Here's the last portion of the Tracy Sharp/Jeff Mariotte dual interview that'll run on this blog. There will be one more section on Tracy's blog tomorrow.
JM: That was a hard one, so I'll throw you a twist on it: Who's your favorite character to write, and why?
TS: Oh, that's easy. Definitely Leah. I've been writing her for years and I know her very well. She's very comfortable for me to write, and she's a lot of fun. She's always surprising me. She makes me laugh, too. I love writing her.
What is your writing process like? What does a writing day look like for you?
JM: My writing process changed a lot when I took a day job last year. The old way--and the way I hope to get back to, sooner rather than later, was that I would head downstairs to my home office after breakfast, check email, then write until lunch. After lunch, write some more. Of course, other tasks sometimes interfered--correspondence, phone calls, promotion, etc. But it was pretty much a 7-8 hour writing day, every day, which enabled me to be pretty prolific.
Now it's mostly weekends. The day job is about 80 minutes from home, so adding the round-trip commute to the 9-hour workday doesn't leave a lot of time for writing. I do hae a digital recorder in the car, so if I have inspiration I can make notes, or even record whole blocks of text, but I have to be pretty deeply into a book to be able to write that way. On weekends, I'll do as I described above (though I also have to fit my various ranch and home chores around the writing). It has definitely slowed my output, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it has also made me more selective about what projects I choose to take on.
We've mostly been talking about your Leah Ryan books here, but you've done others as well. If you were only allowed to write in one genre, would you stick with crime/mystery stuff, or pick something else altogether? On the flip side, are there genres you're dying to work in but haven't yet?
TS: I love the crime/mystery stuff. In fact, the two horror novels I'm working on, one being a young adult book, both are mysteries as well. Some how I always end up making a story a mystery. My novels are kind of a mish-mash of genres. They are crime/mystery/thriller/horror. But then, the thriller genre is considered to be a sub-genre of horror. I'd say my favorite is the mystery/crime stuff for sure.
Genres I'm dying to work in. I'd love to write a sci-fi novel. But I can guarantee it would end up being more horror than sci-fi, and it would have a hefty dose of mystery and at least a sprinkling of the erotic.
Are you a pantser or plotter?
Okay, we're cutting me off before I answer that. You'll find the answer at Tracy's blog, and we'll post here when it's up over there.
In the meantime, here are the covers of the first two Leah Ryan mysteries:
And to find out more about them, check here:
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