Kate Myles Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Kate Myles is a mystery author that is best known for her debut novel “The Receptionist.” Before she became an author, she had a job as a TV producer for several networks such as Food Network, OWN, and Discovery among others.
Before she became a producer she was a comedian and actor and spent two years hosting the programs Not Your Average Travel Guide and Travel Channel among others.
Her short fiction has been featured in Storm Cellar Quarterly, Necessary Fiction and Quarterly West. The Receptionist was first published in 2021.
Myles now lives with her husband and son in Los Angeles.

Having worked as a comedian, actor and TV producer, Kate Myles knows all about Hollywood. She loved working as a producer but the itch to create something more subversive and deeper never went away.
As a producer she never had the time to write and did not think she would ever become an author as she thought the process excruciating. When she was in her twenties she used to start writing screenplays or stories and would never write more than a few sentences.
However, she always loved to read and whenever she read something interesting she always thought I want to write like that too. When she had her son in 2012 she began writing short stories when the child was sleeping. Given that she had by now spent years churning out episodes of TV the words flowed easier.
Moreover, she joined a weekly writers group and also took creative writing classes at a local college and it was not long before she was seeing significant improvements.

The very first success that Kate Myles experienced was from her short stories. One short fiction piece that she had never managed to finish was a Cinderella like folk tale. Her lead lives in 21st century Hollywood where she gets into an affair with a smooth talking Prince Charming that happens to be married.
Myles has trouble with ending the story since she acknowledged that it would be impossible for Cinderella to get her happily ever after but did not know how to write it. But once she went to her classes she started thinking about Prince Charming’s wife and made her as cynical and shrewd as her husband.
She would eventually write several chapters about the character that would eventually become one of the leads. She then expanded the draft over five years as she was still working as a producer and working in short bursts when she had the time.
She eventually sold her manuscript to Thomas Mercer and “The Receptionist” was published in 2021.

Even though Kate Myles was a Hollywood insider for many years, she does not draw any inspiration for her characters from the people she met or worked with. Rather, her characters are usually inspired by snippets of observed behavior and gossip and her imagination.
Doug and Emily the lead characters of “The Receptionist” would be familiar for anyone that has lived in Los Angeles. They are slick, ruthless and status conscious people that Myles was always fascinated by.
While she was working as a producer and actor she always wondered about how these people justified their actions or even if they ever felt the need to.
While the novel has many takeaways, Kate hopes that her readers will be entertained by the tale she spins.

“The Receptionist” by Kate Myles is the story of Emily Webb who is married to Doug Markham, a serial adulterer. They live a luxurious lifestyle but this is no fairy tale romance but rather a strategic alliance between Emily’s talent agency and Doug’s market research firm Beyond Brand.
Together they had managed to snag Dr. Maryn, a lifestyle guru that was leaving his old agency by dangling a neglected revenue stream they could develop from their data mining resources.
But there are several complications that they need to handle first. He needs money to launch his portable EEG and ropes in Erik Powell a tech consultant and together they intend to sell the information they stole from their newest client Dr. Maryn.
Maryn is an opinionated doctor with high ethical standards and it is not clear what would transpire if she learned of the theft of her clients’ information. But the most disruptive person is Chloe, a receptionist who Doug reassigns to Emily.
Emily and Chloe do not get along even though she seems to have developed quite a relationship with Doug. When Doug gets bored with her, Emily unexpectedly takes her up as she thinks she can make lemonade from lemons. But Chloe too has ideas of her own.