Mysteries with Laurel Heidtman

An author's world with Laurel Heidtman aka Lolli Powell

Kentucky based author Laurel Heidtman joins us today for some Q. and A. and a glimpse into a writer's life.

Q. Laurel, tell us a bit about you.

 A. I write mysteries under the name Laurel Heidtman and romances under the name Lolli Powell. I live with my husband, four dogs and two cats on private land surrounded by Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. Over the years, I've paid the bills by being a dancer, a bartender, a police officer, a registered nurse and atechnical writer. I draw on that life experience and my two English degrees to createstories that I enjoy writing and hope readers will enjoy reading.

Q: How many books have you written?

A: I’ve written and published two mysteries under the Laurel Heidtman name and two romances under the Lolli Powell name. One of the romances, The Wrong Kind of Man, is a romantic suspense so it crosses the genre line with some bad guys, action, murder, and a little something else I’m not going to say. I’ve also got another book that I wrote back in the nineties, but haven’t yet published. One of these days I’ll get it out, clean it up, and put it out there!

Q: Reviews are helpful (usually) to authors and readers. Do you read your reviews? Do you respond to them, good or bad? Do you have any advice how to deal with the bad?

A: I read every review, but I don’t respond to them. I think readers leave reviews for
other readers. By reading a review, an author can learn a lot about how readers are
receiving their books, but I don’t think they should respond in any way.

However, if a reader contacts me directly via my two websites’ contact email, then I
certainly respond. I’ve thanked the people who told me they enjoyed my books, but I
also answer—politely—anyone who says they don’t care for them. For example, I
received an email from one person whose niece bought her a paperback of Catch A
Falling Star at an author panel. She was offended by the vulgar language of some
characters in the first chapter and wrote to tell me she’d thrown the book in the trash. I
responded in a polite manner and told her I was sorry she was bothered by the
language and that I only put it in the mouths of the characters who would talk that way
in real life. Since then, I’ve made a point of warning anyone who buys a paperback of
my mysteries at a live event about the language, and so far it hasn’t stopped anyone
else from buying a copy.

As far as advice on how to deal with bad reviews, all I can say is try not to let it get to you. Not everyone is going to like what you write. Most people won’t say anything if they can’t say something good, but a few will. Read the bad reviews with an open mind. The writer may have a valid complaint that will help you improve your writing in the future.

Others are just “haters,” as a writer I know puts it. All you can do is ignore those. For example, I have a one-star review on Amazon from a woman who got a free copy of my book through LibraryThing. I sent the free ebook copies out on a Saturday and on Sunday—the very next day, she wrote a one-star review calling it “one of the worst books of 2014” and complaining she struggled to get through it. Considering she’d had the book no more than a day, I’m betting she didn’t even read it, or at least didn’t read much of it. The only thing to do is ignore a review like that.

Q: What are you working on now? What is your next project?

A: I’m actually working on two books now. Once before I worked on a mystery and a
romance at the same time. If I bogged down in one, I could take a break and work on
the other and it kept me fresh. I’m about a third of the way through Runaway Angel, the
first book in a romance series that begins in the sixties, and have three chapters of a
thriller titled Whiteout. I hope to release Whiteout by the end of this year or the
beginning of next year, but I’m going to hold Runaway Angel back until I have at least
one more in the series ready to go.

I’m also hashing out an idea for yet another romance series and another book in the Eden mystery series, but I won’t start either of those until I have at least one of my
current ones done. Two books at a time—yes, but more than that? Don't think so! I
value my sanity too much!

Q. Have you ever gotten into a bar fight?

A. No. I’ve only attended them as a spectator.

LAUREL'S BOOKS

Both books are only available for sale through Amazon or CreateSpace. The ebooks are available through Unlimited and KOLL as well.



Bad Girls
Amazon link: myBook.to/BadGirls (Canada)
US - Amazon.com Bad Girls

Cal Becker, the former Chicago cop turned insurance investigator
readers first met in Catch A Falling Star, is back in Eden—and he’s brought his eighteen-year-old niece with him. Marnie Becker is a troubled young woman with an alcoholic mother and drinking problems of her own. When Cal offers to pay her way through Raven University and move to Eden with her, she jumps at the chance to change her life. But on the day of their arrival, she disappears.

It wouldn’t be the first time she ran away when the going got tough. Has she done so again rather than face the challenges of her new life or has something happened to her? Cal has hopes for a new life for himself in Eden, and when Marnie goes missing, he doesn’t know whether to be worried or angry. But when the beaten body of a young girl is found in Daniel Boone National Forest, he fears his worst nightmare has become reality—or has his worst nightmare only begun?


The Wrong Kind of Man
http://bookgoodies.com/a/B00SNP5R20  (Canada)
US - Amazon.com The Wrong Kind of Man 

At thirty years of age, Maggie Fields has had her fill of “bad” men. Unbeknownst to her, her investment counselor husband had paid for their luxurious Denver lifestyle by scamming his law-abiding clients and laundering money for his law-breaking ones. He lasted two nights in jail before a client who didn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut had him silenced permanently.

Maggie fled to her hometown of Vichy, Indiana, and safe haven with her grandparents. Now all she wants is a quiet life as a reporter for a small town newspaper. That quiet is shattered when her ne’er-do-well uncle shows up on her retired doctor grandfather’s doorstep with a wounded and very sexy friend. Did the friend really injure his shoulder while changing a tire, or is he the man shot by the homeowner during an attempted burglary of a house just outside of town?

Maggie soon has reason to believe the homeowner is not an innocent victim, leading her to wonder if her uncle and his friend are involved in organized crime. But in spite of her suspicions, Maggie finds herself drawn to the wounded stranger and realizes the bad experience with her husband hasn’t dulled her taste for the wrong kind of man!

Find Laurel at her website and on Twitter.

What is your tag line?

Identity - we all have one - but what is your true identity?

We present faces to the world that match our roles: mother, friend, sister, boss... But who are we really?  Behind all your faces, who are you? What do you care about? What do you want? What cheers you, harms you or drives you?

I've thought about those questions. I've searched for answers, direction and inner peace. In the distant past, I thought I was the only one searching for these answers. Turns out I do not have a monopoly on the questions. Everyone I've met has asked these or similar questions more than once in their lives

We start out as babies with a clean slate. Everyone we meet, every circumstance of our lives and every action we take write on our slate. But do we let the writing of others define us? Or do we search out our own identity?

Each of us is unique and our answers will be ours alone.

I don't pretend to have answers for you. I have found a few for myself. However, those answers shift with my mood, my circumstances and my heart. I continue to search, to redefine and find new purpose in my life.

This fascination with who we are, why we are here and how we cope has shaped my writing. I write about:

- the puzzle of inner and outer identity
- the impact of people and circumstances on my characters
- the course of overturned lives.
- and I write about characters who find inner strength and skills to put things right in their world.


There are many reality-based books, horror stories, and love tales on the market. A story for everyone, but not the same story for all. I like stories with a puzzle, with struggling human characters and an ending that offers hope. In my writing, I strive to offer those ingredients to my readers.

 

Two of my favorite authors have tag lines I can get behind.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips: Because life is too short to read depressing stories.

Mary M. Forbes: In dreams we can be anyone we want.

 For today, my tag line is:

Stories that set things right....characters that find their way.

Do you have a tag line for your books or for your personal life story? Care to share it? I'd love to hear from you.

Do you want to write for a market with 23 million buyers?

Try the 23 million strong market of women boomers.

 Today's guest, BRENDA M. COLLINS, chats about being a member of, and a writer in, this segment of the population.  This Calgary author traveled to many corners of the globe as a speaker, business adviser and technical writer. Now she's  back in Calgary penning mysteries laced with romance and a touch of magic.

Nothing makes me feel quite as insignificant as knowing I’m one of 23 million Lady Boomers, my label for women born between 1946 and1964.

I showed up towards the end of the swell, so I did benefit from the resources that went into accommodating the bulge in population as it moved through the circle of life; new schools and teachers to address the increased number of youth, and the evolution of the market for fast food, clothing fads, popular music, and cosmetics.

On the downside, by the time I was ready to enter the job market, the front of the wave had flooded the market and unemployment rates were rising. Now, as I trail the rest towards 65, the big fear is that they will eat up all the pension money and I’ll have to work until I’m 75—or until I die. Yet, Boomers are reportedly on track to have higher income in retirement than their parents. Faced with this teeter-totter of my birthright, I’ve decided that, if I must work until I drop, I might as well work at something I love and find a way to make money at it, in which case, I want to embrace my long held dream to be an author.

My passion since the age of twelve has been to write fiction stories. I used to tell myself bedtime stories to fall asleep at night. When I was working a high powered corporate job, I wrote an entire novel while sitting in countless airports to keep from going crazy with boredom. That one’s still under the bed. It wasn’t a very good novel.

There are a couple of challenges with my plan. Everyone, including my mother from the time I was 12, told me that authors don’t make money. That’s why I went to university, got a business degree and pursued a long, successful but tedious career in business management. Secondly, everyone tells me I should write what I know. What do I know about the life of twenty-, thirty- or occasional forty-year-olds who star in all the bestselling novels these days? I am a Lady Boomer grappling with Lady Boomer issues!

 
Like so many boomer women, breast cancer crashed into my world in the last few years- I lost a dear friend to breast cancer a few years ago; several other close friends were fortunate to survive the same dreadful diagnosis. Driven to ‘DO SOMETHING’, Roxy Boroughs and I published an anthology of short stories on Amazon and donate all our author royalties to the treatment of breast cancer.

Only one story actually featured the subject of breast cancer and a fifty-something boomer. There was another one about a middle aged woman struggling with the decision to put an aging parent into an assisted living facility against his will. There was the story about the widow who planned to spend her twilight years travelling with her beloved husband after retirement and wasn’t prepared for re-entering the dating scene as a boomer. Holy cow. Our anthology is Boomer Lit.

I’m certainly getting tired of reading from the point-of-view of twenty-something’s, especially when the experiences of these fictional twenty- something’s bears little resemblance to my twenty-something life of three decades ago. The Times They Are A-changin', as Bob Dylan sang (1964)—non-boomers are probably saying, Who?

  

Wouldn’t it be nice to read about a female protagonist who behaves like me? Thinks like me? Has similar wrinkles on her face and also wears her blouse untucked to hide her meno-pod (aka, wheat belly, muffin top, love handles)?  Hummm, I think with finger on chin, 23 million boomer women….all dealing with the same issues I am….with money to spend….looking for something to read….

If I wrote an age appropriate book, the kind of book I’d like to read, would other lady boomers enjoy it too? A tingle of excitement runs through me. It could be as big as The Golden Girls were on TV.

An idea for a book series suddenly smacks me upside the head—a 50-year-old woman, widowed unexpectedly with no insurance, and kids in university so she’s gotta make money any way she can.

If V I Warshawski could do it, why can’t she? My heroine will become A Boomer Private Detective. A Golden Dick. Okay, maybe that isn’t a great job title, but this is still a work in progress.

ABOUT BRENDA M. COLLINS

Brenda M. Collins writes cozy mysteries laced with romance and a special kind of magic, including The Holly & The Ivy (A Frost Family Christmas) and Witch in the Wind. All authors’ profits from the sale of Stories of Chance Romance, another sweet romance anthology written with Roxy Boroughs, are donated to advance the treatment of breast cancer. Brenda is a recognized speaker and much quoted expert on business issues for writers, an award-winning technical writer, and has been published in numerous industry trade publications, such as Writers Market. 

Look for Brenda’s other titles on www.amazon.com. You can visit Brenda on her website, Facebook, Goodreads, or Twitter.

 

WRITERS ON WRITING - Blog Hop

The what, why and how of my writing life

Thanks to Western Romance author, Mary M. Forbes, and Romance Author, Lorraine Paton, for inviting me on the Blog Hop. Answering the questions prompted me to review what I write and why, a useful activity for all writers to revisit from time to time. You can find my answers below and their answers and more information about their books on their blogs.

1) What am I working on right now?

My current writing project is the second book in the Caleb Cove Mysteries. Katya Binks Came Home From Away. This first draft is created within a “Challenge Group” consisting of two other writers from ARWA. We swap up to 25 pages per week and Skype to give each other feedback. The process includes brainstorming opportunities. My projected release date is June 2014. At the same time I am collecting the what if's and maybe's for the third book tentatively called, You Can Never Go Home Jeffery Brown.

2) How does my work differ from others in its genre?

The biggest difference is possibly the setting. The first three Caleb Cove Mysteries are in or near a fictional island community off the east coast of Nova Scotia. The south shore of NS is rich with history from the saga of the Bluenose to the colorful stories of rum runners. Overall my stories are more contemporary than a cozy, less sexy than a romantic suspense and less technical than a police procedural. The Caleb Cove books deal with identity. Who are we? And what happens when our names, our professions, our personal histories are challenged?

3) Why do I write what I do?

Mysteries have always fascinated, entertained and amused me. I’m drawn to creating complicated back stories that lead to mysteries and uncovering the story behind the story. I blame it on Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and wishing as a child that I was not the daughter of a small town Presbyterian minister. My reading history included writers like Mary Stewart, Agatha Christie and later Anne Perry. On TV I like Bones or Castle. The bottom line: I enjoy books with puzzles, relationships and satisfactory endings. So, that’s what I write.

4) How does my writing process work?

First, there’s a trigger. Maybe it’s a news event, a scene out a bus window or a story someone tells me. Next I write a premise and collect the maybes and the what-ifs. My brain roars with ideas, some of which are actually useful. The ideas might sound crazy or impossible or mundane. It doesn't matter. At this stage, everything that pops into my head is recorded. Later I review, compile and create a skeleton for the story. I flesh out the skeleton as I go, using either scene cards or a rough first draft. It’s a loose plan. What I’m going to write is suggested, not written in stone, and changes as I layer my way through the book. Finally, I do a line edit, listen to it in Natural Soft Reader and present the (hopefully) final copy to my Beta Readers.

COMING SOON - MORE ANSWERS ON THE WRITER'S LIFE

On Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Calgary author, Suzanne Stengl

Suzanne Stengl writes cozy mysteries, and heartwarming romance. She is a member of the Alberta Romance Writers' Association and the Calgary Association of RWA. Suzanne is active in the writing community and gives willing of her time and expertise to help other writers. When she needs a break from her keyboard, she swims lengths at the Y, skis at Sunshine Village and hikes in the Rockies. She’s also a pretty good line dancer . . . and a very poor euchre player.

Suzanne's novella, Angel Wings is a sweet romance with a twist, and and her most recent novel, On the Way to a Wedding, is a charmer with a 5 star rating.

Ryder O'Callaghan finds Toria Whitney on the side of a forest road with a totaled car, a sprained ankle, and a wedding dress. Both Ryder and Toria are scheduled to be married in three weeks--but not to each other. 

On Friday, March 28, 2014

Author Dee Van Dyk

Dee Van Dyk is a professional writer living and writing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She is the author of three non-fiction books (Conspiracy Theories, Hurricane Katrina Survival Stories,and Hurricane Hell) published through Altitude Publishing. 

Her first fiction novel (Sin Eater, A YA Paranormal) is due out on bookshelves in April 2014.

Her work has appeared in many North American magazines and publications, including PROFIT, Canadian Living, Homemaker’s, Write Magazine, Alberta Venture, FiftyPlus, Mocha Sofa, Campus Starter, WestJet Inflight Magazine, Jetsgo Inflight Magazine, West Word, Beltline Outlook, Madame, Home Cooking, Food for Thought, Student Counsellor, Canadian Writer’ s Journal, Avenue, Moving To, homemakers.ca, canadianliving.ca, CanLearn and Visitor’s Choice.

On Friday, March 28, 2014

Author E.C. (Eileen) Bell

E.C.Bell

E.C.Bell (also known as Eileen Bell) has had short fiction published in magazines and several anthologies, including the double Aurora Award winning “Women of the Apocalypse” and the Aurora winning “Bourbon and Eggnog.” Her first novel, "Seeing the Light", (Tyche Books) will be out in November, 2014. 

When she’s not writing, she’s in Edmonton, Alberta, living a fine life in her round house (that is in a perpetual state of renovation) with her husband, her two dogs and her goldfish.