Live chat/interview with mystery author Judy Alter tonight

The Writer's Chatroom presents mystery author Judy Alter.

WHEN?

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Eastern USA Time.....7-9 PM

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WHERE?

The Writers Chatroom at: http://www.writerschatroom.com/Enter.htm

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Please note: The chatroom is only open for regularly scheduled chats.

Tag, I'm It! A look at a work in progress

Have you seen the new blog tag going around? Mystery author Judy Alter tagged me, so today I'm answering 10 questions about one of my works-in-progress and happily refer you, my readers, back to Judy's blog to read about her writing and other musings.

So, here are the questions I was given, and my answers, such as they are.

What is the working title of your book?

So far, it's called Mark's Legacy. Nothing else has popped up yet, but I'm sure this will not be the final title.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Creative commons use from Eric__I_E

I grew up in a home that has been in my family for generations and always had a fondness for the attic. There were several old trunks up there for many years, and since I've always had a fondness toward ghosts and time travel, after seeing an old trunk for sale, the story was triggered. 

What genre does your book fall under?

Paranormal mystery, I'd say.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Great question! I haven't thought about, but now...let's see...for Mark, the protagonist, I'd love David Giuntoli (he currently stars in the TV show Grimm), and it would be perfect for his grandfather to be played by Sam Elliott.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Mark doesn't have time to drive to Vermont and 'claim' the trunk his grandfather left him as an inheritance, but once at the rustic homestead, Mark finds himself drawn into the past in a way he never could have imagined.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I'll shoot for traditional publication first, and see what happens.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Hee hee. It's always hard for me to know when the 'first draft' is done. Actually, I'm thinking about using November's NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) to do a re-write of the novel and see what new things I discover about Mark and his grandfather.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I really don't know...maybe an old Hardy Boy's or Nancy Drew mystery where they discover something in a trunk, mixed with Back to the Future.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My muse. And my love for my grandparent's - this is the first story I've ever written where I focus a lot on grandparents and it's brought back a lot of fond memories of my childhood.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Hhhm. I'm a New England author writing a book set in New England (specifically NH and VT), so that might be of interest. It has elements of family relationships and what it would be like to be able to meet your grandparents *before* they are your grandparents.

So, that's a look at one of my works-in-progress. Does it sound like something you'd pick up?

New interview with mystery author Judy Alter

I'm happy to welcome mystery author Judy Alter back to Reviews and Interviews. 

Today's interview is focused on Judy's newest novel, Trouble in a Big Box, and this is just one stop in a short virtual book tour.

Bio:

An award-winning novelist, Judy Alter has written fiction for adults and young adults, primarily about women in the nineteenth-century American West. Now she has turned her attention to contemporary cozy mysteries. Trouble in a Big Box, the third Kelly O’Connell mystery, follows Skeleton in a Dead Space and No Neighborhood for Old Women, which received good reviews and popular enthusiasm. Follow Judy at http://www.judyalter.com or her two blogs at http://www.judys-stew.blogspot.com or http://potluckwithjudy.blogspot.com.

           

Judy, welcome back to Reviews and Interviews!

Please tell us about your newest release.

My second Kelly O’Connell Mystery was No Neighborhood for Old Women, in which a serial killer targets old women in Kelly’s Fairmount neighborhood and Claire Guthrie, a friend and former client, shows up at Kelly’s front door announcing that she’s just shot her husband in the butt. Then Kelly’s mom, the needy Cynthia O’Connell, decides to move to Fort Worth to be near her grandchildren. Kelly, a harried, hassled, and loving single mom of two young girls, unwittingly puts her children, her mom, and herself in danger and almost derails her love life.

By the new third mystery, Trouble in a Big Box, Kelly is married to her policemen/lover, Mike Shandy. He’s badly injured in an automobile accident that kills a young girl. Developer Tom Lattimore wants to build a big-box grocery store called Wild Things in Kelly’s beloved Fairmount neighborhood, and someone is stalking Kelly. Tom Lattimore pressures Kelly to support his project, and the pressure turns into threats when Kelly activates a neighborhood coalition to fight it. And as she tries to find out who is stalking her and why, Mike is both powerless to stop her and physically unable to protect her and his family. After their house is smoke-bombed and Kelly survives an amateur attack on her life, she comes close to an unwanted trip to Mexico from which she might never return.

What inspired you to write this book?

I wanted to continue telling Kelly’s story. There are so many things that happen beneath the surface of a seemingly peaceful residential neighborhood, and I want to scrape off the top layer. I also wanted to see how Kelly and Mike would maintain their relationship, always both passionate and prickly, under pressure. And I wanted it to be Mike’s book for a change, though it didn’t actually turn out that way. The big-box store was a case of fiction turning into reality: shortly after I began the manuscript, there was a big controversy about a Wal-Mart moving into an adjacent neighborhood.

What’s the next writing project?

Murder at the Blue Plate Café, set in a small East Texas town, will be out in January/February and may well be the start of a new series. It was inspired by many happy meals shared with friends in a specific café. Names changed, of course. But it sort of satisfied my urge to write a culinary mystery and yet not fall into the catering/gourmet style of so many of those. I do include recipes—most from my friend who owned a ranch b&b nearby. And then, sigh, I’m struggling with the fourth Kelly O’Connell Mystery.

What is your biggest challenge when writing a new book? (or the biggest challenge with this book)

Plotting is always my biggest challenge. For my first mystery, Skeleton in a Dead Space, things seemed to develop of their own accord. I wonder if I’m not trying too hard to force things in the one I’m working on. I think I should listen to that old advice (the writing world is so full of “old advice”) and just get to the end of it. Then go back and figure out what doesn’t work and why. I also try to remember the writing truth that if you listen, your characters will tell you what’s next. Okay, Kelly, speak up on this one, please!

If your novels require research – please talk about the process. Do you do the research first and then write, while you’re writing, after the novel is complete and you need to fill in the gaps?

I research as I write, when questions come up in my mind. Frequently, in working of the Kelly O’Connell Mysteries, I’ve stopped to research Craftsman architecture. For such a topic, I start with Wikipedia but go from there. On architecture, I had a local, knowledgeable reference. For the one I’m working on now I really need to talk to a neighborhood police officer to find out about procedure, etc. I’m working on contacting on local NPO.

What’s your writing space like? Do you have a particular spot to write where the muse is more active? Please tell us about it.

I have an office where I spend a large portion of my life, a space with a large bookcase, an ample desk which I try, unsuccessfully, to keep cleaned off, and a computer set-up that links a wireless mouse and keyboard to a laptop and remote monitor. It’s the perfect arrangement for me. I read the paper, eat meals, do everything at my desk. I think my young dog thinks she lives in this room. But it’s where I’m most at home—and where, late at night, I read for pleasure—but I always have one eye on my e-mail.

What authors do you enjoy reading within or outside of your genre?

I almost always read mysteries—but occasionally, especially when assigned a review, I branch out. I recently read Anna Quindlen’s Plenty of Cake, Lots of Candles and enjoyed it. I also just read a Polly Iyer mystery. Murder Déjà vu, that kept me biting my fingernails. But I like a lot of the familiar cozy writers—Carolyn Hart, Susan Schreyer, Diane Mott Davidson, Julie Hyzy, Krista Davis, and others. I’m reading Nancy Martin’s latest Blackbird mystery, Slay Belles, right now.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers today?

I guess the fact that I write because I don’t know any other way to live. When I’m “between projects,” as they euphemistically say, I’m lost. So on days when it really doesn’t seem to be working, I remind myself that it will work out eventually and that if I’m unhappily gnashing my teeth over a manuscript in progress, it would be much worse to be retired and wake up thinking, “Gosh! What will I do today?” I love my life, and writing is a big part of it—but so are my children and grandchildren, friends, cooking, dogs. It’s a great life!

Great to have you back, Judy. Thanks for filling us in on your writing projects! 

Readers, you can read last year's interview focused on Skeleton in a Dead Space, if you like.

Interview with mystery author Judy Alter

Please give a friendly welcome to mystery author Judy Alter. She's here to talk about her newest book, Skeleton in a Dead Space, and all the other fun parts of her life.

Judy, please tell us a bit about yourself.
I have been a reader and a story teller since childhood and wrote my first stories at about the age of ten. I majored in English in college because I liked to read and I was going to get married and some man would take care of me—no career plans for this child of the 1950s. But that didn’t quite work out as I planned, and in my early twenties I began writing nonfiction medical articles for laymen. After earning a Ph.D., I was startled to realize I could write a novel. My first, After Pa Was Shot, pegged me as a juvenile author, a pigeonhole that it’s hard to break out of. But I had a good career writing fiction and nonfiction, for adults and y/a readers, mostly about women of the American West.

Tastes changed, and I didn’t publish for almost ten years. As I neared retirement, I began to write cozy mysteries—I’d read them all my life. Although I’d published in New York and had agents, the mystery world and the changing publishing industry were all new to me. I’ve learned a lot from Sisters in Crime and their subgroups, such as Guppies. I have a couple of abandoned mysteries in my stack, but my first published one, Skeleton in a Dead Space, launched August 29 from Turquoise Morning Press, and I hope to continue the series. The protagonist, Kelly O’Connell reflects some of my own experience as a single parent—but I surely never was involved in investigating a murder. I just read about them.

For almost thirty years, my daytime job was director of a small academic press—a very different publishing hat, but work I loved—my two careers supported each other nicely. I am the single parent of four grown children and the grandparent of seven. I live in Fort Worth, Texas, with my Australian shepherd, Scooby, and my aging domestic longhair cat, Wywy, and a new three-month-puppy, a Bordoodle (cross of a border collie and a poodle) named Sophie. I spend a lot of time puppy training these days, but I’m hard at work on the third volume of the Kelly O’Connell series. The second is already turned in to the publisher.

Please tell us about your current release.
Skeleton in a Dead Space features Kelly O’Connell, a single parent of two young daughters and owner of a real estate business that specializes in refurbishment traditional houses in an older neighborhood in Fort Worth, Texas. Kelly never thought real estate was a dangerous profession. But while updating an early-twentieth-century Craftsman house, she stumbles over a skeleton and begins unraveling an old murder. The police call it a cold case, but Kelly knows she must solve the murder if she is to finish the house and sell it. She and her two young daughters quickly become the target of threats and vandalism, and someone is telling her ex-husband in California what’s going on. Tim Spencer arrives to protect his daughters by taking them to California with him but is soon found shot to death. Then a new client barges into Kelly’s life, and she finds herself facing a gun, a deadly killer, and the solution to the mystery of the skeleton and Tim’s death.

What inspired you to write this book?
Determination to write a published mystery. I thought about creating a heroine who was a little different—not the owner of a craft store or a bakery—and decided on a real estate agent. I added the Craftsman house touch because I love old houses. Also I have a dead space in my kitchen, which we’ve wondered about for years, and one day I passed a house under reconstruction that clearly said to me, “This is the house of your mystery.”

What exciting story are you working on next?
A sequel to Skeleton involving a serial killer who targets little old ladies in the neighborhood is already turned in to the publisher, and I’m working on the third book in which Kelly is stalked and her new husband police officer Michael, injured in an automobile accident, is unable to protect her. That’s about all I know about it so far. I’m a pantser, not an outliner.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
At the age of ten, when I began writing short stories on lined paper. My mom saved them, and I have them somewhere in the attic.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
Since I retired writing is pretty much my full time occupations, but I am easily distracted by household chores, cooking, lunch invitations, etc. Grandchildren can always entice me away from writing. I do try to work in the mornings—but that includes catching up on emails and blogs and FB and, if I’m inspired, Twitter. Twitter is still hard for me. Early afternoons are often good times for writing but then I quit for a nap—one of the privileges of retirement—and somewhere I try to work in either 40 minutes of yoga or four miles on my stationery bike. Late at night, I read for pleasure.

When I’m not writing, I spend a lot of time reading recipes, planning meals for guests, and cooking. My secret ambition: to be a chef (I’ll never do it—my aging feet couldn’t stand it!).

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I think, unfortunately, that my quirk is that I’m haphazard about it. I don’t force myself to spend a certain amount of time at the keyboard, although I am pretty compulsive about checking my word count. I don’t check my Kindle and Smashwords sales daily, I tune out technical discussions about computer programs on various listservs. I’m all for the non-marketing approach to marketing. I want writing to be fun for me and for that fun to reflect in what I write.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A writer

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I spent a week in Scotland in the spring and came away inspired with new story ideas. I’d love to stay on Skype for two weeks and just write!

Launch parties: a local grill, mentioned several times in Skeleton in a Dead Space, will host launch parties at 7 a.m. on Saturday Sept. 24—they get lots of early Sat. morning customers who bring their books and read while they eat breakfast—and again at 5:30 on Monday, Sept. 26 to catch the dinner crowd. Seems an ideal set-up for a signing to me—caters to the local neighborhood, setting of the novel, and I don’t have to buy wine, nibbles, whatever. It’s all there for purchase. I’m really looking forward to it.

Thanks for being here today, Judy. You sound like you have a lot of fun with your writing.