A Visit with Jan Christiansen

     New Jersey native Jan Christensen lives and writes in Texas. Sara's Search was her first novel and she's  published more than fifty short stories over the last dozen years, two of them Derringer Award nominees. She's also written nonfiction articles and has a column about reading in the ezine, Mysterical-e.

  Jan, why is a Jersey girl living in southern Texas?

When you marry a military man, you never know where you’ll land. Fort Hood, Texas, was my husband’s last duty station before he retired, so we stuck around. We’ve moved three times in Texas since Fort Hood—to Amarillo, to Arlington (between Fort Worth and Dallas), and now Corpus Christi. We also motorhomed fulltime for eleven years before settling in Corpus. The Gulf of Mexico is a few minutes away, the weather is probably the best in Texas both summer and winter, and the gulf is minutes away—oh, I mentioned that already. Husband is from Rhode Island, I’m from New Jersey. We love the beach, but not the winters up north.

2.     
    Why mysteries? What is it about them that intrigues you?

I’ve always read more mysteries than anything else, but my first manuscript was mainstream. I decided it needed something to drive the story better, and putting in a murder seemed like a good idea. It still seems like a good idea, but the book will never be published unless I find the time for a huge overhaul. After that experience and the one with Sara’s Search, my only published novel, I’ve pretty much stuck to mysteries.

3.      
    Tell us about Sara’s Search?

Glad to: Sara Putnam has spent the last two years searching for her biological father, Howard. When she finds him murdered, she has even more questions. As she starts her own investigation, she meets Howard's eccentric, co-inventor partner, his ex-wife and their son who calls his mother "the bank," plus an assorted cast of suspects. She also has to deal with her adopted mother's roadblocks, her crazy roommate's problems, sexual harassment at work and her best friend's strange illness. Sometimes quirky, sometimes serious, Sara's Search, as one reviewer said, will keep you flipping those pages. And it’s now available on Kindle!

4.      
    What prompted you to write the book?

Again, it didn’t start out as a mystery. I’d been reading Anne Tyler and decided I wanted to write something with very quirky characters. Sara began as mainstream. Most of my critique group members (except one) didn’t “get it,” though, so I changed gears and inserted a murder into Slot B. Slot A contained those weird characters—Sara is about the only sane one

5.      How difficult is it for a short story writer to graduate to a full length novel?

Very. For me, anyway. Obviously, with over fifty short stories published and only
one novel, I’m more comfortable and probably better at writing short stories than novels. I even have a series of short stories coming out from Untreed Reads (a publisher who only publishes in ebook format, thus their name) about a hapless
burglar who gets pulled into difficult situations by a different woman in each story. Would I love to have one of the novel series I’ve written published? You bet! Since NY is not breaking down my door, I’m probably going to go the self-publishing
route, starting with Kindle and other ebook formats and see how it goes.

6.       
    What’s your writing schedule like? Do you aim for a certain amount of pages a day and do you outline your work?

I don’t outline—I get bored when I know what’s going to happen next and don’t want to bother writing it down, I’ve found. When I’m on schedule, I write one thousand words in the morning because I’m both freshest then (ask my husband—he’ll tell you how fresh I can be), and yet not yet bogged down by real life—in other words, I think the dream state is still somewhat with me, so I can put those words down in about an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes. I get that done most mornings, no problem. The trouble begins after that. I’m not very good about editing the work the several times everything, from the shortest piece to the longest, needs, then submitting it, or promoting.  My ideal schedule would continue with an hour’s worth of social networking and writing in my not-yet-live blog in the mornings.  Afternoons are spent doing everything except writing, and after dinner, ideally, would include another two hours of writing chores—an hour of editing, another of submitting work and marketing.
   
   How do you promote your work?

This is tricky. For Sara, I did the usual signings. I hired P.J. Nunn to do some publicity, and her Breakthrough Promotions was a huge help. But I had some bad luck as we traveled around in our motorhome with repair work needed (had to cancel a signing in Florida and dash up to Indiana for repairs), my son donated a kidney to his sister that year (both doing well!) and ankle surgery for me. Now that we’ve stopped traveling and bought a house, and with internet promotion taking off, I’m hoping our lives have settled down enough that I can get it all together—my schedule, and promoting on-line. Actually, today is the start of my life in a house again because there’s very little left to do to get us settled, so I’m starting up on my writing schedule once again.

8.     
     Advice to budding writers?

Write every day—have daily goals. Once a project’s first draft is finished, begin to write something else every day, but also spend some time editing the older project. Once the editing it done, add submitting old projects to your to-do list. Also start getting your name out there on the social networks—email lists that interest you, Facebook, Twitter, Good Reads and so forth. If you think you’d enjoy blogging, begin. Once anything is accepted, let your social network know, and once it’s published, tell the world. But also remember to write and edit every day and submit every finished piece you have done as soon as it is either finished or been rejected. Now, if only I could follow my own advice about the submitting. And a final bit of advice--read every day, both fiction and nonfiction. I read at least three books a week.

   Thanks, Jan. 

You can visit Jan at her website: http://www.janchristensen.com/

Her author’s page on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Jan-christensen/e/B004XTXSYO/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Her  Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=596611147

The Short Mystery Fiction Society where Jan has been moniated twice for a Derringer Awards for short mystery fiction (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Shortmystery/

A Visit with Lise McClendon aka Rory Tate

Lise McClendon has written fiction in Wyoming and Montana for the last thirty years. Her latest suspense novel, Blackbird Fly, is set in New York and southwest France. Her latest mystery, Jump Cut. was written as Rory Tate.

Lise, you have a diverse background. Born in California, raised in Delaware and lived in Nebraska as well as  Wyoming and Montana. Which place is the center of your universe and where have you set most of your novels?

I have sort of spanned the continent, haven’t I? I think moving around as a kid is difficult but it also makes you flexible and tolerant -- and most of all for a writer, makes you an observer. A writer has to be able to stand back a little and watch human behavior. I’ve lived in the Rockies for thirty years now, half my life. (Yikes!) I love so much about the mountains and the people who choose to live in this wild, beautiful place. I set my first mystery series in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, when I lived in Montana. Later I moved to Jackson Hole, so I guess life sometimes does imitate art.

2.  How did your interest in writing come about?

I have always loved writing. I studied journalism and communications, indulging my love of film and television in the broadcasting programs at the University of Nebraska and University of Missouri Kansas City. I also majored in sociology. I think of fiction writing as a meld of words and the study human nature so the double major worked out.

3.   Tell us about your writing background.

I started writing fiction when I was home after the birth of my second son. I wrote a screenplay first, a form I felt comfortable with. Later I adapted that story into my first novel. I didn’t sell that one but ended up meeting a group of writers, writing a mystery, and publishing my second novel. That was 1994, The Bluejay Shaman is Alix Thorssen’s first adventure in Jackson Hole.

4.   What does writing mean to you?

Writing centers me. I tend to bounce around, unfocussed, if I’m not writing. My head spins with ideas, lists, stuff, but when I write I download it to the page. Then the fun starts: getting it all organized!

5.   When and why did you begin to teach?

I taught for the Writer’s Voice Project for several years when it first spread out through YMCAs around the U.S. I have also been on the faculty of the Jackson Hole Writer’s Conference for years. A new project is a day-long workshop for fiction writers called ‘Truly Richly Deeply: Structure and Voice in the Novel.’ I think very few conferences or workshops teach you how to make your own long fiction better, so my co-leader, Deborah Turrell Atkinson, and I tried to find exercises for that.

6.  What’s your day job and when do you find time to write?

My day job is being a publisher these days, as I started a small press with my friend  and fellow mystery writer, Katy Munger. It’s called Thalia Press. Mostly we publish our own and other traditionally-published authors’ backlist, ine-book and paperback, and a select few originals. We’ve also started a co-op of writers like us. (Our blog is at thaliapressauthors.wordpress.com.) My new
novel (published as Rory Tate) is Jump Cut. Thalia Press is bringing it out in November. I still find time to write, but have to sandwich it in with stuff under my publisher’s hat.

7.  What are the biggest mistakes fledgling writers make?

Despite the fact that I now edit and publish my own work I think most fledgling writers benefit greatly from having agents and editors read and edit their work. I know I have. There have been many times I was too close to the story to see how it worked, or didn’t work. Submitting to criticism and developing a thick hide are developmental steps in becoming the best writer you can be.

8.  Advice to aspiring mystery novelists.

Write what you like to read. You can never go wrong with that. Don’t try to chase trends, they’ll be gone tomorrow.

9.  Thanks, Lise.

You can visit Lise at her website: http://www.lisemcclendon.com

Blog site: http://www.lisemcclendon.wordpress.com

Website as Rory Tate: http://www.rorytate.com

Facebook: Lise McClendon: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lise-McClendon/167132620002780

Facebook: Rory Tate: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rory-Tate/136392329774976

Twitter: @LiseMcClendon

Thalia Press: http://www.thaliapress.com/

A Visit With Carolyn Hart

A bestselling author with more than three million books in print, Carolyn Hart is best known for her Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins (Henrie O) series. Her most recent series features red-haired ghost Bailey Ruth Raeburn of Adelaide, Oklahoma, who returns to earth to help solve murders.

Carolyn, your latest book, Escape From Paris, which will be released this coming week. Was it actually thirty years ago that you originally wrote it?

This month, to my great delight, Oconee Spirit Press is publishing the original manuscript, which has a newly amended copyright. It has been 30 years in coming but now Escape From Paris is available as it was written.

A war story?

I was a child during WWII and the war dominated our lives.Two American sisters risk their lives in Nazi-Occupied Paris to save British fliers from arrest. Family members served in the Army or Navy. We followed the faraway course of the fighting in  huge black newspaper headlines. Food and gasoline were rationed. The war remained vivid in my memory and, as an adult, I wrote several WWII suspense novels. To sell Escape from Paris, I cut the book from 93,000 to 55,000 words. That  version was published in 1982  and 1983.

I hope readers will share the struggles of brave men and women who defied the Gestapo during the bitter winter of 1940. They knew fear, found love, grieved loss. Their lives and deaths remind us that freedom survives only when the free are brave.

 I hope you may be interested to remember a year of war when England awaited invasion and the Nazis devoured Europe. I believe this is a book that will appeal to book club readers, highly intelligent women, often of a certain age, who will bring their own memories or memories of their parents into play.  

 I look forward to reading it. You also have a recent Bailey Ruth Raeburn novel out, Ghost in Trouble. Please tell us about it? 

Bailey Ruth Raeburn has the best of intentions when she returns to Adelaide to save a life but she never counted on that life belonging to a woman she loathed when she was in the world. Moreover, her charge stubbornly insists on playing hunt-the-killer. Bailey Ruth deals with young love, a mother's heartbreak, a fraudulent psychic and a dog's rawhide bone in her quest for a wily murderer.

 Your ghost series is my favorite among your books. How did your impetuous red-haired ghost Bailey Ruth Raeburn of Adelaide, Oklahoma, come about?

 I loved the Topper books and films when I was growing up. I see ghosts as reflections of the person who lived. I always wanted to write about a fun-loving, energetic, impetuous ghost returning to earth to help someone in trouble and Bailey Ruth answered the call.

When did your Death on Demand mystery series originate?

In 1985, I attended a meeting of the southwest chapter of MWA in Houston and visited Murder by the Book. I had never been to a mystery bookstore and I was enchanted. I had just started a new mystery set in a bookstore. I immediately decided to have a mystery bookstore named Death on Demand.

Tell us about your latest Death on Demand mystery,  Dead by Midnight.

Annie Darling refuses to believe in her new employee's suicide. To save a woman from a false charge of murder, Annie unravels the mystery of a towel hidden at midnight in the gazebo, the lack of fingerprints on a crystal mug, blood on a teenager's blue shirt, and the secret of a lovers' tryst.   

You’ve received an amazing number of awards including the Malice Domestic Lifetime Achievement Award. Has the recognition resulted in increased book sales and reader awareness of your work?

 I hope that the awards, which I very much appreciate, help to attract readers. It’s hard to know whether such awards increase sales but any mention of a book or books is helpful to an author.

What's your writing schedule like and do you aim for a certain amount of words each day, no matter how long it takes?

 I try to write five pages a day (approx. 1,500 words) when working on a book. Some days I meet that goal. Some days I don’t. When I am stuck, I take a long walk and usually something will occur to me.

 Tell us about your writing background.

I worked on school newspapers and majored in journalism at the University of Oklahoma. When we started a family, I didn’t return to reporting but decided to try fiction. I wrote juvenile fiction, then YA, and in the 1970s began writing adult suspense and mystery.

How much research do you conduct before you begin a novel and do you always visit the locale?

The novel dictates the amount of research. I wrote several early novels, preceding the Death on Demand books, which had World War II backgrounds and required extensive research. I’ve visited the locales of all the books written since Death on Demand. Once I set a book partly in the Philippines which I have never visited and a woman who grew up there asked me how many years I’d spent in the islands and I knew my library research had been successful.

Advice for novice writers?

Care passionately about what you write. If you care, somewhere an editor will care.

Thank you, Carolyn.

You can visit Carolyn at her website: www.CarolynHart.com

A Visit with Chris Redding

Chris Redding lives in New Jersey with her husband, two kids, a dog and three rabbits. A graduate of Penn State with a degree in journalism, she's held various jobs over the years including pizza delivery and CPR Instructor. When not writing, she works part time for her local hospital.

Chris, when did you first become serious about writing?

I began writing for publication 12 years ago. I hadn’t written in a while and when I was pregnant with my second son I HAD to write. I had these stories bubbling over in me. So I began to write again. I figured if I was going to spend the time I might as well try to get published.

Why romantic suspense?

That one sort of found me. I’ve always been a mystery fan. My sister passed down her Nancy Drew books and when I was older, my mother always had an Agatha Christie book laying around. I always read 3 grades ahead of mine so my mother knew that the Christie novels were okay for me at a younger age. When I began writing, I started with straight romance, but I always ended up with a dead body. Thus, romantic suspense.

Tell us about your latest release, A View to a Kilt.

A View to a Kilt is a humorous romantic suspense about two people. One of them is trying to forget the past and the other can’t forget the past. The heroine is an interior decorator who may have information on the murder of an ex-FBI guy’s wife. He tries to get it out of her while she wants nothing to do with cops and investigations.

How most difficult was it for you to switch from journalism to fiction?

There were a lot of years between my short journalism career and my fiction career so the transition was easy.

What’s your writing schedule like with children at home and a part time job?

I tend to write 5 pages a day in the morning. I’m more awake and competent in the morning. I have time between when the last child gets on the bus and I have to leave for work.

Have you used any of your previous jobs as background for your novels?

I was an EMT for 6 years and have been involved in emergency medical services for awhile in some form so either EMT’s or paramedics are in most of my stories.

Are any of your characters autobiographical?

There is always an element of me in any of the characters, but none of them are a true portrait of me. They are way more interesting and tough.

Advice to novice writers.

Hone your craft and be persistent. This can be a long road.

Thanks, Chris.

You can visit Chris at her website:  http://www.chrisreddingauthor.com/
or her blogsite: http://chrisredddingauthor.blogspot.com/
on Facebook: www.facebook.com/chrisreddingauthor
and Twitter: ww.twitter.com/chrisredding

A Visit with Randy Rawls

A retired career Army officer and ghost writer, Randy Rawls fulfilled his life long ambition to write novels. After six published books featuring investigator Ace Edwards, Rawls wrote his first thriller, Thorns on Roses, featuring Tom Jeffries. He's currently working on a new series with a Florida based PI named Beth Bowman.

Randy, what piqued your interest in writing? 

 Like many others, I have been a writer my whole life. My first story was written in about the third grade. As best I remember, the teacher gave me a C on it. Could have been a C- even. As an Army officer, I spent years as a Staff Officer. In this capacity, I wrote things for my superiors to claim as their own (ghost writer?). Pick a military subject, and I probably wrote a paper on it. I was also a project leader on some interesting efforts and wrote papers on those. Some of those are still circulating today, setting standards for those who followed.

And, during all those years, I started many works of fiction. A few chapters in, each one died. Life kept interfering. Finally, in about 1990, I was assigned to an office where one of the other officers wrote fiction. When his first book was published, I cheered. When his second was published, I thought, I can do that. So I clicked on the keyboard about a high school student who was a star soccer player. About 150,000 words later, I typed THE END and felt like I'd climbed Mount Everest. Little did I know that it might qualify for one of the worst books every written. Bleck!

However, that story, David's Game, planted the seed and it sprouted. Immediately, I began the second book in that series, Tim's Game. I'd like to think it was a bit better, even though it, also, was bad, bad, bad. The good news is I learned from my mistakes. I sat back and looked at what I'd written and decided I could do better and would do better. Not long after, the opportunity presented itself and Ace Edwards, Dallas PI, was born. Ace's trips to small towns in Texas took me through six books, each of which achieved its own level of success.

I believe that one of the successes of writing is knowing when you've bombed. I've bombed on several efforts. They rest on my hard drive, waiting to be saved. Maybe someday I'll get back to them. There are few bad stories, just bad writing.

How much of your protagonist Ace Edwards is autobiographical? And in what ways do the two of you differ?

Ace is part of me and a part of many people I've known over the years. To the best of my knowledge, none of my characters are autobiographical or biographical. Some of them may reflect my beliefs, but I'd like to think they are pieces of everyone I've known.

How do we differ? Ace is a smooth operator. Me, I'm a klutz.

Tell us about your latest release, Thorns on Roses.

After six Ace Edwards books and a couple of other efforts that did not get published, I decided to see if I could write something with a harder edge. Of course, it would have to meet my basic criteria—blood and guts off-page, no graphic sex, and no gutter language. As I considered the challenge, I visualized a PI in South Florida pulling up in front of the Broward County morgue, invited there to identify a teenage Jane Doe. Tom Jeffries was born.

Tom has good reason to not trust the justice system. It failed his baby sister and, Tom believes, will fail his best friend whose step-daughter's body is found in the trunk of an abandoned car—dead, nude, and the victim of multiple rapes. Tom vows to track down the people responsible and discovers the Thorns on Roses gang. One by one, he tracks and disposes of them. But the police are hot on their trail also and may overtake Tom. When he speeds up his operation, catastrophe awaits.

Has your army career served as background for any of your novels as far as violence and understanding human nature?

I don't know. My background has certainly taught me respect for weapons and proper preparation. A military operation launched in haste is doomed to failure, and failure means lives lost. I believe my military background has taught me to insure every step of my story is logical. I write as I would plan a military operation. Every possibility must be considered. To miss one minor step in the path might lead to catastrophic failure. I hope that my readers will find it difficult (hopefully, impossible) to punch holes in my plot line. I do attempt to make them so logical as to be failsafe—but not so logical they're boring.

What does writing mean to you?

Simply stated, everything. I love to write. If I didn't have it, I would be incomplete. Almost every night, I go to sleep thinking about my work in progress. Many times, I awaken in the wee hours with that WIP on my mind. Did I tell you, I love to write?

How has the ebook revolution affected your own work? And what do you foresee for the future of book publishing?

I have resisted the impulse to dive into the world of ebooks as a self publisher. Please don't get me wrong. I respect those who have epub'd books ready for publication. I am one of the original Kindle owners and have read a ton of ebooks. However, I've been burned so many times by books not ready for publication, I am now gun shy. If I don't see a publisher's name, I probably don't bother.

Yes, this sounds cruel. I don't mean to hurt the thousands of wonderful authors who are self-epub'ing their excellent books. But, as an example, recently, I was looking for a new book. I decided to search in historical fiction, a favorite genre of mine. The first two downloads I found, both with wonderful stories to tell, I dumped. In both, the head-hopping was so bad I couldn't keep up. I'm now into a third and hope it will be worth the effort. It breaks my heart that the first two didn't have the benefit of a qualified editor to fix them before they went public. They could have been very good. I am a firm believer that you only have one opportunity to win a fan. Fail, and he'll never come back.

I believe the future of book publishing is bright. Yes, we'll go through several tremors along the way, but when it settles down again, we'll have a solid ebook presence and an equally solid paper presence. I do not believe that paper books are doomed.

However, I do believe there could be a major change in the publishing world. Some of the major imprints may disappear as the big six struggle to cope with the changes.Or maybe, the big six will break up and we will once again have many publishing houses. The future of independent publishers is bright. They are the ones pushing the ebook revolution. I commend them for doing so. Self-publishing of ebooks will stay with us as long as the vendors allow it. Some will be good, but many will be bad. In some instances, as now, writers of bad books will thrive.

How did your first novel, Jake’s Burn, come about?

Jake's was born at a time I was looking for a new approach to my writing. As I mentioned above, I had written David's Game (bad) and Tim's Game (not much better) and was flailing around trying to find a fix for my many writing problems. At that time, I lived in Dallas and spent almost every Saturday in a small town in Texas participating in a bicycle ride for charity. I'd built myself up to where I could do 100 kilometers in respectable time. I went to Cisco and did the ride around Eastland County. I fell in love with the countryside and decided I needed to base a book there. Since I had a major head-hopping POV problem then, I opted to move to first person. For the next year, I read nothing but first person PI stories. During that year, Ace Edwards was born, written in first person, and coming from Cisco, Texas.

It worked. I had found my niche. I liked Ace and Ace was good for me. We went on to write five more books together. And, he's not gone yet. I'm looking at him making a cameo appearance in the sequel to Thorns on Roses. And, Ace solved my POV problem. I now write in both first person and third person and feel comfortable doing so.

Advice to fledgling mystery writers?

On the top ten of my list of advice to fledging mystery writers, the first eight are Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, and Read in the genre where they want to write. Nine and ten are Read and Read some more. I am a firm believer in learning from those who have done it. And mixing the pleasure of reading with the education of learning from what you read is a no-brainer. Once you know what you're doing and have decided on what you want to write, DO it. Your first effort may stink, but DO it anyway. Progress can only come by writing and learning from your mistakes.

Number eleven on that list is accept constructive criticism. If someone you respect says your manuscript is ugly, smile and say, "Thank you." Develop a thick skin and select critiquers who will be honest with you. A single "it stinks and here's why" from the right person is far more valuable than a hundred "it's wonderful" from the wrong people.

Your social media links?

Ouch! My Achilles heel. I am not good in the world of social media. All I have is my website, http://www.randyrawls.com/ and I don't claim it's very good. But I love to hear from people and WILL answer every email. Please contact me at RandyRawls@att.net

Thanks, Randy.