Murder-mystery novelist Margaret Mizushima moved from Colorado to Jefferson County, Washington, in 2022, and even set the ninth novel in her K-9 detective series — “Gathering Mist,” which was published last year — in the Olympic Peninsula.

While it was fun to reflect her current real-life home in her fiction-writing, Mizushima noted that she still has roughly 50 years of lived experience in Colorado to draw from for her storytelling, so for the 10th novel in her series — “Dying Cry,” published Oct. 14 of this year — newlywed K-9 Deputy Mattie Walker returns home to the fictional Timber Creek, Colorado.

Meanwhile, Mizushima herself will discuss and sign copies of “Dying Cry” at the Port Townsend Public Library’s Carnegie Reading Room on Thursday, Oct. 23, starting at 6 p.m., as part of an event that’s free and open to the public.

Mizushima shared with The Leader that she’s already written her as-yet-untitled 11th novel, due to be published next year, and she expressed pride in having been able to publish 10 novels in her Timber Creek K-9 mystery series within 10 years, starting with “Killing Trail” in 2015.

Mizushima tasks herself with a rigorous schedule of generating about 5,000 words per week from January through April, so she can meet her self-appointed deadline of releasing a new novel around October of each year.

“If I hit my weekly mark within five days, I give myself the weekend off,” said Mizushima, who writes mostly during the mornings, “when I think better,” before she conducts her business, responds to her correspondence and reads other writers’ works during the afternoons.

Mizushima’s writing career began after she retired from her first career as a speech therapist, but she freely concedes that she was no overnight success, since it took her 14 years “to learn the basics of the fiction business” enough to get published.

Mizushima has resided for a few years “between Port Townsend and Chimacum,” but her dog-handling protagonist’s trip to Washington in “Gathering Mist” was only ever intended to be a temporary stay, as the author has spent at least a decade developing her heroine’s fictional community in Colorado.

The latest aspect of Timber Creek that Mizushima explores in “Dying Cry” is a cozy rural resort, where guests can don snowshoes or cross-country skis, which she noted to distinguish it from more popular real-world resorts in places such as Aspen, with its downhill skiing.

“I based it on an actual place, just outside of Fort Collins,” Mizushima said. “So the investigation bounces between this quiet country haven and the bank where our victim worked. I liked the idea of exploring greed as a motive, and I did research while consulting with a number of friends who work in the banking business.”

Like a number of mystery novelists, Mizushima admitted one of her favorite parts of storytelling is planting red herrings throughout the narrative, to briefly mislead her readers.

“It’s just really fun, when each of the clues seem to point in different directions,” Mizushima said. “I enjoy setting up all those puzzles.”

Not only will Mizushima be answering questions about “Dying Cry” at the Port Townsend Public Library Oct. 23, but she also plans to give away free copies of the eighth book in her series, “Standing Dead,” which was published in 2023.