Today I'll be talking with Judy Hogan, a fellow mystery writer, who like me uses an educator for her sleuth.
1. Tell us what you’d
like us all to know about Killer Frost.
It will be published September 1, 2012 by Mainly Murder
Press in Connecticut. $15.95 paper, ISBN: 978-0-9836823-8-7; Nook and Kindle,
$2.99. ISBN: 968-0-9846666-5-2.
I am doing
pre-sales now. For $20 I will ship a
signed copy to you early in September.
Send me an email and your address with a check or money order
: PO Box 253, Moncure, NC 27559.
Here’s the plot
teaser:
When Penny Weaver agrees to teach freshmen composition at
historically black St. Francis College, her teaching and relationship skills,
not to mention her detective instincts, are more challenged than they’ve ever
been. She falls in love with her boss,
Oscar, who is very passionate about saving their students from ending up in
prison because of how ill-prepared for college they are. When the Provost is killed, Oscar is the
primary suspect, because of his anger at the Provost for not firing the History
professor who traded sex for an A with Penny’s student Merilee. Penny’s detective friend and her husband,
Kenneth, are investigating and ask her help, but because Oscar is confiding in
her and she’s convinced he’s innocent, she doesn’t want to help them. She tries to throw suspicion on the abusive
History Professor and the Vice President for Financial Affairs, formerly in
prison for embezzlement.
After a
spirited convocation speech on truth-telling, Penny’s students lead a protest
about Merilee’s abuse, bad food, filthy dorms, but the President undercuts them
by threatening to take away student scholarships. Meantime Penny struggles with
her conflict: she loves her husband, but she can’t deny she loves Oscar.
Here’s the back cover
comment I’m especially happy about:
A charming
puzzler of a traditional mystery, this classic academic mystery debut is a
pageturner populated with layered, interesting characters. My hat is off to Judy Hogan on a stellar
debut. I look forward to the further
adventures of Professor Penny Weaver at St. Francis college!
–Julia Spencer-Fleming, New York
Times Bestselling Author of One Was A Soldier.
2. What inspired you
to write the new book?
This is the sixth mystery in my series, written in
2008. I had been teaching in a local
black college 2004-7, and I was disturbed by how poorly prepared for college a
significant number of students were. I
was teaching reading and pre-composition with the goal of their being able to
read and write at college level after these one semester courses. This was a hopeless task for those reading at
grade school level. I came to love the
students, and I wanted to call attention to how their hopes were raised by
being admitted to college and then dashed when there was no hope of their
passing even remedial courses.
3. Tell us a little
about your main characters. Which one is
your favorite? Why?
My heroine, Penny Weaver, is sixty-four in 2001, when Killer Frost takes place. The first book in the series, The Sands of Gower, not yet published,
took place in 1991, when she was fifty-four.
She is married by 2001 to a Welsh police detective, Kenneth Morgan, whom
she met in the first book, and they spend about half their time in Wales, on
the Gower Peninsula, and half of it in the village of Riverdell in fictional
Shagbark County in central N.C., where most of the books take place. She is enjoying her postmenopausal zest phase
now that her children are grown. She
teaches English at a local community college and is a published poet. She also works closely with others in her
village on environmental and other community issues, e.g., the unsafe storage
of nuclear waste, air pollution, a difficult local election.
She likes
to cross the lines that usually keep people apart. The community group, ACTNOW, is
interracial. By the third book, she is
also a small farmer, with her neighbors, as they begin an orchard. In the fourth book they get chickens. Penny can usually see into people’s
characters more quickly than the police investigators, and she usually intuits
the killer before they do.
Kenneth is
more laid back than Penny. His main
reason to worry comes from her persistence in getting herself into dangerous
situations. They normally work well together
as a team, and she is happily married, which is why it throws her off balance
when she falls in love with her new boss at St. Francis. Derek Hargrave is a lieutenant and lead
detective in the Shagbark Sheriff’s Department.
Penny and Derek’s wife, Sammie, usually solve the crime before Derek or
Kenneth do. Penny has a young adult
daughter who has had various unwise relationships, and she now has, in Killer Frost, a child by one of Penny’s
neighbors, who is a little strange and anti-social until you get used to him,
Leroy Hassel, but Penny and friends have come to love him. Other characters include a Lesbian couple,
Belle Jones and Kate Razor, very sharp women, the first in public relations,
the second, a lawyer. Then Rick Clegg is
a local African American community activist leader and minister, who is now a
county commissioner. He’s the one who
suggests that Penny teach at St. Francis.
My favorite
character, who is totally made up (Penny is loosely based on me, and for some
characters I’ve had living models to begin), is Sammie Hargrave. She is African American, also teaches at St.
Francis in Killer Frost. She is bolder and more street savvy than
Penny. She dresses and wear wigs so as
to look different every time you see her.
She’s funny, smart, blunt, compassionate, provides a realism to balance
Penny’s idealism. I never know how
Sammie will react. She always surprises
me. She lives in my mind, and I love
learning what she’ll say or do next.
Sometimes she makes me laugh, and sometimes she makes me cry. She’s my favorite because she’s educating me
about what she’s like, rather than the other way around.
4. Who is the most
memorable character you’ve ever written?
Sammie, as far as I know.
I’ll be interested to see how readers react to her.
5. Judy, could you
tell your readers something about your process of writing. Do you outline or shoot from the hip? What is your discipline?
I like to know who the murderer is and who the victim will
be before I begin. I follow the advice
of Elizabeth George in her book Write
Away: I use prompt sheets as to the characters’ background, description,
behavior under stress, strengths and weaknesses. Then I brainstorm the scenes as far as I
can. Sometimes one chapter is a scene;
sometimes a chapter has several scenes.
I may add or subtract scenes as I go.
There are often surprises, which I like, but generally, I follow my plot
plan. Then I find it easier to
write. I set aside some weeks, optimally
a month or two, to focus on the book and then write almost every day. The most recent book I spent several weeks
planning (that was the place I struggled most).
Then I wrote it a chapter a day, nineteen chapters in nineteen days,
with two in there when I had to be away and couldn’t write. That way I don’t have to keep rereading the
whole book, though I do always reread my most recent chapter before starting a
new one.
My
discipline is making sure I sit down for two hours each afternoon and each
evening and do about ten pages a day.
Generally, people see me as disciplined.
I think of it as having rituals.
I follow a daily schedule, and since I work at home (still teaching
creative writing and doing free-lance editing), I can vary my work between
writing/preparing for classes/editing and gardening and outside work, with
breaks for reading, meals, and email.
I’ve been limiting my activities and social life in recent years so I
can get more writing done.
6. What is it you
want people to take away from Killer
Frost? Do you have a message?
With all my books, I hope to break stereotypes about other
people and help my readers consider the feelings and experiences of people
different from themselves. I want the
books to help people cross boundaries that usually separate them from
others. In Killer Frost I want to make more people aware of what is happening
in the education of young African Americans, especially those coming from inner
cities, how poorly they are prepared for life in our computer age, and how
tragically blinded we are to their plight.
For me these young people are an endangered species.
7. For you, Judy,
what is the most difficult part of the writing process?
Plotting. Characters
are easiest for me, and once I’ve figured out who they are and what they’re
like, the challenge is to put them into a plot with sufficient conflict and
surprise for the reader to find the book an engaging read.
8. What are you
working on now?
I have finished the first draft of my ninth in the series, Bakehouse Doom. I’ll be sending it to some readers for feedback
and then revising it as needed. I plan
to revise next a short story that had some problems when I entered it in a
contest, and then I want to try to publish it.
It would take place right after Killer
Frost, with the same characters.
This summer I hope to do a tenth mystery, going back to St. Francis
College.
9. What advice do you
have for aspiring writers?
I have often advised aspiring writers, since I’ve been
teaching them and also was the founder and editor of a small press (Carolina
Wren Press, 1976-91). I’ve never told a
writer that her work was bad. I always
suggest finding someone to give her honest but supportive feedback, but then
trusting her own best interior sense. We
often know when someone points out a weakness or a strength, but it helps to
get that reinforcement. I also tell
people to persist. In getting work
published, be sure it’s as good as you can make it, because no matter how good,
it’s going to be rejected. You have to
keep after it, keep your faith in your work.
I myself go by Virginia Woolf’s advice: “So long as you write what you
wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or
only for hours, nobody can say.” [A Room
of One’s Own, p. 110]
10. Could you tell
your readers what are you favorite reads and why?
I’ve read a lot of literature, going back to Homer. The
Odyssey and Marcel Proust’s In Search
of Lost Time are my two all-time favorites.
I also love Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope. I often go back to reread them. In the mystery realm, which I started reading
only in my forties, I especially love now Louise Penny and Julia
Spencer-Fleming. I have many
favorites. What I love in books are the
complex emotional tangles people get themselves into and how they sort it
out. In mysteries I probably read most
for the sub-plots and the feelings, also for going into and learning about new
places, new groups of people. The puzzle
of the plot carries me along, but it’s not why I want to read the book. I started on the traditional mysteries from
the Golden Age: Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James, Ngaio Marsh, Marjorie Allingham,
Josephine Tey, Michael Innes, but in this time I also love Charles Todd,
Elizabeth George, Susan Hill, Jacqueline Winspeare, Laurie King, Faye
Kellerman, Cara Black, Cora Harrison, Martha Grimes, Sara Paretsky, Margaret
Maron. There are many I enjoy, and I’m
always on the lookout for new ones.
11. Judy, would you
please give your readers any information you’d like them to have: Website,
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, blog, you name it.
On the blog
I cover mysteries I’ve enjoyed, writers, both poets and mystery writers;
health, aging, recipes, farming (I have chickens and do chicken
workshops)–whatever suggests to me keeping up the zest in the postmenopausal
years. I often post poems I’ve
written.
So far I
haven’t joined in the rush to social network sites, but I like to have guest
bloggers and to be a guest blogger.
I blogged
on “My Black Baby Doll: The Sources of Killer Frost” on Kaye Barley’s
www.meanderingsandmuses.com back on Jan.
29, 2011, and on Jenny Milchman’s “Made It Moment” blog:
www.jennymilchman.com on Feb.15. I’ll be chatting with Sasscer Hill, a good
msytery writer friend, on “Two Women Chat About” on Kaye Barley’s blog July 18,
2012.
Sometime in
September I’ll be blogging for Debra Goldstein on her blog.
If you live
in the Triangle area of North Carolina, I will be reading locally starting
September 22, with a launch party at my Hoganvillaea Farm. If you’re nearby, you’re invited.
Thank you, Robert.
Excellent and challenging questions!
Judy Hogan
You are most certainly welcome, Judy. I’ll be on the lookout for Killer Frost in September.
