We are delighted to welcome author Teresa Watson to Omnimystery News today, courtesy of Great Escapes Book Tours, which is coordinating her current book tour. We encourage you to visit all of the participating host sites; you can find her schedule here.
Teresa's second mystery in her Ghost Writer's series is Who Invited the Ghost To Dinner? (Teresa Watson; February 2016 ebook format) and we recently had the opportunity to spend some with her talking about her work.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to your series character. What is it about her that appeals to you as a writer?
Photo provided courtesy of
Teresa Watson
Teresa Watson: My lead character is Camille (Cam) Shaw. She's a ghostwriter. (I'm afraid she's not allowed to mention the names of people she's worked with. Those confidentiality rules, you know). Things are going fairly well for her, until she is asked by a ghost to find his murderer. Needless to say, being able to talk to ghosts all of a sudden is rather unnerving.
What appeals to me is the interaction with the ghosts. I love how she's the only one who can see them, so she has to watch what she says around her family and friends. She's also a preacher's kid, so the existence of ghosts is not something that was generally acknowledged as she was growing up. She's having to balance her religious beliefs against what is happening. At some point, I'm sure she's going to have to tell her father about this. That should be an interesting conversation.
OMN: Who Invited the Ghost To Dinner? is the second book in the series. How has Cam changed since she was first introduced?
TW: I try to develop my characters over time. The reason being is because if these things were to happen to a person in real life, then it would be safe to assume that it would affect them in some way. You can't just have someone suddenly start talking to ghosts, and not expect them to change in some way. As this series progresses, I expect to see Cam really struggle with the implications of this newfound ability, and how it affects her relationships, especially with her parents and her boyfriend, who happens to be the chief of police. This isn't something that she'll be able to keep secret forever, so I anticipate her becoming something of either a local celebrity (for the paranormal crowd), or the town oddball.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?
TW: Cam is a lot like me. I am a preacher's kid, a writer, a redhead, love Dr Pepper, sports, and I'm close to my family. Grandma Alma is based upon my late grandmother, Edna Anna Alma Kersten Altman; Jim and Charlotte Shaw are based on my parents (also named Jim and Charlotte). Like Jim in the story, my father was also a military veteran.
As for the situations, some of the conversations between Jim and Cam are similar to ones that Dad and I have had over the years. Not word for word, but close enough for me to write about them first hand. Cam is a bit of a klutz; my friends call me Queen Klutz. I should own stock in medical supplies, I'll put it that way.
OMN: How true are you to the settings in the books?
TW: The Ghostwriter stories take place in a small Texas town called Waxahachie, which is where I live. It's just south of Dallas. Our town square has our famous courthouse in the middle (if you've seen Tender Mercies, Places in the Heart, or Walker, Texas Ranger, you've probably seen it). I've done my best to stay true to the local environment. The community theatre is located in the park; it is hexagon shaped, and it was built in the early 1900s. The police station is about two blocks from the old courthouse, just like in the story.
I lived in the area for a while when I was growing up, and after I got married, we built a house here. So, in a way, it was like coming home. This area has a beautiful, rich history that a lot of people don't know about, so I do my best to make sure Cam and the gang represent it well.
OMN: If we could send you anywhere in the world to research the setting for a book, where would it be?
TW: I would take my mom and go to England and Scotland. If Texas has a beautiful, rich history, just magnify that a thousand times over for England/Scotland. Our ancestors come from Scotland, so I would love to go there and do some research. Wouldn't it be wonderful to set a ghostwriter book in a haunted Scottish castle?
OMN: Create a Top 5 list for us on any topic.
TW: Top 5 favorite films:
1. The Quiet Man
2. McClintock!
3. El Dorado
4. The Longest Day
5. The Man with No Name Trilogy
OMN: What's next for you?
TW: Book-related, I'm working on the eighth book of the Lizzie Crenshaw Mysteries (my first series), Death Drives a Zamboni. Then I'll work on the next Ghostwriter book, which we have an idea for, but no title. Personally, road trip to Missouri next month! Yep, I'm driving up there in my van, so my mother can take the van and go to Myrtle Beach, without me. Something seriously wrong with that …
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Teresa Watson is the daughter of a semi-retired Methodist minister, and has spent most of her life living in Texas and New Mexico (and no, she is not a native Texan; she was born in the state of Washington). She graduated from West Texas A&M University with a bachelor's degree in 2000. She taught school for a couple of years before realizing that she really wanted to spend her time writing. She's a daughter, mother, wife, sister, granddaughter. Currently, she lives in North Texas with her husband, and her son has gone off to college. She has a wicked sense of humor and finds almost anything funny.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at MyFunnyViewOfLife.com and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Who Invited the Ghost To Dinner? by Teresa Watson
A Ghost Writer Mystery
Publisher: Teresa Watson
Cam Shaw is hoping that her life will be ghost-free from now on. But that hope dies with the appearance of Mac "the Faker" Green, a wise-cracking ghost from Vegas who has followed her grandmother home. And during the opening night of Blithe Spirit, someone has sent Susan Ingram to her ghostly afterlife.
What does her death have to do with the death of her mother-in-law fifty years ago? Who is trying to wipe out the Ingram family one person at a time? And when will that Vegas ghost stop sticking his nose into Cam's business?
— Who Invited the Ghost To Dinner? by Teresa Watson. Click here to take a Look Inside the book.
