Please welcome Stacy Verdick Case author of an Intimate Murder.
Stacy will award a $50 Barnes and Noble GC to one winner, and a signed ARC of An Intimate Murder (US only) to two randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during this tour and her standard tour.
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An Intimate Murder
by Stacy Verdick Case
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
A Catherine
O'Brien Mystery.
When Jonathan
and Susan Luther are murdered in their home, St. Paul homicide detective
Catherine O'Brien and her partner Louise discover this isn't the first time the
Luther family has been visited by tragedy. Is it a case of bad family luck or
is there something more?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
INTERVIEW:
1. What or who inspired you to start writing? My mother is the person who cultivated my love of story. She didn’t inspire me to start writing but she did inspire the love of story. She’s one of the only non-writers I know who can tell you why a story works and why it doesn’t. I think that helped me to become a natural born storyteller. I’ve always written as long as I can remember and I think it was because she’s such a story lover.
2. What elements are necessary components for this genre. My stories are mysteries so drama, suspense, and of course a mystery. What’s not essential to the genre but is essential to my books are elements of humor.
3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel? It was a moment. I saw a young kid drive a red Spyder way too fast down a residential street, swing into a driveway and when he got out his glare was the coldest thing I’d ever seen. It was so etched into my brain that I wrote a prolog that is not actually in the book anymore, which was that scene exactly as I saw it that day. The rest of An Intimate Murder just flowed from there. When the prolog was cut, I was a little sad because it was the impetus for the whole book, but it didn’t diminish the story in any way, so I got over it.
4. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio? Some days I don’t even want people to know what’s in the bio. LOL! It so strange to have people know things about you when you’ve just met. I have to remind myself that they’ve probably read the bio. Sometimes it can be downright creepy though like I was once asked what my favorite beverage was in an interview and I said, “Starbucks Venti Caramel Macchiato.” Later I had someone say, “Can I get you a Carmel Macchiato?” I was thrown a little wondering if this person was psychic, but they admitted they had read the interview. That’s hard to adjust to.
5. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans? More books in the series and possibly a few stand-alone books. I would love to see Catherine and Louise make it to the small screen. I think they would make a great TV detective team. Like a modern day Cagney and Lacey.
6. If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and why? Digs for sure. All his angst for Louise aside, I think it would be so cool to have his intelligence and be able to dissect the evidence the way he does. Of course, having doubt and insecurity would suck but I guess there has to be a trade off somewhere. No one is perfect and if they are, I don’t want to know them.
7. Can you give us a sneak peek into this book? That’s hard to do without giving too much away. I can tell you that Catherine put her foot in her mouth in the first few pages of the book, which leads to her and Louise being shadowed for the whole investigation by a reporter. There are plenty of twist and turns to keep the reader guessing.
8. Do you belong to a critique group? If so how does this help or hinder your writing? No, I tried that when I first started to pursue a career as a writer but I can’t write by committee. Critique groups are one of those things that either work for you or the they don’t and I’m in the latter category. What I found when there were too many voices weighing in on my book, I started to doubt and second guess myself, and that is a dangerous place to be. You can’t move forward if you’re always worried what the next person will think of the scene you’ve just written. I have a few author friends whose expertise I trust. They are only give the manuscript after its complete and not one second before. They give me their thoughts and insights, and I take it from there.
9. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step? The first manuscript I submitted was a God-awful romance. Romances aren’t God-awful because I love them but mine was just terrible. There wasn’t a conscious moment of deciding to submit. The book was done and I was ready to move on, so it was sent out because that’s what you do when you want a career as a writer. You suck it up and mail it out. I try not to overthink things too much or suddenly you get paralyzed with fear.
10. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing) The best advice I ever received was as soon as the book is finished, start the next one. This is a business and if you want a career, you have to keep working. The worst advice I ever received was write what you know. That is phrased all wrong. What they’re really trying to tell you is to know what you write.
11. Do you outline your books or just start writing? I’m a complete pantser. I just start writing. I tried outlining once because someone convinced me it would make me a more productive writer, but after all that time plotting out what was going to happen, the characters took over the story. The final product ended up with no resemblance to the outline at all. That’s when I decided my time could be better spent just writing. Plotting either works for you or it doesn’t. I have a great friend who can fill a three ring binder with back story and plotting before she even starts. It’s her process and it works for her. Every writer has to find out what process works for them. There is no right or wrong way to write.
12. How do you maintain your creativity? I pursue other creative outlets other than writing. I like to take pictures. I refinish furniture. Decorate my home. Any sort of creative outlet helps refill the creative well. Creativity is like a muscle, if you don’t use it the creative impulse gets weak.
13. Who is your favorite character in An Intimate Murder. Can you tell us why? That’s like asking a parent who their favorite child is. I have an affinity for all the characters in the book. They are all people I would like to know in real life, except of course the murders in the books. They could stay home.
14. Are your plotting bunnies angels or demons? I don’t know what a plotting bunny is so I have to stare blankly at you now. I’m just kidding. I don’t plot so I don’t have a plotting bunny. I used to have a muse but I shot her when she refused to speak to me for a while.
15. Anything else you might want to add? To all the writers out there please stop making yourselves crazy. I meet so many writers who are doing this because this books said to, or that because that book said to, or Donald Maass gave a workshop and said to do this. Stop and listen to your instincts. If they are screaming at you and telling you that this doesn’t work for you then don’t do it and I don’t care who told you to do it or what their writing pedigree is. Trust you. Be kinder to yourself too. You know you are your own worst critic. If the voice in your head says something to you that you would not say to a stranger out loud then shut it down. Be nice to you.
Thank you Angels for letting me be here with you today! I very much appreciate you allowing me to be a part of your and your reader’s world for a while.
EXCERPT:
The
world as a whole is a strange place, and the people who inhabit this world are
even stranger. The Luther’s neighbors proved to be the strangest I’d
encountered in ten years of law enforcement. Considering the whackos and
ice-blooded murders I’d run into, these neighbors could be proud of their over
achieving ways.
The
street looked benign, an affluent tree lined parkway with a BMW or Mercedes in
every other driveway. The neighbor across the street had a pickup truck in
their drive, but it turned out to be the yard man’s, who happened to be
cleaning up the left behinds from the oak and maple fall deposits. Pretty to
look at until they rotted into brown slime piles on your grass.
We
questioned every neighbor on the block but no one heard the gunshots. They
lived behind triple pane glass where the temperature was never too hot or too
cold. Only one had dared to steal a glance out their insulated glass when an
older car, rusted in too many places and not carrying the pedigree of a classic
automobile, sped down the street.
“I
knew right away they were up to no good.” Bernice Leigh, who claimed a relation
to Janet Leigh, rocked on the edge of her tufted, chintz ottoman.
“Well
maybe not right away.” She rolled her hand dramatically in the air. “At first I
thought the car could belong to one of the boy’s friends who visit the Luther’s
from time to time.”
“Did
you know the Luther’s very well?” Louise nibbled the edge of a Ginger Thin Mrs.
Leigh had fanned out on a china plate, and placed on the coffee table in front
of us.
Bernice
Leigh shook her head with such force that her hair, which had been so obviously
a wig, dislodged itself and canted to one side. Bernice righted the wig without
as much as a second thought.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Stacy Verdick Case was born
in Willmar, Minnesota. After a brief
stint as a military brat, where she lived in Fort Sill Oklahoma and Fort
Campbell, Kentucky, her family moved back to Minnesota.
Stacy has written all her
life earning a High School Writer Award and a Daphne Du Mauier Award for
excellence in Mainstream Mystery/Suspense.
Stacy currently lives in a
suburb of St. Paul with her husband of twenty-years, her five-year-old
daughter, and their two cats.
An Intimate Murder is the
third book in the Catherine O’Brien series.
Visit Stacy on the web:
www.StacyVerdickCase.com
Twitter @SVerdickCase
https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Grand-Murder/265021126858004
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5094848.Stacy_Verdick_Case
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