A Portrait of the Artist

Lilian Jackson Braun was born in 1916 (we think - this has never been confirmed), though not in Michigan; she hails originally from Massachusetts, but moved to the Detroit and Thumb area soon after. Her literary career began when she was two, with her first poem - "Mother Goose is up in the sky, and these are her feathers coming down in my eye." As Braun says, "Not bad for a two-year-old." Braun chalks up her choice of career to her mother's influence - she encouraged her children to talk about what had happened to them at school each day, cultivating their storytelling abilities, and taught little Lilian to read and write at three so that she could correspond with her grandmother.

Lilian's work was first published when she was just sixteen, shortly after she graduated from high school; she was a big baseball fan and sold articles on the game to Baseball Magazine and The Sporting News under the pen name of Ward Jackson (Ward being her mother's maiden name, Jackson being her surname at the time) - she felt that a female sports writer would not be taken seriously at the time. Lilian also wrote short sports poems (which she called "spoems") six days a week for publication in the Detroit News. Eventually, the young author became a copywriter, writing ads for a department store, then graduated to a job at another department store as director of public relations.

After that, Braun took a short hiatus to write a few short stories, but discovered that writing at home was a lonely life for a lively former PR executive. After a few months, she was offered a job at the Detroit Free Press, writing articles on many of the subjects Qwilleran tackled during his tenure at the Daily Fluxion - antiques, interior decorating, architectural preservation, cooking, and art. She eventually became the department editor, and she stayed at the paper for thirty years.

The Cat Who... mysteries were sparked from Braun's personal sorrow; her first Siamese was killed in a fall from a tenth-floor window. Her neighbors suspected foul play, and, as catharsis, Braun wrote a tale in which a Siamese murdered in a similar fashion was avenged ("The Sin of Madame Phloi"). Eventually, she went on to pen other cat-related stories and, of course, the Cat Who...series. Braun originally wanted the main character to be a newspaperwoman like herself, but her friends discouraged her from doing so, saying that it would be "too autobiographical". The Qwilleran we know and love (or, at least, the incarnation of him seen in the early novels) is a composite of five gentlemen she knew at the time of the inception of the series.

Her first novel, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, was first published in 1966 and well-received. She followed up with The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern and The Cat Who Turned On and Off, but then took an eighteen-year hiatus from the series - her publishers wanted stories with more sex and violence, and Braun's books were unwelcome. She retired from the Free Press in 1980, and in 1986 she revived Qwilleran, Koko, and Yum Yum in resubmitting The Cat Who Saw Red - a manuscript she had written almost two decades before - and continues writing to this day - twenty-four Cat Who... mysteries so far.

In 1989, she left Michigan to move to North Carolina, in the mountains near the town of Tryon. She currently has two Siamese (named Koko III and Pitti Sing) and is married to actor Earl Bettinger. Her favorite creation, as one would expect, is Jim Qwilleran, yet she also loves Polly Duncan, Hixie Rice, Arch Riker, and Amanda Goodwinter as well. When asked to name her favorite Cat Who... book, though, she is understandably stymied - "it is like the woman who has a lot of children -- she loves them all."

And so do we. In this harried, unkind world, to spend some time with someone as sensible and sympathetic as Qwilleran and his two more-human-than-animal feline companions is a great comfort. Here's to a witty, charming lady who has given joy to so many people through allowing us to retreat into a quiet small town that seems like home with characters that are old friends. From all of us --