One of my favorite writers, Meredith Resnick, of The Writer’s Inner Journey, invited me to participate in this blog hop, started by Sandra Beckwith. You can read Meredith’s post here (and as I am in the privileged position of editing some of this work, I can tell you that it’s a magnificent piece of writing)
1) What am I working on? I’m working on telling you all about my new novel of romantic suspense, NIGHT ORACLE. In fact, I’m having a little virtual launch party at my Facebook page on Thursday, April 10th.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre? Well for one thing, the characters aren’t kids in their 20s. They’re well into their thirties with failed relationships and the school of hard knocks behind them. Main character Nan Troy has prophetic dreams–that is, dreams that predict real events; the rub is, these events are usually unhappy and the people in her life are sick of her nighttime harbinger of bad news so she’s become something of a black sheep. In fact, she’s taken to staying up all night–which works with her job as a transcriptionist–since the dreams seem worse at night. Thanks to her schedule, she meets her love interest Cal Banks at his nightclub, The Nocturne. He has sleep issues too; night terrors whose origins he doesn’t understand. I also have two books for writers due out in 2014: A WRITER’S GUIDE TO PERSISTENCE, and, with Martha Alderson: DEEP SCENES. And, two other novels in various stages of completion, a literary coming-of-age story called Don’t You Forget About Me, and a novel of psychological suspense called The Women in Red.
3) Why do I write what I do? The truth is, I write a lot of different ways. My first novel is psychological suspense. I write books for writers (two more of those coming out next year), and literary novels–seeking publication for those–and more. I go where the stories take me, worrying less about form and more about my characters and what serves their plots.
4) How does your writing process work? It’s pretty simple: things under deadline get written first. No deadline? I motivate myself with arbitrary deadlines such as: “You better finish this before your kid starts first grade,” or “Write a novel in the month of November, which is always entirely insane? Sounds grand!” I believe in the butt-in-chair, move it or lose it, perspiration, not inspiration school of writing.
Next week I hand off to Amy McElroy, writer, yoga teacher and essayist whose work has recently appeared here, on Elephant Journal, Sweatpants & Coffee.com and Joel Friedlander’s Book Designer’s Carnival of the Indies, among others.
