A Virtual Tour Visit with Alice Duncan

Award-winning author Alice Duncan lives with a herd of wild dachshunds (enriched from time to time with fosterees from New Mexico Dachshund Rescue) in Roswell, New Mexico. She's not a UFO enthusiast; she's in Roswell because her mother's family settled there fifty years before the aliens crashed. Alice no longer longs to return to California, although she still misses the food, not to mention her children, one of whom is there, the other in Nevada.

Alice, how did your dancing and singing careers lead you into writing?

Um . . . I’m not sure they did. Wait a minute! They certainly did. Silly me. When my body began rebelling against all the dancing and aerobicizing I’d been doing for so many years, not dancing left a huge chunk of my life empty. I tried to fill it up with compulsive cooking and eating, but eventually I turned to the only thing I ever really wanted to do in my life: writing books. So I guess you might say that I finally started writing because I had no excuses left not to.

Winning the HOLT Medallion Award for your first novel, One Bright Morning, was a great start. Where did your writing career go from there?

Downhill. Fast. One Bright Morning was bought by Harper, which also published my second book, Texas Lonesome. Then Harper dumped me. I took it personally at the time, since I was so new to publishing. However, then Harper dumped the rest of their romance writers, so I presume the market began to slow down. No publisher will ever tell you the truth about stuff like that. Trust me on this. Anyhow, I recovered and managed to sell another 40 or so books since then, but publishing is a brutal business, and it’s difficult to get published and stay published.

Tell us about your latest novel.

Genteek Spirits is Book #5 in my "Spirits" series, featuring Daisy Gumm Majesty, phony spiritualist extraordinaire:

Daisy Gumm Majesty is back, and she’s up to her ears again. Not only does she have to deal with her husband Billy’s declining health and her dog Spike’s obedience training, but she’s been hired by Lola de la Monica, a fabulously spoiled silent-screen beauty to be her spiritual advisor on the set of her next picture. As if this wasn’t already enough, a friend asks her to find out who’s been sending him poisoned-pen letters. Her problems only multiply when Sam Rotondo, Billy’s best friend and Daisy’s worst nightmare, is stationed on the same picture set as she!  

Why the move from Pasadena to Roswell, New Mexico, with your wild herd of dachshunds?

Money. It costs so much to live in Southern California. Then there were the ghastly crowds and the horrid smog. The air’s clean here, and there’s always parking. However, I do miss the food available in So. CA. Even the Mexican food is bad here unless you make it yourself. I’m looking forward to my trip to California in October. I plan on eating every kind of food I can’t get here: Japanese, Indian, Middle Eastern, Thai, good Mexican. Actually, Roswell does have a couple of pretty good Chinese restaurants, so we’re not completely cut off from culinary pleasures. Just mostly.

What have you done in Roswell to support your writing habit?

I edit books for Tekno Books, the company that acquires for Five Star, and I also have an independent editing service. Before both of those jobs took off, I worked as a part-time secretary to a defense lawyer and taught on-line writing classes for Writer’s Digest’s Writers On-Line Workshops. I hate teaching. Don’t ask me why, ‘cause I don’t know, so I no longer do that. I enjoy editing, though, and I can do it in my own home in my sloppy jeans and t-shirts, with the dogs lying around nearby. Mind you, since I live in Roswell, and things are pretty casual here, I probably could have worked for the lawyer in sloppy jeans and a t-shirt, too, but now I don’t have to leave the house to hold down a job. And my dogs like having me around.

How long does it take for you to develop a book and bring it to conclusion?

Not too long, if I’m on my game, which I haven’t been lately. However, there were years past in which I’d have four or five books (full-length novels, maybe 80,000-100,000 words each) published. I’ve slowed down considerably in recent years. Guess I’m not as driven as I used to be. However, I generally think up a plot and write a book in three months or thereabouts.

What’s your writing nemesis and how do you conquer it?

At the moment, it’s incentive. I have two books under consideration at a house, and I can’t get worked up enough to begin another one. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I have a fifth “Angels” book (Lost Among the Angels, Angels Flight, Fallen Angels) started, but since the publisher hasn’t yet bought the fourth one, I can’t conjure the oomph to finish the fifth one. However, I did get so sick of writing the stupid thing that I took time out and wrote a short cozy historical mystery story that I put directly onto Kindle and Smashwords (Pecos Valley Incident).

How do you feel about the ebook revolution? Are your ebooks outselling your print editions?

I absolutely adore the ebook revolution! I’ve put almost my entire backlist up on Kindle and Smashwords, and the books are selling! Mind you, I’ll never be an Amanda Hocking, but it’s nice to be making money on books that have been sitting around out of print for years. Since my books are now coming out in hardback and are so blasted expensive, I don’t really expect people to buy them. I can’t say for sure that my ebooks are outselling my hardbacks, but I kind of expect they are.

If you weren’t writing, what would occupy your time?

Reading. Rescuing dachshunds. Visiting my children (one in California and one in Nevada). Right now I sing in a church choir. If I had more time, I might join another singing group. I’d love to dance again, but my feet won’t let me.

Advice to aspiring mystery writers?

LEARN YOUR CRAFT. The English language has rules that can be broken from time to time, but it’s really easy to see when a person is deliberately breaking a rule, and when a person honestly doesn’t know the language. The language is our tool; learn to use it well.

Also, NEVER GIVE UP! You might never get published if you keep trying, but giving up is a sure way never to achieve your goal. Also, don’t compare yourself to anyone else. Everyone writes the way s/he writes.

Thank you, Alice.

You can visit Alice at: her website:  alice@aliceduncan.net

At My Space page: : http://www.myspace.com/117749004
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1074293388

And Twitter: alicesbooks
And she would love to hear from you at alice@aliceduncan.net.