We are delighted to welcome back author Lori Rader-Day to Omnimystery News today.
Lori's second stand-alone mystery is Little Pretty Things (Seventh Street Books; July 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats) was published this month — we featured an excerpt from it earlier this week — and we recently had the opportunity to talk with her more about it.
— ♦ —
Omnimystery News: Tell us a little more about your lead character in Little Pretty Things. What is it about her that appeals to you as a writer?
Photo provided courtesy of
Lori Rader-Day
Lori Rader-Day: Juliet Townsend works at a cheap roadside motel, almost ten years out of high school, with one disastrous and short-lived semester of college under her belt. When her former best friend and high school track rival shows up at the motel one night, she's embarrassed. She wants more out of life, but she's stuck and scared the person she turned into is the only thing she'll ever be.
Juliet is a good ten years younger than I am, but in a lot of ways she's me — or actually the me I might have been if I hadn't gone to college and figured out something I could do for a living. I like her, even if she's a little young for her age, a little naïve. She has things to learn and therefore is interesting to write about. One of the important things she needs to learn is how to be on the same team with other women, and she gets that chance when her friend is murdered.
OMN: Both of your mysteries to date have been stand-alones. Have you considered writing a series?
LRD: Little Pretty Things is only my second book, and it was actually conceived as a series starter. We'll see. I like Juliet a lot, and I have many ideas about how she could have more adventures and get herself into much more trouble. But I write during my lunch hours of a demanding day job and on weekends and vacations, so the top criteria for the book I write next is: Am I excited to spend all my free time with this character, telling this story? I have to keep things interesting for myself first, so that I'll spend the time to write something interesting for readers. Right now, the way I keep things interesting for myself is to give myself a fresh story and a new set of characters to talk to.
OMN: Into which fiction genre would you place your books?
LRD: I didn't know what my type of book was when I started submitting to agents, so I called it "suspense." And then my agent called it something else when she pitched to editors. And then my publisher called it a mystery. And then online retailers filed it under "suspense." So basically? Nobody knows what these divisions mean, not really. It's all marketing, but I see the point of it, because marketing isn't about tricking people into buying something they don't want. It's about putting out all the markers so that readers can find the kinds of books they will enjoy. I love being called a mystery and of course "suspense" always worked for me. A writer friend of mine swears I could go undercover in the "literary" fiction shelves without changing a thing, but I love being in the mystery section. These are my people.
OMN: Where do you most often find yourself writing?
LRD: I write in a lot of different places. Restaurants and cafes over my lunch hour, at home on my couch. In the summer I spend a lot of time on an old couch on my back porch. I write in silence and also in noise. If I'm having trouble concentrating, I bring out the headphones and listen to music. I have a playlist for each book that I add to over time, and I guess I'm a little superstitious about sharing my playlist until the book is done. I wish I had an office, though I'm not sure I would write any more or better if I did. I would have a place for all my stuff, though. There's a lot of stuff that goes along with publishing.
OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of your stories?
LRD: For Little Pretty Things, the little bit of research I did had to do with working in a hotel. I read a book written by someone in the business. I had also been staying in a lot of hotels because of conferences and events for my first book, so I paid close attention while I was out on the road last year. I try to stay in better places than the Mid-Night Inn, but I still learned a lot.
Little Pretty Things features women who came together through the high school track team back in the day. My high school sport being the yearbook staff, I needed to find an expert. I had a friend of mine read the book in draft to tell me what I'd gotten wrong. She said I must have been a runner in a past life. I'm repeating that every chance I get so I don't have to run in this one. I also dropped an email to the principal of my old high school to fact-check if someone with only one semester of college could be a substitute teacher. My editor doubted that was allowed, even though I had done it when I was a freshman in college. Rest assured, fact-checkers. It's still possible. Juliet could substitute teach for three days before a more-qualified person would be called in. Thanks to Principal Rob Ramey for being my expert witness there. Just realized I forgot to thank him in the acknowledgments.
OMN: If we could send you anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, to research the setting for a story, where would it be?
LRD: I'm dying to get to England to do an Agatha Christie/Jane Austen/Sherlock Holmes/Harry Potter/Alice in Wonderland/Winnie-the-Pooh tour. I think I could see most of the country with that plan, couldn't I? I have an idea for a book I'd have to research in England, but that plan is so far in the future I can't begin to tell you about it. The truth is that I don't travel as much as I used to because all my free time is spent on book writing and book events. One of these days, I hope to make this trip a reality.
OMN: What is the best advice — and harshest criticism — you've received as an author? And what might you say to aspiring writers?
LRD: The best advice anyone can get about writing is from Stephen King: read a lot and write a lot. It's really the only thing you can do. You can't help but get better if you're doing both of those things and paying attention. The harshest criticism would be to tell someone to quit writing. I'm thankful I never got that advice, though I can say that I haven't always been fully encouraged. But you can learn from being successful and you can learn from failures. The trick is not to let someone's silence or rejection or full-throated derision of your work turn into your failure to keep trying. My best advice (besides quoting Stephen King): Take it seriously. Clare O'Donohue told me early on, before The Black Hour sold, that being published was running a small business. You would run a small business with seriousness, wouldn't you? So you have to go at writing and publishing with the same attitude. Do your research, learn, connect, work hard, take advice, learn what works for you, don't give up.
OMN: What's next for you?
LRD: I'm working on my third book, a mystery set in the Midwest featuring a woman who works as a handwriting analyst. She's trying to rewrite her life, but then the past won't quite stay where she's trying to stow it. The book will be out from Seventh Street Books in summer 2016. I'm also already thinking ahead to another project for 2017, for which I want to do some research this summer. That sounds crazy, but so far all of my books have taken two years to write, so I'd better get started. It's hard work, but don't let any of that fool you. I love it.
— ♦ —
Originally from central Indiana, Lori Rader-Day grew up frequenting the local libraries, reading all the Judy Blume and Lois Duncan she could get her hands on. Then she discovered Agatha Christie and Mary Higgins Clark. She may have wandered off the mystery writer path a few times, but she knew she would get back there eventually. She studied journalism at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, but eventually gave in to her dream and studied creative writing at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Now a decade-long resident of Chicago, Lori has a favorite deep dish pizza and is active in the area's crime writing community. She is the vice president of the Midwest Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and a member of Sisters in Crime Chicagoland, the International Thriller Writers, and the International Association of Crime Writers.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at LoriRaderDay.com and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
— ♦ —
Little Pretty Things by Lori Rader-Day
A Novel of Suspense
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Old rivalries never die. But some rivals do.
Juliet Townsend is used to losing. Back in high school, she lost every track team race to her best friend, Madeleine Bell. Ten years later, she's still running behind, stuck in a dead-end job cleaning rooms at the Mid-Night Inn, a one-star motel that attracts only the cheap or the desperate. But what life won't provide, Juliet takes.
Then one night, Maddy checks in. Well-dressed, flashing a huge diamond ring, and as beautiful as ever, Maddy has it all. By the next morning, though, Juliet is no longer jealous of Maddy — she's the chief suspect in her murder.
To protect herself, Juliet investigates the circumstances of her friend's death. But what she learns about Maddy's life might cost Juliet everything she didn't realize she had.
— Little Pretty Things by Lori Rader-Day
0 comments:
Post a Comment