SCHMOOZING WITH ERIKA CHASE

1.Who has influenced you the most in your writing career?
There is no single “most”. I owe it all to a long line of people starting with my Grade 8 English teacher, all the wonderful and creative authors I’ve read over the years, to Capital Crime Writers for stimulating workshops and programs, and to my writing group, The Ladies’ Killing Circle. Their critiquing, although not always gentle, has been invaluable in the process of becoming a published author.

2.What are you working on now?
The fifth book in the Ashton Corners Book Club Mysteries, still untitled (eep!). Book number four comes out in Aug. 2014. I am also starting a new series (planning is taking place in my head) which I’ll start in Sept. when #5 goes to the publisher. I’m pleased to announce that the Culinary Capers series will be written by Linda Wiken!

3.In what ways is your main protagonist like you? If at all?
She loves reading mysteries. That’s about it! Oh, yes…there’s the almond butter thing too, another passion we share. Along with Siamese cats and chocolate. I guess there’s quite a bit after all. She is younger though. I won’t say by how much!

4.Are you character driven or plot driven?
Definitely character driven. I start with the characters and their names and out of the choosing of such things as careers and family, a plot works its way into the midst.

5.Are you a pantser or a plotter?
I used to by a pantser, in my pre-published years and we all see how far that got me! My editor at Berkley Prime Crime wants a synopsis for each book and I’ve found that was the key to organizing my thoughts and working through the story. Of course, the end result is never completely according to the synopsis, in fact, I’m usually adding twists and turns along the way. Or maybe even an entire new highway. It’s a good starting place, though.

6.What do you hope readers will most take away from your writing?
An enjoyable story. I hope they’ll feel it was a worthy read and that they didn’t guess whodunit too soon.

7.Where do you see yourself as a writer in 10 years?
I really have no idea. I want to be writing…something. Perhaps that series set in my home province of B.C. that keeps trying to snag my attention. Whatever, I hope the ten years will be ones of enjoyment and satisfaction.

8.What is one thing your readers would be most surprised to know about you?
Like Lou Allin who appeared on Mystery Maven a few weeks ago, I wanted to be a police officer. Sometimes it’s good not to get what you think you want!

9.What do you like to read for pleasure?
I read everything. Mysteries of all types although usually lighter ones, mainstream novels especially those set overseas, magazines, travel guides.

10.Give us a summary of your latest book in a Tweet
Murder is nothing novel for this book club and who can resist a new author in town, stolen books and a body count that’s rising!

SCHMOOZING WITH HILARY MACLEOD

1. Who has influenced you the most in your writing career?

For writing mysteries, M.C. Beaton has had the greatest influence on me. Her amusing mysteries about Hamish MacBeth, the irreverent copper in the remote highland village of Lochdubh, inspired me to find my own charmed setting (I call it The Shores) right outside my cottage door on Prince Edward Island. Beaton’s books also encouraged the idea of blending tragedy (murder) with comedy (the doings of eccentric locals.) Before I wrote my first mystery, Revenge of the Lobster Lover, I had read all of Beaton’s MacBeth stories, and remember closing the cover on the final one with the clear thought: “I could do that here.” So I did.


2. What are you working on now?

I’m close to finishing Bodies and Sole, the fifth book in The Shores Mystery Series.
It follows Revenge of the Lobster Lover, Mind Over Mussels, All is Clam and Something Fishy.

3. In what ways is your main protagonist like you? If at all?

I deliberately set out to make my protagonist, Hy McAllister, not like me at all. I gave her my younger sister’s red curly hair. She’s tall, which I am not. But, she is a writer and the house she lives in at The Shores is a replica of my cottage in Sea View, PEI. She’s clumsy. She doesn’t like to cook. Guilty as charged. There is also the perhaps subconscious fact that her name, Hy, begins and ends with the same letters as mine. Readers tell me they think I am Hy. I’m not, but I do think there is something of ourselves in all of the characters we create.

4. Are you character driven or plot driven?

Definitely character-driven. The story is there to provide my characters – good and bad – a place to play in and act out. I delight in creating appealing and appalling characters for each new book. My local characters, meanwhile, develop and grow. The Mountie, Jane Jamieson, has gone through the most dramatic changes from the first book to the fourth. My characters are definitely the focus of the stories, more so than the plot.

5. Are you a pantser or a plotter?

I am an organic writer. I prefer that to “pantser,” because although I don’t have a perfectly worked plot in advance of sitting down to write, or an outline, I do have a general sense of what’s going to happen. I’m not always right, because the characters do take over, and I enjoy the fun of writing myself into a corner, then figuring out how to write my way out. I’m sure it happens as well to writers who’ve plotted in advance. I admire writers with outlines. I just can’t do them myself. I wish I could. It’s very time-consuming going by the seat of your pants. There’s a lot of rejigging, weaving, moving scenes around that the more well-organized don’t have to struggle with. More room for error too.

6. What do you hope readers will most take away from your writing?

I hope they will have been entertained, had a few good laughs and some food for thought. I call my sub-genre “village noir satire.” I hope the village and the locals will entertain, the noir give food for thought, and the satire a few laughs.

7. Where do you see yourself as a writer in 10 years?

Resting on my laurels! I’d like to see The Shores mystery series on TV or film. I hope to have completed a historical romance that I now have in the works, and possibly a historical trilogy.

8. What is one thing your readers would be most surprised to know about you?

My readers might be surprised to know that I have never been a reader of mysteries or a watcher of cop and detective TV shows. The first mysteries I read – and certainly the first series—were those Hamish MacBeth stories that inspired me to create The Shores series. I read mysteries now, those of my colleagues, but I have always been mostly a fan of historical novels and 19th century novels.

9. What do you like to read for pleasure?

I read mystery books by my colleagues, writers like the Mystery Mavens, authors I meet in the course of conferences, library readings, etc. I like to know what the people I meet in the mystery community are writing. It’s part pleasure, part business. My pleasure reading at the moment is non-fiction. I read Malcolm Gladwell, sociological journalist, author of The Tipping Point and Blink among others; and Mary Roach, dubbed America’s funniest science writer. Among her books: Stiff, Bonk, and Gulp.

10. Give us a summary of your latest book in a Tweet

Fish fall from the sky, twin kills twin in the womb, a woman dies laughing and a wind turbine whips evil across the cape. Something Fishy.

Hilary MacLeod is the author of The Shores mysteries, a village noir satire series, winner of a CBC Bookie award for Revenge of the Lobster Lover. Her latest in the series is Something Fishy, and work-in-progress is Bodies and Soul.

INTERVIEW WITH LOU ALLIN

1. Who has influenced you the most in your writing career?

Tough question. Influences decades ago when we are young and naive aren’t the same as today. In the beginning, and we’re talking Fifties, I devoured every Agatha Christie book. During the last twenty years, I was devoted to Nevada Barr. An odd mix! On the other hand, I learn something to do (or not to do) from nearly every book I read. Renni Browne has given me the best tips in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

2. What are you working on now?

I’m trying to get my fourth Holly Martin book into shape. The running theme of her lost mother informs the series, and the reveal’s not far away. Clues have to be anticipated in advance, but summed up in every book. It’s been a new procedure for me, but we all need to try something different.

3. In what ways is your main protagonist like you? If at all?

My last protagonist and star of my first book, Belle Palmer, was just like me, same house, same lake, same dog, same food, same appearance, had I decided to sell real estate and not teach. By the fifth book, she was entering her late forties and I didn’t want to keep challenging her physical abilities with marathon chases near the conclusion. So when I moved to Vancouver Island, I started another series with a 32 year old lead corporal. Nice to lose sixteen plus years over night. I don’t feel as close to her so far, but we’ve only spent a year together (in plot) and I think she’s jealous of Belle. We all were in our thirties once, so I need to give us both time.

4. Are you character driven or plot driven?

Which came first, the place or the person or the plot? Since I left thirty years in Ohio to spend thirty years in the Sudbury wilderness, I’d say people are driven by where they live, by landscape. What happens in Athens, Ohio, at a university might not occur in Timmins, Ontario at a mine. Plot and character butt heads but learn to co-exist. In my 20K Rapid Read books, plot slides in before character. In my series, it’s “What will happen to Holly now?”

5. Are you a pantser or a plotter?

Probably a little bit of both. There has to be a master plan, subplot, minor characters, the crime, rationale, and solving. But I plunge right in after that. Plotting extensively saves time later, but some people, like ME, lack the discipline and are too excited to forego getting the scene on the screen. Once when I heard Anne Perry read a “first draft,” it sounded like a final version, but she said that she plotted so extensively that every detail appeared, though not in strict sentence form. Now that’s discipline.

6. What do you hope readers will most take away from your writing?

For aspiring authors, if you write what you want, and someone wants what you write, you have the perfect combination. That rarely happens, nor do most people get rich. For readers, I want them to experience the landscape as well as the mind of my characters. There is no higher compliment than “I was right there” or “I wanted to go to Northern Ontario, she made it sound so beautiful.”

7. Where do you see yourself as a writer in 10 years?

I’d like to finish this police procedural series, sell my historical, and make that a series. I think I belong pre-WW2, just not sure how far back.

8. What is one thing your readers would be most surprised to know about you?

I wish I had gone into law enforcement at the time (1963), but it was not an option. By now I’d have branched into the K9 Corps, retired, and written a tell-all book. And think of all those wonderful shepherd pups.

9. What do you like to read for pleasure?

Usually I order library e-books for my iPad. The last three books I read were Cover of Snow by Jenny Milchman, The Widows of Braxton County by Jess McConkey, and The Cutting Season by Attica Locke. For bestsellers like Sue Grafton’s series, The Goldfinch or Gone Girl, I get on the long list for the library hardcovers. I read for two purposes: pleasure and comparison. I like to “escape,” but also from a construction standpoint, to see how someone handled a situation. I gravitate to thrillers or suspense, but skip the romance, being a “the next morning” person.

10. Give us a summary of your latest book in a Tweet

Corporal Holly chases a delinquent dumper whose great aunt died suspiciously, muttering about Queenly Treasure.

Lou Allin is the author of the Belle Palmer mysteries set in Northern Ontario, and the RCMP Corporal Holly Martin series on Vancouver Island. Lou also has written That Dog Won’t Hunt in Orca’s Raven Reads editions for adults with literacy issues and in 2013 won Canada’s Arthur Ellis Best Novella Award for Contingency Plan. She lives across from Washington State on the Juan de Fuca Strait with her border collies and mini-poodle. Her website is www.louallin.com and she may be reached at louallin@shaw.ca.





L

SCHMOOZING WITH VICTORIA ABBOTT!

1. Who has influenced you the most in your writing career?   

From MJ: Three big influences: first, my writing group, now the Ladies Killing Circle. From them I learned that you have to take advice and fix your work. Second, the authors I enjoyed reading, specifically those who wrote mysteries with humour. They taught me that it could be done and done with style. Third, Sue Grafton, who once gave a very inspiring talk to unpublished writers. She said many things, but she told us how long it took her to get published and how she kept at it although it took seven years for her to sell her first book!  As I’d been writing for seven years, this was welcome news.

From Victoria:  MJ is definitely my biggest influence, everything she has learned on her own journey, she passed on to me, patiently, I might add.  My second biggest influence would have to be Janet Evanovich and her way of creating deliciously flawed characters.

2. What are you working on now?

We are working on The Wolfe Widow, the third in the book collector mystery series. The Rex Stout books and the wonderful characters of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin will work their way into the story. Sure is fun to reread all these classics for research. These are books that stand the test of time.


3. In what ways is your main protagonist like you?  If at all?   

From Vic:  I would happily wander the isles of a Flea Market any day of the week, just like Jordan. I’m a vintage fashion lover.  The thrill of finding something great is something Jordan and I could bond over definitely.

From MJ: I think I’d love to have Jordan’s job, maybe not her boss though. Like Jordan, I enjoy the lure of the Golden Age of Detection. Good thing, because we are rereading them all.

For the record, neither Victoria nor I own a set of lock picks.

4. Are you character driven or plot driven?  

We are fascinated by characters and probably read for character too.  However, we value plot and work hard to make sure that works. But if the characters don’t ‘sing’, for us there’s no music in the book.


5. Are you a pantser or a plotter?   

We’re very pansty, but we know we should be more plotsy.  With two people writing a book, it’s extremely hard to keep it together if you don’t both see it going in the same direction. In fact, sometimes … but that’s a story for another day.


6. What do you hope readers will most take away from your writing?

That there is much joy in the classics of the mystery tradition and that the relationships with family and friends are actually the most interesting part of a book. And finally, that humour is always worthwhile.


7. Where do you see yourself as a writer in 10 years?

Besides having more naps?  Well, MJ would like to try her hand at a play and a PI novel and has a few books left in her other series that need to be written. Vic would love to keep on painting the night away but wouldn’t mind dabbling in a screen play or novel of her own.


8. What is one thing your readers would be most surprised to know about you?  

Vic watches Coronation Street...don’t judge her!
MJ thinks that with all this social media, people know she knits, loves dogs and reads in bed.


9. What do you like to read for pleasure?

Oddly enough, mysteries. We read a lot of them!  We like all types of mysteries from those dark Scandinavians to funny cozies. We read tons of Canadians and, of course, we love all our friends’ books. We have to be careful not to read books that will influence our current project too much.  

10. Give us a summary of your latest book in a Tweet.
Stolen Sayers first editions, a body in the backyard, romance in the air: Jordan Bingham seeks answers and finds danger. Do you smell fire?

That shadowy figure known as Victoria Abbott is a collaboration between the always very funny and creative artist, photographer and short story author, Victoria Maffini and her mother, Mary Jane Maffini, award-winning author of three mystery series and two dozen short stories. Their first book in the series, The Christie Curse, has received excellent reviews and the second, The Sayers Swindle, will hit the shelves in December 2013. They are hard at work on the third installment: The Wolfe Widow (September 2014) and haven’t killed each other yet.
You can keep up with their characters on the thirtieth of the month over at www.killercharacters.com and their culinary adventures at www.mysteryloverskitchen.com or by signing up for their newsletter at www.victoria-abbott.com or www.maryjanemaffini.com