North Carolina's Rick Helms: Thunder Moon

Rick Helms is my special guest today. 
Such a nice guy and a member of The Carolina Conspiracy, as am I. Welcome, Rick. Have a barbecue sandwich and a glass of sweet iced tea.

Thanks, Susan.

I’d be fascinated to know more about you.

How many books have you written and in what genre(s)?

Thunder Moon, my fourteenth novel, came out in June, from Five Star Mysteries. They're already slated to bring out novel number fifteen, The Unresolved Seventh, a standalone, in April of 2012.

What books or authors have influenced you, Rick?

I was very strongly influenced early on by John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, along with Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, and John O'Hara. My early thrillers (The Valentine Profile, The Amadeus Legacy) were heavily derivative of Robert Ludlum and David Morrell. In the crime genre, I learned tons from reading the works of Robert B. Parker, Dennis Lynds, Dennis Lehane, Robert Crais, James Lee Burke, John Sandford, and Michael Connelly. Lately, I've been very interested in the work of Reed Farrel Coleman, Wallace Stroby, and S.J. Rozan.

What are your writing goals?

I want to score a multimillion dollar five book deal with Random House and retire to the island of Corfu in Greece to do nothing but write, drink caipirinhas and margaritas, and bask in the Mediterranean sun. Realistically, though, I would be content with leaving behind thirty well-written novels. I'm almost two-thirds of the way there.
What is your most rewarding experience during the writing process?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist who specializes in the study of creativity, likes to talk about the state of flow, or that almost meditative state an artist can reach where he or she is totally tapped into the right brain, and the product is transmitted straight from the unconscious mind to the paper, or the canvas, or the musical instrument. I really crave this state. Sometimes I sit down in front of the computer and stumble over how to start a new passage or chapter. The first keystrokes are tortuous, but after a few minutes I reach a point where reality disappears and the world I'm writing about is real. I write stuff during the state of flow that I look back on later and say, “Where in hell did THAT come from?” It's like going on a vacation in your head. On the days when I can really drill down and access that creative flow, I feel really incredible.
Yes! It's a wonderful experience!

Tell us about your latest release, Thunder Moon.

Thunder Moon is the second book in my Judd Wheeler series, set in a fictional small North Carolina town called Prosperity. Wheeler is the Chief of Police there. He grew up in Prosperity, and was the local high school starting quarterback before heading off to college and eventually to Atlanta to become a cop. After returning to Prosperity to take over the family farm, he was recruited by his longtime friend Kent Kramer, a local real estate developer, to start a new police force in Prosperity.

In Thunder Moon, it's the hottest month of the year, and a top recruit for the Pythons NFL team in the next county is brutally murdered in Prosperity, in a house lent to him by Kent Kramer. Wheeler discovers bloodstained bills in Samples' pants pocket upstairs, and the county Sheriff's Department lab discovers that the blood isn't from Samples, but rather from a motorcycle gang chieftain who was killed in his car in Morgan, the Bliss County seat, several days earlier. Now, in addition to finding out who killed Samples, Chief Wheeler must figure out the connection between Samples and the slain gang member. His investigation will bring him into contact with a shady ex-con with an underaged girlfriend, pro football players with possible axes to grind, a paroled sex offender trying to set his life straight, and an itinerant tent preacher who may be running a variation on the Spanish Prisoner con game. Bodies begin to stack up like cordwood, as Wheeler's investigation uncovers a series of crimes reflecting a level of evil previously unknown in rural Prosperity.

Gulp. You've hooked me!
Is it available in print, ebook, and Kindle formats?

Right now, it's only available in hardcover format. I hope to have the first book in the series, Six Mile Creek, available in Kindle and Nook formats shortly.

Were any of your books more challenging to write than the others? 

Thrillers are always more of a challenge, because of the intricate nature of interweaving plots and the need for intensive outlining beforehand to get everything straight. The availability of computers and word processing software has helped the process greatly, enabling authors to do what I call “Bill and Ted's Excellent Writing”. In other words, I suddenly decide to insert a new plot point or device, but I haven't set it up. So, I make a note to go back five or six chapters and insert the setup. I can always clean up the transitions in rewrite. With private eye novels, I very seldom do any outlining. I prefer to write them using the process that Robert B. Parker used, starting with a conversation between the PI and a client, and allowing the story to grow organically. Both processes work, but I really prefer to write the PI stories because their more fun (I actually surprise myself sometimes when the case is solved!).

How do you develop characters, Rick?

I attended a master class with Edward Albee back in the 1970s, and I recall that he said you should never write a word on paper until it can write itself. That means you are always writing, but now always putting down words. I'm not sure I totally agree with Albee, since I get a lot of mileage out of free-writing, especially in PI novels, but I do spend tons of time thinking through plots, running dialogue in my head, and figuring out what motivates my protagonists and antagonists, and sometimes even secondary characters. Being a psychologist, I understand motivation as a scientific concept, and the various theories of motivation, and I can use these to help grow my characters' personalities, again organically, so that they 'feel' real.

How do you choose your setting?

I think it's easier to write about places with which you are already familiar. I visited New Orleans several times, and explored it walking down a lot of dark alleyways, before I started writing my New Orleans-based Pat Gallegher books. With my Eamon Gold novels, I visited San Francisco several times and made a lot of notes and took a ton of pictures. The Judd Wheeler books are easy, since the fictional town of Prosperity looks very, very similar to the small North Carolina town where I live. Knowing your setting intimately makes it very easy to compose descriptions that provide readers with vivid pictures. I like to write about places where eccentric people are likely congregate.

John Berendts, in Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, said that strange people are more likely to be found in cities “where the road ends”. It's as if they search and search for someplace where they can be accepted, and finally run out of road, so they stop there. Places like New Orleans, San Francisco, Key West, Bar Harbor, etc, would all qualify. The other kind of place filled by eccentrics are small towns. In small towns, everybody knows everybody else, and they tend to overlook the quirks that might make someone stand out in a more impersonal setting. David Lynch exploited this wonderfully in Twin Peaks, with the Log Lady, the Colonel (“The owls are not what they seem.”), and even with the protagonist Agent Cooper, who seemed to fit right in immediately. I try to do that with my fictional town of Prosperity, populating it with rubes and rednecks and Mama's boys, and all the wide range of personalities you tend to find in rural backwaters.

What are your protagonist’s strengths? Flaws?

All of my protagonists share a similar set of ideals. They're rooted in the work of Thomas Malory and the Chivalric Code, which I believe to be the foundation of the private eye ethos, as stated by Raymond Chandler, who said, “Down these mean streets walks a man who is not himself mean.” My protagonists believe in a private code of behavior which provides clear boundaries between what they will and won't do. They might kill, but only under specific circumstances, and never without provocation. Sometimes they act in a way that seems contrary to traditional community values, but their behavior is entirely consistent with their codes. These boundaries may shift a bit from one protag to another, but for each one of them the codes are absolute, and constitute the personality factors that separate them from the antagonists, who will do whatever they need to in order to prevail.  For some of my protags, especially Pat Gallegher, the flaws are my flaws, which mostly involve basic insecurities and anxieties. Gallegher, for instance, spends a great deal of time wallowing in self-doubt, questioning which horn of a dilemma he will follow. There's a lot of me in that writing.

Can you tell us about current or future projects?

I'm putting the finishing touches on number sixteen, a historical PI novel set in the final days of the Batista regime in Havana (The Mojito Coast), and I'm working this summer on the third title in my Judd Wheeler series, with the working title Carolina Blue. I'm about halfway through the fifth book in my New Orleans-based Pat Gallegher series (Paid In Spades), and maybe a third of the way through my third Eamon Gold novel (Brittle Karma). I've started a standalone thriller featuring a county court psychologist, which has the working title The Four-Nine Profile. I tend to alternate between hardboiled private eye novels, small-town police procedurals, and thrillers. I'm considering doing a YA novel in the steampunk genre, and I've started the outline for a 'big book' (literary novel), centered on a very tragic event that took place during the First World War. I'm also working on several short stories which I hope will find their way into Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, now that I seem to have cracked that market.

Where can folks learn more about your books and events?

Please feel free to drop by my website, www.richardhelms.net  Besides the writing stuff, you will be able to look in on my woodworking hobbies. I have a set of pages there on lutherie, or the construction of stringed musical instruments such as guitars, dulcimers, banjos, and violins; and I'll put up a section shortly covering my summer project, building a Stickley Morris chair for my home office.

Rick, thanks for taking the time to visit, and I hope to see you soon at a Carolina Conspiracy event and certainly at the Cape Fear Crime Festival in Wilmington in February.

Thanks for the interview and the lunch, Susan.

Lynette Hall Hampton's Stetson Mold

Lynette Hall Hampton is my special guest today. Welcome, Lynette. Give us a little history about yourself.
I was born into a family of readers and writers. My Dad read western novels by the car load. When he retired from public work he read at least one a day for the rest of his life. My Mother read everything from Shakespeare to Grace Livingston Hill and wrote short stories and poems. She also wrote a column for her local paper. In the third grade I discovered a book called Cowgirl Kate and decided then and there that I’d someday write a book someday. It took many years of writing magazine articles and an occasional short story for me to reach that goal. In 2003 my first mystery novel, Jilted by Death was published. I haven’t stopped writing novels since.

I've read all of you books and enjoyed them very much. Briefly tell us about Stetson Mold.
My latest book, Stetson Mold, came out in January of this year from Wings ePress in e-book and trade paperback. It is a stand alone romantic suspense. It’s setting is an injection molding company which is located in Huntersville, NC – a small town near Charlotte. Stetson Varner dies and leaves his company and all his assets to his niece, Shelly Wakefield. When she takes control of the company, she learns that Stetson Varner didn’t die in an automobile accident as was reported, but he was murdered. In her struggle to learn who killed her uncle, she faces threats, sabotage, a potential strike and the possibility that the handsome molding manager is behind it all before she leans who she can and can not trust in the company.

How do you develop characters? Setting? Plot? And do you have specific techniques you use to stay on track?
My characters and plots have no rhyme or reason about them. It may sound strange, but my characters seem to pop into my head, sometimes uninvited. At first they’re fuzzy and nameless and without much form. To find out who these drop-in guest are I have a series of questions for them. Name? Age? Married? Single? And so on. After I get a fix on them, I start asking such things as: Where are you? What are you up to? Where do you work? Why are you bugging me? When I get the answers here I usually start writing. I don’t worry about a full blown plot, though I often have a vague idea of how things are going to end up and it usually does end this way. It’s the twist and turns in the middle that often surprise me. Though I know a lot of writers plot their entire novel before writing, I can’t seem to do it. Every time I’ve tried, the books have ended up not written or tossed in the trash. I’m not saying that I don’t plot at all, because I do. It’s simply a chapter or so at a time and as I do this I asked myself, “How is this going to lead to the ending I have decided on?” It’s kind of like a thirty-day trip I took across several years ago. I knew I was going to go a northern route through Ohio, Michigan, Montana and Oregon, go down the California coast and come back to NC by way of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. I didn’t plan some of the most fun things – the off shoots of visiting the Grand Canyon, The London Bridge in Colorado or touring the plantation in Louisiana among other things. And though I started out and ended up where I planned, I had a more exciting time doing ii than if I’d know about these things in advance.

Where do you write? What do you have around you?
I’d like to impress everyone and say that I have a beautifully appointed office, but alas that would be fiction. Because my son-in-law had to take a job out of town and he’s away five days a week, I have recently downsized and moved into a small apartment connected to my daughter’s home. I have a large living room and one wall contains bookshelves, a desk with my computer and a television in the corner. My file cabinet is in my walk-in closet and my cat thinks the back of the desk is his private sleeping quarters. (He’s nineteen years old, so who am I to argue with him?) At least it’s private and my two grandchildren are most of the time thoughtful enough to knock before coming into my area. My seven-year old granddaughter sometimes forgets and will come bounding in, grab her mouth saying, “Oh, I forgot,” go running back out and knock. It always makes me smile.

What are your current projects?
I have to laugh when I think of this question. I’m one of those strange writers who works on more than one book at a time. I’m about half through the third in the Rev. Willa Hinshaw series, though it’s giving me more trouble than any other of the series. I have completed three books in the Coverton Mills Romance series and am working on the fourth. A third of the third book in the Ferrington Men series is finished and I’ve recently written a stand alone historical romance which is looking for a home. I’m now writing the second in this genre. I like stretching my mind and attempting different forms of novel writing, but I haven’t had the urge to try my hand at erotica yet. Probably won’t do that one.

Some of this books will be out in the future. The first in the Coverton Mills series, Lady Slippers for my Lady will hopefully be coming out from Wild Rose Press in 2011 under my pen name, Agnes Alexander. Your Place or Mine? is scheduled to be out later this year from WriteWord Books. The mass paperback reprints of Jilted by Death will be out this summer from Harlequin’s World Wide Mysteries. They will publish Echoes of Mercy in 2011. I have offered Wings ePress the first in my Calendar Clan series. So, like all writers, I’m waiting to hear form the others I have out.

Where can folks learn more about your books and events?
My website, http://www.lynettehallhampton.com/, is in bad need of updating, but my older books are there. Most of my books are available on Amazon and other on line booksellers. Of course they can be ordered from the publishers: PublisherAlabaster.Biz or WingsPress.com. I keep books on hand myself and my email is LynetteHampton82@Yahoo.com.
Thank you for interviewing me, Susan. I enjoyed it.

It was my pleasure, Lynette. Good luck with all those books going at once. I tip my Stetson to you!

Lynette (in the hat) and Susan at

Carolina Conspiracy event

Elizabeth Craig

My guest today is fellow Carolina Conspiracy member, Elizabeth Spann Craig.

Elizabeth writes the Myrtle Clover series for Midnight Ink and is writing the upcoming Memphis Barbeque series for Berkley Prime Crime as Riley Adams. Like her characters, her roots are in the South. As the mother of two, Elizabeth writes on the run as she juggles duties as room mom and Brownie leader, referees play dates, drives car pools, and is dragged along as a hostage/chaperone on field trips.
http://elizabethspanncraig.com, http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com, http://mysteryloverskitchen.com

Elizabeth, welcome. When did the writing bug bite, and in what genre(s)?
I’m not one of those people blessed with multiple talents. J I discovered early on that writing was the one thing that I was good at. I started avidly writing stories and poems when I was in 4th grade and never looked back. Mysteries were always my favorite reads growing up—I cut my teeth on Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and the Bobbsey Twins, then I moved on to Trixie Belden before finally ending up with Agatha Christie. I must have reread Christie’s books ten times each!

What are your writing goals?
If I’m writing a first draft, I write half a chapter a day—this gets me through a 75,000 word book in about 5 weeks.

Briefly tell us about your latest book. Delicious and Suspicious is the first book in the Memphis Barbeque series and will be released July 6: When a food scout from a cable cooking channel is murdered, it's only natural for restaurant owner Lulu Taylor to take it personally. After all, her barbeque restaurant served the scout's last meal. But danger lurks as Lulu investigates the crime. Will she clear the restaurant's name, or is she next to be skewered?

How do you determine voice in your writing?
My voice is my natural voice—the one I tell stories in for my children at night. It’s very casual—“I want to tell you a story.”

How do you promote yourself online and off?
Since my children are still pretty young, I’m limited to my in-person appearances. I’m going to the Malice Domestic conference in DC April 30—May 2, and I make appearances with the Carolina Conspiracy mystery writers group in North and South Carolina. The bulk of my promoting is done online, though—via guest posts, my blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. Online promotion is a lifesaver!

Where do you write? What do you have around you?
I write anywhere I can! As a stay-at-home mom of busy children, I have to grab my moments when I can find them. You’ll frequently find me squeezing my writing into 5 minute blocks—at the grocery store deli line, waiting for my car to get washed, in the pediatric waiting room, or in the carpool line at the elementary school.

What are your current projects?
I’m handing in the second Memphis Barbeque book to Berkley Prime Crime this week. My deadline for the 3rd is November 1. I’ll also be promoting my first Memphis Barbeque book, Delicious and Suspicious after its release on July 6.

Where can folks learn more about your books and events?
They can visit me at http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com. I blog daily and use the site as a hub to connect to other blogs I write for. Thanks so much for interviewing me today, Susan!

It has been a pleasure. Hope to see you at a Carolina Conspiracy event soon, Elizabeth.

Kathleen Delaney and Murder for Dessert

Kathleen Delaney stopped by to tell us about herself and her writing. Grab a cup of hot tea and a few cookies and enjoy the visit.

I lived the first seventy years of my life in California, married young and had five children. Somewhere in there I got my real estate brokers license and moved my one still-at-home child, my father and mother, five horses, three dogs and I no longer have any idea how many cats to Paso Robles on California’s central coast. It’s a beautiful little town and wonderful wine country. I stayed there for twenty-three years, working as a real estate broker, and watched it grow and change from cow/calf and barley farming to a major wine producing area. The growth of the town inspired my first mystery novel, Dying For A Change.

After retiring from real estate, I decided I wanted the experience of living in a very different part of the country and ended up in South Carolina, equally beautiful in a different kind of way and an equally delightful place to be. The south is just dripping with American history so, of course, I bought a 100 + year old house in the historic district of a town at the base of the Appalachians. I even have white wicker furniture on the front porch.

I came to writing somewhat late in life. I had always held writers up on some sort of pedestal, and assumed it was something I couldn’t do. Oh, I wrote. Little stories, essays, short sketches, but they all ended up in the cedar chest. I had no intention of letting anyone see them. I assumed they were awful, and, actually, they were. But several things happened that nudged me forward and finally, one day, I got out the article I’d started about my family’s adventures with 4H. I polished it up, and sold it. To Disney’s Family Fun. For money. I was a writer.

The next step was a novel. Picking my genre wasn’t hard. I loved mysteries and had read hundreds. I would write a mystery. This was more intimidating than you might imagine. I had no idea how those clever people thought up all those plot twists, invented those characters, or structured their stories. Most of the dust jackets said the authors had PhD’s in English, or were famous newspaper people, or had been writing best selling poetry since they were in kindergarten. All I’d ever done was read. And sell one article. I didn’t realize then that a lifetime of reading had introduced me to hundreds of experts who had already taught me how a novel should go together, that a story had rhythm, and that all action springs out of character. And that’s where I started. With a character.

Ellen McKenzie is a woman in her forties, freshly divorced, who returns to her home town of Santa Louisa on California’s central coast to see if she can put back the shattered pieces of her life. She is a fledgling real estate agent, and, of course, stumbles over a body in a new house while waiting for her very first real estate clients to show up. I knew something about all of that, so thought it would be an easy book to write. It wasn’t. But I kept at it, read “how to” books, took classes, woke up early in the morning and sat up in bed with a cup of coffee and a legal pad, trying to shape a book. It took over a year just to get something together that vaguely resembled a novel. But my mother liked it.

St. Martin’s Press holds an annual contest for the best new mystery novel by an unpublished author in the mystery field. I certainly qualified on that score, so polished up my effort as best I could, and off it went. Of course I was going to win. So, while I waited, I started the next novel in the Ellen McKenzie series. I wanted to be ready.

I didn’t win, but the judge did me an enormous favor. She sent back a letter saying the book was good, but not good enough and sent a short synopsis of where it failed. After stomping around, yelling and screaming, I went back and read it again. She was right. So, back to the computer, back to class, and I finally had something that I thought was pretty good. Dying For A Change was a finalist the next year. It was published a year later, and Give First Place to Murder came out a year after that. It takes Ellen into the world of Arabian horse shows and I still love the ending. Then Poisoned Pen Press accepted the third book in this series, And Murder For Dessert. Ellen gets herself mixed up with a murder at the Harvest Festival Dinner at the town’s most famous winery, and in order to find the murderer, almost ends up fricasseed in a bed and breakfast. It has been a Booksense Notable Mystery, has had really nice reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and Library Journal and, from what people have told me, has given a lot of people many enjoyable hours. That is, I think, the nicest thing any one can say about my work and is my chief goal.

The fourth book in the Ellen McKenzie stories will hopefully be along soon.
In the meantime, I am starting a new series. There is a character in the Ellen books, her Aunt Mary, whom I just love. Smart, funny, takes no nonsense from anybody, and I have been told she needed her own series. I agreed. So, Aunt Mary is off to Colonial Williamsburg on the trail of a murderer (what else!) and we’ll see where that leads.

Best of all, I am learning with each book, drawing the characters a little tighter, letting them loose to be a little funnier or a little more clever in solving the mystery, and hopefully giving the reader even more hours of pleasure. I’m sure having a great time trying.

Kathleen, stop by for a visit any time and keep us posted on the new books.