This author is one of my current favorites. Rich stories with believable characters, it’s a pleasure for me to be able to interview Jodi Thomas.
Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.
A. I write all over the place. I have a great office at West Texas A&M University with all my covers on the wall. I have an office upstairs in my home with one wall of bookshelves and three walls of windows and I have a tiny office out back off the garden where I’m putting together the plot for a new series.
Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)
A. No. I tend to work in two to three hour time periods. I get up to refill my drink every hour—diet coke if it’s warm, hot tea if it’s cold. I always open with what I worked on the day before. If I have to be away from my work more than four or five days, I start from the beginning. Usually spend at least half my time rewriting before I start writing.
Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?
A. I named my youngest son Cole after the hero in ASHES IN THE WIND. Don’t tell him.
Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?
A. Hey, I could zone out of reality at any moment and write. Don’t believe in ‘feeling creative’. I think of creativity as more like a muscle than a talent. The more you use it
Another favorite!
the more creative you become.
Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?
A. Hardest part of writing is getting your butt in the chair. It’s not easy. I sometimes tell myself, “just 15 minutes tonight, I’m tired’ Three hours later I look up. Once I’m in the story, I’m in the story and don’t want to leave.
Set goals—-5 pages a day 5 days a week.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! April’s author is Jodi Thomas. Coming Soon! Authors Barbara Taylor Bradford and Dorothea Benton Frank. To receive a free audio book and my sign up! On the home page, enter your email address. I love comments! Take the time to write one at the bottom of the post. Thanks!
A. Someone who makes you forget you’re reading a book, whose writing makes you care about the characters and what happens to them, sometimes so much so that you ignore plot holes and stay up half the night to finish it and then feel sad because there’s not any more book left.
Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?
A. For me, writing a book (and I’m referring to series now, so I already have a cast of characters and a place) starts with an “aha” idea. I see or hear or read something, somewhere, and it just clicks. It can be as little as a single word, but it’s the core idea that drives all the rest. That doesn’t mean I jump on it immediately and start writing. Usually I’ve got a couple of books at different stages (draft, revisions, edits, proofing), so I’m busy.
But then there’s the moment when the characters for the new book start speaking their lines, and you know the book is coming alive. Sometimes that comes at an inconvenient moment (like when I have a deadline for something else), but I’m a strong believer in the subconscious, which is busy churning away even when I don’t know it.
Of course, it’s still a long slog to get all the words on paper. I may have a fuzzy idea of the story arc, but like many people, I often have a panic moment in the middle when I think that I don’t have enough story to fill up all those empty pages before the end. So far I’ve muddled through.
Then I ship it off to my editor and forget all about it until he or she tells me that I have to change any number of things and I can’t remember why I said them in the first place. Editing is not my favorite part of the process, even though I know it’s necessary.
Q. How has your life experiences influenced your writing/stories?
A. I’ve had a career no one would describe as linear. I have an undergrad degree plus a Ph.D in Art History, and an MBA in Finance, and you’ll notice I’m not working in either field. But almost everything I’ve done, from providing advisory services to a major city, to working as a fundraiser for a library/museum, to being a free-lance genealogist, has found its way into one book or another. I think it makes a difference to a reader’s experience with a book if you can insert authentic details. Anybody can do research, but it’s the little things that make a story feel real.
Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?
Sheila Connolly
A. Sometimes I borrow from real people (some but not all of whom know it). For example, the main characters in the Orchard series are based on a woman I worked with for several years, and who is still a friend, and the guy we bought a house from in Pennsylvania, who continued to be a neighbor for years. That may sound a little odd, but the first possesses a wonderful sense of calmness even in the fact of difficulties, and the second was one of the nicest guys I’ve met—he’d do anything for you, and he was sincere about it. In the Museum Mysteries I had to use another amazing woman I worked with, because her history and her knowledge of Philadelphia are essential. She’s in on the secret now and is one of my biggest promoters. On the other, the hunky FBI agent in the Museum Mysteries is my own invention—and my ideal man (as I may have mentioned to my husband a time or two). Sometimes for the protagonist I use myself—a smarter, younger, better version of me.
Q. What inspired your story/stories ?
A. Places, mainly. The Orchard Mysteries are set in a house that one of my ancestors built, in a small New England town where I have multiple generations of those ancestors—I stumbled on it when I was looking for a bed and breakfast in the area. I worked in Center City Philadelphia in a major institution, and I thought people would enjoy seeing what goes on behind the scenes (the Museum series) while my sleuth goes about solving murders. I also wanted to try setting a traditional mystery in an urban setting. And for
Pub in the village
Ireland…it’s a challenge to portray it without making it too cute, but there is a strong sense of community and connection there that works very well in solving mysteries.
Q. Have you? Or do you want to write in another genre`?
A. I started out trying to write romance, because I knew it was the largest market, but I wasn’t very good at it. A few years ago I tried my hand at a rather tongue-in-cheek romantic suspense, Once She Knew, that I self-published. That was fun to write, with a lot of snarky dialogue and a plot that involved saving the First Lady’s life. Then in 2013 I pulled a book off from one of those dusty shelves that most writers have—something I’d written years ago, a romance with ghosts, set in an area I know well and featuring a heck of a lot of my dead relatives. I self-published it as Relatively Dead. It sold well, so my agent said, why not do another? Which became Seeing the Dead, last year. Now I’m working on a third one in that series, which looks at the Salem witch trials from a different perspective (and yes, I have a number of ancestors who were accused of witchcraft in Salem).
Q. Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know?
A. I love what I do. It’s like I’ve been preparing for this all my life, but it took a long time before I thought I had something to say. I can’t believe I get to do this for a living, because it sure doesn’t seem like work.
Click here to read Part I of this interview
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“Meet the heroines of WOMEN OUTSIDE THE WALLS.
These women are all brought together through one avenue: Their husbands are all in the same prison.
First, there’s Alma. Her husband, Charlie, is in prison for murder. At first that sounds terrible, but there’s a story behind this that makes you see that everything isn’t so cut and dried as it may seem at first. Alma has been in love with Charlie since she was 16 and he was 23. But he knew he was too old for her and he went away so he could avoid making a mistake with her. Abandoned by her mother in favor of a boyfriend that didn’t want kids around, she was taken in by a neighbor that helped her get through the next couple of years until she graduated from high school. That’s when Alma found that she had a talent for exotic dancing. It was at the end of one of her performances in a high end strip club one night that she was reconnected with Charlie, quite by accident. The next thing she knows, Alma’s pregnant and Charlie runs again, at least temporarily. They do end up together as a family and all is well until Charlie gets in trouble.
Next is Kitty. She’s a woman of wealth and social standing. Her husband, Edward, is imprisoned for a white collar crime and she’s simply not equipped to handle it. However, she does take herself to the prison on visiting day to see him. He agrees to see her once and that’s only to tell her to get a divorce and make a new life for herself and their children. After that, even though Kitty comes faithfully on every visiting day, he refuses to see her.
Then there’s Hattie. She’s a proud, African American woman with a talent for cleaning, a head for math and a heart of gold. Her husband, Joe, doesn’t belong in prison. He’s only there because he’s protecting his little brother. But Hattie is counting the days until her Joe gets out and can come home to her and their kids. Joe loves Hattie and they both look forward to that day.
These women all come together in the waiting room and then visitor’s room at the prison while waiting to visit their men. They all have one thing in common and that’s the fact that they love their men. In the process of this shared experience, they become connected in a way that no one else would ever understand.
Life goes on in this way until the day that a tragic event takes place that will involve them all even more. Things may not end as anyone expects.
Told in both the present and past tenses, WOMEN OUTSIDE THE WALLS offers a bittersweet look into the lives of women that love incarcerated men. There’s laughter and tears but, most of all, there’s the strong emotional bond these women share.
This is an honest book, which means that it’s not always a happy book. It will touch your heart in ways that you wouldn’t expect and is a book well worth spending the time to read. You’ll come away with a new respect for women in this situation and a bit more understanding of why they continue supporting the men they love, no matter what.’ ~~Review~Freshfiction.com
5 out of 5 quills The COUNTERFEIT HEIRESS
by Tasha Alexander
A fourth of the way through this intricately crafted story I wondered to myself if it was based on a true story. And whad’ya know? Truth is stranger than fiction. It’s based very loosely on an American Heiress who recreated the physical environment of her own captivity after she was rescued. And that’s all I’m going to say about the that! It’s a treat!
It’s early 19th century, England, and our two favorite sleuths, Emily and Colin are called upon to find a missing heiress….missing for over twenty years; most likely dead. Tasha Alexander takes us (chapter by chapter) from their clever detective work to the room where the heiress is being kept. At no point in the story is the reader certain whether she is alive or dead. How can a woman survive in a coffin-like room? Continue reading “Missing! and Feared Dead…a Review”
Rating: 5 out of 5 quills “Suspicion at Seven” by Ann Purser
These plots shouldn’t work……but they do in the most charming and understated way. The owner of New Brooms, Lois Meade is an amateur sleuth and has a team of ‘cleaners’ (merry maids) that keep their ears to the ground when foul play occurs. Cunningly simple and a delight for readers.
The setting is a small village in rural England where Lois has lived most of her life. She has raised three children and now lives with her husband, Derek, and her mother, Gran, who rules the house with an ungloved hand. (no velvet gloves here!)
‘The Taste of Murder‘ has just been released and ‘The Art of Murder‘ (revised) has a new cover and two new chapters.
YOU CAN WIN A FREE BOOK! Just like my page on Facebook www.facebook.com/writeratplay and follow me on Twitter @writeratplay4. Write a comment about this post letting me know which book you would like to receive and your USA mailing address. A contact email would be good.
In Book 5 in the series The World of Murder, Detectives O’Roarke and Garcia have a cold case dumped on their desk. Despite their objections that they ‘don’t do cold cases’ their Commander tells them that they do now since the new Mayor has asked for them…. Continue reading “FREE BOOK GIVE-A-WAY! The World of Murder”
Another one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Hoyt writes historic romances with humor.
Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?
A. I have an office—it’s a sun room at the back of the house. I also do a lot of writing at coffee shops.
Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)
A. I like to have something to drink—both coffee and water, preferably.
Q. What is your mode of writing?
A. If I wrote in longhand I wouldn’t be able to read the result. 😉 I use Scrivener on an eleven inch MacBook Air.
Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?
A. I write to deadlines. When I’m on deadline I write. 😉
Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?
A. I find that the bowel-loosening fear of defaulting on a contracted deadline and possibly messing up my entire career is a pretty good incentive to sit down at the computer. If you don’t have a contracted deadline, you need to make your own deadline or goal because the muse may never arrive if you’re waiting on her to write. Continue reading “An Interview with best selling author, Elizabeth Hoyt”
Book 5 in The World of Murder series is now available.
In Book 5 in the series, Detectives O’Roarke and Garcia have a cold case dumped on their desk. Despite their objections that they ‘don’t do cold cases’ their Commander tells them that they do now since the new Mayor has asked for them. Three years earlier the mayor’s brother-in-law was murdered and the case was never solved. The cold case plunges our murder cops into the world of television and competitive cooking shows and their pick of suspects three years cold.
REVIEW: ‘The Taste of Murder is Book 5 in Sugarek’s ‘The World of Murder’ series (previously acclaimed by this reviewer as a tight, compelling series that builds powerful scenarios and believable protagonists) and is especially recommended for prior fans of the books who want a continuation of the same successful devices employed in the previous titles: emotion-driven protagonists and a whodunit scenario that puzzles readers as much as the characters doing the investigating. Continue reading ““The Taste of Murder” Now Available!”
Q. How do you get from ‘finished’ book from ‘no book’? (continued)
A. When I am happy with my outline, I can see what and where I still need to research. I make a list of all the locations in the story and I make a point of visiting every one of them. A sense of place is very important in my books, whether it is France, China, or the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. I never write about a place if I haven’t been there. I like to go and take video of the locations, making notes about what sort of things strike you when you are there – the heat, or cold, the smells etc.
When I get back from my location research I will make a short video of each location that I can replay when I am writing the scenes that are set there. Sometimes visiting the locations will cause me to have to change the story outline. I make any changes necessary, then I am ready to write.
Writing the actual book is probably the most difficult and least enjoyable part of the process. I want to get it over and done with as quickly as possible. I adopt a very strict routine that absolutely nothing is allowed to interfere with.
I get up at 6 am, take my breakfast to my desk, Continue reading “My Interview with international best selling author, Peter May (part 3)”
Q. When did you begin to write seriously? (con’t.)
I wrote stories all through my teenage years and at the age of 18 I finished my first serious attempt at a novel. I sent it off to Collins Publishers and of course received a rejection letter. The editor who wrote to me took trouble and care to reply to me, saying of my writing: “…we do like it. It has a direct and emphatic narrative style and has an oddly memorable – even idyllic flavour about it. We feel you ought to go on writing, and would like to see anything you write in future – which may not sound very much, but is, I can assure you, a great deal more than we say to 95% of the people who send in their typescripts!”
Those words stayed with me all my life. And there’s an amazing coda to this story, because that very editor, a writer named Philip Ziegler, recently wrote the definitive biography of Lawrence Olivier which was published by Quercus, the publisher of my own books. My editor at Quercus was able to arrange a meeting for me with him, and 42 years later I came face to face with the person whose words of encouragement all those years ago, gave me the incentive to stick with my writing and keep trying.
with all my covers on the wall. I have an office upstairs in my home with one wall of bookshelves and three walls of windows and I have a tiny office out back off the garden where I’m putting together the plot for a new series.
on the day before. If I have to be away from my work more than four or five days, I start from the beginning. Usually spend at least half my time rewriting before I start writing.
sign up! On the home page, enter your email address. I love comments! Take the time to write one at the bottom of the post. Thanks!
Meet the heroines of WOMEN OUTSIDE THE WALLS.
