 |
- Author interview - |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Interview with Carol Cail, author of Who Was Sylvia By PJ Nunn PJ NUNN - Welcome, Carol. Tell us about Who Was Sylvia and the previous Maxey Bu  rnell mysteries.CAROL CAIL - The idea for Who Was Sylvia, the fourth Maxey Burnell mystery novel, came from a a Rocky Mountain News filler four sentences long. It concerned a Denver city councilman being asked by a hospital to release for burial the body of an elderly woman who had died without relatives or friends. He did not know her, but his business card was found in her effects, which is why he was called. He signed the papers and then attended the funeral. Maxey finds herself in the same situation, but after the funeral, she goes on to investigate the destitute woman's life, and discovers Sylvia's death was not an accident. Sylvia is based on a similar pack-rat character who used to roam the downtown streets of the town where I live. I'm always intrigued by the serendipity of writing fiction. If I had not read that little filler, how would Sylvia-the-book have been different? During the writing of Unsafe Keeping, the plantar fascia in my left foot broke, and I found myself in a cast from toes to knee. That inspired the murder weapon in mid-book, and I have no idea what turns the story would have taken without that experience. Since my latest medical adventure, watch for a total knee replacement surgery in some future plot.  Maxey is a delightful mix of ordinary characteristics combined to create a unique persona. What inspired her? Maxey began with Private Lies, and I had the plot for that before I had my main character. Because I needed a woman with a reasonable reason to be involved in a disappearance and a murder, I thought of a reporter working for a small newspaper. I set the story in Boulder, Colorado because I'm familiar with the town and it has such an interesting ambiance. Maxey is a younger, braver, more experienced woman than I am, but we share the same values and sense of what's humorous. Don't you have another mystery in the works? Yes, I'm halfway through Maxey Part Five, to be published in 2002 as Death Kindly Stopped. In January of 2001, Deadly Alibi Press will publish The Seeds of Time, a stand-alone mystery. The premise is that two psychic women, one in the Nineteenth Century and one in the Twentieth, help one another solve murders in their respective times. You may imagine how much fun that was to plan and write. Also in 2001, I'll have a murder mystery coming out from Write Way Publishing, His Horror the Mayor, the first in a possible series about a retired school teacher who discovers a murdered woman she doesn't know, yet immediately knows who the killer is. As in all my writing, I've tried to make it funny as well as mysterious. How did you first get started writing? I've always been a writer, even before I could read. My first published work was a poem, in the 1960's, and shortly after that I sold my first short story to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. I didn't manage a novel until I retired from working full time at the family office supply store. That novel, a romantic suspense, sold to Harlequin. At this moment, I've seen ten books accepted by publishers, most of them mysteries. How has your writing changed since that time? I hope the difference between my early books and my current work is I'm as entertaining as ever. One hopes to constantly improve, but I wouldn't care to have ever published an inferior story either. Who are you when you're not writing? What kind of work do you do? What are your hobbies? My husband just retired, and I'm taking life a little easier myself. But I love to write, so it's unlikely that I'll be forgetting about my word processor anytime soon. Besides, I need it for teaching fiction correspondence courses for Writer's Digest School, and for reviewing cookbooks for Home Cooking magazine. My hobbies are reading, cooking, walking, rooting for the Rockies and the Broncos - and more reading. Who or what most influenced your writing? My love of reading, especially mysteries beginning with the Bobbsey Twins, led to my desire to write my own imagined adventures. I had a great English teacher in high school who made the mechanics of writing fun for me, and I've never had to worry about getting the grammar right since. Numerous college teachers encouraged me to pursue writing. I was lucky enough to marry a very supportive man who puts up with my staring into space and not speaking a word for any stretch of time. From the letters written by my students, I know how difficult it can be to write when one's family has no sympathy for the time and effort it takes. As a writer, where do you see yourself in 10 years? In ten years? Why would I want to do anything but what I'm doing now, making up stories and helping beginning writers make up stories? It doesn't call for much physical strength, so if my mind holds up, I should be able to carry on into my seventies. What do you enjoy most about writing? What I enjoy about writing fiction is making something out of nothing, using only my imagination and words to create something that can be understood by others. I love it when a reader says a scene seemed real, and I especially love the comment, "I had to read every word or I'd miss something." What do you find most difficult? Because I write tightly, leaving out words that readers skip as Elmore Leonard advises, I sometimes struggle to write enough words for a full-sized novel. I haven't written a novel that I didn't worry about two-thirds of the way through, because I'd be several thousand words short at the end. I usually have to go back and add a subplot or more backstory to meet the word count. Otherwise, my first full draft of a novel would be pretty close to the final draft. This is because my method for writing is to write a section one day, and the next day go back over it in editor mode before continuing to write the next section. I like to have it as near perfect as possible as I go along - in case I kick off before the manuscript is finished. What’s your best advice for new writers? Never give up. Perseverance is as important as talent, both the determination to write regularly enough to finish the manuscript and the stubbornness to submit to publishers again and again until it eventually sells. Do you have a website? I don’t have a website. The previous Maxey novels are Private Lies; Unsafe Keeping, If Two of Them Are Dead. My romance novels are all out of print. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||