Authorsday: Mike Gerrard

1. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

From the age of about 7 or 8. My dad wrote in his spare time, mainly humorous columns for the local paper. I loved playing with his typewriter – which tells you how long ago that was. I loved comedy on radio and TV, and it was a revelation to me when I discovered that people wrote the scripts. I just imagined the comics made it up as they went along. So I decided I wanted to write sitcoms for TV. I never made it. The nearest I got was having the pilot episode of a sitcom bought by the BBC, but the Producer didn’t like Episode Two, so that was that.

2. How did you pick the genre you write in?

I didn’t, really. It just sort-of happened, as lots of things do in life. I’ve been making my living as a travel writer for about 20 years now, and that was only because I enjoyed travelling and enjoyed writing, and like everyone else it seemed the dream job. I now know it isn’t, it has its downsides like any other job, but back then I decided I wanted to try to get into this travel writing. I sold one or two articles, then a few more, and slowly it built up till I was able to make a living from it.

I’d always read crime novels, but alongside lots of other fiction and non-fiction. A few years ago I discovered writers like George Pelecanos and Michael Connolly, and began to read more and more crime as I discovered other brilliant crime writers like that. I wanted to write something that was more of a challenge than writing travel. Not that there’s anything wrong with writing travel, but I think any kind of writer would want to try something they hadn’t done before, to see if they could do it. So I decided I wanted to try writing a crime novel

3. What drew you to the subject of Strip till Dead?

I went out with a stripper for a while when I first lived in London, and it was an insight into a remarkable and very colourful world. I really wanted to write about it somehow, one day. It might have been comedy, it might have been non-fiction, but that world all came back to me when I decided to try my hand at crime writing, and I knew it would make a brilliant setting.

4. How many rejections have you received?

Hundreds, probably. I’ve been a journalist for about 30 years, and a travel writer for about 20. Travel writing is very very competitive, and you’re always sending in ideas and having them turned down. You have to be able to take that. You soon learn that there are all kinds of reasons why an idea or even a finished piece can be rejected. It isn’t simply that it isn’t good enough. It’s nothing personal. One travel editor told me she received something like 400 story ideas a month, of which she could use only a handful. That’s just the way it is.

Strip till Dead was turned down by several agents and publishers, although some of them said some very nice things about it. None of them said the nicest thing of all, though, which is ‘yes’. I got frustrated with the agents who never got back to you, who would ask to see the book on the basis of a synopsis and sample chapters, and then you never heard from them again. In a 5-month period over the summer of 2010 I sent the book to 3 agents and 2 publishers in the UK, all of whom had asked me to send it in. By the end of the 5 months when it was time for me to go back to the USA, where we also have a house, not one of the 5 had got back to me, so I decided to publish it myself. I can take ‘no’, like I said. What I can’t take is not knowing, and being ignored when you send in polite follow-ups to ask what’s happening.

5. If you have a day job, what is it?

It’s still travel writing, which these days includes updating a lot of guidebooks, writing very little journalism, but also now publishing and writing three travel websites with my wife. The main one, www.Pacific-Coast-Highway-Travel.com, is now well on the way to becoming a full-time job in itself.

6. What do you consider your strengths in terms of your writing?

I can write good dialogue. I’ve had three radio plays broadcast by the BBC, and radio really tests your ability with dialogue. I think I can also be funny, and I’m interested in people and their quirks, and personalities. I hope I can create believable characters.

7. What do you consider your weakness and what strategies do you use to overcome it?

My great weakness is plotting. I’m just not good at creating strong storylines, but fortunately that is something you can work on, and I have. One of my Amazon reviews in the States said: ‘Gerrard plots his story well and carries it off with flair.’ And no, it wasn’t by a friend of mine. I was more pleased with that one line than anything else in the review. I’ve read books on story structure and plotting, over and over, and of course when you come to work on a story, you just have to try to create a strong plot, otherwise it goes nowhere. But it doesn’t come naturally to me.

8. What authors do you admire?

John Steinbeck and Flannery O’Connor are the two I admire most. In crime, it’s the grittier writers, usually American, like George Pelecanos, Michael Connolly, James Lee Burke, Megan Abbott, Dennis Lehane.

9. What did you enjoy most about writing this book?

The liberation of writing fiction, of being free to make things up. That’s hard to do when you’re writing guidebooks! They have to be factually accurate. With fiction, if you want someone to be born in 1976 instead of 1966, you obviously need to think about the implications on the story – but you can just do it. Set a scene in Brixton? Well, if it’s right for the story and characters, you do it. Believe me, when you’ve spent 20 years being obsessed by museum opening hours and how many rooms a hotel has, fiction is a complete liberation of the mind.

10. What was your favorite scene to write?

The whole final chapter. Not because it meant I’d got to the end of the book, but because I didn’t know what was going to happen in it. I knew the main characters were going to come together in it, and it was going to be nasty, but the actual ending surprised and shocked me a little – so I hope it does the same for the reader. It was one of those sections that almost wrote itself. The characters took over, and they decided what was going to happen, not me. I really enjoyed writing both the two main final scenes, and when I put the book aside for a while and re-read it some time later, it still worked for me. Also, I had intended the book to be a stand-alone, and when I did the ending it seemed obvious that it would have to be a stand-alone. But after a while I started to wonder what happened to the characters next. ‘You can’t leave them like that,’ I thought. So I have been thinking about another book with the two main characters, though given what does happen in the final chapter, it presents a challenge. Though that’s what made me write the book in the first place, to face a challenge, so what’s another one?

Author Bio:

Mike Gerrard has won several awards for his travel writing and guidebooks, and has written for The Times, National Geographic, American Express, Michelin, the AA, AAA, Fodor’s, and many other leading travel publishers. He has published a collection of his travel writing, Snakes Alive, and written three radio plays for the BBC. Strip till Dead is his first crime novel. He divides his time between Cambridgeshire in the UK, and Arizona in the USA.

Book Blurb:

Liz is Nicola. Nicola is a stripper. And a stripper is about to die. When Liz Pendle moves from the north of England to go to university in London, her life is about to change in more ways than she can imagine. Persuaded by her flatmate Zuzzi that stripping is an easy way to make money, Liz is soon taking her clothes off in some of London’s seediest pubs and clubs. But when a stripper is found murdered, Liz is lured further into this secret world and must decide how far she’s prepared to go to help unmask the killer.

My website:

www.mikegerrard.com

Strip till Dead

US Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/4fv32zf

UK Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/48vgygc

Paperback: http://tinyurl.com/striptilldead

Recipe Wednesday - Pat Brown

Coincidentally I have two bananas that need to be used right away! Guess what I'll be doing this evening. I welcome Pat Brown with her recipe for Banana Muffins.

Canadian author Pat Brown, who writes as P.A. Brown, loves cooking and baking and has a dangerous passion for all things chocolate. She is the author of the L.A. series featuring LAPD homicide detective David Eric Laine and his lover Chris Bellamere. The series includes the first book, L.A. Heat, followed by L.A. Mischief, L.A. Boneyard and the latest L.A. Bytes. She is also the author of the Geography series, including Geography of Murder and Forest of Corpses, and standalone suspense novel Memory of Darkness.

Banana Muffins
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups (625 mL) unbleached Flour1 cup (250 mL) granulated sugar3 1/2 teaspoons (17 mL) baking powder1 teaspoon (5 mL) salt1 cup (250 mL) mashed ripe bananas* (2 to 3 medium)3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips1/2 cup (175 mL) milk
1/4 cup of plain yogurt1/4 cup (50 mL) neutral vegetable oil1 (1) egg
1/2 cup (175 mL) brown sugar
Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).2. Grease muffin pans or use paper inserts3. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in large bowl.4. Add banana, milk, yogurt, oil and egg.5. Blend with wooden spoon or spatula scraping sides and bottom of bowl.6. Mix just until blended. (Do not over-mix.)
7. Fill each muffin holder 3/4 and sprinkle brown sugar over top8. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
9. Cool 10 minutes in pan. Remove and store covered.

*Freezing well-ripened bananas for a day will make them mushier and easier to blend


Canadian author Pat Brown, who writes as P.A. Brown, loves cooking and baking and has a dangerous passion for all things chocolate. She is the author of the L.A. series featuring LAPD homicide detective David Eric Laine and his lover Chris Bellamere. The series includes the first book, L.A. Heat, followed by L.A. Mischief, L.A. Boneyard and the latest L.A. Bytes. She is also the author of the Geography series, including Geography of Murder and Forest of Corpses, and standalone suspense novel Memory of Darkness.

Blurb for L.A. Bytes:

Los Angeles' Ste. Anne's Medical Center has been hacked by a brilliant, malicious cracker. Christopher Bellamere has been hired to find out who is behind the break in. When tampered medical records nearly kill Homicide Detective David Eric Laine, the stakes go up and Chris goes after the cracker with all his skills.

It quickly becomes clear the cracker's intentions go far beyond just breaking into a hospital's computer network. He has the skill to bring the city of Los Angeles to its knees. Can Chris and David stop him in time? Or will a digital Armageddon descend on the city of Angels? At what cost to the two lovers?

Authorsday - Beth Solheim

A hearty blog welcome to author Beth Solheim today. She'll talk about her writing style and how she came to write At Witt's End.

How did you pick the genre you write in?
I am an avid mystery reader. My ideas flowed toward writing cozy mysteries.

What drew you to the subject of At Witt’s End?
Channel surfing. I flipped from channel to channel and heard someone casually mentioned crossing over to the other side. I chuckled and hoped that person wouldn’t take a wrong turn on their journey. That silly thought grew into an idea, moved on to character development, and end up as my Sadie Witt mystery series.

What type of research did you do for your humorous paranormal series?
For the paranormal part, none. It stemmed from my imagination and tidbits I’ve read or watched on television. Because the setting for the series is at a resort situated next to a mortuary, I spent time with a funeral director (grateful it was from a live perspective) so the mortuary scenes would ring realistic. I am in awe of folks in that profession.

How long have you been writing?
About ten years, six seriously. Classes, critique groups and sticking to a schedule helped me understand the intricacies of writing, marketing and the publishing process. It’s an on-going learning process.

Do you plot or write by the seat of your pants?
I plot and outline, chapter by chapter. I can’t go anywhere without a road mad and the same holds true for writing. The hardest part is developing the outline sequence because all those jumbled ideas fight for a starring role. After I have a chapter outline, writing the story is quite enjoyable.

What’s your writing schedule?
I work full time at a hospital in Human Resources, so I write evenings and weekends.

What is your favorite word?
Shenanigan. Sounds like a whole lot of high jinks, humor and entertainment.

What did you learn from writing this book?
Two things. First, if you truly believe in something, keep working on it until it comes to fruition. Second, nearing retirement is the beginning of a whole new adventure. I’m thrilled to see so many senior writers being published. Maybe there’s something to be said about ‘gray’ gray matter.

If you could ask your readers one question, what would it be?
Are you interested in reading the second book in the Sadie Witt series? Their answer will determine the future of Sadie and her wacky cohorts.

Tell me something about yourself that very few people know?
I have a wild female grey fox that comes to feed on our patio. If we entertain around our patio table, Foxy Lou plops down on the grass about ten feet away and rotates her gaze toward the person talking as if she understands every word. She’s frequented our yard for three years. She’s part of our little piece of paradise.

AUTHOR BIO
Like the main character in her Sadie Witt mystery series, Beth Solheim was born with a healthy dose of imagination and a hankering to solve a puzzle. She learned her reverence for reading from her mother, who was never without a book in her hand.

By day, Beth works in Human Resources. By night she morphs into a writer who frequents lake resorts and mortuaries and hosts a ghost or two in her humorous paranormal mysteries.

Raised and still living in Northern Minnesota, she resides in lake country with her husband and a menagerie of wildlife critters. She and her husband are blessed with two grown children and two grandsons

BOOK BLURB
Mayhem is on the rise at the Witt’s End Resort, especially Cabin 14, where no guest ever leaves alive. To make matters worse, Sadie Witt must untangle a murderous web while struggling to prevent an unscrupulous sheriff’s deputy from shutting down her lakeside resort.

When guests arrive at Cabin 14, they’re stunned to learn Sadie is their conduit to the hereafter. Clad in outlandish outfits, (clothing typically reserved for those without sagging body parts) and sporting hairdos that make bystanders want to look away but can’t, Sadie realizes one of the guests has been murdered and works against the clock to prevent further mayhem.

WEBSITE
http://www.bsolheim.com/