Today Suspense Sisters welcomes Award-winning Mystery Author Lorena McCourtney.
Lorena is giving away a copy of her book, DYING TO READ. If you'd like to be entered in the drawing, please leave a comment and you must include your contact information.
Lorena McCourtney is a long-time resident of Southern Oregon and enjoys
using Oregon settings in her books. She wrote numerous short stories for
children before moving on to romances and now to mysteries, often with a
bit of humor. She won the American Christian Fiction Writer's Mystery
"Book of the Year" and twice won the Daphne Du Maurier Award of
Excellence.
I met Lorena (Elizabeth here) when I lived in Oregon. I hadn't yet sold my first novel to a publisher and was writing book reviews. Lorena contacted me to review her mystery, Stranded. We were both thrilled and surprised to have another Christian fiction writer living in the same small town in Oregon. So we started getting together for lunch once in a while. Over the years, Lorena has been a great encouragement and friend to me, and I'm so blessed that God brought us together.
We're honored to have her with us today.
S.S: Do you write full time? If the answer is no, what else do you do?
If you are a full time author, what other jobs did you have in the past?
McCourtney: I still write full time, more or less. Although I’m not
quite as full time as when I was younger. I’ve been a writer for a lot of years
now, but it wasn’t what I started out to be. I worked my way through college
with a job in a seed laboratory, and earned a BS degree in agriculture. Which
probably doesn’t often lead to a career as a romance and mystery writer! At the
time what I wanted was a big ranch, or maybe do some writing on agricultural
subjects. Unfortunately, I turned out to be less than thrilled writing about
hog raising and making sausage, which was what they wanted at the meat-packing
company where I got my first job out of college. I then worked at various office jobs until I
quit to be a full-time Mom and write children’s stories, and eventually moved
on to romances and mysteries.
S.S: Tell us about
the moment you finally felt like a “real author”?
McCourtney: I’ve had
42 books published, and sometimes I still feel like an imposter. Sometimes at the beginning of a new book, I
feel as if there’s no way I can do this. A “real author” should know exactly
what to do – and I don’t! So I guess I’m still waiting for the “real author”
moment.
S.S: Why mystery? Do you write in any other genres?
If so, what?
McCourtney: I started
out, when I left magazine-length writing for both children and the womens’
market, doing mass-market romances. I think I did 24 of them. When I decided to
switch to strictly Christian fiction, I still wrote romances. But in one of
them I tossed in a murder and a mystery, and I thought – hey, I like this. So
after a couple more romances, I changed to Christian mysteries and that’s what
I’ve been doing ever since. I like the more complicated twists and turns. Sometimes
I don’t even know who the killer is myself when I start out, or sometimes the
killer changes halfway through a book. So that’s fun.
Mysteries do take a
fair amount of research, especially, for me, on police procedure and legal
details. And I sometimes wonder if
there’s some Big Brother out there suspicious of why I’m looking up how to
embezzle a fortune or build an explosive device.
S.S: How does your
faith play into your writing?
McCourtney: Faith is
an integral part of my writing now. I want my writing to serve the Lord, and I
think that means putting my beliefs into the story. I see reviews of my books
occasionally that say there’s too much “religion” in some of them, but my own
feeling is that if I haven’t put enough of a faith-based foundation in my
characters and plot to bring some complaints, then I probably haven’t put
enough in. But I do want to keep from
sounding preachy or holier-than-thou. I want the faith to flow out of the
characters themselves.
S.S: Tell us about your current release.
McCourtney: My latest release is“Dying to Read,” Book #1 in
the Cate Kinkaid Files series from Revell. Cate, desperate for a job, goes to
work as an assistant private investigator in her Uncle Joe’s Belmont
Investigations business. Her first assignment is supposed to be quick and easy,
no danger or mayhem, definitely no murder. Instead, she soon finds herself up
to her elbows in Whodunit ladies, a paint-blobbed hunk, a deaf white cat – and
killers.
S.S: Where did you get your inspiration for this book?
McCourtney: I’d been thinking a lot about so many people out
of work. Even people with good education and experience may not be able to find
a job, and my Cate is one of them. She first thinks of working as an assistant
private investigator as strictly temporary, but the Lord often has different
plans than we do.
S.S: How do you come up with such interesting and unique
characters?
McCourtney: The world is
full of interesting and unique people! I never use a character based exactly on
a real person, but I do like to take bits and pieces of real people and meld
them into a character for a story. Or I sometimes pluck out a little bit of
myself to put in a character. This was especially true in my Ivy Malone
character, the woman who feels she has aged into invisibility. A definite part
of me! I like both real people and book characters who are on the quirky side,
so that’s the way some of mine are too.
S.S: What is the main thing you hope readers remember from your
story?
McCourtney: I often tend
to use the theme that God is in control. He may not take care of things exactly
the way we’d prefer, or the style to
which we’d like to become accustomed, but he will never abandon us. He’s always
there.
S.S: Who is your
favorite character in this book and why?
McCourtney: My main
character, Cate Kinkaid, of course! I like her because she gets herself into
strange situations, but she’s fun and resourceful, never a quitter.
S.S: What are you working on now?
McCourtney: “Dolled Up to Die,” Book #2 in the Cate Kinkaid Files is
already written and is scheduled for release sometime in mid-2013. So right now I’m working on Book #3 in the
series, title not decided on yet.
S.S: Now let’s get a little
personal. Name two things on your “bucket list” that you haven’t done yet.
McCourtney: One item has nothing to do with writing. I’ve long wanted to climb Ayers Rock in
Australia (though I think it may have a different name now). Why? Good question. Especially since a recent fall off a ladder reminded
me I’m not great in the climbing department.
But I’d still like to do it.
Another is that I’ve long had a futuristic story simmering in the back
of my head. It’s way out of my usual brand of writing in romance or mystery, so
maybe no one would ever read it if I did write it. But it keeps simmering.
Closer than that, however, on the “list” is doing another book in the Ivy
Malone Mysteries series that readers keep clamoring for.
S.S.: Where can readers find you on the internet?
Or just put my name in a search engine such as Google, and you can
never tell what might show up!
S.S.: Anything else you’d like to tell or share with us?
McCourtney: Just that hearing
from readers is one of the best parts of being a writer. I try to answer every
letter or e-mail I receive, though I’m sometimes a little slow. You can go to
my website and there’s contact information on there. Or I should get anything
sent to: lorena.mccourtney@facebook.com
Thank you for joining us today, Lorena!