A Conversation with Mystery Author Sandra Parshall

with Sandra Parshall

We are delighted to welcome mystery author Sandra Parshall to Omnimystery News today.

Sandra's sixth mystery in her Agatha Award-winning series featuring veterinarian Rachel Goddard is Poisoned Ground (Poisoned Pen Press; March 2014 hardcover, trade paperback, and ebook formats) and we recently had the opportunity to talk to her about it and the series as a whole.

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Omnimystery News: When you wrote The Heat of the Moon, which won an Agatha Award for Best First Mystery, did you know it would be the first of a series?

Photo provided courtesy of
Sandra Parshall

Sandra Parshall: No, I saw it as a standalone suspense novel. But the publisher wanted a series, and I felt I had more to say about Rachel. I'm glad I continued her story instead of starting a series with a new character, because I've been able to work through the problems I left her with at the end of the first book. She has a strong character arc and changes quite a bit throughout the series. She began as a frightened young woman who didn't trust her own memories and had no sense of who she really was. Now she's a confident person who knows what she wants and has learned how to share her life with someone she loves. Although each book can be read on its own, readers will have a much better understanding of Rachel if they start at the beginning.

OMN: How to you categorize the books in this series?

SP: My first book is pure psychological suspense, but the rest are fast-paced, suspenseful murder mysteries. My editor says I'm more of a suspense writer than a pure mystery writer. A lot of reviewers call my books thrillers but some call them dark traditional mysteries because they take place in a small community. Take your pick! I do think a label has advantages in that it targets a specific reading taste. At the same time, that label may exclude readers who would enjoy a book if it were labeled differently.

OMN: Tell us something about Poisoned Ground that isn't mentioned in the publisher's synopsis.

SP: The synopsis makes it sound like a story entirely focused on a dispute over development, but it's more than that. The fight over the resort proposal is simply the trigger for violence and discord. Families and neighbors are divided, old grudges and heartbreaking secrets churn to the surface. I was much more interested in the relationships between a particular group of close neighbors than I was in who won the development fight.

OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?

SP: My stories aren't usually based on real events, and my characters are never based on real people. In the case of Poisoned Ground, though, the germ of the plot came from a dispute in the early 1990s in Northern Virginia, where I live, over Disney's desire to turn a rural community called Haymarket into a vast theme park. Disney lost, the farms remained undisturbed, but the battle threatened to tear the community apart and left a residue of bitterness on both sides.

OMN: Describe your writing process for us.

SP: I need to know where I'm going, where I want to end up, but I can't plot every detail of a book in advance. As I write, the story expands, new characters come along, and things happen that I could never have planned for. I wouldn't want to be tied to a rigid outline. I wouldn't enjoy the writing if I had to work that way.

OMN: How true are you to the settings of your books?

SP: Mason County, Virginia, is fictional, but I've placed it in a real area, southwestern Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. It's a gorgeous area, but the unemployment rate is high and the beauty of the landscape masks some serious problems for the casual visitor.

OMN: What are some of your hobbies or outside interests? Have any of these found their way into your books?

SP: My hobbies are photography and gardening. I'm working one of them into my next book. My great passions — they're not hobbies but consuming and compelling interests — are animal welfare and conservation. With a veterinarian protagonist, I've been able to use animals in a meaningful way in every book. Conservation is trickier to deal with because either side of an issue is likely to anger readers, but I hope that in Poisoned Ground I've shown both sides of the development dilemma. The book deals more with economic concerns, but the threat to the land and a way of life is very real.

OMN: How did Poisoned Ground come to be titled? And tell us a little more about the cover design.

SP: The title Poisoned Ground came easily, because the story revolves around a community battle over plans to turn farmland into a huge resort for the rich. It has another meaning, though, as readers will discover when buried secrets come to light during the murder investigation. I love the cover design by Nick Greenwood and feel it perfectly captures the tone of the book, with a gorgeous landscape bisected by an old, broken fence and shadowed by gathering storm clouds.

OMN: What is the best advice — and harshest criticism — you've received as an author?

SP: The best advice was also the harshest. Long ago, an agent pointed out that my characters weren't closely connected to their environment. I wasn't letting the reader fully experience their sensory perceptions and feel the world through them. This is basic writing advice, but I needed it, and it totally changed the way I was writing.

OMN: Complete this sentence for us: "I am a crime novelist and thus I am also …".

SP: I am a crime novelist and thus I am also relentlessly curious and will unapologetically steal your secrets and put them in a book. I promise, however, to change names and telling details to protect the guilty.

OMN: What kinds of feedback have you received from your readers?

SP: I always enjoy hearing from readers who understand and empathize with my characters and pick up the subtext of relationships. I don't especially enjoy hearing from someone who says, "I couldn't stand Rachel. I just wanted to shake her sometimes." Okay, that's your right, but what do you expect me to do about it? The oddest complaint I've heard came from a reader who said that Disturbing the Dead had "too many characteristics."

OMN: If the Rachel Goddard mysteries were to be adapted for television or film, who do you see playing the key roles?

SP: I think Rachel McAdams could play Rachel Goddard. I can't see any actor in the role of Tom Bridger, who is Melungeon (mixed race) and has a distinctive physical appearance. I'm fine with readers having their own visions of the characters, but most of the time I'd rather not hear about it!

OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?

SP: I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. I was reading adult fiction at a young age. But, I must confess, I never read Nancy Drew. I didn't read Agatha Christie until I was in my twenties. I always knew I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't settle on crime fiction until I had written several "literary" novels that never sold.

OMN: And what do you read now for pleasure?

SP: I still read some literary fiction, but I've found that the best crime novels and psychological suspense have everything I want: superb writing, deeply developed characters, and compelling moral dilemmas. Books like Dennis Lehane's Mystic River can stand comparison to any literary novel on the market. I want to see characters pushed to their limits, their most cherished beliefs tested, their lives turned upside down. I want to see how they survive that ordeal and who they are when they emerge on the other side. Crime fiction is entertaining, but when it's done right it's also challenging, thought-provoking, and memorable.

OMN: Do you have any favorite series characters?

SP: I'm addicted to Erin Hart's Nora Gavin and Cormac Maguire, Karin Slaughter's Will Trent, Deborah Crombie's Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, Lisa Gardner's DD Warren, and Tess Gerritsen's Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles (the books only, not the TV show). They're all strong, vividly drawn characters who feel like old friends by now. I also love Stella Crown, and I'm happy that Judy Clemens brought her back in Leave Tomorrow Behind. But there are many series characters I enjoy and try never to miss, and I'm constantly discovering new ones. If this keeps up, I'll have to devote all my time to reading and will have none left over for writing.

OMN: Have any specific authors influenced how and what you write today?

SP: Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers had the most lasting effect on me. They made me realize that ordinary lives are filled with drama, heartbreak, conflict — everything necessary for a compelling story.

OMN: What's next for you?

SP: I'm taking a break from the series to write a standalone suspense novel — it's an idea that keeps begging to be written — but that doesn't mean I've abandoned Rachel and Tom forever!

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Sandra Parshall was born and raised in South Carolina, and the first job that paid her for writing was that of weekend obituary columnist on her hometown paper, The Spartanburg Herald. Eventually she became a reporter — after putting together a feature on her own initiative and giving it to the editor to prove she could do it. From there she went to jobs on newspapers in West Virginia and The Baltimore Evening Sun. Sandra has covered everything from school board meetings to a mining disaster, health care in prisons, poverty in Appalachia, and the experiences of Native Americans living in the city. Her debut mystery, The Heat of the Moon, which introduced Rachel Goddard, won the 2006 Agatha Award for Best First Mystery.

Sandra has lived for many years in the Washington, DC, area. She currently shares a house in Northern Virginia with her husband Jerry, a long‑time Washington journalist, and their cats, Emma and Gabriel, who are properly pampered, as most writers' pets are.

For more information about the author and her work, please visit her website at SandraParshall.com or find her on Facebook.

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Poisoned Ground
Sandra Parshall
A Rachel Goddard Mystery

Gunshots on an autumn day leave a beloved local couple dead and signal the start of a vicious battle over the future of Mason County, Virginia. A powerful development company has chosen this small community in the Blue Ridge Mountains as the site of a sprawling resort for the rich, and the local people are taking sides.

No one opposes the project more vocally than veterinarian Rachel Goddard, and her outspokenness complicates the job of her husband, newly elected Sheriff Tom Bridger. Many see the project as the cure for poverty and high unemployment in a dying community. Others, including Rachel, know the firm behind it is notorious for mistreatment of employees, and they’re alarmed by the prospect of the entire county becoming financially dependent on a predatory company.

Rachel’s friend, horse breeder Joanna McKendrick, owns the most desirable land, and she’s fighting intense pressure to sell and make way for the development. When Joanna’s neighbors, an older couple who also refuse to give up their farm, are gunned down outside their house, it appears supporters of the project will stop at nothing to push it through. Soon a small-scale civil war is raging in the county.

As the violence escalates, Rachel and Tom realize the truth behind the attacks is far more sinister than it seems, rooted deep in the poisoned ground that lies beneath Mason County’s bucolic surface.