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.

Laura Elvebak's Lost Witness

Laura Elvebak is the author of the Niki Alexander series, LESS DEAD and LOST WITNESS. Born in North Dakota and raised in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Laura settled in Houston, Texas in 1981 with her three children, now grown. She is the past chapter president of Mystery Writers of American Southwest Chapter, and presently serves as Treasurer and has been editor of the chapter’s newsletter, the Sleuth Sayer, for five years. She is also finishing up her term as Vice President of The Final Twist Writers and she is a member of Sisters-In-Crime. Her short stories have been published in two anthologies by The Final Twist Writers and three of her screenplays were optioned by a production company.

Laura, thank you for joining us so soon after Christmas.
When did the writing bug bite, and in what genre(s)?
I have already been a day dreamer. My mother died of cancer when I was five and my father in his grief left me with my grandparents for the next three years. I had one friend who lived across the street, a little girl who also lost her mother and lived with her grandmother. When I wasn’t at her house, I spent the time reading and making up stories to entertain myself and escape.
When my father remarried and I went to live with them, I started to write short stories, impulsively sent them off to magazines like The Ladies Home Journal, and always got a polite rejection. I was an avid reader and loved to go to movies. At night before going to sleep, I had to plot a story or continue the one from the night before, always putting the previews first. Just like the movies. Starting reading mysteries with Nancy Drew then graduated to romance and adventure –Harold Robbins and Frank Yerby were two of my favorite authors at the time.
I was on the rebound from a year-long marriage to a man ten years older when I met my second husband. He inspired me to write mystery and suspense. Not that he approved of my writing, especially when I wrote about him, but he was just a wonderful character. His life as a hard hat diver and world traveler spurred my imagination. He was thirty years older – I was twenty when we met; he was fifty. We spent six months in Baja California where he fished and I wrote. After a summer in New York, we spend two years in Florida and I wrote every chance I could.
I am no longer married, but I continue to write mysteries. Sometimes I feel like I have lived my life as I would have written a character in a book.

Briefly tell us about your latest book. Series or stand-alone? If you have written both, which one do you prefer?
My two published books are part of a series. Niki Alexander is an ex-cop who quit the Houston Police Department after she killed a seventeen-year-old boy in a shootout. Traumatized by this event, she became a counselor for a teen shelter, determined to help troubled teens so they wouldn’t end up like the boy she killed. In the first, LESS DEAD, Niki searches for a missing street teenager who had been abandoned by her father months earlier.
LOST WITNESS is the second and latest book and deals with a younger child than Niki usually comes into contact with. A traumatized child is found next to the body of a murdered drug mule by a street teen who reluctantly takes him to the nearby street church for the homeless. Niki is there dealing with her friend whose granddaughter is being adopted by her foster parents because the mother is an addict who lives on the street.

What’s the hook for LOST WITNESS?
The hook is the Hispanic child so traumatized he cannot speak about what or who he saw when his mother was killed. After Niki turns him over to CPS he is placed in foster care and soon afterwards disappears. Niki feels responsible and goes to great lengths to find him.

How do you develop characters? Setting?
Most of my characters have come from real life. Tara in LOST WITNESS is an older friend of my youngest daughter. She has helped me paint and tile my home, has babysat my grandkids. She has survived on the street, overcome drugs and has many of the problems as her character in my book. Ric is also someone I know from my kids and, like his character, is in a wheelchair and no one is quite certain from where he gets his money.
The books are set in Montrose, a part of Houston near downtown. Open Palms is loosely based on Covenant House, a teen shelter I have visited several times and where my son once stayed in his teen years. I have been at the street church and talked with the homeless teens at length. They were eager to tell me their stories.

How do you determine voice in your writing?
I write from Niki’s point of view. It’s easy to get into her head, feel what she feels. I hear her voice in my head as I write. Likewise, I hear Rube or Nelson or Tara or Ric. Okay, yes, I hear voices. But only when I write.

Do you have specific techniques you use to develop the plot and stay on track?
I write a synopsis and characters sketches first. I don’t always stick with the synopsis but it gives me a start. While I write I keep a timeline, and do a chapter by chapter outline. That keeps me on track.

How does your environment/upbringing color your writing?
That’s a loaded question. I find quirky characters everywhere. I listen to the way they speak and what they say because most times their dialogue and their actions reveal how they think. I’m always fascinated by why people act as they do. What motivates them? What do they care about most? What or who would they die for? I had a very open-minded upbringing in California and I find other peoples prejudices sometimes disturbing. When I come across an idea, or someone’s actions, that really annoys or angers me, I am compelled to build a story around it. Passion about an idea always will spark my imagination and turn into a story. Take whatever it is and dissect it and examine it, and do something about it in the guise of fiction.

Have you started any online networks or blogs to promote yourself and others?
I seem to be everywhere. I have a website: http://lauraelvebak.com and a blog: http://lauraelvebak.blogspot.com. I am also on Facebook, MySpace, Crimespace, Redroom, Goodreads, Amazon Authors, Shelfari, L&L Dreamspell, and The Final Twist Writers. And I twitter. Who has time for it all? I try to attend workshops and conferences, such as Bouchercon, to network. I also belong to two critique groups which I attend every week and am active in writing groups. I try to make a promotional dent, but then it’s back to writing. Oh yes, I also hold down a full time job as executive secretary for a small oil and gas exploration company.

What are your current projects?
I recently finished a short story for an upcoming Final Twist anthology and helped edit the other submissions. Now it’s back to work on the third Niki Alexander mystery.

Where can folks learn more about your books and events?
My website, my blog, L&L Dreamspell and Facebook
Thank you very much, Susan, for this opportunity.

My pleasure, Laura. Happy New Year!