NiFtY Author: John Lindermuth

Posted on by Beth Hull

Today’s NiFtY Author features writer John Lindermuth, author of the Sticks Hetrick mystery series. In addition to the Sticks Hetrick series, he’s written four other novels, three of those historical fiction.

BH: What’s your one-paragraph pitch for the latest novel in your Sticks Hetrick series, Being Someone Else?

JL: When an out-of-state reporter is found murdered at a disreputable bar the tendency to violence spirals and the investigative trail keeps bringing Hetrick and his team back to the family of a wealthy doctor who has retired in his hometown.

BH: Dan “Sticks” Hetrick is a retired police chief who acts as a consultant to his successor. What are some of the challenges he faces due to his less-than-official standing?

JL: He has no ‘official’ status and constantly clashes with a town official who is an old enemy. In this novel there’s also Police Chief Aaron Brubaker’s fear Hetrick wants his job back.

BH: The setting of your series is a fictionalized town in rural Pennsylvania. How big of a role does the setting play in your mysteries? Would you describe it as a character in itself, or is it more of a backdrop highlighting the actions and personalities of your characters?

JL: I do see the town as a character. Its rural nature and attitude of the inhabitants is often juxtaposed to that of the ‘big city’ of Harrisburg. The nature of the small community is also constantly exposed to change which impacts on the residents.

BH: I am thinking of turning my work-in-progress into a series. What recommendations do you have for developing a far-reaching character arc? The idea is we want our heroes to grow…but not too much in one book, right? Do you have any advice or tips on how to accomplish this?

JL: It’s a gradual process. Hetrick was a widower and retired in the first novel. His offer to assist Brubaker wasn’t altogether altruistic. He was bored and irked over having been forced into retirement. In subsequent novels, he and Brubaker have become closer. Hetrick’s protégés Harry Minnich and Flora Vastine also became more important members of the cast. In the latest novel I’ve introduced Brubaker’s suspicion and a new love interest for Hetrick.

BH: Tell us about your path to publication.

JL: It has been a long road. Throughout my career as a newspaper reporter and editor I wrote and submitted and garnered enough rejections to paper a room. My first novel, Schlussel’s Woman, was accepted after my retirement in 2000 by a publisher who shortly  went bust. Frustrated, I published it through iUniverse. After more submissions and rejections, Whiskey Creek Press (www.whiskeycreekpress.com) offered me a contract for Something In Common, first of the Hetrick novels, in 2005. I now have five novels with WCP. I published another historical novel, The Accidental Spy, with Lachesis Publishing (www.lachesispublishing.com) in 2007 and just signed a contract with Oak Tree Press (www.oaktreebooks.com) for Fallen From Grace in their new Western line.

BH: What does your workspace look like?

JL: Usually a mess—sticky notes, stacks of paper, reference volumes, etc., crowding the space. As the mood takes me, I move between my desktop and the laptop (which may be in use anywhere in the house).

BH: What is your favorite book on the craft of writing?

JL: I actually have two: Stephen King’s On Writing and Elizabeth George’s Write Away.

BH: What is the best writing advice anyone has given you?

JL: The best advice I ever had actually came from a painter. When I was in high school I had hopes of becoming a painter. I wrote Thomas Hart Benton, one of my idols, for advice of succeeding. His reply was one word: paint.

I think the suggestion is equally applicable to writing. If you want to succeed, write. We learn best by experience. Write, read and persevere.

BH: Thank you, John, for joining us today and sharing your insights into your books and writing!

For more information on John and his writing, you can visit these sites:

Website: http://jrlindermuth.com

Blog: http://jrlindermuth.blogspot.com

Books link: http://whiskeycreekpress.com/authors/JRLindermuth.shtml

Bloggus Interruptus

Posted on by Beth Hull

I’m baaa-aaack! [In Which the Ever-Suffering Mother Writes More About Writing and Less About Mothering, with a Rather Large Focus on Blogging. You Have Been Warned.]

After sixteen different blog post ideas floating around my head all morning, I find myself at the computer and at a loss for words. In fact, I’ve just interrupted myself to write three different emails, post a file for critique on one of my writing group websites, and locate a book on the shelf that is totally unrelated to anything.

So. Los Angeles. It was wonderful. Great food. Some total wins in thrift/vintage shops. Enjoyable movie (Easy A: it features an adolescent who is wittier than most adults I know and thus unbelievable as a teen, yet so endearingly funny that it doesn’t really matter).

I thought I had decided to cut my blog posts down to two per week, but then I read this post on Christi Craig’s blog. The summary, for you minxes who can’t be bothered to do the research yourselves, is that writers need to practice the craft, set tasks for themselves, and  submit that work for publication.

I, the Ever-Suffering Mother, feel that I should get an automatic pass. Every spare moment is pretty much devoted to writing (as the state of my kitchen floor, the pile of dishes in the sink, the grimy bathrooms, and my lonely Husband will attest). Giving myself a Pass from practice, however, will not help my writing.

While all of my energy has been reserved for the new novel-in-the-works, I haven’t wanted to write here very much. I get an idea every now and then, but it has been difficult to focus, develop something, spend time on a deserving idea. If I approach the blog posts as writing exercises, though…maybe it could work.

I don’t know the answer.

I do know that I had a great time in Los Angeles, not worrying about the blog, or my daughter, or anything else for that matter. Just hanging out with D-Chan. It was wonderful.

Mommy Goes To Los Angeles

Posted on by Beth Hull

My first weekend away from home since Z’s birth deserves a tribute, and Z deserves a new book. So I made one for her. It cost no money and took approximately forty minutes to create. The illustrations especially are an indication of the book’s hasty publishing.

Z has been without her father for weeks at a time (usually for work), so she’s used to him being gone (although she never likes it). Because I’m always around, I thought a book might be a good way to explain what’s going on. I could just tell her, but that would be boring.

Plus, I love making books.

So here’s the text:

Mommy is going to Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is a city in southern California. Auntie Dana lives there.

Mommy is going to visit Auntie Dana, and stay at Auntie Dana’s house.

Mommy and Auntie Dana will do fun things, like go out to dinner, go shopping, and tell stories.

While Mommy is in Los Angeles, Z will get to spend lots of time with Daddy!

Z and Daddy will eat together, play together, and do naptime and bedtime. Maybe they’ll read lots of stories, like this one.

Even though Mommy will have fun with Auntie Dana, she will miss Z and Daddy and Clark very much!

But remember, whenever Mommy goes away…

Mommy comes back!

Kids are so easy to impress. She LOVES the book. She especially liked how I used her markers to make it.

Quick bit of blog business (three things):

1) No post on Monday. I have a great book to review for you (Plain Kate by Erin Bow) and I want to do it justice, not, like, write it while I’m in an airplane.

2) Starting in December we’re going down to two author interviews per month. I’ve been missing my free-for-all entries. Starting next Friday, interviews will be shorter.

3) I’m thinking of going down to two updates per week. I need to focus on my fiction, which was the whole reason for starting this blog-website. If the blog is taking over fiction time (or family time), that’s a problem.

Happy weekending, everyone!

Death in the Long Grass

Posted on by Beth Hull

This is a book by Peter H. Capstick, which, I confess, I’ve never read, although my father and younger brother both love it. No, in my mind it isn’t so much a title, but a spooky chant that echoes in my head every time I step into the back yard.

Death in the long grass, death in the long grass, death in the long grass…

Because the Ever-Suffering Mother does not have enough to do with ignoring all the housework, it is also her responsibility to ignore the yard. I would offer photographs depicting the effects of such negligence, but it is far too embarrassing.

While day-to-day yard maintenance such as lawn-mowing, leaf-raking, and porch-sweeping/de-cobwebbing suffers (and brings down property values within the immediate neighborhood), gardening is no problem at all. Give the Ever-Suffering Mother some seeds, soil, and a spade and within a few months she will give you vegetables. (Quite literally. The garbage truck driver got to take home a couple of tomatoes today.)

In fact, the success of the tomato plants in the back yard caused all manner of problems. They overstepped their boundaries. They piled over the tops of their cages like uneven, green, toppling wedding cakes. And then, then they began their pilgrimage across the lawn. I just let them drift. [Internal editor: that’s a point-of-view shift. You had been talking about yourself in third person. Me: Now I’m talking to you/myself in second person. Internal editor: throws hands in air, gives up. Me: Yeah, that’s right.]

Fast-forward a couple of months, and the tomato plants have overtaken that side of the yard.

Last week I finally hacked my way through the jungle. I wasn’t going to clip the plants completely back, as there were still a few lingering green tomatoes, but when I saw what the jungle had done to my grass (think swamp), and when I saw the fat brown slugs masticating their way through that swamp, I got a little carried away. The only reason the three plants are still in the ground is because the yard waste bin and the compost pile were overflowing.

Z was thrilled because she finally got to “break the rule” and pick all those green tomatoes.

Don’t worry, we’ve still got ten or so tomato plants in the side yard…inching their way across the long, long grass.

Picture the Dead by Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown

Posted on by Beth Hull

I know, I know I said I wasn’t going to read any more supernatural-type books for awhile. But this book landed in my lap, and it is so pretty, and autographed by the authors to boot, so fine.

Jennie Lovell believes in ghosts. Her twin brother died in the Civil War just before the story begins, and she feels his presence on a daily basis. Then, at the beginning of the story, Jennie receives news that her fiancé, who is also her cousin (by marriage, people, before you get the heebie jeebies. And even if they weren’t cousins by marriage, that’s how things were often done way back when, so go with it in historical fiction).

Jennie’s place in her uncle and aunt’s house becomes unstable (she’s an orphan), and she begins having ghostly experiences of her dead fiance. He’s angry about something, and she feels compelled to discover what. These searches lead her to befriend a spiritualist photographer (eh? eh? Picture in the title? No? Fine).

Most remarkable about the book are the illustrations. I’ll admit: I hated them at first. I thought they did not reflect the spirit (har har) of the times and instead gave a Civil War setting too much of a contemporary graphic novel vibe. But soon I got into the illustrations, which are set up to be Jennie’s scrap book, complete with her commentary and various items she pilfers from her adventures. Jennie’s notes, scribbled amongst the “photographs,” enrich the story and strengthen her voice. In the end, I decided I was sold on the illustrations.

The front and back covers of this book read like an invitation list for popular authors: Holly Black (twice), Brian Selznick, Michael Chabon, Kit Reed, and Judy Blundell. I was actually a little worried. Did the authors need this much endorsement to get readers to pick up the book? Maybe, maybe not. But the story and setting were engrossing, and that’s all I can ask for as a reader.