#WriterWednesday with DonnaRae Menard

I’d like to welcome the fabulous and funny DonnaRae Menard to the blog for #WriterWednesday!

Hardest thing about being a writer: Finding the just right place to market.

Easiest thing about being a writer: Let the story build itself and getting it all down.

Things you need for your writing sessions: coffee, chocolate, cats

Things that hamper your writing: The Three C’s – coffee, chocolate, cats.

Words that describe you: Energetic, Over the top, Willing to share.

Words that describe you, but you wish they didn’t: Boring. Staid.

Something you’re really good at: Talking to people.

Something you’re really bad at: Remembering I should have boundaries.

Last best thing you ate: Sour pickle, pepperoni, and cheese snacks on Ritz.

Last thing you regret eating: The entire container of Chunky Monkey ice cream ten minutes before I went to bed.

Favorite music or song: The Last Kiss, version by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers.

Music that drives you crazy: Anything that is the same 3 lines over and over again.

The last thing you ordered online: Doll grocery cart.

The last thing you regret buying: 3 months’ worth of the GOLO diet.

Things you’d walk a mile for: The heck of it, good music, a chance to be with my friends.

Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: Anything work related that is 45 minutes of 5 minutes’ worth of information.

Things you always put in your books: food, critters, compassion.

Things you never put in your books: Usually real sex. I like the innuendo, the hint that the reader can build in their mind.

Things to say to an author: You can do this. Tell me what you need, let’s see if I have an answer.

Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: Your idea is trite, your prose repetitive, and your character a joke.

Favorite places you’ve been: Anywhere in the car.

Places you never want to go to again: Up in a four-seater airplane on a sightseeing flight.

Favorite books (or genre): Historical mystery fiction

Books you wouldn’t buy: True crime.

Favorite things to do: Eat, gab, write.

Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing: Sit through a self-awareness lecture.

Most daring thing you’ve ever done: Played spray paint cow bingo in the middle of the night

Something you chickened out from doing: Facing my dad when I knew I was totally wrong. I blamed it on my brother.

The funniest thing to happen to you: I booked a non-refundable flight for a three-day conference, and spent the time couch surfing at a Marriott.

The most embarrassing thing to happen to you: Having to stand up in front of a woman I didn’t like and apologize for my bad behavior.

The coolest person you’ve ever met: Lyndon Baines Johnson

The celebrity who didn’t look like he/she did in pictures/video: John Travolta.

The nicest thing a reader said to you: When Katie described her bad hallucination, it made me cry.

The craziest thing a reader said to you: Have you ever actually been around pigs?

Besides writing, what’s the most creative thing you’ve done: I’m a stitcher. I see something I like, go home and make a pattern. I’ve made several wedding gowns and somewhere in the process, I always tweak until I’m happy. Oh, and sometimes forget to ask the bride.

A project that didn’t quite turn out the way you planned it: I volunteered to video a wedding and reception. I got a little tipsy, there was a lot of inappropriate footage.

Some real-life story that made it to one of your books: There are many, many real-life incidents in my books. I have a large family and can usually find someone to help.

Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not: In the An It’s Never Too Late Series, Katelyn Took is not me.

My favorite book as a child: Beautiful Joe

A book I’ve read more than once: All of JRR Tolkien.

Your favorite movie as a child: The Taming of the Shrew with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

A TV show or movie that kept you awake at night as a kid (or as an adult): The Blob. I slept on the porch roof for months because it was cold out there and the Blob didn’t like the cold.

About DonnaRae:

DonnaRae Menard began writing in junior high school and has been scribbling since. DonnaRae is a hybrid author with both self-published books and working with Level Best Books Publishing, as well as with Of Metal and Magic Publishing. She is the author of Murder in the Meadow, 1970 cozy mystery series, In the Shadow of Pharoah, historical fiction series, The Waif and The Warlord, and the Detective Carmine Mansuer series. New on her list are Beneath the Fountain, Dropped from the Sky, Murder on the Small Farm, The Morality Issue, and Snuffling Up Bones, Book 1, in The Pig & I Series. She splits her time between Vermont and New Hampshire, has an affinity for odd jobs, rescued cats, and talking about her 450-pound lap pig. Check out her website donnaraemenardbooks.com. Find her on facebook and Blue Sky. Follow QR code to webpage.

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#WriterWednesday Author Interview with DonnaRae Menard

I’d like to welcome DonnaRae Menard as my guest today.

A few of your favorite things: I like real coffee, black, no hybrid flavors, fall weather, and old movies

Things you need to throw out: all the skinny clothes I will never fit into again, fabric scraps from old projects, all the plastic take-out containers

Hardest thing about being a writer: I hate the selling, the feeling I am begging somebody to like me.

Easiest thing about being a writer: Letting the words flow and telling my story out loud to people.

Words that describe you: I think I’m half as old as I am, I have a hard shell that’s fake, and I love to travel even virtually.

Words that describe you, but you wish they didn’t: I speak without thinking, can be hurtful, am not all that smart.

Favorite music or song: I love music from the 60s and 70s. The Last Kiss, a lot of classical, oh, and Christmas music.

Music that drives you crazy: Loud, banging stuff where I can’t understand the words, Christmas music that’s been redone to something modern and without depth.

Favorite smell: Fresh baked bread

Something that makes you hold your nose: Unwashed hair.

Something you’re really good at: I’m a great talker. My grandmother told me when I was six that

I didn’t have to talk to everyone on the city bus.

Something you’re really bad at: Remembering I took notes and to use them.

Something you wish you could do: I’d like to be able to sing. I know all the words but can’t carry a tune in a bucket.

Something you wish you’d never learned to do: Not tell the truth to save someone else’s feelings.

There always seems to be sorrow later when you try to save someone from reality.

Something you like to do: Have a conversation with my mother.

Something you wish you’d never done: Not had a conversation with my mother.

Things you’d walk a mile for: A friend, the joy of walking, peace of mind

Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: People who have the same two conversations on replaying tapes.

Things you always put in your books: Hm, I always try for the human element; confusion, self-doubt, then awareness.

Things you never put in your books: Animal cruelty, self-mutilation, maybe suicide.

Things to say to an author: Tell me what you’re working on.

Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: Wow, that sucked.

Favorite places you’ve been: Albuquerque, New Mexico, Boston, Mass., Ausable Chasm, NY.

Places you never want to go to again: Seaside, CA, Quebec City, Quebec, Columbus City, Ohio (I got a ticket because I was lost and crying in frustration in a no parking zone.)

Favorite books (or genre): Romance mysteries where the story isn’t necessarily all about the romance.

Books you wouldn’t buy: Self-help, it’s like doctor heal thyself.

People you’d like to invite to dinner (living): George Lucas, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama

People you’d cancel dinner on: The head of the local selectmens board, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin

Favorite things to do: Write, visit my kids, write, travel, write, eat cheeseburgers.

Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing: Oh, gotta be housework; dusting and cleaning bathroom and fridge.

Most embarrassing moment: Doing an intro and forgetting the headliner’s name. I was so nervous I couldn’t read the crib notes.

Proudest moment: Seeing my website for the first time. I felt as though I was really going to be able to sell a book.

Most daring thing you’ve ever done: Once when I was a teenager, I jumped out of a second story window on a dare.

Something you chickened out from doing: Bought the ticket, could not get in that hot air balloon basket to save my life.

The nicest thing a reader said to you: You made me cry, at a place where I cried when I wrote it.

The craziest thing a reader said to you: This character is me, isn’t it? And I’d never met the person until that day.

About DonnaRae

My writing career began in the seventh grade, where I was a country kid in a city school. I took to writing disparaging descriptions of other students in self-defense. Unfortunately, when I got caught writing during class, I had to stand up and read my notes aloud. That was also the start of my training for the one hundred yard dash in track and field.

As time went on, I had diaries, journals, two tiny columns in small-town newspapers, and wrote competition pieces for Toastmaster's International. I also had boxes under my bed filled with novels finished and not.

On April 28, 2008, I was diagnosed with stage 4 squamous carcinoma. My prognosis was bleak. I fought back and won. In 2010, I decided I was going to write and be published. Not just self-published, but by a real publishing house. I kept writing, took classes, went to seminars, book signings, readings, and conventions. Anywhere I might meet someone with experience.

At Crimebake 2019, I met Harriette Sackler and Bruce Coffin. One offered me professional advice, the other the promise to meet me at the top. I went back to work, this time treating writing like employment, not a hobby.

I live just outside of town in the type of place where people feel free to drop off cats, kittens, cages of gerbils or white rats, and even the occasional farm animal. I have a swinging door for those that need. We talk, eat, laugh, and all the while, I type.

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DonnaRae’s Books

Murder in the Meadows

Willa the Wisp

The Fairy Mothers, The Clarion Call Anthology, Vol 4, Fairytale Riot

Murder in the Meadows

After 10 years gone, Katelyn Took returns home in 1974 to find the grandmother who raised her has been killed in the farm meadow. Grams will leaves Katelyn ownership of the now dilapidated farm, but includes a stipulation regarding seventeen cats. Then there's the confused old woman still living in the farmhouse. Katelyn doesn't want to stay, but the longer she does, the more drawn into finding Gram's killer she becomes.