Member AuthorKitGray(they/she)

Avid reader (though not as good at updating here!) and author of The Black Cat Detectives.

I'm gonna share something personal about me...

Not long ago, I had a terrible year where all five of my beloved and very elderly rescue cats, who had been with me their whole lives, took ill succumbed to unrelated conditions one after another.

The thing that helped me most was remembering them as kittens, all snuggly and awkward and impetuous. I realized that I needed to write something healing. Something as joyful and buoyant as those memories.

Naturally, my first thought was murder.

So I sat by the fire each night with a cup of tea and brought their sweet, curious, fierce spirits to life on the page. The result is The Black Cat Detectives, which I hope will bring laughter and light to everyone who reads it.

Kit Gray is the cozy mystery pen name for Elise Scott. Elise writes from their lived experiences of queerness, disability, neurodivergence, fat-positivity, and petting three cats with two hands. Their life has been an adventure, from facilitating equine therapy for trauma survivors to counseling at-risk youth with the aid of an inordinately large sub-woofer and beyond. They earned their BA from Mount Holyoke and their MS from Capella University. Their debut novel, a cozy mystery featuring three kittens with the ability to bend the laws of physics, who must solve a murder to save their rescuer from the human pound, is forthcoming from Crooked Lane in May 2026. Elise is a 3rd place Not Quite Write Prize winner and Best-of-the-Net nominee. Their short work has appeared/is forthcoming in The Advocate, Choices: An Anthology of Reproductive Horror, The Not Quite Write Anthology 2025, The B'K, Five Minutes, Knee Brace, All Existing, and Quibble, among others. Find out what they’re working on now at http://elise-scott.com.