Episode 10: Stories Are Everywhere, with Chris Taylor

Australian author Chris Taylor and host Patricia McLinn dish about Chris’ writing romantic suspense novels set in Australia for North American audiences. Chris talks about her “hot and steamy” novels, making sure that her language and plot lines work for North Americans, and about being a full-time author, former lawyer and mother of five.

You can find Chris on:

*her website,

*Facebook and

*iBooks.

Thanks to DialogMusik for the instrumentals that accompany this podcast.

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Authors Love Readers with Chris Taylor

Patricia McLinn [00:00] Hi, welcome to this week’s Authors Love Readers podcast, where we delve into the stories behind the stories. We’re asking authors questions. Some of them fun, some of them serious, and from their answers, you’re going to learn things you never knew about the people who write the stories you love. My name is Patricia McLinn. I’m your host and designated question asker.

Chris Taylor [00:23] I’m Chris Taylor, and I’m an author who loves readers.

Patricia McLinn [00:27] Now let’s start the show. Hi, welcome to Authors Love Readers podcast. This week, we have Chris Taylor joining us from, as you will soon hear, Australia. Chris and I met two years ago, I think, so you’re, you’re a pretty recent one at the Novelis Inc. conference.

And we just hit it off and saw each other again this year, because this brave soul traveled all the way from Australia to come to the Novelis Inc. conference and join up with all the other writers, uh, writing in popular fiction. Chris, tell us a little bit about what you write.

Chris Taylor [01:05] Hi, Pat. It’s so lovely to be here all the way back in Australia and we are baking in the heat down here. I know you guys have probably all rugged up for winter, but I tell you what—

Patricia McLinn [01:15] Yes.

Chris Taylor [00:] —I am sitting in the air conditioning.

Patricia McLinn [01:20] I have an Afghan over my lap because I’m chilly.

Chris Taylor [01:26] And I have sweat dripping down. No, just kidding. But it is so hot.

Patricia McLinn [01:29] So Chris, tell us a little bit about what you write.

Chris Taylor [01:32] So I write romantic suspense, but it’s set in Australia. So, um, very early on in my writing career, I was told to write about what I know. And even though I had written, I had read a lot of, um, American stories and loved American stories, um, I, I knew about Australia. I live here. And so I based all of my stories in Australia.

Patricia McLinn [01:56] Do you think there’s any difference between US written and Aus— or set, um, romantic suspense and Australian set romantic suspense?

Chris Taylor [02:08] I’m not sure that there’s any difference in the story as such or even really the setting. Uh, it’s more just the, the language. And even though I, I try hard to make it, um, you know, North American friendly, and I have a North American editor who makes sure the phrases that I use are something that you guys can actually understand.

Uh, every now and then I will get it a note in the margin back from her. And, and it’ll be something that, you know, we say all the time and she’ll say, I know that, I get this from the context, but I have never heard this before. And you know, after 25 books, I still get that occasionally. So that’s always funny because I try really hard to make sure that you guys can understand it.

Patricia McLinn [02:48] Is there a phrase you’re particularly aware of that North Americans don’t get that you use a lot?

Chris Taylor [02:55] Oh, man, I should’ve come up with one off the top of my head. Um, there are always some things, you know, and it’s, it’s really common sort of things down here. I mean, apart from the language differences, like boot, a boot for us is your trunk and, uh, you know, we, we use a torch as in something like you call a flashlight and, um, you know, that the sidewalk is our footpath and, you know, just words like that.

But, but there are definitely, um, sayings and I’ll, I’ll um, I’ll think of one when we finish I’m sure. But my editor will say, this is an Australianism. She calls, she calls it an Australianism. I, you know, I get it from the context, but I’ve never heard this before.

Patricia McLinn [03:36] I’ve heard, um, that Australians tend to shorten a lot of things. Do you see a lot of words or phrases?

Chris Taylor [03:45] Yes, we definitely shorten names. Like we’d never call anyone by their real name. You know, if it’s Michael it’s Mick. If it’s, yeah, no, it’s true. And we didn’t realize it was an Australian thing until, you know, you kind of start traveling and, and meeting other people. And, but we always shorten people’s names. I don’t know why.

Patricia McLinn [04:03] Before we started the recording, we were talking about that Chris never goes by Christine and I, um, sometimes go by Patricia for writing, but I always wonder why I use that because it makes me feel like I’m in trouble. And, uh, but you couldn’t get much shorter than Chris and I couldn’t get much shorter than Pat. So…

Chris Taylor [04:25] I totally relate though, Pat, you know. All my, all my childhood if I was in trouble, my mother would be going, Christine, you know, and that, that’s the only time I got called my full name. I don’t know what it is. It’s a, it’s a parent thing, I think. But, um, no, definitely, well Chris, I chose Chris deliberately, um, because it was, um, you know, an androgynous name really.

And I, I had read somewhere that male readers will pick up a book by an unknown author. They’ll pick up a male author. If it’s the author is unknown to them before they’ll pick up an unknown female author. So I thought, well, this gives me a bit each way, and them in the male market. And, uh, and it has absolutely worked. I’ve, I’ve got quite a lot of male readers and, and often they write to me and say, Dear Mr. Taylor, and then they will tell me how they’ve never read a romance book, but they picked up one of mine because my covers are certainly not, they don’t, you know, I write romantic suspense and it’s probably 50/50.

So my covers, certainly I’ve got no bare chests or anything like that, you know, they, they’re more a thriller cover than a romance cover, so they pick them up and then there’s, I’ve never read romance and now I’ve read the whole series. And it’s funny that they assume I’m a man. Even though I, you know, I mean, I go by Chris, but in the back of the book, you know, I, I certainly, um, you know, confess that I’m a, I’m a wife and mother and et cetera, et cetera.

Patricia McLinn [05:39] Let’s let the readers get to know you a little bit better with some fun questions here. I think they’re fun, you may not. Do you have any surprising jobs that you’ve held?

Chipping cotton and giant spiders

Chris Taylor [05:53] Oh, I had the usual jobs as a, as a teenager, waitressing and I worked at KFC for a while and that sort of thing, but one thing you guys might not do over there, I’m not sure, but, um, it’s cotton chipping. So what that is, I live in a cotton growing area. It’s one of the main crops grown here.

And as kids, well, you know, teens into our college years and whatever, you would go cotton chipping in the summer, which is actually hoeing out weeds on the, in the cotton. So you’ve got a hoe and you’d walk up and down the rows for eight hours in the heat and you chip out weeds. But it was good money. And I met my husband that way when I was 15. So, you know, I have a fondness for cotton chipping.

Patricia McLinn [06:36] That’s a great expression. I had never heard that.

Chris Taylor [06:38] Yes. Well, we used to get backpackers a lot, obviously as backpackers and sometimes they would chip out the cotton because that’s what it was called, cotton chipping. So they would be going around, chipping out all the cotton instead of the weeds.

Patricia McLinn [06:50] Do you have any strong fears and do any of them have to do with cotton? And do you use them in books?

Chris Taylor [06:57] No, nothing to do at cotton, but, oh my goodness, yes. I, I am terrified of spiders. Probably not to the part of it, to the extent of a phobia. But although when I was younger, I certainly probably did have a phobia. And only just the big black ones. Like not daddy long legs, not every spider, but anything that looks fearsome. And yes, I have used a gigantic man-eating spider in one of my books.

Patricia McLinn [07:22] Which book can you tell us the title?

Chris Taylor [07:26] It hasn’t got a title as yet. It’s, it’s one of my most recent books. Um, and yes, my protagonist gets hunted by this enormous spider. And it gives me shivers just to write it.

Patricia McLinn [07:41] I guess, if you can scare yourself, it’s a good sign. Right?

Chris Taylor [07:45] Yes, that’s what I figured.

Patricia McLinn [07:47] Okay. So what’s your favorite taste?

Chris Taylor [07:49] Okay, so I am a sweet person, you know, you’re either sweet or savory. I will skip the, uh, the main meal every time and go straight to dessert. So, um, I love salted caramel anything, but salted caramel ice cream is my absolute favorite.

Patricia McLinn [08:04] Ohh, good choice. Favorite color. And why? Do you have associations with it?

Chris Taylor [08:09] Okay, so it used to be green when I was younger and I’m not really sure why, but I just did love that deep forest green color. But as an adult, it’s become red. And I wear a lot of red and I know it that’s a bit corny because I write romance and stuff like that, but I just, I love, you know, beautiful, deep, red color.

And it does remind me of love and romance and passion and all that kind of stuff. And in fact, my, my bedroom has these deep red curtains and I’ve got a beautiful red throw on the bottom of the bed and you know, that kind of stuff.

Patricia McLinn [08:42] See, now that I’m writing mysteries too, I also think, Oh, deep red curtains, they wouldn’t show blood as much.

Chris Taylor [08:47] I’m hearing you, Pat. These things are important.

Patricia McLinn [08:56] Do you have a— I know. I know. Do you have a childhood book that. Got you addicted on stories that, that really opened that world for you?

Chris Taylor [09:06] Look, I was always an avid reader. I spent an hour each way on a bus with no air conditioning and vinyl seats in the heat and all the rest. And I loved to read, so it was a way to fill in the time. And I must admit, even from a young age, I loved mysteries and romance. I used to read The Famous Five and, and The Secret Seven and Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. And I always wanted the Hardy Boys to get with Nancy Drew and they never ever did.

Patricia McLinn [09:30] I know. What was the problem there?

Chris Taylor [09:32] Exactly.

Patricia McLinn [09:33] It was a natural.

Chris Taylor [09:36] Absolutely.

Rewriting Gone with the Wind. Steel Magnolias, Eight Seconds, and Good Morning Vietnam

Patricia McLinn [09:37] Any of those stories that you read in your, in your pre-author days, did you, um, decide they did not get the ending right. And at least mentally rewrite it. I am always curious about this because I think this triggers something for a lot of writers when we’re quite young.

Chris Taylor [09:55] Yeah. Well, I, I’ve got to say Gone with the Wind. I probably read that when I was about fourteen, I guess, something like that. And, uh, oh my goodness. You know, Ashley Wilkes, really? I mean really just, and then the whole, the, all the stuff they go through and, you know. No, I definitely had to rewrite that. I was just so disappointed, and I have read the sequel, and you know, it’s never as good and all the rest, but you know, that is one book that I absolutely loved, but absolutely hated the way it all went, went in the book.

Patricia McLinn [10:25] So how did you end it?

Chris Taylor [10:27] Well, of course they get together permanently and they love each other and all the rest. My goodness, you know, we all knew they did. It’s like, For God’s sake, wake up to yourself. So I make sure that I get that happy ending. You know, even though all seems lost, of course we know they got to get together. That’s how it has to be.

Patricia McLinn [10:44] I don’t know. I thought they were both kind of stinkers. Um, I, I know that’s, um, not the popular opinion, but that was my view on both of them.

Chris Taylor [10:55] She was a selfish, spoiled little brat, but she did grow, you know, there was that character growth, where at the end, of course, when it was too late. But he always loved her and was much more mature and it just broke my heart that he just didn’t give her that one last chance, you know, that he gave up on them because he still loved her and he just, she wore him out. But, you know, come on. I’m getting angry.

Patricia McLinn [11:20] I, I would have been with Rhet. I would have said, Bye, honey.

Chris Taylor [11:24] I know, she didn’t deserve him all the way through, but towards the end, when she finally woke up to herself, you know. I guess she, she’d got to the point where… No, they did deserve each other, but anyway, it wasn’t to be.

Patricia McLinn [11:35] So, okay. I’ve got to ask you now, because I, I suspect, I know one that will not be on the list. What three movies would you take to my strange little desert island that somehow lets you plays movies, but limits it to three. Well, we get to play three.

Chris Taylor [11:52] Wow. I am a huge movie buff. Um, and I was trying to think of my all-time favorite movies. There are just so many, you know, there are so many, but some that, um, came to mind, Steel Magnolias. I absolutely love and adore, you know, it’s just a beautiful movie and I know it’s an old movie, but I’m old too, so, you know. Oh, I love that movie. Still love that movie. I actually own that movie and watch it, you know, quite, not often, but you know, it’s a beautiful movie.

I also love Eight Seconds. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that one that came out in, um, oh, it was probably the early nineties.

Patricia McLinn [12:25] Yeah.

Chris Taylor [12:26] Again, I’m showing my age here. Um, and it ha—

Patricia McLinn [12:28] It’s about Lance Frost, right?

Chris Taylor [12:31] About Lane Frost. Yes. And I ac—

Patricia McLinn [12:34] Lane Frost.

Chris Taylor [12:35] And I actually used that rodeo kind of thing in one of my books and, um, uh, you know, and it just, it that was the inspiration for that. But, um, uh, so at the time Luke Perry of course was on 90210 and was the hottest thing out. So, and then he did that movie and it was just as beautiful as it. And I own that movie and I have watched it a few times and I still cry.

And the other one, I, the other one I chose. I mean, I could’ve chosen anything with Robin Williams in it because, um, you know, he was just such a brilliant actor and always had just brilliant stories. Uh, but so I put Good Morning Vietnam on my list, because that was another inspirational movie that I love to watch, and so it’s on my list.

Patricia McLinn [13:16] Can you see a thread connecting those movies?

Chris Taylor [13:19] I love the good stories. I love inspirational stories. I love stories that move you and what you to be a better person.

Patricia McLinn [13:28] Okay. And when you say old movies, girly, I love movies from like the thirties. Those are old movies. Those are classics.

Chris Taylor [13:40] I agree with you. I’m a move buff too.

Patricia McLinn [13:42] Is there a saying from your parents that you remember them using all the time and now you hear it coming out of your mouth?

Chris Taylor [13:50] One of the ones, I mean, there are lots of different ones. I think my mother was very big on sayings. Um, uh, but one of the ones that she used to say when, uh, you know, if you’re trying to get something by her, she would say, I didn’t come down in the last shower. I don’t know if you guys use that, but…

Patricia McLinn [14:08] No, but it’s wonderful.

Chris Taylor [14:10] So yeah, I remember her saying that quite often, you know, when we’re kids, I’m one of six. Six girls. So, you know, there are plenty of kids around, and, um, I remember her saying, Oh, I didn’t come down in the last shower as if you know how to, you expect me to believe that. And I have used that in a couple of times.

Patricia McLinn [14:24] Turned it on your kids now, huh?

Chris Taylor [14:28] That’s the way it goes that’s, that’s the, the story of life.

Patricia McLinn [14:31] Are you left-handed or right-handed?

Chris Taylor [14:35] I am right-handed.

Patricia McLinn [14:36] Okay. On your right hand, which is longer your index finger or your ring finger?

Chris Taylor [14:43] Now this is a really weird question, I have never, ever looked at my hands like this before, but you know what, it’s my ring finger. I don’t know what that means about me or says about me.

Patricia McLinn [14:52] I don’t either. I don’t know what it means. I’m just curious about it. I think it’s, it’s interesting that it’s, that it differs for people. Who knew.

Chris Taylor [15:01] Does it really? I didn’t know that either. So, okay.

Patricia McLinn [15:04] Yeah. And sometimes it differs from one hand to the other, for some people, it doesn’t for me. And I have no idea. There’s, there’s probably some significance to it.

Chris Taylor [15:15] It doesn’t for me either, but my left hand, but the index finger is a little bit less short than the ring finger on the left hand. There’s less of a difference.

Patricia McLinn [15:22] So that they’re closer on the left-hand than they are on the right hand.

Chris Taylor [15:26] Yes.

Patricia McLinn [15:27] I thought in my, in my, um, palm reading days, wasn’t it your left-hand is supposed to be what you’re born with in your right hand is what you make of yourself.

Chris Taylor [15:38] Wow. That’s interesting.

Patricia McLinn [15:40] Except that I don’t remember, I don’t remember anything else from that. That’s it. That the extent of it.

Chris Taylor [15:47] That’s totally unhelpful, Pat.

Patricia McLinn [15:49] We’ll have to do some research on it. And as long as I brought up the R word, let’s go ahead and talk about it. Because writing romantic suspense in particular, you must have to do a lot of research. How do you do it?

Chris Taylor [16:01] Uh, yes, well, I’m, I’m lucky that I, I had a medical background, uh, at one stage I was a nurse for a few years. And I also was a lawyer for a lot longer years, so I had a legal background and I’ve done, so I’ve done a medical romantic suspense series and I’m in the middle of a legal series at the moment. So I do call on a lot of past experience.

And I also have, um, a, your equivalent to the FBI. We’ve got the AFP, which is the Australian Federal Police, same kind of thing as the FBI. Uh, and so I’ve, I have one of their, um, retired supervisors or superintendents, on my speed dial and he answers any technical questions about the police and that sort of thing, because I often have a police investigation going on. And in fact, my hero or heroine is quite often a police officer or a detective.

Chris Taylor [16:49] So that’s really handy. I also have, um, a contact in the state morgue. So I’ve done some, you know, some scenes in the morgue and that sort of thing. And as a nurse, I actually watched autopsies. So I, I have been inside there and seen all that happen. So that helps.

I’m not, I’m not some… I love. I love, I love historical romance, but I just could not spend all that time on the research to get it right. And I’m someone who has to be right. So I just, I will not go there because I just know I just, I’m too impatient for the story to begin. And I just love to get in it and start writing. I don’t want to be pulled out all the time or spend months doing the research ahead of time. So I’ve stayed well clear of historical romance, even though I absolutely love it. Love to read it.

Patricia McLinn [17:29] How did you develop these connections with, uh, the retired gentlemen from the AFP and your other, your other sources?

Chris Taylor [17:38] So, I’m lucky, one of my sisters works for the Australian government. She’s a diplomat. And so the federal police are based in Canberra. I mean, they have offices around in the other capital cities, but their headquarters are in Canberra. So she knew this fellow through her work because she often deals with the federal police.

So she got me into contact with him and he was, I haven’t actually ever met him face to face, but we’ve spoken on the phone and I email, you know, every book I write to him about something or other. And it’s always just, Hi, Hey, guy, what do I do? And blah, blah, blah, what would happen if blah, blah, blah. And he just talks back. He hasn’t heard from me for a month or two, and then, you know, and he’s just straight back with the answer. So it’s really handy.

Chris Taylor [18:15] And as for the, um, the state morgue, I actually called them, um, you know, and explained I was an author and whatever, and that I needed, you know, could I speak to somebody about this? And, uh, anyway, they said that they would, um, you know, get, get someone from their media department to call me back. And so, you know, within ten minutes or so I got a call back and I explained again, who I was to this fellow, and he said, Yes, I know I’ve looked you up.

So they actually, they actually did a bit of a search because I guess I get calls from crazies and that kind of thing.So they’d gone and they looked at my website and whatever, and realized I was, you know, legitimate, often writing, you know, crime kind of novels. And, uh, anyway, so he he’s been very helpful as well. I, I, I write to him, email him or, uh, speak to him sometimes when I’m dealing with that kind of stuff.

Patricia McLinn [19:02] Well, those are great sources, because I find sometimes that when you find somebody like that, who will enter into the what if they are precious. I, I did a course in forensics at a place in North Carolina a few years ago, and the guy was great. He was also telling us a lot of times what usually happened and I would be saying, Yeah, but what if? And he’d say, Well, but that doesn’t usually happen. And I’d say, Yeah, but what if, and he felt at one point, he, he said, Don’t ever go into crime, you are the devil’s spawn. *Laughter* I know, writers think that’s a great compliment. My family wasn’t as impressed.

Chris Taylor [19:49] That’s funny.

Ideas from true crime and songs, obituaries for the living

Patricia McLinn [19:51] Okay. On behalf of a reader, I am going to ask you, uh, her question and she says, Where do your stories come from? I know one author who dreams her stories. Another has a character suddenly take up residence in her head. So how are your beautiful stories born?

Chris Taylor [20:08] Okay. So, um, they’re not necessarily character driven. I-I’m usually inspired. I watch a lot of crime, true crime TV. I-I’m obsessed with that a bit, I think in fact, my husband, just, yeah, he does think I’m obsessed with it. And, um, uh, so I, you know, cause truth’s often stranger than fiction, so often I will see something that will just it’ll spark an idea., and I start thinking, Well, how did that happen? Or why did that happen? Or what if this had happened, you know, you start asking all those questions and you know, from there I can get a story.

Sometimes it’s a song that inspires me that I just, like I’m listening to, um, I have discovered Gretchen Peters. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of her—

Patricia McLinn [20:46] I haven’t.

Chris Taylor [20:48] —but she’s been around for a long time, apparently. But I’ve just discovered her. She’s a country sort of, um, uh, singer, but she has the most amazing stories in her songs. And so I’m, I’m listening to one at the moment called Five Minutes, about, and it’s, you know, it’s about this girl who’s working in a diner and she’s on her break, a five minute break, you know, and she’s thinking about her past, and the boy that she loved and they’ve split up and she’s got a daughter to him that, you know, they, they haven’t seen each other for twenty years or something, I think.

Anyway, it’s just, and she’s thinking, and then the owner of the diner, you know, she knows he likes her. She could always have a relationship there, but he’s not this guy who, you know, she’s still thinking of. And it, oh man, there is a story there. I am going to definitely write a story backed from there. You know, it just it’s so, so emotional, and so sad and all that kind of stuff. And I like to tap into the emotions. I mean, even though I have the suspense going, the romance is just as strong.

Patricia McLinn [21:40] I like, I like songs too. And I have a couple songs that have grown out of, actually songs, um, sung by Hal Ketchum. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him.

Chris Taylor [21:52] No, I haven’t heard of him.

Patricia McLinn [21:54] And that, wonderful storytelling songs. So I totally understand that. The only drawback is, start with this idea and then you have to turn it into a book. So how do you do that? How do you start taking that, that story you’ve heard in a song, how do you create it into a book?

Chris Taylor [22:15] Yeah, it is, it’s strange, but that’s part of the magic, isn’t it? That’s the part I just totally love, coming up with a new idea and totally building this amazing story about it. So another example I was listening to, I love country, I love country music, like I could listen to Nashville radio all day and often do. But, um, I had, I was listening to a song by Alabama called I Believe. And it’s a song about this fellow, who’s lost his wife, you know, she’s died. But he could still feel her, you know, he says, I still feel you.

And so my very first book was inspired by that. And I could see this guy standing, you know, kneeling down by this headstone and he’s crying and he’s touching the headstone and it’s cold, but he can still feel her. He can still feel the warmth. And that is the scene in my very first book. It’s one of the very early scenes is this grieving husband. And he’s actually, the detective in the story, goes from there, but man, I could see that so clearly. And it was just, yeah. Just just beautiful is great.

And I just love that whether I connect through a song or just something I’ve seen or even read, you know, sometimes I read this obituary in the paper, once in our local paper, it was an obituary, only the person hadn’t died. It was just so weird. Yes. They weren’t dead. Someone had written their obituary, but they weren’t dead. And so I thought, Wow, what is going on there?

Patricia McLinn [23:29] Were they, were they somebody well known in the community?

Chris Taylor [23:33] No, not well known in the community. At least I didn’t know them. And I live in a fairly small community. I mean, some people would have known them, but there was something going on there that, that they’d written their orbituary, likely someone else had written there orbituary. Think, Wow. That is that’s, that’s weird, there’s something going on there. That is a story.

Patricia McLinn [23:51] Newspapers write, um, obituaries for famous people ahead a time, and then kind of fill in details, but they have them ready to go basically. But it doesn’t sound like that was the same situation.

Chris Taylor [24:03] No, this was just in the classifieds. So someone had just paid to put this, it was like an ad in the classifieds, but it wasn’t an obituary. Like it was only a small square, you know, with stuff on it, but it wasn’t that small, but it was, it wasn’t a huge page or anything, it was just in the classifieds. And it was just these few paragraphs about this person, only they weren’t dead.

Patricia McLinn [24:22] Okay, we got to use that in a book.

Chris Taylor [24:27] Oh, definitely. I haven’t used yet, but that is definitely going in. That is just, Wow, what is going on there? They obviously hated each other.

Patricia McLinn [24:35] Well, you get dibs on it because you, you read it, but I really liked that. When you, when you finish up a book, this is another question from a reader. Um, do you find the miss characters? Do you think about them a lot? What, how they are going on from the end of the book? Um, and, and then I, uh, I want to add the question of, and has that thinking, if you do think about them, has that ever led you to write another book?

Chris Taylor [24:58] Yeah, so I write series, so I do myself in that series and there are usually like nine or ten books, so that there’s a reasonable length of time where you’re immersed in there. I, one of my, my first series was actually based on a family. So there were, there were so many brothers and a couple of sisters there to make up the books. And so I did revisit the characters and you just, you do that, they’re like your family. I know that sounds weird, but you just feel like, you know them, like they’re people that you know. And you know, so when things happen to them, you feel for them and, you know, and you like to hear back from them.

So, I did a novella, Christmas novella in the first series to revisit all the people that were, it came up as book seven. So you’d already met six of the brothers and sisters. And so I revisited each one around a Christmas theme, and, oh, that was so nice. You know, it’s like catching up with old friends.

Patricia McLinn [25:49] And, you said you feel bad for them when bad things happen to them, but you are making those bad things happen to them.

Chris Taylor [25:55] I know.

Patricia McLinn [25:56] How do you feel about that?

Chris Taylor [25:58] Oh, it’s so weird, it is. You know, it just happens. You, you would understand as an author that, you know, the story just takes you to certain places. I’m, I’m a planner. So I do plan quite a lot of the story out beforehand. I don’t just sort of get an idea and run with it. Um, so I often know, you know, a lot of it, but every now and then it just, the story just takes over or the character just takes over and does something that’s so surprising that you, you think, Oh wow. And it could be good or bad, you just have to go with it because that’s, that’s what the story needs. That’s what they’re telling you it needs anyway.

Patricia McLinn [26:30] What, that planning that you do before a book, what does that look like?

Chris Taylor [26:34] Okay, so it depends on how much time I have, um, for my deadline. So I, but generally, if I have, you know, I write fairly fast, so I publish every couple of months, generally. So I allow myself about three weeks to write a first draft and then I edit it and probably take me a week to go through and do a full edit. And then it goes off to be edited back and forth. It goes through three passes back and forth between my editor and, and me. What was the question again? I’ve lost my train of thought.

Patricia McLinn [27:03] What, how you’re planning?

Chris Taylor [27:05] Oh, the planning.

Patricia McLinn [27:06] What, what your planning looks like, what you’re doing.

Chris Taylor [27:08] Yeah. So I would, uh, write a rough draft, hand-write a rough draft chapter by chapter, just in point form.

Patricia McLinn [27:15] Hand-write?

Chris Taylor [27:16] Hand-write in point form. So it takes me a couple of days probably to hand-write, just, in point form chapter by chapter. But I find that I’m, I’m more efficient if I take that time because I’ve got five kids and so I’m often called away. And so I can just come back to my, my plan, I, you know, my summary really, and know where I’m at. I don’t have to go back and read, you know, where, where I was heading. I know where I’m at. I can just look straight down at where I leave it open on my desk and, um, you know, and then I just continue on. So I just find it. But it’s more efficient that way, because I get interrupted fairly frequently.

Patricia McLinn [27:50] When, when you have books where the character takes off on a different direction from you, are those, are those a joy to write or are those harder to write? And what would, which of your books you’d say was the easiest to write?

Chris Taylor [28:03] Okay. So, um, but it doesn’t happen all that often. I guess I keep them under control pretty well, but, um, every now and then… I wrote one about a serial killer. The, the man was a serial killer and they had two children, him and his wife. And she was meant to be totally oblivious to all this stuff going on. And then all of a sudden there’s a scene towards the end where the wife turns up with the chainsaw, you know, by his side, she walks in on him and he’s thinks he’s been sprung. But in fact, she’s, she’s, she’s part of it, you know, she’s… And I thought, um, I know it was too much, too much. I can not do that to those poor children. They cannot have two serial killer parents. So I had to, I regret that I did not let her come in and do that. And she was never meant to be there.

Patricia McLinn [28:46] So it was only to save the children, huh?

Chris Taylor [28:50] No child should have to go through life like that, with two serial killer parents.

Patricia McLinn [28:54] But okay. Your most recent book, how much, has that, say there’s a continuum of easy to write, joy to write, versus, Oh my gosh, um, this is, this book is going to kill me. Where in the continuum did the most recent book come in?

Chris Taylor [29:11] Um, it wasn’t too bad. It was another romantic suspense. Um, I, I have my series mapped out ahead of time. So I have nine books in the series. I’ve got all the titles chosen, and when I was doing this sort of planning, I, I would come up with an idea and just write a few lines down on each book. So, um, I already knew, you know, as I kept to each book in the series.

I know what the theme is. I know what the main story, I always know what the black moment is. For people, for readers who, who don’t know that, that expression, it’s where, um, particularly in romance where you think all is so wrong they’re never going to get back, they’re never going to get together. You know how they’re so far apart, that’s never going to happen, but that’s the black moment where you’re just in total despair that they’re ever like, like I was with Rhett Butler, don’t worry, I’m still in despair.

Chris Taylor [29:59] And then of course, you know, we resolve it and they get back to, they get together and, and that’s what, that’s the happily ever after we promise in a romance. Um, but, but, you know, so sometimes, the current book has, has, um, yeah, it’s flowed pretty well. I’ve um, recently started using dictation software. So, in fact, you guys inspired me at Novelis Inc. conference, when you are, you’re all talking about, um, Dragon Dictation software and how much, um, more efficient it was than all the rest.

And I tell you, I have been quietly impressed. So it, it’s making me think differently. I think I’m using a different part of my brain, which is weird, but it just feels a little bit different to be dictating a story rather than typing it and seeing it coming up in front of me. But it definitely is quicker.

Patricia McLinn [30:44] How do you make changes on the fly on Dragon? Cause if I couldn’t backspace, delete, and cut and paste, I would be in big trouble.

Chris Taylor [30:55] Yes. I’m with you on that. And I have only just started using the software on the latest book. Um, but what I have been doing, because I feel that way too. I have been dictating just like a thousand words at a time. So for about ten minutes, it takes me to do a thousand words, and then I transcribe it and then I’m editing it straight away. So, because sometimes as I’m speaking, I agree, I’d like to backspace and delete or change something. But I don’t. I just keep going until I do the thousand words, and then I just edit it straight away. So the thought or the deletion I wanted to make the correction is still fresh in my mind. So that’s how I’ve been dealing with it. I’m not sure how other people do.

Patricia McLinn [31:30] I was contemplating trying, um, dictation on things like emails because it’s not as precise for me as writing.

Chris Taylor [31:40] Yeah. Well, when you watch the, um, the YouTube videos and things on that, you know, write composing emails and stuff with dictation software is just so easy. You know, it’s like open mail, new mail, send, send mail to Pat, you know, whatever. And it just pops the address in and all that stuff. It’s just like, Wow.

Patricia McLinn [31:54] I might have to try that. But speaking of editing, have you edited, ever edited something out of a book or had it edited, edited out by someone else, that you still regret that you think, ah, I wish I’d left that in.

Chris Taylor [32:13] There is actually, and I’m sure the, the edit was made for all the right reasons. So I write generally for the North American market, because it’s just, you know, from a business point of view, it’s a lot bigger market than the Australian market. Just, you guys have got a lot more people than, than we do. We don’t read, but you know, there’s a lot, it’s a numbers game.

So I was writing this book where this guy had, he was a returned army officer. And he had PTSD, undiagnosed PTSD. You don’t realize this right until the end, but anyway, he had had an affair. Okay. So there were a lot of reasons why, in fact, you find out that he was part of his, trying to break this terrorist cell in Indonesia and stuff, and, and to keep his cover and basically saved his men, he, you know, he sleeps with this Indonesian girl. Who’s also a spy, you know, my editor made me, no, I could not use that. It was not acceptable to have the hero. Have had been unfaithful to his wife.

So I had to get rid of that, which it was, it was just so, yeah, I did. I mean, I still had PTSD, but he wasn’t unfaithful. He just, he still walked out on his marriage, but not for those reasons. So, um, but I still really loved that story. It was such a beautiful love story and I’ll write, I like to write really real and, you know, that happens sometimes, but no, my editor felt that it was not going to be acceptable to an all American audience, that a hero is unfaithful no matter what, the reason. So that went, and I do mourn the loss of that.

Patricia McLinn [33:38] Do you think it would have been acceptable to an Australian audience?

Chris Taylor [33:41] Most definitely.

Patricia McLinn [33:43] Oh really?

Chris Taylor [33:44] Yes.

Patricia McLinn [33:45] Why do you think there’s that difference?

Chris Taylor [33:46] Well, I don’t know, I was guided by my, um, North American editor, um, that, that, that kind of thing wouldn’t go down well in, in North America. In Australia, I dunno. I think we are just more, um, not accepting, but we were just less, gosh, I don’t know what the, what the word is. It would have definitely been acceptable in an Australian audience. We would have understood it. And understood the reasons.

And even though, you know, it comes good in the end, of course, they still love each other and they, you know, and we realize all this stuff was going on. But, you know, and it’s, I think it’s a beautiful love story, but, uh, yes. I don’t know why I think that that definitely would have been okay in Australia that it wasn’t okay over there.

Patricia McLinn [34:26] Now, other than the, the story where the wife of the serial killer shows up to join in, um, which of your stories has surprised you the most? And how did, how did it surprise you? And did you learn anything from that for books that, that followed?

Chris Taylor [34:43] Wow. The one where the wife turns up, that was my first, um, well that was my first book published. And so it was my first book because we always, we all write books well, before we got to publishing, uh, stage, but I guess that was the first time I had had a character take over like that. And it was like, Wow, how did that happen? Like, I’m the one writing this stuff.

So I guess, in later books, um, it didn’t happen as often, but every now and then, and I just gave myself the permission to let that happen. You know, I accepted that sometimes that happens that the characters take over where until then, you know, I hadn’t thought in those terms, you know, as, as you say, I’m the one putting the words there, what do you mean that the characters taking over?

It sounds really strange to somebody who’s never done it before, but after that experience, I realized, you know, that’s sometimes that can happen. And sometimes it’s okay. Sometimes it’s not like I had to get rid of it because it just was too much for those poor children. But, you know, sometimes they go that way.

Patricia McLinn [35:38] Well, I’ve told this story before, but, um, I had a murder mystery that I was writing, uh, that came out a year ago, um, called Look Live. And I was ahead of schedule, which I rarely am. I’m tootling along with this book and thinking, Oh boy, I’m going to be finished ahead of time. And then looking at the screen, what do you know? The person I thought was the murderer ended up dead.

Chris Taylor [36:05] I love that. I love that.

Patricia McLinn [36:08] Oh… I thought, Uh, oh.

Chris Taylor [36:12] Now what do I do?

Patricia McLinn [36:13] This is a problem. So I got the book out on time, but I was not ahead of schedule. I had to do some real rethinking and it, and it never occurred to me to make him undead.

Chris Taylor [36:24] Yes. Yes.

Patricia McLinn [36:25] He was dead. That was it, there it was.

Chris Taylor [36:27] It’s something I think that readers think is weird because, um, you know, like, we’re the ones writing the story. I mean, I know sometimes, so I haven’t been able to write the climax that I often have, you know, people getting killed or chased or whatever, you know, there’s always a threat that their life’s in danger.

And often I can’t write that late at night. I do write late at night. But I can’t write those scenes at night because I’m so scared. You know, it’s just, it’s like for goodness’ sake, I’m writing it. I know how it’s going to work out. Okay. You know, what’s going on here, but you know, it’s like, that’s the way it is.

Patricia McLinn [36:59] So are there other ways you think writers are different from normal people?

Chris Taylor [37:04] Normal people, yeah, that’s right. But we’re so far left of normal aren’t we. Um, I think that we just, I do think we think differently and I see stories everywhere, you know, and like, I, I wouldn’t say I’m a particularly observant person, but I just, I see stories in people and in actions and, and just, you know, sitting on a train or whatever. And you just see a comment or overhear a conversation or something. And man, my mind’s already off. Where I don’t know that normal people think like that.

Patricia McLinn [37:31] You know, uh, uh, a lot of the authors are saying this. And, I just had this thought, we’re making a lot of normal people really paranoid about being watched and listened to by writers since they’re out in their normal lives. And you’re in, you’re going to be in a book.

Chris Taylor [37:51] I often get emails from people who, because, you know, I write, I write a lot of murder and death and you know, stuff like that. There’s always chasing. There’s always, you know, the adrenaline pumping stuff and I, I will get emails every now and then from people who, cause sometimes I use the real names, real suburb names and things, especially in Sydney and whatever. And you know, I’ll get people saying, Oh my goodness, I live there. I live in that suburb. I’m still looking over my shoulder.

Patricia McLinn [38:14] That’s one of the things I feel bad about. My mystery series is set in Wyoming. So I managed to pick the least populated state in the United States. And I am rapidly depopulating it further.

Chris Taylor [38:28] Uh, yeah. Yes, one book at a time.

Patricia McLinn [38:33] That’s right. But sometimes multiple bodies. So how do you think you have changed and evolved as a writer? Since you, say not just since you started, but say since you were first published.

Chris Taylor [38:49] Um, well, it’s, it’s like anything, any profession, I think. That the more you do do and the more hours you spend on it, the better you get. So I’m definitely more efficient. Um, I’m definitely less wordy. You know, like some of my earlier books were a hundred-twenty, a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty thousand words just for, you know, an ordinary fiction novel, which should have been around, you know, eighty or ninety.

So I’ve learned to, I’m much more efficient with words and I love that. You know, I love that. I can just have a few words, a few words in a sentence and say exactly the same thing that I might’ve had ten words in before, you know, it just, and it just comes up more easily. And I think like any job, you know, the more, the longer you’re at it, the better you get at it. So that’s one of the things that has changed for sure that I’m better at it. And I’m more efficient at it.

Patricia McLinn [39:35] You have a writing routine that you follow?

Chris Taylor [39:38] Yes. Well, I, I write full-time. I’m lucky enough to write full-time. So it’s my job. So, you know, I’m, I’m in front of my desk by nine in the morning after my kids have gone to school and, you know, I’ll have a quick lunch break and I’ll be back again. You know, like, like I would a job and I sit here till four, when my kids get home from school, this is in between, you know, obviously, sometimes there’s interruptions and I have to go and buy food and stuff every now and then, which is an annoyance, but…

Um, generally, yeah, look, I worked seven days a week as well, and I often do more work, you know, after the kids have gone to bed, I’ll do another two or three hours then. So, um, but the good thing is it doesn’t feel like a job, you know, when you’re really into it. There’s nothing like being really into it and just, so immersed.

Patricia McLinn [40:19] And when it comes, just kind of its own, which doesn’t happen all the time, unfortunately, but it is lovely when it does.

Chris Taylor [40:27] Yes. Now, a lot of the time it is, it’s just getting that story down. But I think the more, more, um, prep I do earlier on, the more I get to know my characters, before I start to write the easier it is. So even though I chafe at the delay, you know, whether it’s two or three days where I’m just writing things out. In the end I think it’s, it’s more efficient because I don’t have to, I don’t have as many pauses where I’m thinking now, you know, what, what would they do here or what, what happens next?

Patricia McLinn [40:52] Now, uh, a reader wants to know what is your favorite place to write and why? And does it have an inspirational view?

Chris Taylor [40:59] Well, I, I generally write from my office when I’m home. Um, I, I use one drive on my iPad so I can go flip between the iPad and my desktop. But generally, I like to sit in my office and I do have a lovely view. I live out of town, so I’ve got a very nice rural view of the mountains and I’ve got a nice pool in my backyard that I look out over. So I have a water view, I guess.

Um, so, and often I’m the only one home, you know, when my husband’s at work, my kids are away. So it’s often just me. I don’t need to have music and stuff going. Like a lot of people need something going on. I can just sit here in total silence. I’ve got enough voices going on in my head. I don’t need anymore.

Patricia McLinn [41:39] You need one of those floating desks for your, for your pool. So you can just paddle around.

Chris Taylor [41:45] That would be nice.

Patricia McLinn [41:47] So have you ever had a situation that, a reader wanted to know about this, when the cover image didn’t match the character description, have you run across that? And then she said, if you have, she wants to know how it feels for the author.

Chris Taylor [41:59] Okay. So I, I’m lucky because I am an Indie, um, um, published author. So I, I have a lot of input into my covers. Uh, and I have used the same cover designer all the way through, so they really, they get, they get me in my, my, my books. So I, I mean, occasionally I have tweaks of course, that the, the hero doesn’t look like he should or is too young looking. I mean, man, I’m 45, everyone looks young now to me, but, um, you know, I don’t know, he’s too young. He looks like he’s—

Patricia McLinn [42:27] Go away.

Chris Taylor [42:28] You know what I mean. But I’m lucky in that way. I haven’t ever had a cover that totally mismatches, but I certainly sympathize with author friends who have. Because you know, you’ve got this person in your head and they’re a certain way and they look a certain way, they’ve got certain, you know, um, mannerisms and just some sort of bearing or whatever. And you get just turn, you get something that’s just nothing like that. And I can understand how ghastly you must feel about that.

Patricia McLinn [42:52] Now a lot of your characters… Hmm. I shouldn’t say a lot, but, um, you’re writing in areas where it tends to be male dominated, more males working than, than women, than females. Um, how do you approach writing about, from the point of views, especially of the opposite sex?

Chris Taylor [43:13] Okay. So I love to write from the male point of view. I don’t know why, but I guess, if I have a choice say from running single point of view, and I have a choice, I will often gravitate towards a male character, which is weird because I have no brothers.

So I grew up with five sisters. So obviously I had a father, but, um, you know, I, I didn’t have a lot of male influences such and I love writing the male characters. I don’t know whether I get it wrong. I think I probably make them a little bit too emotional. I can always tell a book that’s written by a man, but you kind of don’t even have to tell me the author, I, you know, I just can tell from the style.

And in, particularly if there’s any sort of emotional scenes, you know, you can tell it’s been written by a man. Uh, but so I probably am a little bit emotional, but I guess, you know, the people who read my books do tend to be women too. So, you know, we, we get it, we get that.

Patricia McLinn [44:01] So this question is sort of out of the blue, but I, I’m interested to hear the answer. What’s the best money you’ve ever spent as an author?

Chris Taylor [44:11] Okay. Um, I think on my covers, you know, um, they say a, Well, you can’t judge a book by the color, but we often do in this day and age of digital books, you know, we, we, we, we have the covers in front of us.

Unlike, you know, in the old days, when you had to go to a bookstore, I guess you saw covers too, but, um, most people shop online now I think, so the covers are really important. And particularly if you’re looking for just a read, you know, you’re not actually searching for a particular author. And I think the covers are really important.

And I probably spend on the upper end of the scale. Not the most expensive for sure, but more than some, um, on my covers, but I have had a lot of feedback on the covers that they, and, and, you know, even from digital retailers that the covers are stand out and that, you know, they’re, they’re attractive to readers.

Patricia McLinn [44:58] Do you have a favorite cover of yours?

Chris Taylor [45:00] That’s hard to say, cause I do like all my covers, but, um.

Patricia McLinn [45:04] Or one that’s gotten particular, a particular amount of feedback.

Chris Taylor [45:08] Probably, um, my, my hospital series, which it features sort of a part of the building on, on all the, of the fictitious hospital I set in Sydney, but, um, they, they’re kind of darker and grittier and edgier those books and the covers are all sort of reflective of that, I think.

Um, and they’re nice and glossy, some I’m doing a matte, some series I do are matte and I love matte, the matte cover as well. But, um, the glossy, the glossy really, that talks to me.

Patricia McLinn [45:36] Now you said that you have had some books set in the legal, against the legal background—

Chris Taylor [45:42] Yes.

Patricia McLinn [45:43] —right? And you were a lawyer. Were you a criminal lawyer?

Chris Taylor [45:46] Yes, I, I did a bit of everything in my early days. I worked for the, um, director of public prosecutions, which what do you guys call it? You know, the district attorney’s office, that kind of thing.

Patricia McLinn [45:58] Right.

Chris Taylor [45:59] So I did purely criminal law there on the prosecution side of it. Um, but when I moved to, um, the country, that was in Sydney, I lived in Sydney. When I moved to the country where my husband lived, I became a country lawyer. So in a country practice and I did a bit of everything and then I was a defense lawyer. So that was really weird because I, you know, you’re on different sides of the bar table. People probably don’t even realize, but you know, the defense sit on the left and the, and the prosecution sit on the right. And so all of a sudden I was on the other side of the table and it just was, so even though you’re already, still a few meters apart, it was just so weird to do that.

But yeah, I did defense criminal lawyer for a few years and also did a lot of commercial work and, um, you know, conveyancing and did a bit of everything in the country.

Patricia McLinn [46:44] So if you weren’t writing, would you go back to the law?

Chris Taylor [46:47] Yes. I would.

Patricia McLinn [48:48] And now that sort of surprised me because a lot of, there are a fair number of authors who are departed lawyers, escaped lawyers. Um, so that’s interesting. So what, what made you switch from law to writing?

Chris Taylor [47:00] Well, I always loved writing and I used to do that on my weekends and things, especially before I had children, I would be writing kind of Harlequin romances and things. Um, it was only later I got into the suspense.

I did try and write Blaze, um, but I just could not contain the word count. You know, I was always had too many secondary characters and too many plots going on. So I realized fairly, fairly quickly I was a single-title writer, and I didn’t even know that term until I started talking to other writers, you know, but, um, anyway, so I, I, I was always writing.

I just love criminal law, not so much the other stuff, but, uh, I love the criminal law. I’ve always been fascinated with that. And I think that, that’s why I’ve, uh, you know, I write about it because it, it’s, it’s fascinating, you know, what makes a person get to that point.

Patricia McLinn [47:46] How do readers respond to especially your criminal stories, do they, or, or any of your romantic suspense, what sort of feedback do you get from readers? What sort of interaction do you have with them?

Chris Taylor [47:59] Yeah, so I, I think the book that I get the most, um, response from is one that was on domestic violence. So it was in the medical series and the husband was a doctor, you know, very well-respected doctor, uh, at the hospital. And she was a nurse, the wife, and of course behind closed doors, we realized it’s so different to the, you know, the public persona that he was, he was showing everyone.

And I get a lot of response from that, you know, because I think there’s a lot of people out there in those situations. And I get a lot of emails from readers who, or, you know, sometimes it’s the daughter saying my mum was in a situation or one was, My mum is still in this situation, which was so terrible. So heartbreaking. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [48:43] Oh, dear.

Chris Taylor [48:44] Yeah. But, but I think that that one has touched a lot of people. I get a lot of letters about that, about domestic violence, which just, I like to do, um, issues that draw attention to things I think need more attention, you know, more public awareness. So that was definitely one I, I felt, I felt for a long time that I needed to get out there and I get a lot of response from that one.

Patricia McLinn [49:04] I have a question that a reader posed, I think is intriguing. I’m very interested to hear what you have to say. If you could write a book with any author, alive or dead, who would you want to work with and why?

Chris Taylor [49:19] Well, see my favorite author, well, I have two favorite authors, one, and one, one’s alive. One’s dead. So one of them is a historical romance author by the name of Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. Now, she was one of the first, um, romance novels I read, I think I read her first book when I was about 13 or something.

Totally, totally loved her books. She just had the most amazing characters, such beautiful men, you know, and just lovely characters that you fell in love with. So she is somebody I would love to written with. Um, just because she just could tap into the, you know, into emotions so well.

The other one I love, um, and he is, again, one of my, is up there with her, my favorite author, is Richard North Patterson. So he has a couple series. And, again, he’s a guy who writes from a male’s point of view, but how, his guys are just so great, so lovely, you just, you know, you fall in love with them. His, um, male characters and, and he always has a fantastic story that goes with it. So I would love to write a book with him.

Patricia McLinn [50:23] So you’re looking at these authors, not just that you enjoy their work, but what you could learn from them.

Chris Taylor [50:28] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Their characterization and the way that they just, you know… Richard North Patterson, especially his, you know, he writes contemporary drama sort of stuff. Um, you know, one’s a political series, another one’s a legal series. Um, he’s got other books, but there is the ones that I love. He taps into the real situations that anyone can relate to. And some people would have been in. And, and they react in a real way. You know, I always really liked that.

In fact, I, when I first discovered Sandra Brown, and she is one of my, my inspirations, um, she was the first author I had ever read that, you know, where it was a bit of swearing, people reacted in a normal way, you know, in a way you would expect. And it wasn’t sugar-coated, you know, and I thought, Wow. I was just blown away the first time I read one of her books.

Patricia McLinn [51:16] Now those books are sort of in your same genre. Is that what you read for fun or do you go outside your genre?

Chris Taylor [51:22] I do read a lot of that kind of stuff for fun, especially from, from authors that I really enjoy, but I also, I mean, I love historical romance. I love contemporary romance. I, I, you know, I every now and then I’ll read an autobiography, but not really for fun. It’ll be just something I’m interested in or some person, you know, I’m interested in to know their life story, I’ll read that for. But for fun, it’s always, it’s always romance in some form.

Patricia McLinn [51:45] So somebody who has never read any of your books and we’ll say this from the North American market, since it’s the, the bigger one, what would be a good place for them to start? Which book would be a good start for them?

Chris Taylor [51:59] I was given some advice that, um, at a RWA conference, actually, I can’t even remember who said it, but this was before I was published, so it was really timely for me. They said that you had no control on where a reader might come into your series. So I write series, I like to write series.

Um, and, but they said, you’ve, you know, you might have book four on sale or something, and someone gets that one. And if they can’t understand and enjoy that story on its own, without having read all the other, other books, um, then they may not go back and fill in the gaps, you know. Where if you, if you write it as sort of a standalone story within the series and they enjoy it, you know, as, as its own book, then you’re more likely to get them to, you know, go back and read or, or pick up another one.

So I took that on board. So my, I’ve got three different series at the moment. And each one is a standard line story. I think you get more out of it if you’ve read them in order, because there is some reference back to previous characters. And so you’ll realize that these ones have just had a baby or these ones aren’t doing so well or whatever, you get a bit more out of it. But you can still enjoy any of them.

Chris Taylor [53:02] So, the first series is really a detective series on a, on a family. Um, the second one is a bit darker, a bit grittier, is that the hospital series. So I deal with topics like domestic abuse and organ donation, you know, the, yeah, I think kind of controversial things that one’s about illegal trafficking, you know, organs. Um, so it’s a little bit grittier.

Uh, that the third series, the legal series is a lot of courtroom drama stuff. So it really depends on what you, what you like to read, I think. I think you can tell that I’ve written them all there. They’re very much stamped with my, my voice. Um, and, uh, you know, they’re fairly hot and steamy. Most of them are.

So, um, I would recommend any reader starting, pick a series and start at the, the first one, because I just think you get a little bit more enjoyment out of it, but, but really they could come in anywhere and enjoy it If it’s their kind of story.

Patricia McLinn [53:56] I was at a mystery conference in Indianapolis last fall, and a reader came up, we were doing book signing and she came up with, I think it was the fourth book in the series. And I said, Oh, you know, have you read the other books? And she said, No, I’m going to start here. So there is a proof, at least one person out there is doing what you were told about. Okay.

Chris Taylor [54:21] I would never do that. I have always, you know, gone and tried to find the first one because that’s just me, I like to do that. Even if the others are on sale, I’ll still start with the first one. But apparently, you know, some people don’t, they just, they dive in and see if they’re going to like it. So, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [54:37] Do you have any, any of your books that you have a sense has been overlooked and not, not as, read as much that even your loyal readers might, might’ve missed some?

Guns, snakes, murder

Chris Taylor [54:49] One of the stories that is very close to my heart is the eighth book in the first series. So it’s called The Defendant, and, um, it’s, it was inspired by my son, who was twelve at the time. And in Australia, well probably over there in the States, I don’t know what your age limit is, but in Australia at twelve, he can get a gun license. So my name is on the permit. So you still have to be under supervision of an adult, et cetera, but you can actually get a gun license at twelve. And we live out in the bush and, um, uh, you know, my husband’s got guns and, and, you know, I’ve even got a gun license. Um, he goes to the range every now and then. We’re not hunters, but you know, we’ve got guns.

And so my, my twelve-year-old was really, really keen to get his license, you know, when he turned twelve. And so he did, he got his license and of course, then he just wanted to shoot everything in sight, you know. I had a snake at the back of my back door on the concrete steps and, you know, he’s tearing off to the shed to get the 410 shotgun, you know. I’m like, Oh my God, you know, like his mentality was like, Let’s shoot it. Let’s shoot it, you know?

Chris Taylor [55:49] And anyway, so that inspired that book. It’s a very sad story. Uh, you know, like that twelve-year-old actually shoots somebody dead. For good reason, you know, for good reason. Terrible scene between, uh, you know, with his mother involved. Um, but this is the story is basically on a trial of this child. Because he, he wouldn’t, he, you know, he, it comes down to intent.

In Australia, if you, if the prosecution can prove that the boy intended to kill and knew that what he was doing was going to kill or had a fair chance of killing. Well then, you know, you can be charged with murder. And, um, so he was, in this story. He was in the book as it unfolds there. But I have had comments from the North American readers going, Wow.You know, it’s so different over here. You know, this, this kid would never have been charged with murder and blah, blah, blah.

But I write in Australia, so I follow Australian law and, um, you know, that, that definitely would have happened. And, and, uh, anyway, but that’s a book I think that not a, I don’t get a lot of feedback on, so I’m not sure whether it’s not being as widely read as it, as I wished it would because it’s, it’s a great story. And, um, uh, you know what, but that book is close to my heart.

Patricia McLinn [56:54] Tell us how people can find out more about you and your books.

Chris Taylor [56:58] Well, I’m, I’m on all the digital retailers. At iBooks and Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and, um, uh, you know, I’ve got them all up there on my website, um, which is just www.christaylorauthor.com.au

Um, and people could just click on them go to different links to buy. Uh, you can also order paperbacks off Amazon and CreateSpace. So, uh, you know, they are, they are available.

Patricia McLinn [57:25] And we will include the URLs and the show notes. So it makes it easier than when you’re trying to catch something that’s being spoken and you’re trying to remember the URL. So, folks, you’ll find them in the show notes.

One of my very favorite journalism questions is to ask if there’s something I should have asked that I haven’t, or if you’d like to answer something that wasn’t asked.

Chris Taylor [57:48] Oh, Pat, you’ve done very well. I mean, it’s been a real pleasure to be here and see your questions. Um…

Patricia McLinn [57:56] Not done yet. We’re not done yet. So now we have, this is my, my perhaps favorite part where we talk about, uh, Or we do either Ors. Okay?

Chris Taylor [58:05] Okay.

Patricia McLinn [58:06] You just gotta answer fast. You gotta right through these. Uh, cake or ice cream?

Chris Taylor [58:11] Ice cream.

Patricia McLinn [58:12] Day or night?

Chris Taylor [58:14] Night.

Patricia McLinn [58:16] Cowboy boots or hiking boots?

Chris Taylor [58:19] Cowboy boots.

Patricia McLinn [58:20] I think you’ve already answered this one. Appetizer or dessert?

Chris Taylor [58:24] Oh, definitely dessert.

Patricia McLinn [58:26] Heels or slippers?

Chris Taylor [58:58] Slippers.

Patricia McLinn [58:29] Mountains or beach?

Chris Taylor [58:31] Beach.

Patricia McLinn [58:32] Dog or cat?

Chris Taylor [58:33] Dog.

Patricia McLinn [58:34] Sounded not totally sure.

Chris Taylor [58:36] No, definitely a dog. I’m not a cat lover. I have five cats. I have five cats, but they belong to my five children, and, um, yes. Yes. They all live outside.

Patricia McLinn [58:47] Okay.

Chris Taylor [58:48] I’m not against cats. I just can’t stand the fur they leave everywhere.

Patricia McLinn [58:51] Hey, I have a Collie you want to talk fur. Okay. Um, sailboat or a motorboat?

Chris Taylor [58:57] Ah, motorboat.

Patricia McLinn [58:58] Leggings or sweats?

Chris Taylor [59:00] Sweats.

Patricia McLinn [59:01] I’m not sure this particularly applies to you, but well, we’ll go for it anyhow. Which is eerier to you, an owl hooting or coyotes howling?

Chris Taylor [59:10] An owl hooting or a coyote howling. Okay. So I’ve never heard a coyote howling because we don’t have them here in Australia. Um…

Patricia McLinn [59:18] That’s what I wondered.

Chris Taylor [59:21] But I can imagine it sounds quite eerie and lonesome. I mean, I’ve seen it on movies and things like that. Uh, so I think I’ll go coyote.

Patricia McLinn [59:29] Okay. Gardening or house decorating?

Chris Taylor [59:32] Wow. I’m not keen on either. I love a nice house and I love a beautiful garden, but I’m, I’m not, you know, I’m not naturally inclined towards either, uh, if I had to choose, I’d say garden.

Patricia McLinn [59:47] Well, then that may be a hint to what your answer will be to the next one. Best china or paper plates?

Chris Taylor [59:53] Yeah, paper plates.

Patricia McLinn [59:57] Mustard or ketchup?

Chris Taylor [59:58] We call it tomato sauce. Um, tomato sauce, definitely ketchup.

Patricia McLinn [1:00:03] Okay. So the last one, would you save the best for last or grab the best first?

Chris Taylor [1:00:08] Wow. I think I would save the best to last.

Patricia McLinn [1:00:12] Well, thank you so much, Chris, for taking the time to be with us today. Really appreciated it. And I hope that the listeners will come back next week to meet a new author. And in the meantime, have a great week of reading and we’ll see you next week on the Authors Love Readers podcast.

Chris Taylor [1:00:33] Thank you so much, Pat. It’s been fun.

Patricia McLinn [1:00:36] That’s the show for this week. Hope you enjoyed it. And thank you for joining Authors Love Readers podcast. Remember, you can always find out more about our guest authors in the show notes, and you can find out more about me at www.patriciamclinn.com. You can also send in questions to be asked of future authors at: authors@podcastatauthorslovereaders.com

Until next week. Wishing you lots of happy reading. Bye.

 

Episode 9: Creating a Past, with Victoria Thompson

Host Patricia McLinn talks with bestselling author Victoria Thompson about her Gaslight Mystery series and the ups and downs of a career spent writing historical romance and mystery books. Victoria and Patricia discuss the craft of writing and teaching that craft to others.

You can find Victoria on:

*her website,

*Facebook and

*Twitter.

Thanks to DialogMusik for the instrumentals that accompany this podcast.

authors love readers podcast

authors love readers patreon

Transcript: Authors Love Readers with Victoria Thompson

Patricia McLinn [00:00] Welcome to this. Week’s Authors Love Readers podcast, where we delve into the stories behind the stories. We’re asking authors questions. Some of them fun, some of them serious, and from their answers, you’re going to learn things you never knew about the people who write the stories you love. My name is Patricia McLinn. I’m your host and designated question asker.

Victoria Thompson [00:24] I’m Victoria Thompson. And I’m an author who loves readers.

Patricia McLinn [00:27] Now let’s start the show. Welcome to this edition of Authors Love Readers podcast. I’m delighted to have the guest Victoria Thompson here this week. And Victoria, and I, I don’t know how long we’ve known each other. It’s been a really long time.

Victoria Thompson [00:45] Forever.

Patricia McLinn [00:47] Don’t you think?

Victoria Thompson [00:48]Yes, forever.

Patricia McLinn [00:49] Or it just seems like forever. Is that what you’re saying?

Victoria Thompson [00:52] Right. Well, if we met at Novelis Inc. it has to have been since 1989. That’s what it, that when Novelis Inc. started. So that’s probably back then.

Patricia McLinn [01:02] Yeah. Did it start in 89? I don’t think I joined until the second year.

Patricia McLinn [01:09] Yeah. Great organization. And those have listened to other podcasts, it crops up now and then. And Victoria is a former president, a past president of Novelis Inc. As am I, and, uh, is back on the board doing yeoman’s service as the advisory council liaison to the board. So we really appreciate everything she’s, she’s done and is doing for Novelis Inc. And let’s see when we first met each other. You were writing historical romance, right?

Victoria Thompson [01:47] Correct. Yes.

Patricia McLinn [01:49] And I was writing contemporary romance and over the years and here and there and she, she made this, the switch to, um, historical mysteries. And I’ve added contemporary mysteries. I never let go of anything is as you know, and has this wonderful two wonderful series now.

And we’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk about those a little bit more, but first I just wanted to kind of ask you some. Get to know you questions for the, for the readers. And I uh, I don’t know the answers to some of these, so let’s start off with surprising job you’ve held.

Victoria Thompson [02:31] Oh my gosh. I was a printing specialist for the government, US government printing office back in the day, shortly after I got married, my husband, um, wanted to become a preacher. And so he was going to, so we were going to move from the Washington DC area to Dallas and he was going to go to college to become a minister and I needed to get a job to support him.

And a gentleman on our church, it was a friend of the public printer, who’s like the secretary of state to the, to the government printing office. And, uh, he gave me a job in their Dallas office. That’s where we moved to Dallas and, uh, so I became a printing specialist, was my title. I knew absolutely nothing about printing. And for years afterwards, whenever my husband was describing someone who knew nothing about what they were doing, he would call them a printing specialist.

Patricia McLinn [03:29] I think that’s confirming a lot of people’s belief about the—

Victoria Thompson [03:32] About the government. I know.

Patricia McLinn [03:33] —government, that somebody called a specialist, and knows nothing about it.

Victoria Thompson [03:36] And after working in it, I can readily understand that they’re, they’re certainly justified in being a little skeptical. But my job was to order printing for various government agencies whenever they needed anything printed, I would write the specs and bid the job out. So I do know a lot about printing now. I did not however, when I was hired for that job.

Patricia McLinn [03:57] Now, was that ever a good background for you and in your publishing career?

Victoria Thompson [04:01] Never.

Patricia McLinn [04:03] Never.

Victoria Thompson [04:04] Not in this life. I mean, I do know about fonts, maybe that was helpful. I don’t know. I mean, being traditionally published, I was never involved. It’s actually pretty my book. So it wasn’t helpful at all,

Patricia McLinn [04:18] But that’s a great odd job that you’ve had. Okay. What’s your favorite taste?

Victoria Thompson [04:26] My favorite taste. I, you know, sweet, I guess.

Vicki Barry mysteries, the color red, and anger

Patricia McLinn [04:30] Uh, do you have a childhood book that addicted you to stories?

Victoria Thompson [04:33] You know, I read so voraciously when I was a child that it’s hard to pick a favorite book, but what I do remember the book I remember most from my childhood was a series, the Vicki Barr mystery. She was a stewardess. It was sort of like Nancy Drew, except she was a stewardess. It was that same era in the 1950s.

And I had gone to the book fair at school, and I saw this book and it was, um, this character had the same name as I did. She even spelled it the same way. And, um, she was a stewardess, which was the most glamorous job you could possibly have in the 1950s. And she solved mysteries, and, um, I asked my parents for that book and, um, It was a hardcover book and it was expensive and I didn’t really hold out much hope that they get it. And they came back from the book fair without it. So, I just assumed they hadn’t gotten it for me.

And I was looking in a closet one day and I found that book, the sequel to that book in a hidden, carefully away, because they were going to give it to me for Christmas. I was so excited. So of course on Christmas morning I pretended to be very, very excited. Didn’t have to pretendto be happy. But that was like, sort of my, um, it’s sort of, I don’t, I’m not sure it’s the first mystery I ever read, but it certainly cemented my love for mysteries.

Patricia McLinn [05:55] Uh, do you know how you became a voracious reader? Was it from your folks? Or was there something else that got you started?

Victoria Thompson [06:03] I think it’s, um, I think it’s a culture that, um, that you’re raised in. My parents were both readers, and my mom, my mom subscribed to the book of the month club. So we always had, we always had in the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, she got, we always had books in our house and my mother was always reading, so, and, and they read to us as children. We had a whole shelf full of Little Golden Books. And so we always had story time before bed at bedtime and stuff. So, um, reading was just a natural part of life, I think. And, um, so as, as far back as I can remember, so I think that’s certainly a contributing factor.

Patricia McLinn [06:43] Do you have any saying from your mother or father that you hear yourself saying now?

Victoria Thompson [06:52] My mother, my mother always said, Be careful. Whenever you left the house was like a mantra for her. And when my sister and I got older, we would say no. When she’d say, Be Careful, we’d say no, just to be contrary. But yeah, that’s she said it to the day she died.

Patricia McLinn [07:16] So do you hear yourself now saying be careful or are you always saying no?

Victoria Thompson [07:20] I try not to, you know, I try not to assume something terrible is going to happen every time somebody walks out the door. So, um, no, I don’t say be careful a lot, but I do say it when it’s, um, I think when it’s appropriate. Like my daughter is out in Los Angeles, and in Los Angeles right now and there’s fires there. So I told her to stay safe, but you know, that’s appropriate. I think.

Patricia McLinn [07:47] So do you have things from earlier in life that you used to fret over that now you just don’t care anymore?

Victoria Thompson [07:54] Oh, my goodness. I guess I used to care what people think. I don’t worry about that so much anymore. Um, I reached the age where, you know, I’m old enough now I can say pretty much whatever I want. People just roll their eyes attribute it to old age. But, um, yeah, it’s a nice feeling that you don’t have to worry about, you know, impressing people anymore.

Patricia McLinn [08:21] That’s terrific. So what’s your favorite color, Victoria?

Victoria Thompson [08:24] Red.

Patricia McLinn [08:25] Do you know why it’s your favorite?

Victoria Thompson [08:27] I don’t.

Patricia McLinn [08:29] You look great in it.

Victoria Thompson [08:30] Thank you. Well, that’s probably a contributing factor, but yeah, cause I’m a winter and I do look good in red. But, I have a red Mustang convertible and just about every, you know, whatever I can, I— Actually are living room furniture’s kind of red. I just really like it. I think it’s bright and it’s a strong cover, color and hot. I, uh, I heard someone talk about, David Morrell was speaking and he said, you should, you should decide, figure out what your, what your dominant emotion of your life is. And I, I was horrified to realize mine was anger.

Patricia McLinn [09:07] Really? I would not associate that with you at all.

Victoria Thompson [09:09] Oh, well, thank you, that’s good it doesn’t show. But I’m, you know, I’m always outraged about something. Not necessarily angry at someone, but outraged about some injustice or whatever. So, uh, in fact, there’s just some stories, news stories that I don’t read and books I don’t read and movies that I watch because I know they’re just going to make me so angry that I, and then not be able to do anything about it. So I just don’t, don’t participate.

Patricia McLinn [09:35] Do you, does that find its way into your books, or do you vent in that feeling at all in your books?

Victoria Thompson [09:43] Actually, yes, um, because in fiction you can, uh, you can get people justice, but you can’t necessarily in real life. Sometimes real life doesn’t cooperate. But, um, in fiction, you can always have a happy ending. You can always get justice and things can work out and be fair, which is not necessarily true in real life.

Patricia McLinn [10:05] So that’s, that’s putting your anger into books. How about fears? Do you have any fears that slide into your body?

Victoria Thompson [10:12] Well, I’m afraid of heights. I’m terrified of heights. Sometimes I’ll give my, uh, character a phobia, because that’s kind of fun.

Patricia McLinn [10:19] Not necessarily heights or is it usually at heights?

Victoria Thompson [10:23] Heights—

Patricia McLinn [10:24] If they have a phobia.

Victoria Thompson [10:25] If they have a thing it’s not, you know, I can, I can, if I’m inside of a building, I can look out the window. But it’s, uh, I think my husband says I’m not really afraid of heights, I’m afraid of falling. So if it’s open and I could, could conceivably fall, then I’m scared. But if I’m inside of a building, like there’s a window between me and whatever, then I’m fine. So, I know people though, who can’t even go near a window.

Patricia McLinn [10:52] Yeah. I really think that glass is going to save you, huh?

Victoria Thompson [10:55] Let’s just say the chances are, I’m going to throw myself through it are pretty small.

Patricia McLinn [11:02] A lot of us writers, putting myself into this because I definitely do have a bad habit word or two that crops up in our, our writing. It’s a crutch and most of us have to go back and take it out. And, if we’re aware of it, do you have a bad habit word? Will you confess your bad habit word to us here?

Victoria Thompson [11:25] I do, but it varies from book to book, so, for some reason, I’ll get stuck on, on a phrase or a word and keep using it over and over again in that book and then never, it’s never a problem again. But, uh, um, one, I remember one book, it was, the word was like, and I was in a critique group. This was years ago when I was writing historical romance and I had a critique group. And they said, You know, you’ve used like twenty, you know, thirteen times on this page. And I’m like, What? And I’ve used its various meanings too, but, you know, but I never did that again.

Um, but I think because I was conscious of it from then on it. Sometimes it’s that I tend to overuse that a lot. Um, and I just got a fan letter the other day from someone who said, Do you know that you use the phrase or something, um, which, you know, like, blah, blah, blah, or something, um, twenty-seven times or whatever in this book?

And it was like, Oh my gosh, if only my editor had caught that before it got published. And I noticed the book, I was, I just finished last week, um, I kept, I got a feeling that I was using of course, a lot. But, you know, people would say something and the reply would be of course. And I thought so, um, so I just was conscious of it and I cut it out a lot of them so that it wouldn’t happen. But yeah. The answer is yes.

Patricia McLinn [12:48] That’s particularly difficult when it changes in the book.

Victoria Thompson [12:50] Exactly, because you don’t really notice, not necessarily.

Patricia McLinn [12:53] It’s a moving target. Yeah. Well, we have a question from a reader that I will start you off with. That, um, it’s related to, but not exactly a question that we get a lot. And she says, where do your stories come from? I know one author who dreams her stories. Another has a character suddenly taking up residence in her head. So how are your beautiful stories born?

Gaslight series, Murder on Union Square, and Counterfeit Lady series like Robin Hood

Victoria Thompson [13:21] Usually from research for me. Um, I create, you know, I’ve written the Gaslight series now it’s twenty-one books long. And, um, so when I want to, so the characters are pretty much set, their world is set.

Um, and when I want an idea for a story, I just start researching wherever we are in the timeline. Um, what happened at that period of time. What was going on in the world? And usually that’ll trigger something, some idea, because there’s always something interesting going on in the world. If people, what were people thinking about? What were they talking about? Was there a scandal? Was there, you know, something, something new invented. Just anything could be a trigger like that. So that’s what I do. I just, when I’m ready to get an idea, I sit down and, and start reading research on that era.

Victoria Thompson [14:15] In the Gaslight series, um, the, the book I just finished, which will be out in May, um, Murder on Union Square, is, uh, it’s September of 1899. So the next book is going to be set at NewYyear’s time. And when the century turns. They already know some funny things that happened at that time. So those are the things that are going to go into the next book.

The, my other series is a completely different series and it is the heroine of the Counterfeit Lady series is a con artist reformed con artist, I should say. And so each book will feature a different con that she is using her talents now for good. And the second book I just finished, uh, she tucks, she mentions Robin Hood. Someone said, Oh, you’re like Robin Hood or robbing from the rich to give to the poor kind of thing.

And, uh, except she’s robbing from the evil people to give to the good people that they’ve cheated kind of thing. So she’s getting people’s money back from, for them, that kind of thing. And, uh, So I just research, um, books about conmen and, you know, come up, read a story about a real con that happened and think, Hmm, how could I adapt that for this book? So that’s where I’m getting the ideas for that series.

Patricia McLinn [15:32] And when is that series set?

Victoria Thompson [15:34] That’s series, it starts in 1917. The first book is set in November. So the second book is in January of 1918.

Patricia McLinn [15:43] So we should compare notes at some point because my mystery series Caught Dead in Wyoming, the sleuth is a TV reporter and she’s working at this little tiny station. She’s been sort of exiled there from her high flying career on the East Coast. And she is put in as the consumer affairs reporter. So I’m often dealing with a scam that she’s either actually covering or using as a blind for her boss to pretend she’s covering to, to do these other things. It’d be really interesting to know if some of the same cons slash scams have endured for a hundred years.

Victoria Thompson [16:23] Yeah, I mean, it’s really, there’s really basically three big cons that exist. One is the stock market scam. One is a race, like a fixed race, um, I can’t even remember what the third one is, but they’re just really, so what you have to do is sort of fudge. And, but a lot of these scams don’t work anymore because the technology has changed so much. So they, people are more creative nowadays, I think.

Patricia McLinn [16:53] Or the, or the people who call up and say, um, We’re with Microsoft and you have to do, pay this and this and this or your computer—

Victoria Thompson [17:01] Right. Exactly.

Patricia McLinn [17:02] —won’t work anymore. I know somebody who told them that they didn’t own a computer and the person started arguing with them. What do you mean you don’t own a computer? Everyone owns a computer.

In your research, have you ever had research that messed up your, your projected plot? Or I guess if you’re doing it early enough, it’s not going to be a dead end.

Victoria Thompson [17:25] No. And since I get my ideas from the research, then it’s, it meshes much more easily that way. A lot of times though, I’ll um, I’ll be writing a, a line… I did this several times in the book I just finished, I’m like, um, I needed a place, I needed them to use a safe deposit box. So I’m like, did they have safe deposit boxes in 1918? I had no idea. Luckily they did. So…

Patricia McLinn [17:52] Where you’re suddenly questioning things that you take for granted now. Yeah. So once you’ve done the research, how do you start actually writing the story? Do you start at the beginning, do you outline, do you just start going?

Victoria Thompson [18:08] Well, when I first started writing, um, I was a plotter, and I would completely outline the entire book before I ever would sit down to write. And the book was essentially finished in my head and I was just typing it up so other people could read it too. Um, that was how I did all my, uh, romances.

And then when I started writing mysteries, I can’t even remember how I wrote the first mystery, if I, um, I just sort of did it by the seat of my pants instinctively. I’m a, I’m an intuitive learner, which means that reading how-to books don’t really, doesn’t really help me.

Victoria Thompson [18:49] I just, you know, I read a lot of fiction and, and I’ve sort of instinctively figure out how it’s done subconsciously. Um, like when I wrote my first book, I, I just knew from reading the hundreds and hundreds of books in my life that you end a chapter with a cliffhanger. Um, you know, that wasn’t something I read in a how-to book. I just knew that that was how you write because good books are always written that way.

Um, I knew, you know, I just knew how, uh, the rhythm of the plot should go because that’s how having read so many books, you just know instinctively where the crisis should come. And so when I started writing mysteries, that was, um, I just sort of relied on that instinct that I had from having read so many in my lifetime.

Victoria Thompson [19:42] And, um, and then I’ve, um, because I teach writing too, I’ve worked out, uh, a system for doing the mysteries now. And I come up with a list of, I figure out who the victim is, and then I figure out five people who wanted that person dead, who had motive, opportunity, and then I give them each a, a secret, which is either connected to the murder or not connected to the murder, but makes them look guilty because they have the secret.

So that is the basis of my plot. And when you have all that, You pretty much have outlined it. You, you know, you can just, uh, you figure what clue, you know, what, what you want to reveal when, and that’s how I write those, the mysteries.

Patricia McLinn [20:31] So you know that before you start writing?

Victoria Thompson [20:34] Not always. Sometimes I don’t know people’s secrets at the beginning. Usually I know their motive and their opportunity, but sometimes I don’t know their secret. And so they’ll tell me as I’m writing along, um, sort of comes up in the conversation.

Patricia McLinn [20:51] It’s interesting that you’re doing less outlining in the mystery, because one of the things that, that, um, held me back from starting mysteries, I’m a real pantser, and everybody said, Oh, you, but you have to plot mysteries. And it wasn’t until I thought, Well, wait a minute, I’m not actually writing any mysteries by thinking I have to plot them. So it can’t be any worse if I try pantsing it, you know, what do I have to lose?

Victoria Thompson [21:23] You know, I mean, I, I have a lot of friends through the years who say, if they know how the book is going to end, they aren’t interested in writing it anymore. So that would be, yeah, it would be critical that you don’t know how the book ends. Um, I don’t even know how, uh, who the killer is. I used, I mean, when you’re writing a romance, you know, if the couple is going to get together and live happily ever after in the end, so that’s all you really need to know. But in a murder mystery, you kind of have to know who the killer is by the end of the book. But I, I set it up so that everybody had motive and opportunity.

And, um, so they all had it. You don’t have to decide right away. You can, uh, you can wait to decide until close to the very end of the book who the actual killer is. And that also helps create suspense too. If the writer doesn’t know, then, I mean, what I, what I discovered writing the first couple is that if I knew who the killer was at the beginning of the book, I made it so obvious that I had to change it anyway, so I just didn’t decide until pretty far into the book who the killer is.

Patricia McLinn [22:27] And a little over a year ago, I was working on a book called, um, Look Live, and I knew who the killer was, which is rare. And I’m writing along and I’m thinking, I’m going to be done ahead of time. And then the one I thought was the killer ended up dead. And I can remember sitting and looking at the screen going, This is a problem.

Victoria Thompson [22:52] Exactly. Exactly.

Patricia McLinn [22:54] So what I took from that as a lesson is don’t think things out ahead of time. It just is a waste of time, but, so what is your favorite part of the process? What’s your favorite part about writing?

Victoria Thompson [23:09] My favorite writing quote, which I think is another one of the questions, but it’s from Dorothy Parker, and she says, I hate writing, but I love having written. I think most writers feel that way. I, you know, writing is, it can be fun. I mean, let’s face it, sometimes it’s just so much fun, but a lot of times it’s like pulling teeth too. It’s not always fun, but what is really fun is typing The End and knowing you’re finished and having written a book. That’s the best part for me.

Patricia McLinn [23:41] Then, do you celebrate when you finished?

Victoria Thompson [23:45] Um, I went out the other day and bought clothes, went shopping, treat myself to, you know, just be good to yourself, do some, do fun things. You know, that I, that I enjoy doing.

Patricia McLinn [23:58] Do you have something that really cool that you did one time?

Victoria Thompson [24:00] I think I went on a cruise once or I’ll go on a trip, you know, try to finish up. So then when we go, I usually planned trips ahead of time, but knowing that I have that to look forward to, that’s my reward, when I finished the book kind of thing.

Patricia McLinn [24:13] Do you need deadlines? Or do deadlines add more pressure for you?

Victoria Thompson [24:18] I need deadlines. Um, I’m not sure, it’s just too easy to not write if you don’t have anybody waiting for it. I don’t always meet them, but it does keep my nose to the grindstone.

Characters keep adding up, superstitions come true, no room for everyone

Patricia McLinn [24:33] Do you miss your characters after you’ve finished a book? Now I know you’re doing ongoing series, but you have characters who appear in some books and, and, uh, not others. And this, this is a question from a reader who says she does miss the characters. So I’ll, I’ll give that part away. Um, but do you?

Victoria Thompson [24:52] Oh, my Lord, yes. I have put too many, I’ve created too many recurring characters. Um, there were in the beginning, it was Frank and Sarah and Frank was, Frank has a son, and his mother lives with his mother who takes care of his son. And Sarah was childless, a widow and estranged from her parents. So it’s a very small world in that first book.

But then Sarah makes up with her parents. So she has her parents in, to deal with. And then her, um, nosy next-door neighbor, who gets involved in some of the mysteries, and her next-door neighbor has a son. And then Sarah picked up a, um, an orphan, an orphan child and she couldn’t leave the orphan child alone, so she had to get a nanny for the orphan child.

And then Frank needed a cohort at the police department, so he got Gino as his sidekick. And Gino’s in love with the nanny now. And it’s like this, you know, it just got bigger and bigger, and I get fan mail that says, So-and-so wasn’t in the last book. What were you thinking? I didn’t have room. There was no reason for this person to be in this stories.

Patricia McLinn [26:07] The readers are not going to be very understanding if you start killing off any of those characters.

Victoria Thompson [26:13] Oh, I wouldn’t dare kill any of them. Heaven above, no. But I did get, I did have now Sarah and Frank are married and they all live in the same house. Sarah and Frank and his mother and, and his son and her daughter and the nanny. So that’s six people that live in their house, one house. So that makes it a little easier to get everybody.

Her parents still live somewhere else. And the next-door, the next-door neighbor now lives across the street. So cause they had to move to a bigger house obviously because of so many people living here, you know.

Patricia McLinn [26:45] You’re going to have them have their own village pretty soon.

Victoria Thompson [26:47] Exactly, it takes a village. Yes. Um, and my, the neighbor is superstition, superstitious, and I started by having her, um, quote some kind of superstition in every book, which seemed like a really great idea in the beginning, but I am running out of superstitions. I mean, I have books and books of superstitions, but you’d be amazed at how few of them work in an urban setting.

Most of them require some kind of nature or, you know, uh, exterior birds or bees or wildlife or plants, or, you know, so it’s hard. People say, um, you could make them up and I could, except I can’t just make them up. I just I’ve tried, and I’m just, my brain just doesn’t work like that. So it’s um, so Mrs. Elsworth always has to come by at some point and spout some superstition. And her superstitions always come true. Like if she sees an omen, and whatever it is, the omen was for, happens. So, which nobody’s ever challenged me, but it’s true.

Patricia McLinn [27:58] How about having a reader contest?

Victoria Thompson [28:00] I should. Yes.

Patricia McLinn [28:01] Where they give you, uh, superstition ideas.

Victoria Thompson [28:05] Ah, yeah. Well, you know, I get the same three every time. I actually have tried that on Facebook, and I say, what are some superstitions? And you know, he’d throw the hat on the bed, shot salt over your shoulder, breaking a mirror. I mean, I’ve used all of those so…

Patricia McLinn [28:24] Well, there are a lot of, there are a lot of superstitions about New Year’s, and if you’re doing the end of the year, that should give you, New Year’s is the only time in the year ever that I eat pickled herring and I still do it under protest, but it’s, I don’t know if it’s a family superstition, but it’s a superstition that you have to, that has to be the first thing you eat in the new year.

Victoria Thompson [28:47] Oh my goodness. Yeah, the Pennsylvania Dutch say pork and sauerkraut, which is not too bad. I actually liked that. So, in Texas it was black-eyed peas.

Patricia McLinn [28:58] No, I think I’d take pickled herring over that. Yeah, black-eyed peas is a big one. The other thing is you have to go out and you make noise, and then the first person back in the house has to be a dark-haired man. Well, there’s a fair amount of gray going on with the dark-haired man. One time we made a family member back in to the house where the dark hair was. So superstitions can be fun, at least for, for observers of the writing process.

Victoria Thompson [29:30] Unless you scour, unless you realize, Oh my gosh, Mrs. Elsworth hasn’t shown up yet. I have to find a superstition. So everything for three days, while I scour all these books looking for a superstition.

Patricia McLinn [29:43] Before you wanted to be a writer, did you have something else you wanted to be, or, or, and when did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Victoria Thompson [29:50] Well, I don’t think when I was young, I never really thought of writing as a profession, uh, a job. And, you know, I grew up in the 1950s, my goal was to get married and have children and be a housewife. I was not planning on having a career at all at first. So, um, and then as I got older, I decided I wanted to be a nurse. And I actually picked the college I went to originally because they offered nursing. but by the time I got to the college, I realized that the sight of blood may be faint. And you had to study science to be a nurse. And I wasn’t that interested in science at all. So once I figured out those two things, I thought, Nah, nursing is not for me.

And at that time, they’re, really the choices for career for a girl were teacher, nurse, or secretary. Couldn’t be a nurse already decided that, and I didn’t want to be a secretary. So that left teacher. And I did sort of like teaching. So I, that’s what I majored in, in school. I was, uh, I always say I’m a retired English teacher. I taught one year and retired. It was quite a nightmarish experience that I still have nightmares about.

But, um, teaching writing since 2000 and that’s been, and informally before that for many years. Um, so yes, I really do enjoy teaching. So, uh, it did work out in the end, but it took a long time.

Patricia McLinn [31:21] And a lot of us are involved in teaching writing in that informal way, but you did it in a very formal way. So tell us some about that.

Victoria Thompson [31:31] Um, well, the, I teach in the Seton Hill University and at Seton Hill. And it’s located in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh. There is a Seton Hall in New York City, but that’s not it. Okay. So don’t correct me. You’d be amazed how many people say I know it’s Seton Hall, but no, no. There is Seton Hill.

And Seton Hill has a master’s degree program in writing popular fiction. It was the first in the country that focused on popular fiction. Most writing programs at the university level are focused on literary fiction and are very, very, um, snobbish about popular fiction. Don’t even accept people who write popular fiction. Um, so ours was the first program and I was recruited, I think, in the second term that they offered this program.

Victoria Thompson [32:30] And, and I started in, uh, January of 2000 teaching in the program. And it’s a, it’s a low residency program designed for people who can’t take two years out of their lives to get a master’s degree. So you only have to be on campus for a week, each semester, and then you go home and we, and um, you come for the week and you take classes, and then you’re assigned a faculty mentor, and you go home and every month you write pages.

A certain number of pages and turn those into your mentor who critiques them for you. And you take online classes as well for, um, during the semester. So, uh, by the end of the two and a half years, you have a completed manuscript, hopefully suitable for publication at that point. So it’s a really great program for people who are serious about writing and want to write popular fiction. And we accept people from all, all the genres.

Patricia McLinn [33:20] And so it’s open to people outside of the United States, as long as they can come and spend this week on campus?

Victoria Thompson [33:25] Yes. We’ve had people from Russia, people from, um, Austria. Those are just the ones I happen to know, but yeah, you can come from anywhere, from all over the world, but you do have to come to be on the campus for the, for that week.

Patricia McLinn [33:39] What has surprised you, uh, from the teaching angle? What, and have you, have you learned things about your own writing from the teaching? And what, what things have surprised you about this teaching in this program?

Victoria Thompson [33:54] Uh, the reason I keep doing it, even though it doesn’t pay very well and, uh, it’s a lot of work in it doesn’t pay well, but it’s, it’s really, really, really rewarding. Every time I would think, Oh, you know, I should probably flip this and I think, Oh, I miss it so much because it’s so to go to the campus for that one week and be with, be with the other teachers and be with the students who are so excited and so invested.

Um, and to remember what it was like to be a, uh, unpublished and, and to be brand new in this business and innocent and, uh, and, and teaching really does keep you on your toes, you know, you’re, cause you catch yourself falling into bad habits. And, um, it just keeps my writing fresh because I always have, I’m, I’m always criticizing someone else’s work and it’s so much easier to see faults in other people’s work than your own.

So, um, it keeps my attention on the things that are important. So there’s that. And it’s just fun to have students who get pumped to see them go through the program and then get published. One of my students has a book coming out this month, her first book, and she’s contracted for three different mystery series. It’s cool, which is really unusual for that level of success. But, you know, she asked me to give her a cover quote for her book. And I was like, I’m thrilled to do that. That was just so exciting to see people coming through and, and, um, having success.

Teaching writing, using many ideas or only one, refusing help with your writing

Patricia McLinn [35:29] So when you, when you’re looking at this student’s works, can you spot story ideas that just are not going to work? You know, the writer can be talented, they have the, the ability to do the writing, but you can see that that story isn’t going to carry it?

Victoria Thompson [35:48] Oh, yes. Um, you see every possible kind of mistake that people can make. And I think, you asked me, I think the original question was what is surprising. And I think what a surprise, been surprising to me is that, um, when you point out these things to people, you know, like you say, this character, isn’t appealing, this plot element isn’t going to work, this whole plot idea isn’t going to work. Nobody’s going to buy it. Nobody will publish it. Nobody will read it if you publish it.

It’s, um, when you point these things out to people, some people are like their aha light clicks right on. And they say, and you know, part of my job as a teacher is not only to point out the errors, but to suggest ways to fix it. And so I always like editors who will, you know, they say, This is, this is wrong in your book. And here’s an idea for fixing it, but then they don’t expect me to necessarily use their idea.

Victoria Thompson [36:44] But then their idea gets me thinking in a whole other direction and I come up with a better one of my own. So, I expect my students to be able to do the same thing, but some people can’t. Some people, um, I mean, come in the program and with an idea, one idea it’s been their idea for their entire life and their dream is to write this story.

And they’ve come to you to figure out how to do that. And when you tell them the story is not going to work, they don’t want to hear that. And so they’re reluctant to change the story in any way or to think about it any, in a different way. And some people don’t make it through the program because they’re unable to accept criticism and improve their work based on other people’s suggestions, which is pretty critical if you’re going to be published.

Patricia McLinn [37:40] Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s true if you’re going to have a career as a writer, but that’s very different from having one, one story idea that has—

Victoria Thompson [37:51] Right.

Patricia McLinn [37:52] —you know, taken up space in your head. Um, because I think a lot of us who do it as a career have many, so we have more, more ideas than we could possibly finish in a lifetime.

Victoria Thompson [38:03] And I think that’s also, that’s also the problem with people who come with one idea is that they think that’s the only idea they can ever have, and they may be right about that. And so there, I think it’s a fear that if they let that go or change it in any way, it will slip away from them and they all, and it’ll be over.

And, and for some people that may very well be true, they have one idea and that’s all they’re ever going to get. But real writers, oh my gosh, we get so many ideas that we couldn’t possibly write them all. I think that’s where you separate the real writers from the, from people with an idea.

Patricia McLinn [38:44] I remember a session at, um, Novelis Inc. long time ago. Um, long, long time ago. I want to say, were we ever in San Francisco? Hmm, someplace like that.

Victoria Thompson [38:56] Gosh, not that I know of. San Diego.

Patricia McLinn [38:58] Maybe it was the one in Vancouver. I know it was on the West Coast. And the question was asked, you know, the group of us all sitting around in a, in a circle. And the question was asked if you had a choice, would you rather be a career writer or have one huge hit. And, and never write another book again, but that one book would set you up. You’d be rich. You know, you wouldn’t ever need money again. And I was stunned that a few people said the one big book, I, it never occurred to me that—

Victoria Thompson [39:38] —that anyone serious.

Patricia McLinn [39:41] Yeah. Would want, would want that option. And I, uh, It was a good lesson to me that not everybody thinks the way I think. What a concept.

Victoria Thompson [39:53] Right. I mean, I’ve been around a long time. I published my first book in 1985, and I remember I went to my first Romantic Times conference before my first book ever even came out because I was writing for Zebra, and which was at that time was Kensington. And, um, and they had a, the Kensington authors had a fashion show and they invited me to participate. So we all dressed up like our heroines of our books and were in this fashion show.

And I look back on all the women that were in that fashion show with me, all of whom were at that point in time, much more successful than I. How many of them had stopped writing at some point along the way. And I, you know, I actually had an opportunity to stop writing when I got dumped by my publisher and I couldn’t, couldn’t publish historical romance anymore because my sales were too low and nobody else would take me on, and I could have given it up.

Victoria Thompson [40:54] I had to get a job a day job anyway. And I could have just packed it in and said, No, the heck with this, but I couldn’t. I just, I couldn’t stop getting ideas for stories. I could not even think of myself as someone who wasn’t a writer, it just, you know, wouldn’t compute. So I just kept plugging away until I finally, um, had success again in mystery and got published there. But a lot of people who started out with me in the business, quit at some point. And God bless them, if you can do it, fine.

Patricia McLinn [41:29] Yeah. Well, and I look back and I see people I thought were they, and they were doing so much better than I was—

Victoria Thompson [41:37] Oh, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [41:38] —at various times. And they aren’t, they aren’t around anymore. Um, for a variety of reasons. Have you ever gone through a period where you didn’t write for a while?

Victoria Thompson [41:50] Yes, I did. Um, actually. Well, I used to take off half the year and not write when I was working full-time. Um, I’d write for the first six months and then take the second six months off. I was just, so just get one book a year, um, just because it was so hard because when you’re writing, you go to work all day, come home, eat dinner, and sit at the computer and write until bedtime. And all weekends are taken up with writing too, and you don’t really have a chance to live a life. So, so you need that time. So now I’m writing just in the daytime. Now that I’m retired from my day job, I just write in the daytime.

So I, in the evening I can watch television. I can relax. I can read, I can do whatever I want and I can take days off if I need to. And that sort of thing. But, um, and you know, I’ve been chasing rabbits and I can’t even remember what we were talking about originally.

Patricia McLinn [42:50] About taking time or, or going through a period where you didn’t write.

Victoria Thompson [42:54] Where I didn’t write, yes. Uh, well, when I, when I lost my publisher, um, and this was the late 1990s and, uh, I couldn’t, it wasn’t that I wasn’t writing. I was, um, I was churning out proposal after proposal sending them to my agent and she was sending them out and they were getting glowing rejections left and right. I did have to take some time at that point.

And I remember I was so stressed and so, such a wreck because, you know, it’s, it was, it was very traumatic being dropped by my publisher, and a career I thought I would have for the rest of my life. And, and even though I was still writing it wasn’t, nobody was interested in publishing it. So I had to step back and think, Okay, what am I doing wrong here?

Um, and I needed to, I needed to reboot myself essentially. And one of my friends who, um, who, like me, very practical and very skeptical of all the touchy-feely stuff, said I needed to do The Artist’s Way, needed to read that book and go through the program. And I resisted for several months, but then several other friends who didn’t know that, that the original friend had suggested it, were suggesting the same thing to me.

Victoria Thompson [44:13] And I thought, Well, This, obviously this is something I need to do if everybody thinks it is. And people who, um, who were like me and were not touchy-feely, and, you know, were skeptical about this kind of thing were telling me to do it. So I bought the book and I did, did The Artist’s Way program and it, it successfully rebooted me. And not only that, but it led to me, um, getting the mystery series.

And, uh, I, I found a letter that I had written to my agent, but I’m, a cover letter because back then we had to do things by snail mail and I’d sent her a proposal. And, uh, I wrote her, the cover letter said, this is because I’ve been doing the writer’s Artist’s Way. It’s all synchronicity.

So yeah, that’s, but yeah, it, it’s, it’s, I know writer’s block is a definite thing and what it really is, is burnout. When you’ve gone to the well too many times, without letting it, giving it a chance to refill and refresh. It’s, you just have to be good to yourself.

Patricia McLinn [45:20] How did you make the decision or, or what, what took you from writing it, knowing that the historical romances weren’t working, um, for the market, guided you to historical mysteries?

Victoria Thompson [45:34] Okay. So I was trying to write a contemporary thriller, um, uh, romantic suspense. And I actually wrote several, um, one of them was optioned and, uh, the producers sold the option to ABC and they wrote a script. Then it was never made into a movie. Um, I got really glowing rejections on that. Everybody, my agent loved that story. She sent it to every publisher known to man, and I said, Are we trying to set a record here, being rejected by every publisher? And she said, Yes.

I think it was rejected by just about every publisher and they all, none of them said exactly what they thought was wrong with it. I just, I’ve figured it out later. Catherine Coulter read it for me. And she told them, I was telling her about it, and she said, Well, if it comes back again, send it to me and I’ll see if I can figure out what’s wrong. And, and, um, when she, after she read it, she said, I think you must’ve done something really bad, and God punished you by giving you the idea for this story.

Victoria Thompson [46:33] I reminded her of that years later. She’s like, I didn’t really say that, did I? But yeah, it was fatally flawed, she figured it out, um, what the fatal flaw was, but nobody else could. The editors couldn’t figure it out, they just knew instinctively there’s something wrong with it, they didn’t know what it was.

So anyway, um, so I had been doing this and, and, you know, I was sending these proposal after proposal, and I sent this one to my agent, and she calls me and she said, You know, with just a few minor changes, this could be a launch book for a mystery series. And I said, the thirteen stupidest words I’ve ever said in my life, I said, Eww, I don’t want to be stuck writing the same characters over and over.

Victoria Thompson [47:17] So I did not take her up on that. Um, I probably wouldn’t have been that successful as a series in any event, but, um, so I kept trying and trying for probably another year. And then I, uh, I was actually at a conference for my day job in Chicago of all places where I live now, but, and I got a message to call my agent. And I, uh, I had to wait until I had, uh, some time off and we were, we had an afternoon off and we had gone down to The Miracle Mile to shop, and I was in the food court where there were payphones. Cause we didn’t have cell phones in those days.

I called my agent, you know, it’s noisy and I got my finger in my other ear so I can hear her. And she said she had had lunch with an editor from Berkley who was looking for an author to write a series set in turn of the century New York City, where the heroin is a midwife, would I be interested in giving it a shot? She had been trying to talk me into trying it, doing a mystery series for a long time, and I’ve been resisting and resisting, as I just explained.

Victoria Thompson [48:23] Um, but by then, I was so desperate to be published. I would have done anything. So I thought, Okay, I’ll give it a shot. And it was set in turn of the century in New York City. My daughter had just started school at NYU. My husband and I had walked around Greenwich Village. We’d even bought a couple of books on the history of Greenwich Village, just because we were interested. Um, I was working for the March of Dimes. Some of my volunteers were midwives, and I thought, This is kismat.

Patricia McLinn [48:52] Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Thompson [48:53] So I, um, so I wrote a proposal and, um, sent it to them and they bought it. And that, I added a few tweaks. They wanted, they wanted the, uh, heroin to be the poor relation of a rich family, but I made her the daughter because, uh, uh, she needed to be able to go, move in all social classes easily. So I made her the daughter of a rich family and, uh, I knew she needed a sidekick. And that a midwife probably would not be coming across a lot of murders in the general course of her life. So I gave her a police detective to be her partner because it’s his job to solve murder. So the two of them between them manage, always managed to stumble across the body in the course of there work at some point.

Patricia McLinn [49:46] Do you ever struggle with the, the dichotomy of the real world calendar and how it runs versus the fictional world calendar where you’ve, you’ve written twenty-one books in how many years?

Victoria Thompson [50:04] Twenty-one years I’ve written them, but it’s covered, they met in April of 1896 and now it’s September of 1899. So it—

Patricia McLinn [50:17] So does that ever blow your mind? Do you have trouble with, with the timeline?

Giving the characters time to get themselves together after life-changing events

Victoria Thompson [50:23] Well, what I used to have trouble with it in the beginning, after about five or six books, I started getting fan letters that asked, When Frank and Sarah are going to get together? And I would say, You know, it’s been five years for you, but it’s only been six months since they met. So it’s really… And they’d be, Oh, really? I didn’t’ realize that. So…

Patricia McLinn [50:42] Uh, I’m getting that with, with my sleuth, who, um, in story time has been divorced for now exactly a year. And she’s met, she met these two guys basically seven or eight months before, and a few readers, not many, but a few are like, Well, how much longer do we have to know which one she’s going to go with? And why isn’t she over this? And I’m thinking, come on she—

Victoria Thompson [51:11] Yeah. Give her a break.

Patricia McLinn [51:13] Yeah. Give her a chance to, to really get her feet, and, you know, they say when you have these major life changes such as moving and, or divorcing that you should wait a full year before making big decisions, but…

Victoria Thompson [51:26] Right, at least.

Patricia McLinn [51:28] She’s practical. She’s going to do that.

Victoria Thompson [51:30] Right.

Patricia McLinn [51:31] She may wait longer. How do you like that? Sometimes I think, I’m just going to make you wait.

Victoria Thompson [51:38] That’s right. That’s right. Well, I made my readers wait like fifteen years before Frank and Sarah finally got together, but it was only like, two and a half years for them.

Patricia McLinn [51:49] How has having them be married changed the books?

Victoria Thompson [51:53] Oh, it has been wonderful because they have, I mean, they’re together, first of all, they don’t have to figure out ways to be together that are proper. They sleep together now, so they’re sharing a bedroom. Um, And, uh, and they, and, and I had to, um, in order to get them married, I had to figure out a way to make Frank socially acceptable.

And that was, he came into some money and because he was rich, he, the police department, uh, he could no longer work there. Um, it was just, people were just, the other employees were just too jealous of him. So he couldn’t, he couldn’t work as a police officer anymore. So he, but he didn’t want, wasn’t interested in becoming the idle rich.

So he opened a detective agency. So now he can pick and choose. He can get justice for people that the police department wouldn’t mess with. Um, you can do all kinds of things so that that’s opened up a lot of possibilities as far as the kinds of cases that he can take. And he doesn’t even have to worry if he gets paid or not, because he’s rich so he can help poor people as well.

Victoria Thompson [53:00] And Sarah naturally helps them because they’re married. And I don’t have to figure out a way for her to get involved every time, which I used to have to do because she, they weren’t married and she was not involved with the police department. And there were reasons, many reasons why she shouldn’t be involved.

Now, it’s just, you know, he’s always worried about her safety, but other than that, that’s about the only hang up, uh, so it’s, it’s opened up all kinds of, uh, of opportunities for them.

Patricia McLinn [53:31]Well, that’s encouraging. I’ll have to keep that in mind, when I think about mine.

Victoria Thompson [53:36] Yeah. And actually it rebooted the series because everything’s different now. The whole dynamic is different now.

Patricia McLinn [53:42] That’s cool. And how have readers reacted to that?

Victoria Thompson [53:45] They seemed very happy that they finally got together. They were getting angry before. In fact, that was why I finally figured that I had to get them married because I don’t normally read my reviews, but I, for some reason was an Amazon and happened to catch site of some reviews of the latest book, and people were just like, I’m never reading this series again. I’m so mad, you know, fifteen books in one kiss and blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, ah, I gotta get these people together. It’s just cruel to make, and, and it, it was getting very awkward after awhile, you know? I mean, there were many reasons that they couldn’t get married, but still it was, they, they probably would have stopped seeing each other would have been too difficult to continue because if they weren’t going to get married.

Patricia McLinn [54:32] Yeah. In addition to your readers agitating for, for them to, to come together and get married, do you have other, um, reactions from readers or have you had encounters or, um, special letters?

Victoria Thompson [54:46] I haven’t had anybody not like the fact that they got married. I think it was just so, people were just so desperate, but you know, it’s really ironic when I, cause I was came to mystery from romance and, and my editor and my agent and everyone warned me. You have to be so careful in mystery because mystery readers don’t like romance in their mysteries.

I can’t tell you how many people told me that. And I’m like, I don’t think so. I think what they don’t like, they don’t want it to be a mystery, a romance plot. They don’t want the romance to take over the story, like it would’ve in a romance. But they really do like relationships. They like their characters to be real and have real human relationships and romances, or one of them.

Victoria Thompson [55:34] And so, so I, and it was really hard writing that first book, because if it had been a romance, those two people would’ve gotten together by the end of that book and lived happily ever after. So I had to keep them apart, but it was obvious, and they were so different, and the relationship was so interesting, and the people had so much room to grow and it was just so cool.

And so I started getting fan letters, and every fan letter I got would say, I really liked this or that, or blah, blah, blah, and when are Frank and Sarah getting together, I mean, that started immediately with book one. And so I knew I hit the right balance there then, they, they wanted a relationship. Maybe they didn’t want romance, you know, the whole sexual attention stuff, or, you know, they might not like that part, but they did want, uh, those people to fall in love and get married and live happily ever after and keep solving histories. So it was, yeah, that’s how it came to be.

Patricia McLinn [56:34] Well, I have some more questions from readers that I am the designated question asker on their behalf. Um, one question is she says, when the cover image doesn’t match the character description, a pet peeve of mine, how does it feel for the author? How does the author react to that?

Victoria Thompson [56:55] My very first novel that I ever wrote, um, my very first published novel, the hero was named Dusty Rhoades, and he had red-gold hair, when I got the cover he had black hair.

Patricia McLinn [57:12] Oh no.

Victoria Thompson [57:13] Yeah, oh no. And it was imperative that he have red-gold hair. So they sent it back to the artist and the artists put what might be highlights there. It was pathetic. So I felt really bad, really bad. And then I had another hero who was prematurely gray. He was like 28, but his hair had turned gray. So, and it was like a joke in the beginning of the heroine meets him, and she thinks he’s an old man, because he has gray hair and, um, so she’s not at all interested in him. So, um, that was just sort of a, a little joke.

And, uh, um, so I get my, when my editor calls me, she says, we love the book. We’re going to buy it, and he can’t have gray hair on the cover. So they made him blond, I think. And then, you know, I got letters, all kinds of letters. They always blamed the author for these things. You know, my husband used to say that they made you fill out these forms with the description of the character so that they, to make sure that the people on the cover look nothing like the people in the book.

Patricia McLinn [58:19] It felt like that, didn’t it? Yeah.

Victoria Thompson [58:23] It does sometimes. And I’ve been very lucky, I’ve only had a couple instances, like the ones I just described. However, on my brand new series that just launched in November this month, the heroine has dark black hair and blue eyes. And when I got the cover, the heroine has auburn hair and she was beautiful. Just. Beautiful.

And my agent is like, you have to change her hair. And I’m like, I know I have to change her hair. It’s just, the cover was just so breathtaking that, it only required a couple of changes in the text. So I fixed it pretty easily. But, uh, and, and I did a signing for it not too long ago. And, uh, I was chatting with some, some of the readers and they were looking at the cover and she said, I’m so glad she has red hair.

Patricia McLinn [59:18] Oh, well, that’s good.

Victoria Thompson [59:19] Not in the beginning. So sometimes, you know, it’s fate, it’s just have to—

Patricia McLinn [59:26] Yes. Yeah. I don’t know that, well, it depends on at what point I knew her hair color cause sometimes certain pieces of the characters come to me and they’re so it’s so strong and so vivid, I cannot change it.

Victoria Thompson [59:41] Right. Right.

Patricia McLinn [59:43] You know, it could be, it could be that he wears a brown bomber jacket or that, you know, he has a dog named Chair or, you know, whatever it is, but that, that cannot change. Everything else could change about them, but that can not. So…

Victoria Thompson [59:57] Yeah. But when I saw that cover, I knew that was Elizabeth. Now Elizabeth has red hair, apparently. I didn’t know.

Patricia McLinn [1:00:03] There you go. Okay. So, what is your favorite place to write and why? Does it have an inspirational view? That’s what a reader asks. And then I would expand on that and ask if you have a writing routine.

Victoria Thompson [1:00:17] Okay, I have a writing nook in my house and I, you know, I started, when I started writing, a computer was a big clunky thing, a tower and a keyboard and a monitor, and you had to have a desk. You couldn’t sit on your couch and write. Um, there were no such thing as laptops. So that’s how I started writing was sitting at a desk and writing. And even today, even though, um, even though I have had many laptops now, go through many laptops in the course of my career. I used them as my tower now. I plug my keyboard and my monitor into my laptop and I write at a desk.

Now, if I do my email or something, I can take my laptop and go sit in the recliner. But, but if I’m writing, I really do need to be at a desk. And in my writing nook, I have liked that, it’s like an office. I love my bookshelves with all my research books. And I have a file cabinet with all my files and, uh, all my writing awards hanging on the wall.

Patricia McLinn [1:01:18] And is that the view?

Victoria Thompson [1:01:21] And I have no view I’m facing a blank wall. So, uh, just cause I’m not distracted, I don’t want to be distracted. I have a beautiful view if I turn around, I’ve a, my backyard and there’s a Lake back there and it’s really lovely, but I don’t… You know if I want to stare at that, I go sit on the patio. I need to not be looking at the view.

Patricia McLinn [1:01:40] I can sort of understand that. Although I like to see outside. But I purposely do not have my, um, office at the front of the house because I’d be watching what was going on out there distracted by that.

Okay. Here’s another question from a reader. If you could write a book with any author alive or dead, who would you want to work with and why?

Victoria Thompson [1:02:03] That is so hard. I, my, my instinct is to say Mary Higgins Clark, just because I admire her so much. But you know, the truth is I’m such a control freak that I can’t imagine every working with someone else to write a book. Cause it’s my way or the highway. I’m not going to compromise for someone else. So the answer to that question is Mary Higgins Clark if I had to, but probably wouldn’t happen.

Patricia McLinn [1:02:35] That’s, that’s an interesting insight. Yeah. Cause it does specifically ask, you know, who would do work with, cause there’d be lots of people it’d be interesting to talk to.

Okay. Among your books, which one is the best place for a reader who’s new, new to you to start?

Victoria Thompson [1:02:54] It sounds very cliche, but um, I would always recommend that you start at the beginning of the series. Um, although you can read my series out of order. Um, I don’t give away, you know, previous cases. I hate when that happens, you know, read a book, read a series out of order, and you already know who the killer was in the previous book because you just read it in this book. So I never give away the solution to other books.

But the, book one is Murder on Astor Place. It, it, you know, it’s the book that introduces the characters and explains how they got together and why they worked on their first case together and that sort of thing. And it builds from then. And then you get to watch the relationship develop over the course of the series.

Patricia McLinn [1:03:37] And what’s, what’s the title of book one of the new series?

Victoria Thompson [1:03:40] Book one of the new series is City of Lies, which is brand new, right, just been out a few weeks. And it’s a, it’s a completely different kind of series. One of the reviews said if you’re, you’re expecting, uh, a dead body and five suspects, you’re going to be disappointed because that’s not what this book is about. This is a different kind of book. It’s a lot of fun. It’s funny. It’s an, and very interesting, I think because of, uh, the cons and the way they work and you get to see how conmen actually operate and, and how they think. Which has been fun for me to research.

Patricia McLinn [1:04:22] So that, that the title then refers to the, the lies of the cons.

Victoria Thompson [1:04:27] Exactly. Exactly.

Patricia McLinn [1:04:29] Okay. And what else, what’s coming up next?

Victoria Thompson [1:04:33] Uh, next I have, uh, the Gaslight series. The next book is Murder on Union Square. And in that book, Frank and Sarah are ready to adopt the little girl that Sarah has taken in because according to what they believe, her parents are dead. Both of her parents are dead, and so they, um, they think that they can adopt her. But they find out when they go to adopt her that, uh, the law considers this other man, who was the man who was married to her mother, to be her legal father, even though he’s not really her father at all. So they can’t adopt unless he relinquishes his rights to her.

And so they go and ask him and he agrees. But when Frank goes back to have him sign the papers, he’s dead, he’s been murdered. And so Frank is accused of murdering him and they have to figure out who really killed him to, uh, Clear Frank’s name and to enable them to adopt Catherine.

So, uh, and then the next book in the, uh, in the city, in the Counterfeit Lady series will be City of Secrets and, uh, And that’s, that book will involve, Elizabeth will be, uh, she’s engaged to the hero at that point. I’m not going to make the mistake I made in the first book when she was going on for years, knowing him forever. So she got, he proposes to her at the end of book one, but from, for many reasons they cannot get married right away. So, um, and they can’t even announce their engagement because she was engaged to someone else. It’s very complicated. But anyway.

Patricia McLinn [1:06:14] When does that book come out?

Victoria Thompson [1:06:17] That book will come out about next November and then Murder on Union Square will be out in May of 2018.

Patricia McLinn [1:06:24] And readers can find out about these releases and other things about you and your books. Where’s the best place?

Victoria Thompson [1:06:31] Um, you can go to my website, victoriathompson.com. Or you can follow me on Facebook. It’s Victoria Thompson.Author. Or you can follow me on Twitter. Um, Gaslight VT, and I guess you’ll have those posted somewhere.

Patricia McLinn [1:06:47] All the URLs will be in the show notes. And, um, people, where it’s so much easier to—

Victoria Thompson [1:06:51] Right.

Patricia McLinn [1:06:52] —follow, then listening to them and doing them. So I’ll ask you, is there anything I should have asked you that I haven’t?

Victoria Thompson [1:06:58] Oh gosh, I can’t think of anything. You’re very thorough. I don’t think I have any secrets left.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:03] Well, we’re, we’re going to do a few more. We’re going to do these rapid-fire ones.

Victoria Thompson [1:07:09] Oh, God.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:10] Um, and so it’s they’re either or questions. Not, not real serious.

Victoria Thompson [1:07:14] Right. Right.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:15] You can just answer. So we’ll, let’s see, we will say tea or coffee?

Victoria Thompson [1:07:21] It depends on the time of day, coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:27] You troublemaker.

Victoria Thompson [1:07:28] I know.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:29] Sailboat or motorboat?

Victoria Thompson [1:07:32] Sailboat.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:33] Day or night?

Victoria Thompson [1:07:35] Night.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:36] Cake or ice cream?

Victoria Thompson [1:07:38] Ice cream.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:39]Toenail polish or bare toenails?

Victoria Thompson [1:07:43] Toenail polish.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:44] Dog or cat?

Victoria Thompson [1:07:46] Dog. I’m allergic to cats.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:49] Ohh. Cruising or backpacking?

Victoria Thompson [1:07:53] Cruising.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:55] Gardening or house decorating?

Victoria Thompson [1:07:59] House decorating.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:00] Paint or wallpaper?

Victoria Thompson [1:08:02] Paint.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:04] Good. Appetizer or dessert?

Victoria Thompson [1:08:09] Desert.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:10] I’m with you. Heels or slippers?

Victoria Thompson [1:08:13] Slippers. I don’t even own heels anymore.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:18] Binge watch or make the watching last as long as possible?

Victoria Thompson [1:08:22] Binge watch.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:24] Okay. So then, uh, I’m guessing we might know that, but we’ll try, save the best for last or grabbed the best first?

Victoria Thompson [1:08:32] Save the best for last.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:34] Well, thank you so much, Victoria. It’s been a lot of fun and I hope everybody has enjoyed the, your visit to Authors Love Readers, and will come join us next week for a new interview. And have a great week of happy reading everybody.

That’s the show for this week. Hope you enjoyed it. And thank you for joining Authors Love Readers podcast. Remember, you can always find out more about our guest authors in the show notes, and you can find out more about me. At www.patriciamclinn.com.

You can also send in questions to be asked of future authors at podcast@authorslovereaders.com

Until next week. Wishing you lots of happy reading. Bye.

 

Episode 8: It’s Like a Dream, with Anne Gracie

Host Patricia McLinn talks with Regency historical romance author Anne Gracie about Anne’s writing process, characters, and love of her craft.

You can find Anne on:

*her website,

*the Word Wenches blog,

*Facebook, and

*Twitter.

Thanks to DialogMusik for the instrumentals that accompany this podcast.

authors love readers anne gracie

 

authors love readers patreon

 

Transcript: Authors Love Readers with Anne Gracie

Patricia McLinn [00:00] Hi, welcome to this week’s Authors Love Readers podcast, where we delve into the stories behind the stories. We’re asking authors questions. Some of them fun, some of them serious, and from their answers, you’re going to learn things you never knew about the people who write the stories you love. My name is Patricia McLinn. I’m your host and designated question asker.

Anne Gracie [00:23] I’m Ann Gracie, and I’m an author who loves readers.

Patricia McLinn [00:28] Now, Let’s start the show. Hi, welcome to this edition of Authors Love Readers podcast. Today we have Anne Gracie all the way from Australia by the wonders of technology. And I am delighted to have her here with me. Anne and I met— Do you realize I was thinking about this? It was ten years ago because it was the Novelists, Inc. conference in San Diego, the year that I was president of Novelists, Inc. So I remember that.

Anne Gracie [01:05] Oh, I do.

Patricia McLinn [01:06] Precisely.

Anne Gracie [01:07] Yes.

Australia, Enid Blyton, and Georgette Heyer

Patricia McLinn [01:08] And then in, um, August of 2015, I was in Australia and New Zealand and Anne was the best hostess and the best representative for Australia and Melbourne while I was there. And, uh, I will never forget you keeping me awake to fight the lag after the 30-hour trip.

Anne Gracie [01:31] It was actually the obligatory piece of torture.

Patricia McLinn [01:37] But it was all worth it, it was all worth it. So, Anne writes historicals and we will get more into that. But first I wanted you all to get, uh, get to know her a little bit, and I always find out interesting things from these, from these answers. So let’s start with. Did you have a childhood book that addicted you to stories?

Anne Gracie [01:58] I wouldn’t say that there was ever one childhood book, but, you know, I suspect it was probably A. A. Milne. My parents and my older brothers and sisters, uh, used to read Winnie the Pooh stories to me, uh, before, when I was about four. And the poems I can still recite all of A. A. Milne’s poems, uh, off my head. And then as soon as I learned to read, which was just before I went to school, I devoured my oldest sisters and brothers books.

Uh, and a lot of them were written by Enid Blyton. Who’s, who was an English author. And she wrote endless series. And, and with all kids having adventures, and I just devoured those books. And I think just about every English writer would, would be the same thinking about their childhood books. I think everybody read Enid Blyton in England and Australia, not so much as America because I don’t know that they were even published there.

Patricia McLinn [03:04] Yeah, I, um, I know her name, but I don’t think I ever read her books.

Anne Gracie [03:08] Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [03:09] I know I didn’t as a child.

Anne Gracie [03:10] We know The Famous Five and, and, uh, the adventure books and yeah. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [03:13] Did you hear of the Bobbsey Twins?

Anne Gracie [03:16] Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [03:17] That was something I read.

Anne Gracie [03:18] Yeah, my eldest sister had those because, my sister used to read a book and that was it, but I, I had to always have a book on the go. So I read everything. I read my brothers, you know, stories, everything.

Patricia McLinn [03:31] Yeah, I read those, um, my, my older sister had them too.

Anne Gracie [03:35] Yes.

Patricia McLinn [03:36] And so I inherited those and The Borrower’s Afield. I love that story.

Anne Gracie [03:42] Yeah. Lovely. There’s actually a whole series, there’s about four books, I think.

Patricia McLinn [03:47] I know. I love those. And all The Wizard of Oz books. Not just The Wizard of Oz, but there was a whole series of books.

Anne Gracie [03:56] Oh, I knew nothing about those.

Patricia McLinn [03:59] So you should go back.

Anne Gracie [04:01] Yeah. Well, there are a number of, um, I think one of the reasons that I’m such a historical writer, when I was about eleven, I discovered Georgette Heyer. And you know, I never went back. You know, I still re-read her. I think that, and I read a lot of other historical novels. For me, historical novels weren’t about history, they were just stories in a different time and place. And that’s still how I think, I don’t understand it when people say, Oh, I don’t read historicals. I think, Oh, really? That’s odd.

Patricia McLinn [04:34] So I have to ask, which is your favorite from Georgette Heyer?

Anne Gracie [04:37] Oh.

Patricia McLinn [04:38] You say Higher or Hair?

Anne Gracie [04:40] I say Higher, like lots of people. She apparently at some stage said they called it Air. Um, but I think the original, her grandfather was German, I think, and there was an attempt to make it not sound so dramatic in World War I and II. So I don’t really know. But I say Higher, I’ve always said Higher. She’s not going to hurt me if it’s Higher. And as far as, uh, my favorites, I dunno, I have so many I love. The Unknown Ajax, which is just very funny and very clever plotting. Probably the most romantic is, uh, Damerel it’s call The Nation is the book and Venetia is the heroine and Damerel is the hero and he’s gorgeous. The Convenient Marriage, which is about a very young—

Patricia McLinn [05:30] Angsty.

Anne Gracie [05:31] Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Friday’s Child is another young bride, but some very funny minor character things. Oh, there’s just so many. A few of hers were not successful for me, but most of them they’re just fabulous.

Patricia McLinn [05:49] See I, my absolute favorite is The Talisman Ring.

Anne Gracie [05:52] Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. I love that line—

Patricia McLinn [05:55] I love that one.

Anne Gracie [05:56] Yeah, yeah that line when she’s, the young girl who’s not the heroin, uh, is talking about, um, asking the very dour hero, wouldn’t he feel sorry for her to see a young girl go alone in a tumbril, going off to have her head chopped off, and he says, I’d be sorry for anyone. He’s completely failed to see that romantic in her. It’s lovely. There’s some lovely humor.

Patricia McLinn [06:20] Yes, it’s wonderful is that, see the, I love the humor.

Anne Gracie [06:24] Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [06:25] I also love her, um, mysteries—

Anne Gracie [06:27] Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [06:28] from the 1930s.

Anne Gracie [06:29] Yeah, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [06:30] Terrific.

Anne Gracie [06:31] Rather good, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [06:32] I enjoy those a lot. Well, we got way off. Okay. I’m going to ask you another question. What’s your favorite taste?

Anne Gracie [06:37] ah, oh, salty-sweet, maybe. But, ah, look, I’m more a savory than a sweet. One of my favorite indulgences, and it’s, people will probably yak at this, but anyway, it’s a, a French pasty sort of thing called Anchoïade and it’s anchovies and garlic and capers and you smear, and they’re all mashed up together and you smear it on hot toast. And I like just adore it. Okay. Um, but the other alternative is chocolate of course, chocolates.

Patricia McLinn [07:14] Oh no. I think, I think that may be one of the times I would pass up the chocolate.

Anne Gracie [07:20] Yeah. Yeah, not together, separately.

Patricia McLinn [07:24] Okay. Okay. So what’s your favorite color and why?

Anne Gracie [07:30] Probably blue. Blue’s the most, there’s so many beautiful variations of blue. Going from that they almost start at lilac down to sort of almost purple, like yeah, so many blues. Both of my parents had blue eyes, I’ve got blue eyes and my dad used to have, wear blue shirts and blue jumpers and stuff and it just, I just loved it. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [07:55] Okay. Blue is for you.

Anne Gracie [07:59] Yes.

Patricia McLinn [08:00] Do you have anything that you remember your mom or dad saying at, at, you know, uh, saying that they had, and now you hear yourself?

Anne Gracie [08:10] Yes. And it’s so silly. Um, I hear it, when, when other people’s kids are talking to their mothers, and it’s what Dad used to say to me, Don’t talk to your mother like that. And I want to say then, Don’t talk to your mother like that. And then I laugh because it’s just so silly.

It’s like they’d say when particularly, you know, repetitious about things. There was a, a thing on the web, uh, on, on Facebook recently where someone said, You know, what did your parents often say, and I said, Clean up your room. I’m sorry, if you want something philosophical, Clean up your room. I think it’s still appropriate.

Patricia McLinn [08:55] Well, in a way that is philosophical.

Anne Gracie [09:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [09:01] Stand in for many other things.

Anne Gracie [09:03] Absolutely. Yes. We’ll take it metaphorically as well as literally.

Patricia McLinn [09:08] Yeah, right. Do you have anything from, um, earlier in your life that you used to fret over that now you think **blows raspberry** who cares?

Anne Gracie [09:17] Yes, sort of what strangers think. When I was a kid, we moved a lot. And so I was very concerned about fitting in and not so much these days, you know, I’m quite happy for people to just take me as I am.

Patricia McLinn [09:38] That’s what, that’s a wonderful achievement.

Anne Gracie [09:40] Yes.

Patricia McLinn [09:41] That so many of us don’t achieve it.

Anne Gracie [09:43] Yeah. Well, you know, I, I suppose because I’ve left so many people behind in my life, I just realized that the important ones will stick.

Patricia McLinn [09:51] And you think that’s because of, because you said you moved?

Anne Gracie [09:55] Yeah. We moved a lot.

Patricia McLinn [09:57] A lot?

Anne Gracie [09:58] Yeah. Yeah we moved a lot. And, and, you know, in life you just realize that there are some people who are important. You know, I’ve got friends now that I made good friends with when we were 15. And, you know, and we’re still good friends. And I went to, uh, I’ve been to a couple of reunions lately. One was a school reunion, and one was kind of like a student house reunion. And in both instances, I just reconnected with those people so well, so easily. And it was lovely. So the important people will stick.

Patricia McLinn [10:35] Well, that’s a good approach. Okay. Shifting a little bit. Um, most writers have a bad habit word. And if you don’t, I don’t want to hear about it.

Anne Gracie [10:47] Okay. I surely do.

Patricia McLinn [10:51] Yeah, my list just and really. Oh, I use them all the time. So what, bare your soul here, Anne. What are your bad habit words?

Anne Gracie [11:01] Oh yeah. Well see, when you said your bad habit words. I thought Facebook.

Patricia McLinn [11:07] Oh.

Anne Gracie [11:08] But the word I overuse, yeah, I think, I think probably just and only, yeah, yeah. Uh, look, I’ve got lists of the rotten things, and I do, do a, a go through, and I think I, there are certain phrases that pop up every book and that’s a new phrase per book, almost.

Patricia McLinn [11:32] Yeah.

Anne Gracie [11:33] I had to weed out a few in the latest book that I’ve just sent in. Um, her eyes were quite often wide and fathomless, and, and I had to do a search for wide and fathomless and take some out. But, you know, it’s just, yeah, I just get little quirks that pop up in every book.

Patricia McLinn [11:52] I remember in one of my books, I had this poor woman smiling so much I thought her mouth is going to start, you know, just having cramps.

Anne Gracie [12:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah, ,yeah, that’s true. I do that too.

Patricia McLinn [12:09] Now, you’re left-handed or right-handed okay?

Anne Gracie [12:12] Right-handed.

Patricia McLinn [12:14] On that hand, which is longer, your index finger or your ring finger?

Anne Gracie [12:20] Index.

Patricia McLinn [12:21] By a lot?

Anne Gracie [12:23] Not a huge amount, but there’s no doubt. It’s probably maybe quarter of an inch.

Cary Grant, writing with eyes closed, The Autumn Bride, The Perfect Rake

Patricia McLinn [12:29] I, I just find that fascinating. There is no useful purpose for asking this question, I’m just interested. And here as a question that I think will let the readers get to know you better. What three movies would you take with you to my very strange desert Island that has a mechanism to play movies, but only three?

Anne Gracie [12:50] Desert Island with no running water, but, uh, movies.

Patricia McLinn [12:54] Right. None of that stuff, but you can watch three movies there forevermore.

Anne Gracie [13:00] Love Actually would have to be one of them. Uh, you know, I can watch that endlessly and still really enjoy it. And maybe While You Were Sleeping, that movie reminds me of what I’m doing when I’m writing. And I’ve possibly also because I’ve used it a fair few times, uh, as an example for when, uh, when I’m teaching writing. So, and so, and I’ve just written an article that, that refers to it, so that’s probably in my head.

Ah the third one. That’s very hard, I don’t know. Um, I’m going to, I’m always bad with favorites whenever I’m asked a favorite anything. I have a little baby meltdown and say, Oh, what about this? But it could be that. And then there’s the other, I’ll just pick one. I’ll pick one of Cary Grant’s, uh, the old, black and white ones. Um, well, maybe not black and white, they might’ve gone in color, but yeah, an old Cary Grant romantic comedy, I just adore Cary Grant. I think he’s a darling.

Patricia McLinn [14:02] I, that, one of my very favorites is His Girl Friday.

Anne Gracie [14:06] Yes. Yeah, that a beauty.

Patricia McLinn [14:08] The dialogue and that.

Anne Gracie [14:10] Yes, yes.

Patricia McLinn [14:11] Oh my gosh.

Anne Gracie [14:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s wonderful. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [14:14] Yeah. Okay. So this question comes from a reader. And she asks, Where do your stories come from? I know one author who dreams her stories. Another has a character suddenly taking up residence in her head. So how are your beautiful stories born?

Anne Gracie [14:32] I often from most of my books and certainly for every one of the books that sparked the series, I, it’s not a dream, but it’s like a dream and it comes to me on the, when I’m about to fall asleep or when I’m just waking up and I’m in that dreamy state. And a scene will come to me and it starts rolling in my head like a movie. And I have learned to, this is a tragic admission, but I sleep with a notebook and pen next to me.

Um, and I can actually write whole pages with my eyes still closed, uh, and be able to read it in the morning. Um, and most—

Patricia McLinn [15:19] That’s a terrific skill.

Anne Gracie [15:22] —um, for example, in The Autumn Bride, which was the first book of my Chance Sisters series, there’s a scene where the heroine climbs through a window. She’s, she’s at an absolute desperation point and she’s climbed through a window of this house in order to steal something small to sell and pay for a doctor to see her very sick sister. And instead of finding something to steal, she finds an old lady in a terrible situation. Now that, that scene came to me in that exact sort of dream-like state. And I’ve got it, you know, it covers about four pages in, uh, in a notebook.

My first book for Berkley, which was The Perfect Rake, the scene where, where the hero and the heroine first meet, that’s another one that came and I have got their, their meeting, their whole conversation. That was about five or six pages. Uh, and it’s almost identical to what was in the book.

And then, when I get that sort of thing, I think, afterwards they stay with me for a while, cause usually it’s a scene that’s not related to the book that I’m writing at the time and, but it’ll stay in my head and that will take nagging at me to write until I know the longer it stays there, the more it, it impels me to, to write. And so then when I come to write it, I sort of think, Well, who are these people and how do they get in this situation? And where do I go from here?

Patricia McLinn [16:58] I have so many questions to ask you off of that. Are they always scenes at the beginning of books?

Anne Gracie [17:05] No. No. My very, very first book, um, which was called Gallant Waif, and it was a RITA finalist for best first book, that has a scene almost at the end. It’s the ballroom scene, if anyone’s ever read it. And it’s the, it’s pretty much the heroin’s black moment where the thing that she sees most has come to pass. And that is right at the very end of the book. And again, that’s about five or six pages in a notebook that came to me in that way.

And when I came to decide what I was going to do with that, uh, I thought, hmm, this is not, you know, it’s quite an intense thing. It makes people cry a lot of readers say, and, and I had to get, work out who the characters were and how they got to that point, And it was quite a journey. To get to that point.

So, yeah, it’s not always the meeting of the all right. With the all lady, the, the girl climbing heavy, um, privately through the window and the old lady, that comes for about three or four chapters in, if they’re not all straight away, they’re not the opening scene necessarily. They’re just a crucial scene.

Patricia McLinn [18:20] So do you have some of them that you you’ve written down the scene, but you haven’t quite found the story that—

Anne Gracie [18:26] Oh, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [18:28] that. Okay. And you hold on to those then.

Anne Gracie [18:30] Yeah. Look, when, when, um, my one time, I know when my editor was saying, Well, you know, you’re finishing up this series, what’s going to be next? And I said, Oh, I don’t know. And, and because I didn’t have a particular one in mind. And so I went through my notebooks, I’ve got a stack of those notebooks that I’ve got so many story ideas, um, and half done stories and things there isn’t, you know, I could be going till I’m a hundred and eight. Um, probably won’t.

Patricia McLinn [19:02] From that initial story… How many of you books have come from, uh, from a scene like that? What percentage? Do you half of your books?

Anne Gracie [19:10] Yeah, no, I-I’ve never worked it out. I’ve, usually if a series starts with that, those books, those scenes are always the most powerful, whether they’re the most powerful in the book, but sometimes I’ll just have little, little scenes will come and, and bits of story or bits of scene.

You know, if I’m, if I’m immersed in the story and try to get to sleep or just waking up, sometimes the whole conversation between the hero and heroine will come and I’ll just go brum brum brum brum brum. And sometimes they’re, they’re the funniest or the best chit-chat, you know, better nosh. Um, uh, what do they call it? You know? Yeah. When, when it’s backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards and sometimes that’s just the best.

Patricia McLinn [19:59] Yeah, and it really catches, catches the core of their relationship.

Anne Gracie [20:03] Yeah, yeah. And it’s fun. Um, and, um, at that stage, my pen is absolutely flying to keep up with the conversation that’s happening in my head. So I couldn’t, I wouldn’t know how many, what percentage, but it’s a big part of my process. It’s much more a part of my process then logically sitting down and plotting out a plot.

Patricia McLinn [20:24] You know, the characters names at that point?

Anne Gracie [20:26] No, no I don’t.

Patricia McLinn [20:28] Okay.

Anne Gracie [20:29] Um, sometimes they declare themselves pretty quickly sometimes I think, Oh, I think she’s named so-and-so, and then she will refuse to answer to that name. Until I find the correct name. Yep, yep.

Patricia McLinn [20:39] Yeah. Early on in my books, there’s a lot of she and he, and it’s a good thing I know who they are because—

Anne Gracie [20:47] Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [20:48] —it can be a little confusing.

Anne Gracie [20:50] Yeah. I usually start with a name, but then it becomes pretty clear that they’re not going to work or then they don’t like it. Um, I’ve had a series of Adams as, as heroes and they’ve never, they’ve never lasted past about chapter three, Adam just is never going to be one of my heroes it seems. I keep trying because I quite like the name. But no, no, sorry I’m not Adam, go away. Go find out who I am.

Patricia McLinn [21:15] So when you have that idea and it’s time for that, to deal with that book, you know, you’ve, you’ve finished the other one because those things almost always come when you’re supposed to be doing something else, don’t they?

Anne Gracie [21:28] Oh, yep.

Patricia McLinn [21:29] So, but you’re, you’ve got that scene, you’re coming, you’re going to deal with that book. How do you then take it from that scene, to a complete story?

Anne Gracie [21:40] With great difficulty.

Patricia McLinn [21:44] And many months of agony.

Anne Gracie [21:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, it’s always how I have to cast around to find the starting point of the story and my stories don’t usually start out with a bang. Uh, I’d hope that I start with a whimper, but no. Um, they, it takes me a while to find the right thread and to start at the right angle so that you’d get to see the characters in the way that I want you to see them.

And then I do a lot of what ifs, and what’s next. And sometimes characters will come up with just something, you know, something will pop out of their mouth or they’ll say something and I’m thinking, Oh, this isn’t where I want it to go at all, but it’s right for the character, so I have to go there. So yeah, I push on and see, and I do a lot of rewriting, but yeah. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [22:42] At what point in this process are you telling your editor what you’re going to write? Because it sounds like a synopsis would not be very, um, informative, for you.

Anne Gracie [22:54] No, well, it is and it isn’t because the synopsis is so, it’s reasonably general. I devoutly hope that my editor doesn’t sit there and compare the, the final story with the synopsis. And I definitely hope she’s not listening now.

Um, yeah, I’d look, my, I have to put in a synopsis for a proposal pretty early in the piece because they use that for the cover design and to start working out a back cover blurb. Um, it’s my best guess. And in, in general, there, there is some similarities. The act is kind of there. I know where they need to end up, but it’s how they get there, that’s the difficulty.

And you know, I’ve done, once I’ve got the synopsis in, done, I don’t actually worry about it until they stop doing the back cover blurb. And then I have to know a whole lot more. And usually I’m not even finished the story by the time they’ve got the cover and the back cover blue, it’s known as pressure.

Patricia McLinn [24:00] And, and that leads to a question from one of the readers who kindly volunteer questions. Um, and she asks when the cover image doesn’t match the character description, and she says that’s a pet peeve of hers, how does it feel for you? The author?

Anne Gracie [24:19] Okay. I’ve never had a character that looks completely wrong. Like I’ve, you know, I’ve had some of my friends have got redheaded heroines, who’ve got black hair or, you know, I’ve never had that. Uh, that said pretty much all of my cover people are not exactly how I’ve seen them. I was one of the earliest authors to have the headless heroines and heroes.

Patricia McLinn [24:47] Is that because you didn’t know what color hair they had yet?

Anne Gracie [24:51] No, no, no, no. It was just that it was just the time, you know, that was the new thing. Um, An Honorable Thief was the, was the book. Um, and then An Honorable Thief, you know, his and hers heads are chopped off. And that, a lot of people hated that. I didn’t mind because I thought it doesn’t matter, what the book is, the way I imagined the hero and the heroine and not even my books, any books, uh, they never are the person on the cover. So I’m very philosophical about the cover as long as it’s pretty and attractive and worth picking up, I’m happy.

Patricia McLinn [25:31] That’s very sane.

Anne Gracie [25:33] Yes. Well, you know, I’ve had to be. But a couple of times I’ve got the, the cover early enough to have, uh, cause often I’ll get brides on the covers and I’ve been able to incorporate the description of the bridal dress on the cover.

Patricia McLinn [25:47] Oh, nice.

Anne Gracie [25:49] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s been fun when I can do that.

Patricia McLinn [25:52] So as you’re, as you’re progressing through this book, you’ve, had, you’ve had this sort of waking dream scene and you’re trying to figure out what brought those people to that point and what, how they’re going to go on from there. I often liken that by the way, to eavesdropping on people in a restaurant that you see this vignette, and from that just that little bit, you can pick up a lot of what got them there.

Anne Gracie [26:20] Oh, yes.

Patricia McLinn [26:21] And you can speculate on what’s going to take them.

Anne Gracie [26:24] Yeah, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [26:25] Yeah. But yeah, if, as you’re going on with the process, which parts do you love of the process and which parts do you hate?

Anne Gracie [26:32] Easy. I love the bits where it’s going well, and I hate the bits where I’m struggling. Really that’s true. That’s, that’s it, you know, when it’s going well, I’m really happy when it’s not going well, I’m miserable. Um, and I’m all, but I always get to a point three-quarters of the way through the book where I’m certain I’m never going to make it work. And my writing friends are really, really helpful on this. I go to them, and I say, Oh, this book is going to be terrible, and people are going to hide it. I’m never going to win. And they say this really helpful advice. And you always say that, shut up.

Patricia McLinn [27:10] So much sympathy.

Anne Gracie [27:14] Yeah, that’s right. And you know, but I still firmly believe that, that, that struggle at that point makes me go deeper into the story and work harder at it and, and fix the things that my instinct tells me are not working and that everyone else says is okay. Um, and, and I think it makes it more biddable. So I think angst and me in the writing process are a partnership.

Patricia McLinn [27:44] Sounds like almost every book surprises you.

Anne Gracie [27:48] Um, yeah, look, I don’t think I’ve never found in a book. I’ve never just thought, Ah, look, just get it finished. Get it gone. I try, I, yeah, I’ve really worked at it. I love, I love the books. If all in love with the characters and I want, I want it to be right. I want it to be like they’re stuck in Vegas. So, yeah.

Single books into a trilogy, a trilogy into a quartet, the Chance Sisters series

Patricia McLinn [28:08] And that leads to another reader question who asked if, um, you as an author, do you think about the characters after the book is done? Do you wonder, you know, how they’re doing or do you know how they’re doing, and has it ever led to another, you writing a sequel, another book?

Anne Gracie [28:27] Yep. Look, my first books for Berkley. I wrote four books for Harlequin, and my editor did not want me to do any series at that point. And so the book that I sold to Berkley, I actually started with the intentions, sending it to Harlequin. Uh, but as always, my books were too long and I had to cut them, and I was another book that I was going to have to cut 40,000 words off to fit the Harlequin links, and I just thought, I don’t want to do that.

And I wasn’t, it wasn’t contracted. And so I ended up selling that book to Berkley. And the first thing my editor said when I talked to her about it, she said, which girl’s next? Because I had the, the heroine for that was the oldest sister, the plain sister in a family of, of pretty girls. And, and so it was about her, and I hadn’t even thought about the sisters at all.

Anne Gracie [29:23] And so, Oh, okay. Well, we’ll do something about the sisters. And so that was the editor sort of asking me, and that was contracted as a three-book series. And then there was a young, the youngest sister who was just a child in that first book and readers kept writing to me about it.

And, and I had so many letters, I mentioned it to my editor. And she said, go ahead, write Grace’s story. So that was a four-book trilogy. And then the next series that I had was to be a four-book series and it was a five-book quartet. With the—

Patricia McLinn [30:04] Math challenged, Anne.

Anne Gracie [30:05] Yep. Ah, with the Chance Sisters series that I achieved a full book quartet. Um, that’s only because I reckon it was, each one was a seasonal bride. So I had autumn, winter, spring, blah, blah. So there’s not that many extra series. So, ah, that restricted me. Seasons, sorry, extra seasons. Yes, they do, they do haunt me and, and these days, um, I’ve got a whole lot of half-started shorts, other stories that were not contracted.

One of them in particular, Marcus’s story, I get reader letters for him all the time. When are you going to write Marcus’s story? And I promise I’m going to write it, but it’s just fitting it in between the other things. And, and at some stage I’m going to write it and I’ve got the story in my head and bits of it on paper.

But yeah. Yeah. I just haven’t had the time to sort of put it together because, my head space is weird and I can only write one book at a time. So yeah. And I have to do the contracted ones. Some people will do several books at a time, and, but I’m not like that.

Patricia McLinn [31:12] Yeah. I’m one of those. But then, now when you, when you have these, you haven’t named the characters yet and say you, you name a secondary character and then subsequently realize, Oh, that person is going to be hero or heroine of another book. Have you ever gotten yourself in trouble with naming them or giving them a foible or, you know, creating the, the secondary character who you think, Oh, they’re just sort of a walk-on. And then they won’t let, walk off.

Anne Gracie [31:44] Oh, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [31:46] your own book.

Anne Gracie [31:47] Yes.

Patricia McLinn [31:48] And then you think, Why oh why did I do this with them? Have you ever had that?

Anne Gracie [31:52] Yes. And, and I have it all the time. I have to prune back minor characters all the time. And in one of my books, the Honor— Honorable, was it the Honorable Thief? No, it was The Perfect Waltz. Uh, in The Perfect Waltz, I had a secondary romance with the, uh, the hero, the hero’s best friend and his original intended heroine.

And, uh, and it was just a little bit of fun on the side and so many people said, We want their story. So, yeah, these days I think with independent publishing becoming a reality, if I can get my act together, I can write some of those stories and make them a bit shorter.

Patricia McLinn [32:33] Oh, yes.

Anne Gracie [32:34] And still publish them. Um, but you know, at the moment, it’s a theory rather than a practice.

Patricia McLinn [32:42] Well, that leads me to actually kind of two questions. One comes from a reader, and she asked, What is your favorite place to write and why? And does it have an inspirational view? And, and then from that, I want to ask if you have a writing routine.

Anne Gracie [32:59] It changes, my favorite place changes. Um, I, currently I write on a laptop on my bed and I’m looking out the front window of my house, which is a lovely bay, big bay window. And my dog sits in the end, on the end of the bed, on her corner and watches for, um, enemies like cats and people and warns me of their imminence.

Patricia McLinn [33:30] Yes.

Anne Gracie [33:31] Um, another favorite place to write is my local library, which has nice comfy chairs and small desks. And I, and I go there when, particularly I go there when I’m stuck. Um, and I hand write, I don’t take my laptop. I don’t play on Facebook or Twitter or anything like that. I just hand write, and my rule is that I’m not allowed to leave the library until I’ve got three pages. And this is, this is a large sort of spiral back notebook, and three pages nearly always turns out to be a thousand words or more. And often I’ll do a lot more than three pages. Once I start, I just, I’m off and running.

Another place, favorite place to write, I’m very lucky and I go away on a writer’s retreat with a small group of friends with, we’ve been doing it for ten years. We had our 10th anniversary in March and that’s how I knew it was ten years since we met, Pat, because after the very first one, I went to San Diego and to NInc. So, yeah, so we’re coming up to our 11th.

Anne Gracie [34:38] And, uh, and we go to the, we go up to the Gold Coast in Queensland. It’s, we have an apartment building right on the beach. We each have our own apartment. A couple of them share a two-bedroom apartment with a larger sitting room. And we all go there for meetings at lunchtime and night. And that’s a pretty or just some spectacular place.

But to be honest, once I start, I could, I could be living in a cave. In fact, I often say to people, I’m in the cave. Um, if the view doesn’t matter, the, the place doesn’t matter. It’s by a once I get started, the hardest thing is to get started. Once I get started, whoa, I’m off and running.

Patricia McLinn [35:21] I noticed you slid right by that retreat, cause I’ve been, oh, so strategically hinting that I be invited to that at some point.

Anne Gracie [35:36] But it’s a, it’s a closed group, these days.

Patricia McLinn [35:38] Um, yeah. No. These days? You closed it after I asked.

Anne Gracie [35:42] No, no, no, no, no, it’s been like that for, I dunno, about six or seven years, we kind of realized that it’s the same group all the time. And we kind of realize that so much has been shared, that it’s kind of difficult for, you, you know, other people to fit in. So, yeah. Um, that said, I am thinking of, of, uh, a couple of friends and I are thinking of organizing a different kind of retreat, uh, with a completely different group. So you’re still in with a chance.

Patricia McLinn [36:12] Okay.

Anne Gracie [36:13] If you still wanted to come.

Patricia McLinn [36:15] This one is going to be like, in a prison or something like that.

Anne Gracie [36:20] No, no, no, no, we’ll have a gorgeous spot. We’ll have a gorgeous spot and my rule is if it’s going to be retreat, it needs to be near the beach because I think water is very inspiring. You don’t have to swim, but yeah, you know, just looking at the beach and just looking out in the ever-changing water and the sea and the sky is just gorgeous and walking along the beach has just, you know, brainstorming with a friend is just brilliant, you know?

Patricia McLinn [36:45] It is. It is.

Anne Gracie [36:46] So, it won’t ever be in a hall or a prison or anything like that.

Patricia McLinn [36:51] Okay. I’ve got you recorded now, promising I’d be considered.

Anne Gracie [36:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [36:57] So how do you think you’ve changed and evolved as a writer since you were first published?

Anne Gracie [37:02] Oh, hope I’ve got better. I cut more than I used to. I think, I think look, um, I tend to overwrite. I tend to override in general and I have got better at cutting back and pruning back a lot of the extraneous stuff. Otherwise, I don’t know. I, I, I don’t, because I don’t re-read my old books because I heard someone say once at a writer’s conference that a book, as far as he was concerned, that a book is never finished. It’s just that someone takes it off him. And that’s exactly how I feel. Once it’s gone, the editors got and it’s published, I can’t change it. I’m not even going to look at it because I will want to change it. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [37:46] Yeah. Well, it’s been an interesting process with having the rights back to some of my books and putting them out because a number of them, I have felt that way, and I’ve changed some of them quite a bit. One of them, I really, in essence, I rewrote it.

Anne Gracie [38:01] Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [38:02] Um, and then, and yet some of them, it feels like, Yes, I could go in and I could change things, and I’m a better writer than I am now, but they, uh, it’s uh, there’s a completeness to what it is.

Anne Gracie [38:14] Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [38:15] As that finished book.

Anne Gracie [38:17] Yes. Yeah. Look, um, not so long ago, well, a while ago, Mary Jo Putney got my very first book, Gallant Waif, to read cause they put it on Kindle. And, and she said, Oh, I’ve just bought, got your first book, Gallant Waif, and I’m about to read it. And I went, Oh don’t, it’s terrible. And she read it, and she got back, and she said, You know, don’t worry. It’s lovely. It’s a book of its time. It’s, the storytelling is lovely. You know, don’t worry about it. You know, anyone will enjoy it.

And you know, she’s right. It’s a book of its time. Yeah. And the storytelling still works.

Patricia McLinn [38:55] Yes.

Anne Gracie [38:56] And the characters work and I don’t know, I’ve found it hopeless talking about my own writing, but you know, she reassured me that, yeah, it’s fine.

Patricia McLinn [39:02] Well, and as readers, we love to go back to those books written in other times, written in other, um, manners and styles—

Anne Gracie [39:10] Yes.

Patricia McLinn [39:11] —because they were the style of that time. So, um…

Anne Gracie [39:15] Yes.

Patricia McLinn [39:16] It’s just a little closer in time.

Anne Gracie [39:19] Yes, and I think, you know, something has been lost in this drive to eliminate adverbs and adjectives and, and all of that sort of stuff. I think there’s a lushness in some of those older books. I recently, re-read a bunch of Jayne Anne Krantz-Amanda Quick books, uh, from, uh, and also, uh, Elizabeth Lowell’s medieval, she did a medieval trilogy that has always been a favorite and the books are practically falling apart, and I bought them again on Kindle. And, you know, there’s a lushness about those books that’s just so, you just don’t get these days.

Patricia McLinn [39:57] I think what, one of the things I like in some of the older books is a different tempo. And I don’t want to say they’re necessarily slower, but they let characters develop over the course, and you don’t have, the course of the book and you don’t necessarily have to, to know, there’s a tendency to, especially with contemporaries, to throw author, characters into danger right away.

Anne Gracie [40:29] Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [40:30] And maybe, maybe this is only me, but I think, I don’t care. I don’t know who this is. I need to know who they are before they’re in danger.

Anne Gracie [40:37] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I completely agree. It, yeah, there’s characters opening in danger. Some people can do it really well. Dick Francis does it particularly well. Uh, there’s one of his and I can’t think of the story. Um, but it opens with a scene where the character is, uh, in a, handcuffed to the wheel of a car in the desert, sweating, um, you know, about to die first on the scene. And, but the character thoughts really intrigue you. And there’s another one. Um—

Patricia McLinn [41:12] So then you do care.

Anne Gracie [41:15] So you do care, that’s right. The character, you get to know the character by his responses. And I think that in the ones that you’re talking to… Lee Child did that with his first book, Killing Floor. Where he, you know, his character is sitting there, uh, in, in a diner, he’s just arrived, and he’s having, uh, his breakfast and, and the police cars are coming for him with guns and things. And, you know, he knows perfectly well he’s in danger, but he’s fought and he’s analyzing what’s about to happen and, and how it’s working.

You think this guy’s smart. He’s, he’s really clever and you’re with him, you know, whereas a lot of the times people are just reacting and you don’t actually get to know them.

Patricia McLinn [41:57] You have to feel the character.

Anne Gracie [41:59] Yeah. And, and I look, I did it in my Autumn Bride. Um, it was the first book of the series, and I was so worried about how readers would like that book, because as I said to friends all the time, uh, this book, isn’t really a love story between a man and a woman. It’s a love story between a group of girls, four girls and an old lady. And it kind of was. Because the hero—

I have a friend of mine, who’s an editor and a reviewer, and she said to me, came up to me at a conference later, and she said something like page 198. And I went, what, what are you talking about? And she said, When the hero arrived. And she was right. But, people really liked it.

People really liked that, you know, readers love to sort of, the relationship developing between the old lady and the girls. So they forgave the fact that it wasn’t instant love straight up. And, you know, I don’t do instant love anymore. You know, I don’t, I didn’t really ever, but you know, there was always the pressure to get them together pretty quickly. I’ll let the characters tell me now and hope that readers will follow.

Patricia McLinn [43:12] Now, are all of your books set in the Regency period?

Anne Gracie [43:15] Yeah, all my historicals are. I wrote one romantic comedy for Harlequin years ago, but didn’t continue that. That was contemporary. Um, I would love to write contemporary, romantic comedy, but I’m not a fast writer, so maybe not. Yeah. And I think it’s Georgette Heyer that, that, uh, you know, I kind of feel as though I grew up in Georgette Heyer’s Regency, so that’s, you know, it feels natural to me.

Researching, Tallie’s Knight, Grand Tour, and Egypt

Patricia McLinn [43:40] How, what’s your feeling about the research, and how do you approach that?

Anne Gracie [43:43] Okay, the research depends entirely on the book and the characters. Some, sometimes, if it’s only about the characters, you know, it’s the story is mainly about the characters and pretty much set in London, there’s not a lot of research to do because a lot of stuff that I already know. When it’s been set in wartime, I have had to do quite a bit of research and, and, and work out where people were one time and dates and battles and all that.

I set a book in Regency age, era, Egypt, uh, and that was a laugh. The research for that, it was fantastic. I used a lot of travelers, um, traveling in Egypt at that time, these days, it’s, the first one, the first book I ever had to do huge amounts of research for was, uh, my second book called Tallie’s Knight, which was set, pretty much set, most of it was on the Grand, taking the Grand Tour.

Anne Gracie [44:41] And so I had to do a lot of research for that, but what I found was a, um, uh, uh, uh, published, it was in the rare book collections of my state library, and it, it was a whole series of letters from a young woman doing the Grand Tour with a bunch of friends, writing back about the experience to her brother who was, uh, uh, apparently in Ireland.

Patricia McLinn [45:05] Oh, how wonderful.

Anne Gracie [45:06] And, ah, so yeah. And then, and that was fantastic. I ended up being able to buy that book. I bought it online from an Irish bookseller in the rare book library, but these days with, uh, the so many of those books and journals and collections of letters that are on, um, online and you can just get them. And so I had the most wonderful, you know, you can glean so much gorgeous data from those witnesses.

You know, people, if, you know, some people write really boring letters home, and others write really fascinating ones and, you know, that’s, that’s really good. So when I do do the research, it’s fun. It’s not a chore. And you know, I think people who write contemporaries have to do research too.

Patricia McLinn [45:51] Oh, yes. Yes.

Anne Gracie [45:53] Yeah. It’s a rumor that you don’t have to do as much research for contemporaries.

Patricia McLinn [45:59] Oh, no, you definitely have to do research.

Anne Gracie [46:02] Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [46:03] I, I, I refer, I always have a moment in my books I refer to my granite steps moment in my books. My first book was set in Wisconsin, and I had this, it just, it’s an offhand line about them walking up granite steps to a, um, a courthouse, I think, but, uh, you know, a public building, I had the sudden fear as I’m reading over the, I think it was the page proofs at that point. Oh my God, what if for some reason they don’t have granite steps in Wisconsin.

Anne Gracie [46:37] Yep, yep.

Patricia McLinn [46:38] I don’t know why. I couldn’t think of any reasonable reason they wouldn’t. But so I’m on the phone calling, I called courthouses. Most of whom thought I was nuts. Didn’t want it. And then I had a, I had a court clerk whose son, um, studied rocks. All right. And she said, absolutely. They are granite steps. Ah, okay.

Anne Gracie [47:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [47:05] So, there is always something that you fret about, but the flip, the other side of that though, is that the, um, Regency readers are famed… Sorry for that background noise. That was my dog dropping her 18-inch long chew on the heat register.

Anne Gracie [47:30] My Milly dog is jealous of that.

Patricia McLinn [47:32] So, what I was saying is that Regency—

Anne Gracie [47:34] Yeah, the Regency readers.

Patricia McLinn [47:37] —readers are famed for knowing all of the ins and outs and the details. And have you ever been called to account by, by any of the readers?

Anne Gracie [47:47] Well, yeah, I have. Generally I get it right. Um, because, you know, having been brought up in, in with Georgette Heyer, you know, um, sort of mostly I’m right. The, there’s one in particular where I got things spectacularly wrong. And it’s the reg— It’s the research that you think you know, that you then don’t look up—

Patricia McLinn [48:10] Yep.

Anne Gracie [48:11] —that gets him into trouble. And, um, there were two things. One is I had a lemon tree growing in Shropshire, and I had a lovely English lady write and say, Look, by the way, our climate wouldn’t, would kill a lemon tree. There’s no way. You’ve got lemon trees growing, but see, the American writers did not pick that up. The American readers didn’t pick that up, it was just a local lady.

Um, my worst one was, uh, when I had my heroine’s mother, um, take a pilgrimage to Lourdes to pray for her son, she was a French woman, 70 years before St. Bernadette had her vision. And that’s because—

Patricia McLinn [48:51] Ooops.

Anne Gracie [48:52] —Anne thought she knew the dates and didn’t look it up, did she? And I had Catholics from all over the world, because I have a lot of foreign translations, I had Catholics from all over the world writing and saying, Uh umm. And I had to say mea culpa, I’m sorry.

Patricia McLinn [49:09] Mea culpa.Very appropriate.

Anne Gracie [49:15] So, yes. Um, but you know, it’s the things that you think you know and don’t look up that are most likely to get me at any rate into trouble.

Patricia McLinn [49:24] Absolutely, absolutely. To share some of your research on a blog with, um, multiple other authors, the Writing Wenches, um, how have, have you found that blogging has had any impact on your writing of novels?

Anne Gracie [49:42] Um, I don’t really think the blogging has, but for me, the, knowing the Word Wenches has been a huge thing in my writing career because in Australia, when I first got published, there were two other writers published in romance in Australia. One of them was Stephanie Laurens, who I know very well, she’s a good friend, but she was already out of my league. And the other was, lived far distance.

And I just didn’t know anyone else published in New York. Um, you know, to talk to. And so I actually met Mary Jo Putney and Jo Beverley and Pat Rice at that very same NInc conference in San Diego, where I met you. Um, and, uh, and, and, and I met, you said it was quite a small conference. And for me, that was brilliant because I came knowing nobody and, oh, no, sorry, I already knew Jane Porter. She came. Um, but yeah, I came knowing virtually nobody and I left there having made a bunch of friends, and then I went to the second NInc conference, my second NInc conference, which was in New York. And I remember you took me, you took me for a drink at the end of that, and I still owe you a cocktail, I’m sure.

Patricia McLinn [51:09] I’ll meet you back at NInc.

Anne Gracie [51:11] I’ve only fed you wine when you’re in Australia or whatever you do when you don’t feed. Um, but um, you know, being with those, that group of people talking, we talk a lot offline, online, sort of, you know, a little email group and yeah, they, I get some really good advice there. So it’s not so much that it’s affected my writing, um, but it is, it’s definitely affected my sense of my career, or yeah. Something like that.

Patricia McLinn [51:48] So more of the conversation is about career or is there also conversation about craft and getting—?

Anne Gracie [51:55] Oh, everything, everything.

Patricia McLinn [51:56] Oh, good.

Anne Gracie [51:57] Everything. You know, we’ll talk about craft, we’ll talk about dogs. We’ll talk about cats. We’ll talk about, you know, covers, we’ll talk about edits. We’ll talk about anything.

Patricia McLinn [52:07] I knew, I knew cats had to work in there with Mary Jo.

Anne Gracie [52:11] Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I like cats. I’m just allergic to them. Yeah. It’s all sorts of stuff. And sometimes we, I’ll talk with one or two of them off, you know, in just a private email saying, you know, I’m not sure what do you think, blah, blah. Um, it’s great. You know, and, and I’m very lucky in that I get to read some of their stories before they hit the, uh, hit the stands, so that’s a little perk that we have. Um, so yeah, it’s great.

Patricia McLinn [52:38] And that for, for readers who might not be familiar, um, Mary Jo Putney, Jo Beverley, and Patricia Rice have all also written, um, many historicals, wonderful historicals.

Anne Gracie [52:50] Yeah. Yeah. We’re, we’re actually, there’s, there’s eight of us. Um, uh, there’s Joanna Bourne as well. There’s Nicola Cornick from England. Um, there’s Susanna Kinsley, who, um, writes fantastic kind of time sleep stuff, she’s Canadian. Uh, Andrea Pickens, who also writes as Andrea Penrose and Sarah, not Sarah. What’s the, oh God, Cara Elliott.

We all, what links us all is the historical aspect of our writing. Susan King, sorry, is another one. She writes historicals, but not so much, not so much historical romance, but historical novels. So, but yeah, basically the Word Wenches are, um, historical and, uh, that’s, that’s what links us all.

Patricia McLinn [53:40] Well, as long as we’re talking about other writers, this is a good opportunity to ask a really interesting question from a reader. She says, If you could write a book with any author, alive or dead, who would you want to work with and why?

Anne Gracie [53:56] Oh, look, I don’t know. I couldn’t, you know, take me back five years and I would have been happy to say, Oh, this person, that person, the other person. Um, but now I’ve done, I have actually written linked books. We did last a couple of years ago, the Word Wenches did a linked series of Christmas novellas.

Yeah. And, and it was really tricky as we, you know, we, it was all based around a particular event or a Christmas ball. And so just, just getting that in, I figured, Oh, it just became a nightmare at times, and it was fun, but it was tricky. And I realized how much of a control freak I am about my books. Um, and, and I think, I think everybody is. I think all writers are

Patricia McLinn [54:48] Yes.

Anne Gracie [54:49] With my friend Sarah Mayberry just wrote, co-wrote a book with, um, Sarina Bowen. And I’m a huge fan of both of them. They write contemporary romance. And I’m a huge fan of both of them. And I had dinner with, um, uh, lunch with, with, uh, Sarah recently and, and I was grilling her about how it went, and she, you know, she loved it.

She said it was wonderful and they, you know, they, it was just describing getting her to describe the process was fascinating. So yeah, I would, you know, I think I would like to, but it would just depend on who and their writing process, not so much the writing that they’ve produced—

Patricia McLinn [55:29] Oh, interesting.

Anne Gracie [55:31] —but their writing process. You know what I mean? Because, because I’m a huge fan of so many different people. And I read, I don’t just read romance. I read, uh, fantasy and crime and paranormal and all sorts. So, you know, any of those would be fantastic, but it’s, you know, I’m a huge fan of people’s writing, but I don’t know whether I would be able to work with them because it takes a certain amount of give and take.

Patricia McLinn [56:00] True. So how would you, would you, would you entertain, since this is fantasy, would you entertain, um, working with Georgette Heyer?

Anne Gracie [56:09] Having read her biography by Jennifer Kloester. Probably not. Look, I’ll tell you what, I’d probably be able to write with some and enjoy writing with someone like Mary Jo. Um, I would love to write with, I’ve got a couple of friends who write, um, contemporaries, uh, and I would love to write contemporary with some of my friends. Georgette Heyer didn’t even allow her editor to edit. Any suggestion from me, I think would come with a verbal slap.

Patricia McLinn [56:44] It would be interesting to be part of the process, you know, to watch the process.

Anne Gracie [56:50] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [56:54] Yeah. Yeah. We may not have much input, but you wish you could. I think it would be a real interesting, um, learning experience.

Anne Gracie [57:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it would be. Um, and I think there’s nothing I enjoy, look one of the things that I most enjoy when I go on my writers’ retreat is, um, I always get together with a couple of, couple of the friends there, and we brainstorm. And I love brainstorming. And, um, I do a lot of brainstorming with friends on the phone, not just about my books, their books, too.

You know, it’s, it’s very mutual on, I do what you, you know, if I say it once, I’ve probably said it a million times to a couple of, you know, various of my friends, I’m just throwing spaghetti at the wall here, but what about, and I’ll just throw suggestions and I’m not tied to those suggestions. I’m not hooked to those suggestions. I don’t care if they say, No that’s rubbish. Um, I just love spinning possibilities. So, you know, yeah. I could work with somebody, but it would depend. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [57:59] Yeah, I, I’m probably better at brainstorming other people’s stories than having, um, brainstorming done for mine, unless it’s very specific because I have these, I have certain things that are so sharp and so clear and I can’t budge those and they could be idiotic. It doesn’t matter. I cannot budge those without losing the whole story without losing the feel of who those people are.

Anne Gracie [58:25] Yep. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [58:26] And, um, that can be difficult for other people to work on because they never know where these mines are going to be and going, Nope, he’s got to where, you know, he’s got to have a dog that has three legs, you know, that’s all there is to it.

Anne Gracie [58:41] Yeah, yeah, but that’s important, though, you know, you’ve got to, I hate doing the kind of brainstorming where you say to somebody, What about this? They’re like, Oh yeah, that’ll work. Thanks. You know, it never happens like that. With my writer friends, they say, No, that can’t work because of this. Um, and now, now I’ve done a lot of that yeah, but, no, it’s a great idea, but not for this story that, that’s not going to work. That’s not going to work with my hero. No, my hero is nothing like that. You know, it’s, it’s, that’s how it works. We all have, we’ve got to be the boss of this story because we, it’s, it’s all kinds of weird little intangible themes that make it a story and not an idea.

Patricia McLinn [59:23] That’s a great way of saying it, Anne, and yeah, I like that. So we’ve gotten all writerly here. Let’s take it back and talk some more about a little bit more about the readers. You said you have, you have letters from readers about what they, what stories they want to hear from you. Do you have, have you had other, do you have a lot of other contact with readers or, um, do you have great stories about what they’ve written to you or.

Anne Gracie [59:48] Yes. I have one in particular that was pretty funny. Um, uh, yeah, look, I, I, I interact mostly on Facebook with readers. Um, there’s a lot of lovely people who write to me and tell me stuff. And lots of people write emails, send me email cause they, they go to my website and, um, you know, anne@annegracie.com and it comes up, it comes up, um, emails. I get, I’ve got lots of emails and I try and reply to everything. Not always immediately, but yeah.

Funny email, best work behind her

Patricia McLinn [1:00:19] Any funny ones?

Anne Gracie [1:00:20] Probably, yeah. The funniest one was, this was, uh, from a, uh, professor in the U S, who wrote, I wish I could quote it, but I haven’t got it here. Uh, wrote me this fabulous letter. He just read, um, The Perfect Rake. Uh, he said, he thought I was the best writer since Jane Austin.

Patricia McLinn [1:00:47] Oh, my goodness.

Anne Gracie [1:00:48] Yes, and then he went on to say, And what must it feel like to have your best work behind you? Because he didn’t like the following book. He didn’t like the rest of the series. He didn’t like the heroes in the rest of the series. So, yes.

Patricia McLinn [1:01:07] Your best work behind you.

Anne Gracie [1:01:09] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But you know what? He and I had a, an ongoing correspondence that lasted for quite a long time. And, uh, yeah, it’s an interesting bloke and, um, yeah, but, uh, it’s it, uh, that very first one where, you know, what must it feel like to have your best work behind you.

Patricia McLinn [1:01:29] And that is, that is, that’s so indicative of you, Anne, that you did have an ongoing conversation with him rather than just blasting him back or ignoring him.

Anne Gracie [1:01:39] Ah, look, I, you know, yeah. I look, he was fascinating. Um, and, I’m, I just I find people really interesting. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never had nasty stuff, so, you know, I’ve never felt the need to be angry at anyone. You know, I think it’s fair enough if people don’t like some of my books, you know, there’s, there’s not a, there’s not a, an author alive that I’ve got. And I live in a house that’s absolutely drowning in books. Um, but not every, not every author hits the exact spot every time. And I just, yeah, if you don’t like it, fair enough. That’s okay. But he was, he was interesting. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [1:02:20] And I think, I think there may be an element of that for a lot of us who are writing that if we could find the perfect books, um, for what we wanted to read at the time we wanted to read it. We, I probably wouldn’t write as much. I’m often writing what I want to read.

Anne Gracie [1:02:37] That’s exactly how I started, you know, because that first book, Gallant Waif, I had a ,it’s about a girl who followed her father and brothers to war. Uh, or accompanied them into war and, and, you know, followed the army and, uh, ended up in a mess, as you do.

And I had read a book, I had read a book with a heroine who had kind of done the same thing, uh, but had waltzed through behind enemy lines, no problems at all.

Patricia McLinn [1:03:09] Oh.

Anne Gracie [1:03:10] Met nice people along the way, sort of did the whole journey in a red silk dress in boots with eyelets. And I just thought, you know, I don’t believe that. Uh, I think it would have been grimmer, and so my heroine didn’t have, you know, a blessed, easy time of things, and it made her a stronger and more interesting person.

Patricia McLinn [1:03:34] So you were writing what you wanted to read. Yeah.

Anne Gracie [1:03:38] Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think we do.

Patricia McLinn [1:03:42] So, in, of your books, a reader who’s new to you, where would you recommend that they start? Where’s a good entry point to your books.

Anne Gracie [1:03:52] Okay. Oh, I can never, I can never recommend my books. Um, look, a lot of people, the favorite hero is Gideon in The Perfect Rake. Um, a lot of new to me writers, readers, uh, picked up, oh, forgotten the book, forgotten the title. Um, a lot of new to me being read is also picked up The Autumn Bride and follow that series through. Yeah.

People… I had a bunch of not very good covers, and then I had a fabulous cover for, I think it might’ve been The Accidental Wedding. It’s got, it’s got a really beautiful passible, um, bride dress on the cover. And because, purely because of that fantastic cover, a lot of people picked up that book and really liked it, and then went back and read, you know, the backlist. So I’ve been lucky in that all my backlist with Berkeley is still in print. Um, so I think it’s kept alive because people pick up something and they like it, and they go back and read the backlist.

Patricia McLinn [1:05:13] Even with that, with people coming back into your, discovering all of your backlist like that, do you have any books that you think have, have not been read as much as perhaps they deserve and that even your, your loyal readers may have overlooked it?

Anne Gracie [1:05:20] Sure. Two books that I think, you know, the, my second book Tallie’s Knight, it was used in the UK as a giveaway, always too green to know what I was agreeing to. And, it was used in the US, uh, as an experiment to start a new possible line. Uh, and, and it was shelved in the bookstores away from romance.

Patricia McLinn [1:05:50] Oh, dear.

Anne Gracie [1:05:51] And so a lot of people never discovered it, and it’s, it’s a nice book. It’s my, that’s my Grand Tour book. Um, the other one is probably my worst cover ever, which is a baby poo brown background with a bunch of red roses and a white rose in the middle. And that’s my chicken pants, Regency England, uh, the Regency Egypt story. And you know, it, it, it won a few Best of the Year’s in the US and, and, you know, I’ve got some lovely reviews, but just because the cover told you nothing, it was, it nearly killed my career, um, that cover.

And then the following, then I decided to sort of have a look at what was happening. Cause my, my title had died and it was a good book. Um, and that’s when I got the beautiful book with a gorgeous, um, cover. And that, and that just bounced my career back up into living again. So, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [1:06:53] Well those are great recommendations for, for readers. And—

Anne Gracie [1:06:57] Yeah. And look, even though I write series, all my books are standalone as well as being a part of a series. So you can pick up anyone at any time.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:05] And you’ve, you’ve mentioned your, your website, but mention it again.

Anne Gracie [1:07:09] Okay. It’s www.annegracie.com and it’s Anne with an E and Gracie with an I E. Um, I’m on Facebook it’s just Anne Gracie, just, yeah, just do a Google search, it’ll pop up.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:25] And the, and the, um, give them the wenches.

Anne Gracie [1:07:29] Wordwenches.com, I think. I don’t know.

Patricia McLinn [1:07:36] We’ll have the URLs written for the people, and so much easier to click from that than it is from it… I’ve been known to try to write down URLs while people were talking, that’s very difficult. Um, Is there anything I should have asked you that I haven’t, or that you would like to answer that you haven’t been asked?

Anne Gracie [1:08:00] No. No, it’s been lovely.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:07] Well, we’re not done yet. I consider this the epilogue. It might be my favorite part at a rapid-fire either or questions. You can only pick one. I’ve had trouble with, with some other authors about that. So let’s go, um, binge watch or make the watching last as long as possible?

Anne Gracie [1:08:30] Make the watching last.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:32] Cowboy boots or hiking boots?

Anne Gracie [1:08:34] Cowboy.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:35] Tea—

Anne Gracie [1:08:36] I have red cowboy boots.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:38] Oh, Ooh. How high up are they? Are they, you know, just midcalf?

Anne Gracie [1:08:44] Just above midcalf, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:47] Um, tea or coffee?

Anne Gracie [1:08:50] Coffee.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:52] Really? Okay. That’s surprised me. Um, cake or ice cream?

Anne Gracie [1:08:55] Ice cream.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:56] Day or night?

Anne Gracie [1:08:58] Both.

Patricia McLinn [1:08:59] I knew you were going to be trouble. Um—

Anne Gracie [1:09:02] Yeah, I told you I was going to be trouble.

Patricia McLinn [1:09:05] Well, okay. I was going to ask you mountains or beach, but I think I know that one. So let’s, well, this is still—

Anne Gracie [1:09:10] Both. Both.

Patricia McLinn [1:09:11] Okay. Mountains or beach?

Anne Gracie [1:09:13]. One of my favorite, both, one of my favorite places is Lowland in, in Victoria, where there, there are hills in the background going into it, a little low mountain range, and it goes right down to the beach. That’s a bit of a perfect combination. But, otherwise beach. Otherwise, beach.

Patricia McLinn [1:09:30] So sailboat or motorboat?

Anne Gracie [1:09:32] Motor.

Patricia McLinn [1:09:34] Gardening or house decorating?

Anne Gracie [1:09:37] Gardening.

Patricia McLinn [1:09:38] Okay, then I can’t ask you this other one. Let’s see, uh, toenail polish or bare toenails?

Anne Gracie [1:09:46] Bare. I do wear toenail, oh sorry, I’m going to annoy you again. I do wear, in the summer I have toenail polish. In winter and the rest of the time, I have bare.

Patricia McLinn [1:09:57] Definitely more during the summer. Appetizer or dessert?

Anne Gracie [1:10:02] Appetizer.

Patricia McLinn [1:10:03] Let’s see, what else should I, oh, which is eerier to you, an owl hooting or coyotes howling?

Anne Gracie [1:10:10] I love them both. I’ve never heard coyotes howling and I have… No, we don’t have them. And I, and I only ever go to cities usually. So yeah, I don’t, I’ve never heard coyotes. Uh, I would love to hear coyotes. We have, uh, dingoes, but it’s not the same thing.

Patricia McLinn [1:10:28] You’ll  have to come and stay with me because I have both. And especially if they have, um, like fireworks, it sets the coyotes out. And then, um, I will, I will try to get my dog to go out and she looks at me like, Are you crazy lady? I’m not going out there.

Anne Gracie [1:10:48] I do have a dog that sings along to Ella Fitzgerald. Only Ella Fitzgerald, uh, she won’t sing to anything else, but put Ella Fitzgerald on and she howls like crazy. But, yes.

Patricia McLinn [1:10:59] And what is her name?

Anne Gracie [1:11:01] That’s the closest I can get. Milly.

Patricia McLinn [1:11:05] Well, that’s wonderful. On that note, I think we’ll say, Thank you so much, Anne Gracie, for coming all the way from Australia by the, the wonders of technology. It’s been wonderful as it always is when we have a chance to talk. And I hope the rest of you—

Anne Gracie [1:11:20] Yeah, really enjoyed it

Patricia McLinn [1:11:21] Great. I hope the rest of you will come back next week for another author. We can try to find out more about the stories behind the stories.

Anne Gracie [1:11:31] Yep. I will certainly be here listening to that.

Patricia McLinn [1:11:34] That’s the show for this week. Hope you enjoyed it. And thank you for joining Authors Love Readers podcast. Remember, you can always find out more about our guest authors in the show notes, and you can find out more about me at www.patriciamclinn.com. You can also send in questions to be asked of future authors at podcast@authorslovereaders.com

Until next week. Wishing you lots of happy reading. Bye.

 

Episode 7: Tools of the Trade, with Linda Cardillo

Host Patricia McLinn talks with Linda Cardillo about Linda’s writing process, favorite settings, and love of characters.

You can find Linda on:

*her website, and

*Twitter.

Thanks to DialogMusik for the instrumentals that accompany this podcast.

authors love readers linda cardillo

authors love readers patreon


Transcript: Authors Love Readers with Linda Cardillo

Patricia McLinn [00:00] Hi. Welcome to this week’s Authors Love Readers podcast, where we delve into the stories behind the stories. We’re asking authors questions. Some of them fun, some of them serious, and from their answers, you’re going to learn things you never knew about the people who write the stories you love. My name is Patricia McLinn. I’m your host and designated question asker. Now let’s start the show.

Patricia McLinn [00:42] I welcome you to this edition of Authors Love Readers. Today my guest is Linda Cardillo, and this is interesting because a lot of the people I’ve been interviewing I’ve known for a long time. Forever basically. I haven’t known Linda as long, and we know each other more as readers in a lot of ways than writers, because we are both part of a book discussion group that’s all authors, which means we’re really cranky readers. I’m a cranky reader. Um, and so I come, I come to this discussion with Linda from a little different direction. Would you agree, Linda?

Linda Cardillo [01:25] Absolutely.

Patricia McLinn [01:28] Do you find sometimes that you try to predict who’s going to react what way to a book?

Linda Cardillo [01:34] I think I try to be more flexible about how I approach books, but I know that there are some, um, and, and part of it is I think I am in such awe of their critical abilities and what they know about writing books and how they bring that to the reading of books.

Patricia McLinn [01:51] I find I’m not particularly great at predicting who will like or not like a book. I’m not even always good about predicting myself. Um, and I think some of it is, we’re starting here on a discussion about reading, but I do think some of it is because my, my theory is that all reading is interactive. And so at least as much as the author puts in the reader is determining what is taken out of the reading. So a lot of it has to do with my mood and my, you know, what I need to be reading at that point. And sometimes the book that’s chosen answers that need, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Linda Cardillo [02:35] What I find certainly with the books, um, that we’ve been reading are almost all of them are books I might never have discovered by myself. And yeah, it really is. It’s really expanded, um, sort of my repertoire and my willingness to dip into something that, you know, I would have ignored in the past. And sometimes it’s very surprising.

Patricia McLinn [02:57] Absolutely. And discovered authors I would never have discovered on my own because I’ve gone on and read some additional books by, um, authors and that not necessarily that I adored the first book, but there was something in the voice. Um, possibly the worldview that or character that really caught me. Um, and I kept going.

Linda Cardillo [03:21] I agree. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve done that. Yeah. It wasn’t so much that I loved the first book, but there was something very compelling that pulled me and wanted me to find out more.

Patricia McLinn [02:33] Well, and as I said, you know what, it’s probably what I said at the beginning that, that book, that author, that voice, um, answered what I needed at that point. So I kept going back to that. Yeah. I wish I wish there were a better way to do that match, you know, the reader is looking for this sort of experience. This book will have it, but I don’t, I think our discovery mechanisms now are really clunky, really, really clunky. I hope, um, I hope this is someplace where technology can help us over the next decade or so. Um, but that’s my pie in the sky, so…

Claustrophobic, purple, The English Patient, Far from the Madding Crowd, and Endeavour

Patricia McLinn [04:17] Okay, let’s ask, let’s ask Linda some questions. Um, oh, we’ll start off with a hard one. Do you have any strong fears, and have you ever used them in a book?

Linda Cardillo [04:26] Okay. Yes, I do have one strong fear, I’m claustrophobic. Um, I discovered it, this is going back, it was not until I was in my twenties. And I was, um, traveling, uh, in the Black Forest with a couple friends. We were hiking. And we stayed in this hut, um, overnight, that was actually quite large. It was like sort of a dormitory and it had these sort of stacked wooden bunks. And I wound up with the bunk at the top that was very close and I did not sleep all night. It was just, it was so, um, really, uh, I just felt like I was being smothered almost. Um, and so ever since then, I’ve been very careful about small enclosed spaces, particularly over my head, you know.

Once I had to, um, my husband and I were, um, sailing on a schooner and we were, um, bringing a schooner under sail from, uh, Providence, Rhode Island to New Bedford. It was a boat that he had brought across the Atlantic. And the bunk was just like this, that I had in the Black Forest. Um, and I had to I, I sort of pushed myself to the edge of it and kept the curtain open so my head was out of the bunk because I could not, I just could not abide being in very tight space, but what’s interesting, you know, with your question, I’ve never used that in a book. And I think now, I will.

Patricia McLinn [05:53] Well, the first thing that occurs to me is in a former life, you were buried alive. Got to be, Linda.

Linda Cardillo [05:59] Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [06:00] Ooh. Okay. I, uh, let’s go more cheerful. Uh, favorite color and why?

Linda Cardillo [06:06] My favorite color is purple, absolutely. Purple, I’m wearing it. Um, I was trying to think back and it goes back, I think to, um, when I was a teenager and, um, my sister and I shared a bedroom and it had my parents’ old furniture in it. Um, and we were getting new furniture and my mother said to us, You can decorate the room however you want. And the furniture was this sort of white, you know, sort of those little fancy pastel flowers printed on it, black bedspread and purple and orange cushions, like pillows put on the bed. And it was my first sort of statement, um, kind of separating me from my mother’s, um, sense of, of style, but that color purple just spoke to me in certain ways that, um, it was very bold and it was not, it was not at all a pastel.

Patricia McLinn [07:00] Well, I find it fascinating that you had orange cushions on it, because this is one of my theories is that most people who like purple don’t like orange and vice versa. So my next question, Linda, is what three movies would you take with you to a desert Island, a desert Island that has some strange ability to show movies?

Linda Cardillo [07:22] The English Patient. Far from the Madding Crowd, and every single episode of all five seasons of Endeavour. That’s little bit of cheating, but it’s my commitment.

Patricia McLinn [07:36] It is cheating, but creative cheating, but I like that. Okay. Um, most writers have a bad habit word when they’re writing. Uh, I’ve already confessed just and really are probably top on my list. What’s yours?

Linda Cardillo [07:51] Um, just was also one of them. Um, got, only as, um, I, I actually did a, um, a search on a couple of my manuscripts and I found like, you know, 250 instances, sometimes two and three on a page.

Patricia McLinn [08:08] We all have them. So do you have a childhood book that addicted you to stories?

Linda Cardillo [08:15] The Secret Garden.

Patricia McLinn [08:17] Oh, that’s wonderful. I wonder if that, I noticed your, your movie picks have a definite, uh, English bent. And I wonder if The Secret Garden started you along that road.

Linda Cardillo [08:30] Very well might have, you know, and I think that it’s such, um, such a departure from the life that I was living, and really sort of took me out of this sort of urban Italian neighborhood that I lived in and was very enlarging of my world, when I read it for the first time.

Chappaquiddick Island, Ideas from Italian family dinners

Patricia McLinn [08:55] Well, this sort of touches on a, um, question that came from a reader. And I will, her question was, Where do your stories come from? I know one author who dreams her stories. Another has a character suddenly taking up residence in her head. So how are your beautiful stories born?

Linda Cardillo [09:19] Um, certainly I think, uh, a lot of the ideas for my stories come out of people I have encountered or, um, the stories that I’ve heard from them. Um, certainly the two Italian books are based on conversations around the dinner table and memory of, um, the memories of my aunts, for example, but other, uh, other sources, yes, it doesn’t last, you know, I still have a lot of work to do, but just at the beginning there, that voice is what gets me started.

Patricia McLinn [09:56] And is that, is that necessarily at the beginning of the book or is just the beginning of your process?

Linda Cardillo [10:01] It’s both. I mean, in some instances, it’s the beginning of the book. Um, but quite often, but I find is, and I’m finding it more and more as I write more books. Um, that quite often, those first words that I hear and that I put down on paper are not going to be the first words of the book.

Patricia McLinn [10:22] But at some core, at some vision of who the character is—

Linda Cardillo [10:25] Exactly. Exactly.

Patricia McLinn [10:28] —at least for me. Yeah. And whatever comes in that first part, it can never change. Other things about the character, uh, might change or get explored or shifted. But those first moments are in stone that that’s who they are. Yeah.

I was at, went to lunch earlier this week with a fellow, um, author. And I, first of all, I was really surprised that she gave me the choice of where to sit, um, because I find most authors, um, have a particular place they want to sit. And then I was really torn because I could tell one seat was gonna let me see the, the whole restaurant, but the other seat was going to be a better eavesdropping spot.

And, and in a way, this is research, listening to people and, and how people interact and, um, and the, the rhythm of dialogue and, and how, how that all comes together. Um, but more formal research. How do you feel about that? Do you do love it? Do you dread it? At what point in the book do you do it?

Linda Cardillo [11:39] I actually love it. Um, and sometimes I get myself a little bit too tangled up in it. I’m—

Patricia McLinn [11:50] Never happy.

Linda Cardillo [11:51] I, um, I just finished, uh, I’ve sort of an amusing story to tell about research. And I do, I mean, I do do a lot of book research, you know, as sort of, um, in librarians love me, and I, the research librarian in my local library just loves to see me walk in, cause she knows she’s going to help with my next book. But, um, so, but I was, um, I just finished a trilogy that is set on the Chappaquiddick Island, which is off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.

And, um, the book was almost all written, but there were like little pieces of things that I needed, I wanted to be accurate about, because it’s, it, it’s, the book started in the 1940s with, but there were, there are still people around who remember things and would say, you know how sometimes people get really upset if you get even something very small in a detail wrong.

Linda Cardillo [12:36] So I spent the day, um, on the island and I, I, um, headed to the historical society to use their library. And, um, a man was there and really happy to help me. And he had pulled out like bound copies of the newspapers. And I said to him, I have one, I, there’s a scene, there’s a sort of bar brawl, um, and I need the name of a bar in Edgartown. And he said, Oh, you can’t say it’s in on Edgartown. It was dry in the 19th century. And which would have been a huge, you know, just really huge mistake. So he said, let me see if I can help you. And he went to his computer, he said, You know, we, we did some oral histories and we recorded, and sure enough, within the hour he had dug up an oral history of some guy reminiscing about a bar in Oak Bluffs and gave me the name of the bar. And it was still in existence.

Patricia McLinn [13:31] I had, um, I was researching, um, for the, probably for my, um, historical widow woman, but about the West. And I have more ideas for historicals. I just haven’t, I have a couple out, but I haven’t gotten to the, the other ones, but yeah, I got this great gift from a national park service librarian. Um, I think it’s the Museum of the West in St. Louis and, uh, was talking about trying to find out something very specific. And he said to me, the benefit you have of writing fiction is you don’t have to write what did happen. You only have to write what could have happened.

And I thought, Yeah! Yeah, that’s exactly it. So you want to avoid the things that couldn’t have happened or you just, like you talked about the readers are going to, um, and, and certainly I, as a cranky reader, are going to be thrown out of the book and go, Wait a minute. Like, I, I read this romance once where they had the, um, Kentucky Derby on the wrong day and I was like, Forget it, I’m not reading you. I can’t trust you. So, um, so you don’t want to do that ever if at all possible, but we don’t also have to say, as long as we’re writing fiction, what precisely did happen. Um, I thought that was a great gift.

Linda Cardillo [15:04] And that’s, you know, it’s very interesting because I’m, the book that I am, um, writing you know, it is actually, it’s about a real person. Um, but I recognize, and this was a fairly recent recognition over the summer. I mean, I’ve been working on this book for years and I’m finally, I had finally gotten my, gotten it together and gotten it to my editor and I got the, you know, the multi-page single-spaced, uh, memo, uh, back from her.

And I recognized this, I have some insight that I am not writing an, uh, um, a biography. Um, and I’m not even writing the life of, I am writing about some, you know, this whole experience with this woman, um, that inform who she is, but I don’t have to be, you know, sort of starting at the beginning and working my way linearly and also being able to, particularly in, you know, there’s not, um, not always everything available in terms of what happens in someone, in someone’s life. And you can, as a writer of fiction, I can use those, those empty spaces and put in there, you know, what I imagined could have happened, not, and I’m not bound to what did actually happen.

Patricia McLinn [16:19] Uh, I also, I found a book that was, um, privately published. And it was the account of a woman who had gone on this Western trail in the eighteen, late 1860s, I think. Um, and it was fabulous, and this was another great gift. Not only for, for her accounts of what happened, but it had both her diary and copies of her letters home. And the wonderful thing that I found is in her diary, she was much looser. And, and so that, that aspect of humanity and the, and the reminder that, um, you know, she sorta cleaned up her reactions to some things where, you know, some, somebody that she maybe didn’t like particularly had something happen to her in the diary. And it’s like, She deserved it, serves her right. And in the letter, like what a shame. And I thought, Oh, this is, you know, this is a person. This is, you know, so human, uh, and, um, that was another gift for me and in research and reading things that people have written and trying to get a view into who they are from what they’ve written. Um, and sometimes they’re cleaning it up.

Routines and disciplines in writing

Patricia McLinn [17:47] So, okay. Do you have a writing routine?

Linda Cardillo [17:54] I do. Um—

Patricia McLinn [17:55] I knew you would.

Linda Cardillo [17:58] Um, I am disciplined but—

Patricia McLinn [18:00] You are disciplined.

Linda Cardillo [18:01] I was not disciplined when I, you know, when I first started out, um. I’m very particular. Until I was five, my family lived in an apartment over, um, the office of my, um, where my father worked. It was, uh, his uncle’s construction company and Father was the general manager. And at night, sometimes he would have to go down downstairs to the office to do some work and he would let me go with him. And there was this big metal cabinet in his office, and inside that metal cabinet were all the office supplies. And he would allow me to take out a ruled pad and a pencil. And I used to draw pictures before I was able to write. And then I would, you know, when I first started writing it, I would only write on those yellow pads.

Linda Cardillo [18:51] And I think now that I really understand that was sort of where that comes from. It’s, it’s so interesting the, how we become attached to tools and we see those tools as sort of helping the, the process. And the other thing that I do that in terms of my process, which is absolutely key for me, is I have this little electronic timer that I set for 20 minutes. And I, um, as soon as I put the timer on, I turn it so I can’t see the minutes ticking away, but I’ve trained myself when the timer is on. That’s all I do is write. And I generally, um, we’ll do three 20 minute sessions and then I get given myself a break and just sort of barreling through any kind of block that I might have, or, you know, inability to get started. And it works like a charm.

Patricia McLinn [19:44] And you don’t have any hand problems with doing that much by hand?

Linda Cardillo [19:47] I don’t. I mean, I do, you know, I do sort of at, when I do those 60 min— After the 60 minutes, I sorta, you know, flex my fingers a little bit. Um, but I haven’t so far knock on wood right here on my desk. Um, that’s not been an issue. One of the things I’m trying out right now though, is a standing desk. Um, you know, ’cause there’s lots of issues about, particularly for people like us who sit at desks for a long time. Um, so I’m, uh, I’m really just like a week—

Patricia McLinn [20:18] Yes.

Linda Cardillo [20:19] —into having a standing desk. In fact, I’m standing right now cause I’ve, haven’t tried writing by hand yet. Um, standing because I’m not at that phase right now, I’m in the revision phase. So I’m working on the computer, but, um, it’s um—

Patricia McLinn [20:32] Okay. I have multiple questions off of this. So, so you hand, you hand write the whole first draft?

Linda Cardillo [20:37] And then I, and then I type it into computer.

Patricia McLinn [20:44] Ah. And then, then will you revise it again?

Linda Cardillo [20:48] Oh, yes. I probably, I would say most of my books go through at least four revisions. One of them went through five. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [21:00] And are most of them from the beginning all the way through to the end or, um, do you dive in and do an area and then maybe pull back out? And then—

Linda Cardillo [21:10] I have, I’ve written both ways. Um, sometimes, sometimes I will particularly, I think if I’m feeling sort of stuck, um, I will write a chapter that I know, you know, that’s a little, you know, maybe easier to get into. Um, and then, and then go back. I really did have to dig for it. Yeah. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [21:36] Okay. I will also say the first time I wrote a trilogy, I, I thought I’d written a standalone book, and a friend read it and said, Well, you know, this is the middle book of a trilogy, don’t you? And I said, You can’t fool me, a trilogy has to have three books and there’s only one book. So it can’t be a trilogy. And she said go back and look at it. And you have the prev—. You have all the, the pieces of the previous book are indicated in this one. And then you have to do this other character as third book.

And she was right. I was stunned at how much, um, my subconscious, I guess, had, had dropped in to that book and I wrote the first book very quickly. Um, so, uh, but I’m, I write out of sequence and not only within the book clearly, but I wrote a trilogy out of sequence and, and I’ve done it since then, too. Um, but, but the point being of how much is there that you may don’t realize on the top level of consciousness. And then when you go back and read it, it’s like, Ooh, look at that little gift. And Ooh, look at this. I got that too. And oh, there’s that.

Linda Cardillo [22:58] I thought I was writing a trilogy, but there is, there is something in that third book that I think probably could turn into a fourth book. And, um, I started playing with it this summer, and I was really excited about it. It was like, Wow, all right. You know, there is this, you know, I, this is one character who, who is fairly important for the second book, but it plays a relatively minor role in the third book. And I thought, Oh, it may be time to give her her own book, you know?

Patricia McLinn [23:33] And this, and this answers a question that I had from a reader who asked if, as authors, do we miss the characters once we finished a book? And do we think about them? Um, because the reader is saying, yes, she, she does. She thinks about the characters and when she’s really liked the book and once she closed it and then, you know, does it ever lead to additional books? So, boom, there you are. Ah, yep.

Linda Cardillo [24:04] Yeah. And I did. I, I, and I find particularly with trilogy, and I think because I had lived with these characters so long, um, that I really did miss them. And I missed this particular character, um, especially.

Patricia McLinn [24:16] Did, to go back for a second, talking about your, your lined, um, yellow pads and things. And I was thinking about tools. What’s the best money you’ve ever spent as a writer?

Linda Cardillo [24:32] Okay. Um, I was thinking about this and I, I think for me, it was, um, the, the first writer’s workshop. I only had one English speaking friend. All of my other friends were German. And I basically, you know, lived a German life, um, to bounce the ideas off and to say, can you read this and tell me what you think?

And, um, I, I knew I was, uh, I had to be in Boston one summer and I found this workshop because it was long before the internet. Um, but there was a New England workshop at Simmons college and I signed up and got accepted, um, and spent a week and, just immersing myself, um, and it was the first time that I got any validation as a writer, um, outside of my mother telling me, Oh, you, you know, that was beautiful. Um, and, and it was also my first sort of dive into understanding about discipline, writing as a discipline.

Patricia McLinn [25:48] Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s huge because I, I often think we, um, as writers, there’s sort of a, a sense, uh, at sometimes I refer to non-writers as civilians, um, that, that they, um, don’t as in many occupations, the people who are not in it don’t understand, um, don’t have that view of, of what you’re going through. And I think with writers, there’s also that, uh, way of thinking and way of looking at the world. So, uh, for me, the first conference was, Oh boy, there are other people weird like me, you know.

But for you where you had where somewhere where it wasn’t your native language and then to come into, uh, so you’re, you’re coming back into English and then coming back into sort of your native language as a writer, that must have been such an immersion. Has your routine, has your writing routine changed over the years? Has it being, getting published, changed anything about your writing?

Linda Cardillo [26:56] I think that the discipline issue and writing to deadline, um, you know, before you get published, your deadlines are sort of your own and internal. Um, and then suddenly you have external deadlines, which for me were very motivating. Um, Um, but, uh, I, I guess I’m, you know, I’m a very driven person.

And I think back when I was writing the first book and, um, my, my kids are small and my husband would sometimes take Fridays off to give me a full day. Um, I knew I had eight hours. And my goal was always by the time I left at five o’clock was to have eight pages written. Um, and I, I try to remember that hunger sometimes when I’m sitting down at my desk, or now standing at my desk, um, to, um, you know, not to get too complacent.

I guess is the key that I think, I certainly have learned an enormous amount about, about discipline, but the other thing I’ve learned, I do feel like every book, with every book I have learned more and I’ve gotten to be a better writer and I’m a far better writer now than I was ten years ago. Um, and I think that I’ve always been open and I teach a lot of workshops and crafts, but I, um, I’m always discovering new things. I have a much stronger voice now than I did, much more confident in who I am as a writer. Um, But I also think that I have, um, a lot more about what makes good fiction since I’ve been writing myself.

Patricia McLinn [28:50] Sometimes the opinions don’t agree of what makes good fiction. Um, and that has been one of the great lessons, um, from the, from the group that you aren’t gonna please, everybody, you’re just not going to.

Linda Cardillo [29:02] That’s right.

Patricia McLinn [29:04] Um—

Linda Cardillo [29:05] It’s such a personal connection to the words that it’s, yeah.

Patricia McLinn [29:11] Yeah. So in their process, what, what’s the part that you liked the best and what’s the hardest part for you?

Linda Cardillo [29:18] Revision is the hardest part for me. And I think because I’m in the midst of a very challenging revision right now, it’s the hardest, it’s the hardest one I ever, ever had. And I’ve, you know, because I’m just completely restructuring the book and rethinking my original premise, which is like, you know, you just, you get this reaction from your editor and, and, um, these opinions. And I’m just like, Does she really want me to do all of that? You know? Um, and, uh, it’s there, I, I’ve, I’ve really felt overwhelmed by this sometimes. And I feel like I, I’m a person who likes to have a lot of structure, and I feel very unstructured in this revision.

Patricia McLinn [30:10] Yeah.

Linda Cardillo [30:11] And, and looking for ways to create, um, some kind of structure for me. And I’ve actually, just within the last couple of weeks, found a way to do that. And I’m feeling much more, you know, like, like I know, I know longer feel like I’m drowning and I’m sort of dog paddling now, um, through revision.

But, um, I would say, you know, sort of the, the best part for me is hearing characters speaking. For me it’s the character. And that’s what gets me the most joy and gets me fired up. Um, when I really feel like I understand who this character is, um, and I can, um, weave their story. That’s, that’s the exciting part.

Writing and its strong connection to food

Patricia McLinn [30:50] So did you always want to have, uh, have, do something that had to do with writing?

Linda Cardillo [30:55] Yes.

Patricia McLinn [30:56] Uh, uh, did you—

Linda Cardillo [30:57] Yeah, yeah. Always.

Patricia McLinn [30:58] Always.

Linda Cardillo [30:59] Um, probably from the time I was, you know, maybe eight or nine years old.

Patricia McLinn [31:07] But you also have a strong connection, well, we all do with food, but I was thinking of, um, uh, that you, you often, food plays a part in your stories. Did you ever think about doing other things with, with food or cooking?

Linda Cardillo [31:25] Yeah. Yeah. I, um, I had a dream to open a restaurant, um, which, you know, sort of got postponed, deferred, um, and when my, my editor said to me, You always have all this stuff about food in your books, have you ever thought about writing a book that really focuses on food? And that’s when I wrote Across the Table, which is about this family that had the restaurant. And I got to, you know, I sort of vicariously run a restaurant through my characters. Um, and, uh, if I, if I had not, if I had not become a novelist, I think probably that’s what I would have, would have done is open the restaurant. Yeah.

Patricia McLinn [32:12] It seems to me a fair number of authors that I know have, um, a strong connection with food in those ways. Do, do you see anything, is that the creative process? Is that, is there a connection there?

Linda Cardillo [32:30] Well, I think there’s such a, you know, um, certainly there’s the, this, um, I think a very cultural thing, connection to food and food is I think, expressive of emotion and family and relationship. And there’s so many sort of things I tied up in food that I think relate. I think some of the most important scenes that I’ve written in my books, it plays around food.

Patricia McLinn [33:03] There’s that coming together of characters.

Linda Cardillo [33:06] Yes.

Patricia McLinn [33:07] Um, and, and there’s also the, I think the, um, the passing down of things from one generation to another, or, or to the one after that, over food, um, over the preparation, during the preparation of food over recipes, um, I say when I, when I was a kid and we would have come back from church on Sunday, and we’d sit around the table in the dining room and we would talk for hours. We would have a toaster that we had at the end of the table and we’d just keep making toast and talking for hours.

Um, and when, my siblings are older, so when they started having significant others from college, who’d come and spend time with us, they were a little, you know, What do you do on Sundays? And we were like, we make toast and talk. What do you mean what do we do?

Patricia McLinn [34:10] So I have some questions that came specifically from readers and then some on behalf of readers. So, um, let me ask you what one reader asked, What is your favorite place to write? So where do you take your, your lined narrow lined notebooks and why? And they want to know, does it have an inspirational view?

Linda Cardillo [34:30] One of the reasons I wrote this book on Chappaquiddick is because we spent our summer vacations on Chappaquiddick. It’s a very isolated place. The cabin where we stayed, the cottage had no electricity, so there was no TV, not even a radio. Um, and it was surrounded by water on three sides. So I could sit on the porch and for hours a day with my pad, and that’s where I wrote. Uh, and, uh, it still is, you know, sort of a place of, of just absolute peace and beauty.

Patricia McLinn [35:05] Oh, that’s a great place. And, and you would do far better there than I, because I need the plug. So this next question, uh, is, uh, especially for those authors who are traditionally published, um, When the cover art image doesn’t match the character description, a pet peeve of mine says this reader. How does it feel for the author?

Linda Cardillo [35:35] It feels ahhhh!

Patricia McLinn [35.40:] It feels such a way that we’d have to bleep out a lot. I wonder if more so for someone like you, who has background in art, um, uh, as opposed, you know, I always have opinions about it, but I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler. So I think that the difficult thing is it is about marketing, and yet it’s so, um, it’s such an emotional reaction, not only for the author, but clearly for the readers as well. As this reader is saying, they, they invest in the characters, they connect with the characters. They, they have envisioned who the character is. I always figure if the, if the cover is different from how I have envisioned the character, the cover’s wrong, you know, it’s just wrong. I gotta be right.

It’s so, um, so we have another wonderful question from a reader. Um, If you could write a book with any author alive or dead, who would you want to work with and why?

Linda Cardillo [36:40] I would say Margaret Atwood would be one of them.

Patricia McLinn [36:47] Yeah.

Linda Cardillo [36:48] Um, I read, I began reading her books when I was probably in my twenties. Um, and, uh, they were just very, very powerful for me as a young woman. Um, and helping me start seeing myself in a different light and helping you to become sort of just, you know, um, be brave, I guess, would be the word. To have more courage. And so I think too, and I think having courage as a writer, I think as I, as I get older and I’m more willing to take risks as a writer. What I saw in Margaret Atwood was someone who was not being careful at all. And I thought, Wow, I want to be like that.

Patricia McLinn [37:42] What a great compliment to her too. I think that’s, that’s wonderful. I love that. Somebody who has never read your work, which book would you recommend as a, as a kind of good entry spot for them to come into, into your writing and into your world?

Linda Cardillo [38:03] I would say that my first book, Dancing on Sunday Afternoons, which is the book that’s based on my grandparents’ love letters. And I have to, can I tell you an amusing story about it?

Patricia McLinn [38:17] Yes, absolutely.

Linda Cardillo [38:19] It has to do with, with marketing. Um, so I get this call from a newspaper reporter, and she said, I’ve just been assigned to do an article. Um, and I understand you’ve written two books. One is a Harlequin Romance and one is about the Lawrence mill strike. So I said, I think you’re mistaken, they’re both the same book. And she was like, sort of taken aback that Harlequin Romance could actually be about to something as important and serious as the Lawrence mill strike.

Patricia McLinn [38:53] You probably could have just ended it with, Is about something.

Linda Cardillo [39:03] Right, right. Exactly, yes. We ended up having a very interesting conversation and she did, and she put in the article, you know how surprised she was to be doing something like that. And so about two weeks after the article came out, I get this email from the director of the Lawrence Historical Society, who had, um, she said she had, she had Google Alerts anytime the Lawrence mill strike was mentioned, and that my book had popped up and we had this long conversation and she wound up taking the book in the Lawrence Historical Society library. And the conversation that we have was how quite often, um, conveying history is so much more accessible when it’s in a novel, than in a historic, you know, a book of history about Lawrence mill strike, which some people might see as seen as sort of not something that they would want to understand. But—

Patricia McLinn [39:53] So sort of the other, the other side of that, um, where, what’s a good place for people to start reading your books. Is, do you have any of your books that you would consider, um, a hidden gem book? I like to say a book that, um, even your loyal readers might have overlooked to this point.

Linda Cardillo [40:17] Yeah, I, um, uh, so the, the book that set in, in Cold War Germany, I think is like the novella itself is called The Hand That Gives the Rose. Uh, and again, it’s one of those books that, so it takes a moment in history, um, and its impact on individual lives. The heroine is a young woman who takes over the management of her family’s vineyards, um, unexpectedly. It’s not what she had wanted to do, but her father has a stroke and her mother can’t handle the vineyard by herself.

Patricia McLinn [40:55] And where can readers find out more about these books and your other books and about you?

Linda Cardillo [41:01] There’s obviously my website, which is, lindacardillo.com

Patricia McLinn [41:05] And that’s C A R D I L L O.

Linda Cardillo [41:08] Mmhmm, yeah. Um, so there’s certainly lots of information about me and, and all of the books and you’ll find, there’s excerpts of all my books.

Patricia McLinn [41:17] Oh, great.

Linda Cardillo [41:18] Yeah. And there’s also recipes because food is so important to me. I actually did a cookbook a few years ago of my, based on my two Italian books. And so these little excerpts from the two Italian books and recipes of the foods that are mentioned in the books. You can get that on the website too, but, um, uh, and then, uh, of course, you know, all of my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Apple.

Patricia McLinn [41:43] Before I hit you with the, with the kind of epilogue questions, uh, is there anything I should’ve asked you that I haven’t? That was always my favorite question as a journalist, got some great stuff. Not that I’m putting pressure on you or anything, Linda.

Linda Cardillo [41:58] You can ask me what I read for fun, and that’s—

Patricia McLinn [42:03] Oh, good. Let’s hear what you read for fun.

Linda Cardillo [42:06] I read, I read medieval mystery stories.

Patricia McLinn [42:11] Well, fun might not have been the right word, but I’ll have to look into those. Okay? Okay. So here we go with some rapid-fire, um, dog or cat?

Linda Cardillo [42:22] Dog.

Patricia McLinn [42:24] Tea or coffee?

Linda Cardillo [42:25] Tea.

Patricia McLinn [42:27] Cruise or backpacking?

Linda Cardillo [42:29] Backpacking.

Patricia McLinn [42:31] So, sailboat or motorboat?

Linda Cardillo [42:34] Sailboat.

Patricia McLinn [42:35] Best china or paper plates?

Linda Cardillo [42:38] Oh, best china.

Patricia McLinn [42:40]Ooh, okay. Mustard or ketchup?

Linda Cardillo [42:42] Mustard.

Patricia McLinn [42:44] Uh, leggings or sweats?

Linda Cardillo [42:47] Leggings.

Patricia McLinn [42:49] Toenail polish or bare toenails?

Linda Cardillo [42:52] Toenail polish.

Patricia McLinn [42:54] Cake or ice cream?

Linda Cardillo [42:56] Cake.

Patricia McLinn [42:57] And let’s wrap up with save the best for last or grab the best first?

Linda Cardillo [43:03] Save the best for last.

Patricia McLinn [43:06] Uh, this has been a lot of fun, Linda. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it and hope, um, all you listeners will come back next week for another edition of Authors Love Readers.

Patricia McLinn [43:26] That’s the show for this week. Hope you enjoyed it. And thank you for joining Authors Love Readers podcast. Remember, you can always find out more about our guest authors in the show notes, and you can find out more about me at www.patriciamclinn.com. You can also send in questions to be asked of future authors at podcast@authorslovereaders.com

Until next week. Wishing you lots of happy reading. Bye.

 

 

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