Friday's Guest - featuring Joan Yarmey-Donaldson - Who She Was Before #MFRWauthor #Mysteries #historical

1.      What were you in your life before you became a writer? Did this influence your writing?

I have worked at a variety of jobs in my life: bank teller, press operator, bookkeeper, prospector, and meat wrapper to name a few. I began my writing career with travel and historical articles. I then progressed into travel books about the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, the Canadian territory of the Yukon, and the state of Alaska. When I wrote my first mystery novel, I made my main character a travel writer. She runs into a mystery every time she is working on articles for travel magazines.

2 Are you genre specific or general? Why? I don't mean genres like romance, mystery, fantasy etc. There are many subgenres of the above.

I am what I call a cross-genre writer. My mystery novels combine travel and romance with the mystery, my sci-fi novels include mystery and romance, and my historical novels also have romance and travel in them.

3.      Did your reading choices have anything to do with your choice of a genre or genres?

I love to read mystery novels; I like surprise endings and I am disappointed when I have figured out the ending part way through the book. So when I began fiction writing I wrote a mystery.

4. What's your latest release?

My publisher is bringing out a Canadian Historical Brides Series to celebrate Canada’s 150^th anniversary. There will be twelve books, each one based on a piece of history that took place in each of the ten provinces plus The Yukon and The Northwest Territories/ Nunavuk. I wrote a novel set in 1896, the year that gold was discovered in The Yukon, the year before the great Klondike Gold Rush began.

5. What are you working on now? I am researching another historical novel and outlining another mystery. My sister and I wrote a holiday romance that came out last fall and we are discussing another one.

6. Where can we find you?

My website is: www.joandonaldsonyarmey.com