Guest Blog

A Conversation With Lee Carver

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During her husband’s international career, Lee lived and reared their children in Greece, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Indonesia, Brazil and Spain. Her visits to 49 countries became material in her novels. The Carvers were volunteer missionaries in the Brazilian Amazon for six years, the hardest and best years of their lives.

What’s the hardest part of writing romantic suspense?
Lee: I’m mostly a seat-of-the-pants writer, but suspense has to be carefully plotted or the story will have holes big enough to drive a Mac truck through.

What’s the weirdest way someone has died or been killed in your novels?
Lee: Years ago, when I wrote only short stories, a bad guy died on an airplane when the badder guy sloshed on him a solution made from cigarette butts soaked in water. Seriously. Nicotine kills!

How do you research ways to kill someone for your books?
Lee: I’m a former biology teacher. I know ways I won’t even talk about.

Where do you get the inspiration for your plots?
Lee: When I get an inkling, I need to talk it out with other authors or my husband. He’s a great plotter and beta reader.

Current book: Counterfeit
Professor Richard Reed, working with Interpol, thinks he has found an art copyist when he zones in on attractive tourist, Kendra Cooper.

Connect W/Lee
Website: www.LeeCarverWriter.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lee.carver.507
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/leecarver2
Twitter: @leecarver21
Blog: http://LeeCarverWriter.blogspot.com

A Conversation With Carole Brown

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An author of 10 books, Carole Brown loves to weave suspense and tough topics into her books, along with a touch of romance and whimsy. She and her husband reside in Ohio, but have ministered nationally and internationally. They enjoy their grandsons, traveling, gardening, good food and the simple life.

What’s the hardest part of writing romantic suspense?
Carole: Keeping the flow going. When I write suspense, I throw in romance, too, and like to have spots of romance to lighten the suspense. It gives the book a warmer sense, and depending on how much romance, can woo romance readers to your writing. But to bring scenes together, so that they flow realistically, is harder. I work hard to make it happen.

When do you find time to write?
Carole: I don’t. We’re very busy people, so if I left it to chance, it wouldn’t get done. I have to be determined and persistent to get my writing done. I’m not one of those who can sit down and throw together a  book (I write longer books—mostly) in a couple weeks. But if I persist and push through the hang-ups and stuck-in-the-middle sections, then I find my writing gets done.

What is your favorite spot for reading or reflecting on your current work-in-progress?
Carole: In the car, traveling long distances, with my husband. I like to read portions to him so he can point out flaws.

How do you connect with your characters?
Carole: By placing myself within their lives—by being them. I want to feel their emotions. I imagine their pains, their excitement, the danger, the times when they’re feeling overwhelmed or puzzled. I like to feel the warmth of the romance and how I would feel if I was in that same situation.

What did you want to be as a child (and did that dream come true)?
Carole: A detective, a nurse, an airline attendant, and though I didn’t realize it at the time, a writer. Only the writer came true, but I can live my earlier desire of detection through my novels—which is far more realistic for me. The others? Only momentary, passing desires. 🙂

Current book: A Flute in the Willows (WWII Spies series book 2)
She’s determined to keep his love…and help him thwart the German spy who’s out to destroy her husband.

Connect W/Carole
Personal blog: http://sunnebnkwrtr.blogspot.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CaroleBrown.author
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Carole-Brown/e/B00EZV4RFY/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1427898838&sr=8-1
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/browncarole212
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/sunnywrtr/boards/
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5237997-carole-brown
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=67381031
GooglePlus: https://plus.google.com/u/0/113068871986311965415/posts
Stitches in Time: http://stitchesthrutime.blogspot.com/
Word Sharpeners: https://wordsharpeners.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/what-easter-means-to-me/

 

Thank you, Sarah, for allowing me to visit.

A Conversation With Deborah Piccurelli

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Deborah Piccurelli enjoys reading and writing romantic books. She has authored three novels and writes a fiction column for Book Fun Magazine. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and is an advocate for sanctity of life. Deborah lives in New Jersey with her husband and two sons.

Why do you like writing romantic suspense?

Deborah: Even as a child, I always liked reading books that had an air of mystery or suspense to them. Then as I grew older, romance came into play, and so I almost always like to have an element of that to whatever I read. That being the case, it was only natural to write what I enjoyed reading the most.

What’s the weirdest way someone has died or been killed in your novels?
Deborah: I can’t really say anyone has in my novels has ever died in a weird way, but there was an unconventional attempted murder in my very first novel, In the Midst of Deceit, when someone had tried to kill the hero through skydiving.

What did you want to be as a child (and did that dream come true)?
Deborah: Probably most authors wanted to be writers from when they were young, and I had tried writing books a couple times as a child, but that wasn’t my dream back then. Don’t laugh, but my dream as a young girl was to be a secretary. I would watch movies or TV shows where some of the women characters worked in an office and that looked so glamorous to me. That dream never changed as I grew up and it did actually come true. Most of my secretarial career was in legal work, which helped provide some material for my subsequent career as a writer. Oh, and learning to type was bonus!

Current book: Hush, Little Baby
Hired by the doctor responsible for her twin sister’s death, investigative reporter Amber Blake goes undercover to expose him for the crime of fetal harvesting.

Connect w/Deborah
Website: http://www.deborahmpiccurelli.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/deborah.piccurelli
Twitter: @DebPiccurelli
Pinterest – www.pinterest.com/DebPiccurelli

A Conversation With Leann Betts

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Leeann Betts writes contemporary suspense, while her real-life persona, Donna Schlachter, pens historical suspense. She has released six titles in her cozy mystery series, By the Numbers, with Petty Cash releasing in December. In addition, Leeann just released her first Christmas-themed romantic suspense, In Search of Christmas Past.

What’s the hardest part of writing romantic suspense?
Leann: I think for me the hardest part is making sure there are equal parts romance and suspense. I don’t have a problem writing suspense—it’s the romance that always gets me. I usually come up with the suspense plot first, and then spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to weave the romance in.

When do you find time to write?
Leann: I don’t find time—I make time. I am blessed to not have to work outside the home, and I’m married to my biggest supporter, but that doesn’t mean I’m not busy. But I am very badge-oriented (read goal-oriented or project-oriented), so I give myself a deadline and stick with it. I think of every month as National Novel Writing Month.

How do you connect with your characters?
Leann: I tend to do it the hard way—I write about two chapters of backstory, then I end up going back, writing down what I discovered to use somewhere else in the story, then start my story where it really begins.

Current book: In Search of Christmas Past
Can Grace and Luke solve uncover the truth about their real feelings, or will their differences in goals and faith drive them apart?

Connect W/Leann
Website: www.LeeannBetts.com
Facebook: http://bit.ly/1pQSOqV
Twitter: http://bit.ly/1qmqvB6

Stepping Stones to Suspense: A Conversation With Lynne Tagawa

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Lynne Tagawa is married with four grown sons and three grandbabies. A biology teacher, she teaches part-time, writes and edits. She’s written a Texas history curriculum in narrative form, Sam Houston’s Republic, and has just published her debut novel, A Twisted Strand. Lynne lives with her husband in South Texas.

When I was fourteen, I was going to be a scientist. You see, I had discovered Isaac Asimov’s nonfiction essays about all kinds of scientific topics, which may sound boring to some of you—maybe all of you—but he wrote so well.

He had a knack of communicating things in such a way as to make the subject interesting, and no longer was physics or biochemistry arcane and inaccessible—they actually seemed fun.

He didn’t use textbook style, but instead began sentences with words like, “You see,” And maybe I learned something then that I am only fully realizing now.

When in college studying engineering, I soon discovered I was a square peg in a round hole, or perhaps the reverse. Now that I understood what being a scientist or an engineer really meant, I knew it wasn’t for me. But I still liked science and liked to explain scientific things.

So I ended up in the college of education, then found employment as a science teacher, which I’ve enjoyed.

Then came a day when I was asked to review a textbook for an entirely different subject: Texas history.

Predictably, it was boring, written by committee. Where is Asimov when you need him? Plus, there were important things that the textbooks left out, such as Sam Houston’s conversion to Christ and rifle-toting Baptist preachers. To make a long story short, those types of things made it into my personal textbook rebellion: Sam Houston’s Republic.

Later, I wondered what I would write if I made the full leap from narrative nonfiction (my “textbook”) into real fiction. What would I write about? And where would the setting be?

It was like learning to drive a car, and I didn’t want to make it too hard on myself; I decided to stay close to home—South Texas. And if you know that I’m a science teacher, it might not surprise you to discover that one of my characters is a virus.

Not a natural one—it’s engineered. So the suspense part was kind of prefab, in a way. The trick was to weave the strands of the plot threads—the relationship, the truth of the gospel, and the bad guys—all into one coherent narrative.

It’s not Asimov or Crichton. Just lil’ ole me. But it contains scriptural truth, and that made it worthwhile to write.

Current book: A Twisted Strand
After her divorce, Rachel Davis heads to South Texas to raise her kids. Can she find the secret to making her heart whole again?

Connect W/Lynne
Website: https://www.lynnetagawa.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lbtagawa/

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