A Vist with Lesley Diehl

Lesley Diehl retired as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York. In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle. She goes to the "Big Lake" to write, hang out in cowboy bars, and immerse herself in the Florida that used to be. "No beaches, no bikinis, no sand. Just cows, horses, and gators.”

Lesley, tell us about your winter living quarters in “old Florida” where cowboys herd cattle among the scrub palmetto.

We stumbled upon this part of Florida by accident, looking for a place to buy that was more reasonable in price than where we were wintering in Key Largo. Rural Florida drew us because it is unpretentious and undeveloped. Aside from the sounds natures provides such as frogs croaking in our canal or coyotes howling when the train passes, human noises interfere seldom. The city of Okeechobee is the only place for shopping for over thirty miles in any direction and, once you leave the city, you encounter only pastures, live oaks hung with Spanish moss, scrub palmetto and sabal palms. Nothing is manicured, everything grows wild. This is old Florida, before the interstates and rampant development. Eagles nest here. Caracaras settle alongside the road ways. There are more cattle in Okeechobee County than people and I think there are probably more alligators. This place is not pretty, but it is beautiful.

Did you hang out in cowboy bars to research your latest novel?

There is nothing better than a bar filled with cowboys, some right off the range still wearing their spurs and manure on their boots, others dressed up for a Saturday night on the town, lean, maybe mean, faces shaved close enough the skin shines, hair still wet from their showers and the smell of aftershave, and I don’t mean the designer stuff.

I got the idea for my protagonist tending bar from a woman I saw serving drinks one New Year’s Eve. She wasn’t very big, but everyone in the bar knew she could keep order. She had a ponytail which flipped around as she worked and a pair of dangly earrings that threatened to toss you on your butt if you got too close. I’ll bet she could free pour a shot within a millimeter of it being legal. She was an inspiration.

You hold book signings in unusual places such as breweries. Where else have you signed and in which locations have you sold the most books?

I sold well at breweries because my first book, A Deadly Draught, was set in upstate New York and featured a woman microbrewer accused of killing off her competition. Doing the research for it was fun, and only natural I’d sign in microbreweries.

I’ve held signings at the usual places, bookstores and libraries, and sold well at a local library. I also found an appreciative audience in an old inn and hotel recently reopened and restored. When people are happy, filled with food and good drink, they seem to like buying books. I also set up a table in my front yard for the community yard sales in my town. Since we’re new to the village, it was a fun way to get to know people.

How did your Dumpster Dying book come about?

I know many retired people whose spouses have died and who find another person to love. Couples may not want to marry again for various reasons, some of which may be financial, so I thought to myself, “but what happens if one of them dies and everything is in his name?” And what if he left a will naming his ex-wife as sole beneficiary? Does the partner have any legal recourse especially in a conservative community where it is expected couples are legally wed? That’s the situation Emily Rhodes, my protagonist, confronts. To earn money she becomes a bartender at the local country club. She’s making ends meet, barely, when she finds the body of a rancher in the club’s dumpster. He just happens to be someone with whom she’s had several fights. Guess who the authorities think killed him.

Why did you decide to reclaim your country roots after retiring as a psychology professor?

I was born and raised on a dairy farm in the Midwest. I love what cities have to offer in the way of shopping, culture, dining and excitement, but I’m really a country girl at heart. I adore cows and love the smell of hose manure. My most pleasurable dream is of swimming in a field of golden, ripe wheat. Heavenly. In Florida, we live only 30 miles from the coast, so I can get my coastal “fix” easily and then slide right back into my country life. In the summer in upstate New York I have to travel much further to find a city, and I don’t do it often because it’s difficult to pull me away from my trout stream. And there’s work to do on the cottage also.

What’s your writing schedule like and do you outline extensively before you begin?

I write and plot by the seat of my pants. I do not outline, which surprised several of my friends as they find my plots complex. I have a general idea of where I want the story to go, and I love being surprised when it goes in another direction. I write everyday if I can, but do not keep a rigid schedule.

For whom do you write?

My audience? Both men and women read me, young and older. My target audience is probably women over thirty and under one hundred. Yet I don’t think of the audience when I’m writing, so you could say I’m writing for myself because I have to write.

Which writer most influenced your own writing?

Reading Janet Evanovich gave me permission to write spunky, outrageous protagonists. I enjoy a good laugh, and I try to write funny stuff, although my first book was serious. I find that my latest manuscripts kind of “gallop” with funny, at least they do to me.

The writers I love to read probably influence me in ways I’m unaware of. I love Robert Parker, Elizabeth George, Nevada Barr, yet they are not funny. I recently read several of Tom Dorsey’s books. His humor can get grisly, but he writes with regard for old Florida, so I respect him.

Advice to fledgling writers?

Keep writing. Join critique and writing groups and professional organizations such as Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America. Spend your money on one conference a year, a good one where you can meet other writers, editors, agents and bask in that atmosphere where you’re sharing your love of writing with others who feel the same way.

Thanks, Lesley.
You can visit Lesley anytime at her website: http://www.lesleydiehl.com/
as well as her blog site: http://anotherdraught.blogspot.com/