Do you write a single genre or do your fingers flow over the keys creating tales in many forms? Does your reading choices reflect your writing choices? Are there genres you wouldn’t attempt?
Mainly I write mystery, however, I’ve also co-written a paranormal time travel with author Gail Roughton. My reading choices definitely reflect my writing choices, I’m an avid mystery fan and always have been. I would never attempt horror because I’m sure I’d scare myself too badly to finish my book. I’m also not a fantasy writer – my mind is too full of this one world without trying to invent worlds on my own, but I really admire people who can do that – what a job building an entire world for your characters to inhabit.
2. Heroes, Heroines, Villains. Which are your favorite to write? Does one of these come easy and why?
I love writing hero’s – especially detectives and high profile investigators, They come easiest to me, and it’s the most fun for me to imagine myself in one of those personas.
3. Heroes. How do you find them? Do pictures, real life or plain imagination create the man you want every reader to love? Do they come before the plot or after you have the idea for the story?
The hero’s in my stories just seem to find me. I have an image of what they’re going to look like before I even have the story. I don’t know about all writers but for me it’s important that a hero possesses characteristics that I feel are important in a person I would admire. The characters always come before the plot in my stories. I have a general idea of what’s going to happen and where I want the story to go, but it doesn’t always happen that way, sometimes right out of the blue a character will take off in a completely different direction than what I envisioned.
4. Heroines. How do you find them? Do pictures, real life or imagination create the woman you want the reader to root for? Do they appear before the plot or after you have the idea for the story?
Heroines are harder for me because they always have to be smart and good at what they do and strong with definite ideas and attitudes, so I have to be careful not to let the heroine overshadow the hero. Again, my heroines do pretty much the same as my hero’s, they just come along when I’m writing and sometimes they take a much bigger role than what I had originally envisioned for them.
5. Villains or villainesses or an antagonist, since they don’t always have to be the bad guy or girl. They can be a person opposed to the hero’s or heroine’s obtaining their goal. How do you choose one? How do you make them human?
Villains are always bad guys in my stories. I have very definite ideas of what a makes a bad guy, and they are usually characters that are composites of people that I have known, heard about or read about. They don’t come to me as full blown characters the way my heros and heroines do – maybe because I do not admire them and am not open to their worming their way into my head, but they are definitely made up of what I consider the least attractive features of my fellow men and women – I just take a bunch of characteristics, shake them up in a jar and pull out the ones that will work the best for the bad guy I’m writing about at the time.
6. What is your latest release? Who is the hero, heroine and or the villain?
My latest release is Sisters of Prophecy, Ursula. This book, co-written with another Books We Love author, Gail Roughton is the fulfillment of a dream of mine. I’m descended from Mother Shipton of 15th century England. She’s in the history books as a reputed prophetess who prophesied about all kinds of events hundreds of years before they happened. Like the Civil war in the USA before America was even discovered and planes and submarines, all kinds of stuff like that. All my life I wanted to write about her as a young woman, but I’m not a historical fiction author, and it wasn’t until Gail and I met up in Hawaii and started chatting about what if Mother Shipton appeared to Shipton descendants and had them carrying out certain tasks that needed to be done back in the 15th Century, but the girls were modern and the timeframe of the book was contemporary, with little side jaunts back into the 15th century. The more we talked about it the more the story grew until we were both so excited we could hardly wait to get it written. It’s definitely one of my favorites.
7. What are you working on now?
I am working on another Kelly McWinter mystery. This one, A Murder State of Mind, Deadly Lights brings back some of my characters from my original Murder State of Mind series, Deadly Secrets, Deadly Betrayal and Deadly Consequences.
8. How can people find you?
Twitter @judepittman
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