SC: What books have most influenced you as a writer?
As far as mysteries, I’d have to go all the way back to Trixie Belden, followed by Agatha
Christie. I loved Trixie’s spunk, Honey’s common sense, and the boys’ ability to step in and
help without patronizing the girls. And I learned so much from reading Miss Marple books
—not just about fashioning a mystery and crafting a plot twist, but about understanding human
nature and how it plays a role in every good story.
Later books are really too numerous to mention, but I can list favorite authors I’ve read and
studied for decades like Elizabeth Peters, Pat Conroy, Douglas Adams, Nancy Pickard, Fredrick
Forsythe, Rex Stout, Nancy Atherton, Carolyn Haines, Lee Child, Katherine Hall Page, Robert
B. Parker, Carolyn Hart, Michele Scott, Elmore Leonard—okay, I’d better stop now, or I could
go on and on and on.
But truly, we authors are just as big a fan of other authors as anyone reading our books.
Before I had a published mystery, I was at a conference, sitting at a table outside during a lull
in the schedule, when Nancy Pickard and Carolyn Hart came up and asked if they could join
me. Once I found my voice again, they sat down, and Nancy Pickard asked if I was a writer.
When I said I was, she asked what I was writing at the time. I was floored—here was one of
my heroes wanting to know about my current project.
SC: What do you find to be the most challenging part of writing? And the most rewarding?
Most challenging part is always getting started. Seriously, I write at least three different
opening chapters before I finally write the one that gets published. But I don’t write them one
after the other. I write the first and keep going with the book—then somewhere about the
twenty-percent mark I usually realize the opener needs to be changed and write a new one,
then go on a chapter or two more and rewrite the beginning again, and maybe even one more
time. For my October release, Abstract Aliases, I wrote three complete beginnings—believing
every single opener was exactly the right one as I wrote them—before I hit on the one that
will be printed soon. But nothing ever goes to waste. The first opener for Abstract Aliases had
a Halloween beginning that I plan to turn into a short story to give to my newsletter
subscribers for their Halloween “treat” this fall. The second had a Thanksgiving scene I plan to
use later, but will be rewritten to encompass plans for one of Laurel’s friend’s wedding in
(probably) book #4. And the third was a Christmas themed story that ended up as a complete
short story included in a holiday anthology published last year. The final—and the keeper
—opener for Abstract Aliases ended up with my main characters at the Lord Mayor’s New
Year’s Fireworks display in London.