1.
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?
I
began my writing career as a travel writer. I drove and camped throughout
British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon, and Alaska learning about what there is
to see and do along all their roads. But I love reading a good mystery novel
and some of them I didn't think were very good, especially when some clues were
so obvious that I could guess who had done it and why quite early in the book.
I decided to try my hand at mystery writing. I have written three amateur
sleuth novels with the main character being a travel writer. Collectively, they
are called The Travelling Detective
Series and they were published by Books We Love Ltd and are sold in a boxed
set. My latest novel is a slight departure in that it is a mystery/romance
combination. I have written manuscripts in different genres but I have never
had the urge to write a western, historical or erotica.
2.
Heroes, Heroines, Villains. Which are your favorite to write? Does one of these
come easy and why?
Heroes
and heroines come easiest for me to write and they are my favourites. I like to
think I am a normal, polite, nice person who could never scam, beat, or kill
another human being, therefore it is harder for me to get inside a villain's
head to write about him or her. Therefore, I do a lot of true crime reading to
get in a murderous frame of mind.
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?
In
my mystery novels my heroes have been an older man and a young men in a wheel
chair. In my mystery/romance the hero is a mountain man/gold prospector. Once I
have the plot and the hero's character decided then I begin to built his body.
Sometimes, though, they tell me who they really are as the story develops. I do
have pictures of movie stars and regular people from the newspapers on a wall
so I can use certain looks, like hair styles or clothes.
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?
In
my Travelling Detective Series, the main character is a woman who has several
of my traits. (I'm mentioning this because I've had friends tell me, after
reading the book, "I could hear you saying that" or "That's
something you would do.") In my mystery/romance my heroine is nothing like
me but is loosely based on someone I know. Like my heroes, my heroines
sometimes change character traits as I get into the story. I also have pictures
of women on my wall for the same reason as I have pictures of men.
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?
The
villain's job is to cause all the turmoil in a novel. Some villains are good at
it, some are not. But since their true nature isn't revealed until the end it
is necessary to seed a few instances where the person does unusual things so
that when he or she is revealed, the reader isn't going "How could she
have suddenly changed like that?" Instead, the reader should be saying,
"I should have guessed it was him."
6.
What is your latest release? Who is the hero, heroine and or the villain?
My
latest release is Gold Fever also
through Books We Love Ltd. The
heroine is a city girl who is camping for a week with her mother and she hates
it. The hero/villian is a mountain man/gold prospector who takes it upon
himself to show her around the countryside. She is not impressed. The villain
could be the mountain man/gold prospector or any one of four other gold
prospectors.
7.
What are you working on now?
I
have two projects on the go. One is non-fiction about four cats in a motorhome
for a ten week sightseeing trip and the other is a Christmas romance.
8.
How can people find you?
Blogs I contribute to:
http://bookswelove.net/
http://thetravellingdetectiveseries.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/writingsbyjoan
No comments:
Post a Comment