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- Author interview - |
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| Interview with Valerie S. Malmont, author of Death, Guns and Sticky Buns (Dell Publishing, March 2000), the third in the popular Tori Miracle mystery series, and the soon-to-be released Death, Snow and Mistletoe just in time for Christmas 2000. Read our review of Death, Guns and Sticky Buns. Feature by PJ Nunn. PJ NUNN - Val, I’ve loved your series from the outset with Death Pays the Rose Rent. Tell us about the latest - Death, Guns and Sticky Buns. How is the series evolving? VALERIE MALMONT - DGASB is third in the Tori Miracle series. I actually wrote it as book 4 in the series, but it got shuffled around in order to bring Death, Snow and Mistletoe out for Christmas 2000. In it, Tori is living in Lickin Creek, filling in for the editor of the weekly newspaper and missing Garnet, who went to Costa Rica as a police adviser. Tori agrees to co-sponsor a reenactment of a Civil War execution with the local woman's college. But something goes terribly wrong and the guns are loaded with real bullets, not blanks. Tori is blamed for the disaster, the newspaper is losing subscribers right and left, and Tori slowly comes to realize that Congressman Macmillan's death was not an accident. Her search for the person responsible leads her from the ghost filled halls of the Lickin Creek College for Women to the Gettysburg battlefield. I think Tori is growing as a person in the series. The borough of Lickin Creek is also developing, and the people in it and around Tori are becoming very real (to me, at least). Can you also give us a little taste of Death, Snow and Mistletoe without spoiling? Tori Miracle is basking in the quaint glow of Christmas in Lickin Creek. The borough council is quarreling about the color of the Christmas lights and whether or not to allow a real baby in the living creche. The ladies of the Lickin Creek Community Theatre are stretching their leotards to the limits in a pageant called the Nutcracker. But suddenly the season goes sour. A child is missing in the mountains, and a huge storm is moving up the coast. As the town turns out to search for him, psychic Praxythea Evangelista shows up offering her assistance, and a thirty-year-old mystery resurfaces. Two well-known women are murdered. Garnet's replacement police chief is befuddled. And Tori is the next target for murder. I love the whole atmosphere of Lickin Creek. Is it real? It's very real. Lickin Creek is a composite of a number of small boroughs here in south-central Pennsylvania. I borrow from Chambersburg, Waynesboro, Greencastle, Mercersburg, and some even smaller villages. It's located in a vague spot somewhere in the mountains about fifteen miles from Gettysburg. The huge turn-of-the-century mansion Tori is house sitting in DGASB is similar to the beautiful old homes in Blue Ridge Summit. The reason I didn't use a specific town was because I wanted the freedom to move things around geographically to suit me. I've lived all over the world, but when I moved here 21 years ago, I fell in love with the area and knew it was going to be home. I love the quaintness, the festivals, the customs, the food, the on-going conflicts between the old and the new, and the history - from the early settlers who survived the French-Indian War, through the Civil War, and the changes caused by WW II. I know you can't spoil things that will be explained in the next book, but Garnet was conspicuously absent this time. Will we see more of him? He's still in Costa Rica at Christmas time. I wanted Tori to have a chance to explore some other relationships, to determine whether or not she and Garnet are really meant to be together. One man wrote me, a little outraged, because she almost fell into another man's arms (Darious) in DGASB. Actually, she did fall into them, but then she fell out just as quickly. The reader wanted to know what was in her make-up that she wouldn't immediately snatch up a solid citizen type like Garnet. I think it's because Tori's afraid of making a commitment, and with someone like Darious she knows she isn't going to have to. How has your writing changed over the course of these books? I definitely see improvement. When I wrote the first book in the series Death Pays the Rose Rent I had no clear idea of where the book was going. Now, I have a clear vision of Tori, her friends, and what is going to happen to them. I am more comfortable using words as tools, and I have learned a lot about grammar, making me wish I'd paid more attention back in the eighth grade when we diagramed sentences. Who are you when you're not writing? What kind of work do you do? What are your hobbies? I'm a wife, mother of three, grandmother of two, and pretty active in my community. I followed in my mother's footsteps and became a librarian. I was a librarian in Seattle WA, Arlington VA, Chambersburg PA, and at two military libraries in Taipei, Taiwan. Before deciding to write full time, I decided to try something different, so I worked as a marketing assistant for a financial institution, was a jewelry buyer for a gift shop, and I even managed a Hickory Farms Christmas kiosk. I love to travel and try to take at least one major trip abroad every year, sometimes two. I think I'm going to Prague this fall for the International Association of Crime Writers conference. My dear friend Joan and I have recently taken a cruise on the Russian Volga, and returned to Okinawa for the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa. Now, we're looking into a trip to China, Nepal, and Tibet. Not bad for someone who hates to fly as much as I do. The hobby I enjoy the most is collecting Oz memorabilia. I am a member of the International Wizard of Oz Club, go to at least one convention a year, and am trying to keep up with the deluge of centennial memorabilia that is commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Who or what has most influenced your writing? Probably my mother, because she got me interested in books at an early age. Thanks to her constantly reading to me, I learned to read when I was four. She made sure I got to the library once a week. When we arrived on Okinawa when I was eight and there was no library, she borrowed books from a ship's captain and started one. It was my mother who introduced me to the writers of the Golden Age of the Mystery, all of whom influenced me greatly. Next, my father who was a police adviser in the U.S. Foreign Service. When I was not reading mystery and crime novels, I was listening to my father and his co-workers talk about the real thing. Dinner table conversation was about pirates, murderers, counterfeiters, pornographers, and thieves. Everybody should be so lucky. As a writer, where do you see yourself in 10 years? Still writing, and I hope getting better at it. I'd like to stick with traditional mysteries, but I do have a few stand-alone mainstream novels in mind. Maybe I'll even win an award - do they give one for perseverance? What do you enjoy most about writing? The incubation phase. That's when I wake up in the middle of the night so excited about the new book that I just cannot wait to get it down on paper. The house is covered with notes. I have pads of paper all over the house to capture any tidbit of inspiration. Then I go through my nesting syndrome, where I clean my office thoroughly and sharpen my pencils - I don't know why since I write on a computer. I also really love revision. I find it difficult to get the first draft written, but once it's there and I've given myself a little break, I can approach the book with a fresh viewpoint. For me, that's the most fun and the most creative part of writing. What do you find most difficult? The middle of the book. My romance writer friends call it the sagging middle. I know how to begin, and I have a clear vision of what the ending is going to be. But there are a lot of pages in between to fill. Sometimes I think I'll never get there, but I've found striving for a small daily goal will work. Often, that's only a page a day. Somewhere along the way, I fall into a trance- like state where I don't remember writing anything. Somehow the book gets finished. What’s the best advice you can give to new writers? Number one: Finish the book, then worry about selling it. I often get questions from people about how to find an agent when all they've got is a first chapter written. They are really putting the cart before the horse. Number two: Hang out with other writers. Join a group of people who take writing seriously, and they will inspire you. Go to writers' conferences. Listen to authors, editors, agents and learn as much about the business as you can. It's not who you know, but what you know that can help you. Number three: Write what you love and love what you are writing. If you're not enthusiastic about your book, nobody else will be either. Don't try to write for the market. The market will change anyway before you're done. Other novels - Death Pays the Rose Rent Death, Lies, and Apple Pies Death, Guns, and Sticky Buns Death, Snow, and Mistletoe (Nov. 2000) Memoirs published serially in the Ryukyu Shimpo, the Okinawa newspaper, 1997-1999. |
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