first deal with HarperCollins, one of the big five New York publishers.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Trocheck’s first novel, “Every Crooked Nanny,” was published in 1992, and she has published a book almost every year since then. Most are mysteries. Some are even set in St. Petersburg beach towns. And all of them have some sort of personal tie.
“I think a good writer is someone who has insatiable curiosity,” Trocheck said. “A good writer always wonders ‘why’ or ‘what if.’ Some of my best book ideas came because I observed something.”
During a recent sit-down with several journalism students and avid readers in her high school library, Trocheck discussed everything from her high school diary to how to prepare to write a book to marketing and technology.
She encouraged the students to read as much as possible, get a job that involves some sort of writing, and always listen.
“You really have to listen when people say things,” Trocheck said. “Listen to the expres
sions on their faces. Observe what people are doing when they’re talking to you.”
She also disclosed her favorite book: “Hissy Fit.”
“Probably because it was my first New York Times bestseller,” Trocheck told the students. “And when I called my parents to tell them I had made the New York Times Best Seller list, they cried. If you can make your parents cry because they are happy, that’s always a good thing.”
Her most recent novel published this year, “Summers at the Saint,” is set at a landmark hotel in coastal Georgia, an area similar to Tybee Island where Trocheck and her family spend time when not in Atlanta. Her pen name is a combination of her children’s names (Mary Kathleen and Andrew). Trocheck is also a grandmother and her favorite hobbies include thrifting for treasures and fixing up old houses.
“I think what’s most important is for you to find your tribe,” Trocheck said. “Whether that’s when you’re in high school or college or while you’re working, find the people who love to do what you love to do and who are passionate about it.”
