SS (Interviewer Mary Ellis): If
you had to describe yourself in one sentence, what would you say?
KL: I’m
a writer with a career that allows me to kill people legally.
SS: What
do you do when you’re not writing? Any interesting hobbies?
KL: I
don’t know how interesting they are to anyone but me, but I enjoy weaving and
knitting. I’m also a sucker for
cemeteries—the older the better--and am always anxious to explore them. I love the combination of history, art,
architecture. And of course as a writer,
I look at names and dates on tombstones and on family gravestones clustered
together and I always think of stories!
I’m also interested in family history and am the keeper of genealogy for
both my family and my husband’s. I
volunteer at our local county archives which gives me plenty of chances to
immerse myself in old pictures, records and documents. It’s great fun!
SS: What
was your favorite book as a teen or child?
KL: Hmmm…favorite
is tough because I have so many favorites!
As a child I remember reading “Island of the Blue Dolphin” and loving
it. As a teen, I started reading Dorothy
Dunnett’s fabulous Lyman books as well as Mary Stewart and of course, Arthur
Conan Doyle.
SS: Tell
us three things about yourself that might surprise your readers.
KL: Gosh,
I wish there was something surprising about me!
Maybe the surprise is that there isn’t one! I think I’m pretty normal except for my
tendency to plot murder and mayhem at the oddest times like at cocktail parties
and business meetings. But then, maybe
that’s not a surprise to anyone who’s attended those sorts of things.
SS: What
genre did you start out writing? Have you changed course? Why or why not?
KL: I
started my career writing historical romance.
At the time, I didn’t know a thing about markets, but I had a story in
my head, and the more I learned about how to get it published, the more I
realized it was what the industry called historical romance. I love history and I really enjoy research,
so this was a natural to me. I ended up
writing more than a dozen historicals as well as some contemporary
romance. I’ve also written YA and a
children’s book, but my first love has always been mystery. For many years, I talked myself out of
writing mystery because I thought I wasn’t clever enough to pull off the clues
and the plots twists and the red herrings.
Finally I realized that like anything else in life, you don’t know if
you can do it until you try. Thirty
mysteries later, I’m still writing what I love!
SS: What
has been the toughest criticism given to you as an author? What has been the
best compliment?
KL I
don’t know if it’s the toughest criticism, but the one I heard the most back
when I was writing historical romance was that my books were too plot
heavy. At the time, it stung, but
eventually, that criticism helped nudge me toward writing mysteries. Mysteries are all about plot and knowing I
was a plot lover made me realize I was writing in the wrong genre. As
for compliments . . . I never get tired of hearing from readers who enjoy my
work. I remember once getting an email
from a reader who confessed she’d taken my book to work, and had read it at red
lights during her commute! This is not
something I recommend, but it was nice to hear that I’d hooked this reader and
that she couldn’t put the book down.
SS: Any
other genres you’d like to try? If yes, what and why?
KL: I’ve
always been fascinated with short stories and I’ve never written one. I like the way short stories pack so much
into so little room and how they often surprise and amaze right there at the
end. Maybe someday . . .
SS: If
you could go back in time and do something differently at the start of your
career, what would it be?
KL: A
million things! Really. But then, that’s what growing and learning is
all about, isn’t it? None of us is the
person we were five or ten or twenty years ago.
We change because life teaches us lessons. Every day, we understand our world in a
different way. I can’t even begin to
list the things I’d do differently, because there are so many. I do know that if I’d done one or two or
three things in a different way, I wouldn’t be where I am now, I’d be in some
other place. Is that a good thing or a
bad thing? I’ll never know.
SS: What
is the most important piece of advice you’d like to give to unpublished authors?
KL: Think
about what you’re trying to accomplish.
Why do you want to write? If you
want to leave your memories for your family, that’s great, and that’s one kind
of writing. Do you want to
self-publish? That’s a whole other
thing, and something I don’t know very much about. I do know that if you’re looking to publish
commercially with a traditional publisher, never forget that this is a
business. We’re not talking art here or
vision or dreams though all of that certainly goes into the mix. We’re talking business. Publishers are businesses, they need to make
money to keep their doors open. Know
your markets. Target your writing. Do your homework.
SS: Tell us about yourself...
Kylie Logan is the bestselling author of the League of Literary Ladies mysteries, the Chili Cook-Off mysteries and now, the Ethnic Eats mysteries. She is a lifelong resident of Ohio and both the League series and Ethnic Eats are set in her home state. The newest League book (#4), "And Then There Were Nuns," was published in March. In addition to writing cozy mysteries as Kylie, she writes the Pepper Martin paranormal mysteries as Casey Daniels. Book #10 in that series, "Graveyard Shift" will be published this fall. Kylie is a founding member of the Northeast Ohio chapter of Sisters in Crime, a lover of cemeteries, and can't think of a better way to make a living than killing people off--and not getting arrested for it!
SS: Tell us about your new mystery, Irish Stewed, about to released on May 3rd:
KL: Murder on the menu....after flopping as a personal chef to a Hollywood movie star, jobless Laurel Inwood finds herself humbled in Hubbard, Ohio, helping her aunt Sophie run her restaurant. Much to Laurel’s dismay, Sophie’s Terminal on the Tracks is not the cozy bistro her aunt would have had her believe—it’s a run-down greasy spoon in an old railroad station. To save the dingy diner, Laurel cooks up a plan to feature alternating ethnic cuisine as specials. But first there’s the problem of the body in the booth. Slumped over a table with a receipt spike in his back is Jack Lancer—”the Lance of Justice”—an investigative reporter for local TV news. Assisted by the drop-dead gorgeous owner of the neighboring Irish store—who may or may not be a suspect—Laurel sets out to track down a killer who had no reservations about impaling a newshound. But as she turns up the heat, will she end up in the soup herself?
Irish Stewed can be pre-booked at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Stewed-Ethnic-Eats-Mystery/dp/0425274888/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460329395&sr=1-1&keywords=irish+stewed
Please leave a comment for Kylie, along with your email address, to be entered in a drawing for a print copy. US readers only, please.
