Sharon Marchisello is my guest today for #ThisorThatThursday!
Hardest thing about being a writer: Marketing. A close second is the first draft once I get past the opening scene.
Easiest thing about being a writer: Proofreading. Also, talking about being a writer and seeing my books in print.
Things you need for your writing sessions: A computer with Microsoft Word in a quiet area.
Things that hamper your writing: The internet, email, social media. While I love having Google at my fingertips to look up words or do research, I’m easily distracted once I allow myself to get online.
Last best thing you ate: A piece of fresh, perfectly-prepared sea bass in a specialty restaurant on a cruise ship.
Last thing you regret eating: A chocolate brownie. (No nutritional value, and more calories than it was worth.)
Favorite music or song: Classic rock from the sixties, seventies, and eighties speaks to me.
Music that drives you crazy: I could never get into rap music.
Things you always put in your books: I lost both my mother and mother-in-law to Alzheimer’s disease, and the subject seems to have worked its way into my books. Going Home, my first published novel, was inspired by my mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s, so the disease is central to that plot. Michelle, the protagonist in Going Home, is a secondary character in Secrets of the Galapagos, and there’s a brief reference to her mother’s Alzheimer’s in that book. (She’s afraid it could be hereditary.) But also in my new cat rescue mystery series, DeeLo’s mother resides in a memory care facility, suffering from Alzheimer’s. Her mother’s situation is not central to the plot, but it has turned out to be more important than I thought it would be.
Things you never put in your books: I won’t kill an animal. (Humans are fair game, though.)
Things to say to an author: I loved your book, I wrote you a 5-star review, and I’m buying copies for all my friends.
Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: Why can’t you be as rich and famous as J.K. Rowling? Your books must not be that good.
Favorite places you’ve been: The Galapagos Islands, South Africa, Antarctica, Alaska (anywhere I’ve seen animals in the wild).
Places you never want to go to again: The slums of Mumbai.
Favorite books (or genre): Mysteries, domestic suspense, psychological thrillers.
Books you wouldn’t buy: Books about politics.
Favorite things to do: Travel, read, cuddle with cats.
Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing: Bungee jump or skydive. Of course, I wouldn’t run through a fire or eat bugs, either. I’d never cut it on The Amazing Race.
Some real-life story that made it into one of your books: In Trap, Neuter, Die, I used my rescue group’s quest to change the county ordinances to support Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate, Return for free-roaming cats, and some of our ensuing drama. The antiquated animal ordinances governing fictitious Pecan County are based on the real ones followed in Fayette County, Georgia, where I live (and they’re not unique).
Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not: When Going Home came out, one of my neighbors asked me if I really found my mother hovering over the bludgeoned body of her caregiver. (That’s the opening scene.) Fortunately, that never happened!
Your favorite movie as a child: The Wizard of Oz. It came on every year, and sometimes my parents would let me stay up late to watch it.
A TV show or movie that kept you awake at night as a kid (or as an adult): Bambi. I cried and cried when Bambi’s mother died, and I had nightmares about the forest fire. I wanted to rewrite the story and give it a happier ending.
