Getting to know Suspense Author, Bill Schweigart

Patricia: Bill, I’m so glad you could be with us today. Please tell us, what are your favorite things to do when you’re not reading or writing?

Bill: With a busy work schedule, an active family, and a new puppy, there’s barely even time to read or write. When I can carve out some time, I usually put the earbuds in and get a little exercise on the wooded trails of Arlington. I’m also a massive comic book fan, so whatever I’m doing, there’s a good chance I’m doing it while secretly pretending I’m Batman. 

Patricia: What’s your favorite color? Why?

Bill: Any shade of blue. It’s calm and serene and life is anything but.

Patricia: How would you describe yourself, personality wise?

Bill: I once took the Myers-Briggs personality test and the results stated, “You are an introvert, but no one will believe you when you tell them.” I was also voted my high school’s “Most Organized” senior, a category they created just for me. In other words, sorry ladies – I’m married. 

Patricia: Do you like to travel? If so, what are some of your favorite places to go and/or what was your favorite vacation?

Bill: There are a couple of places in particular I’ve always been enamored with and my thriller, Slipping The Cable, makes good use of both of them. The first is Ocean City, the perfect Jersey Shore resort town. I’ve been vacationing there since I was a little boy and no matter how old I get, it still retains its childhood, summertime magic for me. Key West also has a strong pull on me. When I was in the Coast Guard, we sailed into the rowdy little island and I was immediately enchanted by it. My novel hinges on the tense dynamic between Kelly Sensor, the youngest officer aboard the Coast Guard Sentinel, and his vengeful captain, Aregood. When I needed an idyllic home town for Kelly to hail from to contrast the danger and claustrophobia of his shipboard life, I naturally chose Ocean City. And when Kelly and Aregood’s battle of wills explodes into disaster, the young officer hopes to escape to Key West, but paradise becomes a dead end when his captain pursues him. And I just completed the first draft of my latest novel, The Beast of Barcroft, in which something unnatural emerges from – you guessed it – the woods of Arlington, Virginia to stalk its residents. So if I love a place, I mythologize it. It’s a good excuse to spend time in my favorite places in my head when I can’t be there in person. 

Patricia: How would you complete this sentence? If I won a million dollars, I would …

Bill: say, “No more questions, don’t you people know I’m a MILLIONAIRE?” Then I would jump into my custom-made Batmobile and floor it, leaving everyone choking on a cloud of dust. The universe will never grant me a million dollars, Pat. I would abuse it.

http://tinyurl.com/bxosf3q

Mystery of the Month, "Murder's Last Resort"

Welcome to the Sapphire Silver Pines Orlando Resort where guests are checking out--permanently. The tidy world of sophisticated dinners and turn-down treats turns topsy-turvy for Maya French, the manager's wife, when other Sapphire executives turn up as dead as a polished doorknob. Maya dodges bullets--literally--and police suspicion as she hunts for the killer. The fun beaches of Florida turn deadly with this atmospheric cozy. —Sally Carpenter, author of The Baffled Beatlemaniac Caper

 

“…smart, funny, tough and sparkles with insight. She has created one of the best heroines of mystery to come along in decades. The unstoppable, unsinkable, unpredictable Maya French is the bastard literary child of Agatha Christie and Lt. Colombo.” –Kinky Friedman 

Buy link:

http://www.amazon.com/Murders-Last-Resort-French-Mystery/dp/1610090497/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365272268&sr=1-1&keywords=murder%27s+last+resort

Marta Chausée is a Southern California author, poet, playwright and artist.  Women lead sequential lives and Marta is no exception. She has been many things-- junk mail envelope stuffer, foreign language teaching assistant, boutique owner, forensic document examiner, corporate wife, mother, mental health therapist and life coach.  She brings these experiences and her skewed take on life to her creative expression.

Her first full-length novel, Murder's Last Resort, available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com was a winner in the 2011 Dark Oak Mystery contest and her creative non-fiction and poetry have won various awards.  She has been published in Carnival Literary Magazine, Left Coast Literary Review, MoSAiC Literary Review, Internal Family Systems newsletter, Trauma Intervention Program newsletter and The Lowry News in Denver.

Marta is a wanderer with a long history of foolhardy adventures.  She has slept in the luggage rack of a train compartment from Gibraltar to Madrid, and once crossed the Sahara in a beat down, rusty old Jeep with three friends and fifteen crazed Moroccans. Three years ago, she explored the streets of Alexandria, alone and happy, for twelve hours.  These days, she takes long walks, longer bike rides and dances through her life.

Mystery Author of the Month, Kaye George

Patricia: Kaye, I’m pleased to have you with us today. Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? Did your childhood contribute to your desire to be a writer?

Kaye: I grew up in northern Illinois, but have lived in many parts of the US since leaving college. Unfortunately, I had a very happy childhood, so don’t have early-life trauma to blame for my turning to fiction for self-expression. We had a wonderful library that I visited often. My mother was also an avid reader and I think coming from a reading family helped give me the urge to write. I’ve made up stories my whole life. I remember narrating my crayon drawings. Later, when I was in elementary school, I drew comic strips and wrote two “novels” in 5th or 6th grade. They probably were about 10 pages long. I guess I was born wanting to write. My mother often said she wanted to write a book, so I’m kind of living her dream.

Patricia: Where do you live now? Do you use that locale for settings in your novels?

Kaye: I tend to use places I used to live for my settings. I think the distance helps distill the setting for me. If I wrote about where I’m living now, there would be too many details to get in the way. At the moment, I’m living in a very small town outside Waco, TX. My first series published used the Wichita Falls, TX, area, where I lived 9-11 years ago. The book coming out in April will be set back in Illinois where I grew up, and the series debuting with Berkley Prime Crime in 2014 will be set in Minneapolis, where I lived in the early 1980s.

Patricia: What inspired you to write your most recent novel?

Kaye: EINE KLEINE MURDER, published this month by Barking Rain Press, was started a few years ago. I recently picked it up again and, after dusting it off and rewriting, turned into an amateur sleuth mystery featuring a classical musician. That character is close to my heart because I was “writing what I know” with Cressa Carraway. I used my own mother’s summer cabin for the setting, and my own love of classical music for the sleuth character. I’m a classically trained violinist and have done a bit of arranging and composing. I would love to have been a conductor, so my ambition for Cressa, after she finishes writing her composition and solving the mystery of her grandmother’s death, is that of being a symphony conductor. If this gets off the ground, I intend to take Cressa to lots of places with her conducting career, maybe even to Europe.

Patricia: When did you “know” that you wanted to be a writer?

Kaye: As I’ve said above, I’ve never not wanted to write. I knew, as soon as I learned to read, that words could be written and that I needed to write them.

Patricia: Name three of your favorite authors in the mystery/suspense genre. What makes them your favorites?

Kaye: I’ll have to go with my childhood and early adult favorites. If I expanded to present-day writers I could never limit them to three! Rex Stout, Dick Francis, and Agatha Christie. They’re my favorites simply because they’re the first mystery writers I read. I’ve never been bored or dissatisfied by a single book from any of these three.

BIO: Kaye George is a short story writer and novelist who has been nominated for Agatha awards twice. She is the author of three mystery series, the Imogene Duckworthy humorous Texas series, the Cressa Carraway musical mystery series, and the FAT CAT cozy series with Berkley Prime Crime (the last will debut in 2014). She reviews for "Suspense Magazine", writes for several newsletters and blogs, and gives workshops on short story writing and promotion. Kaye lives in Texas, near Waco.
  

Purchase info:
CHOKE
Available at:
(http://www.amazon.com/Choke-Imogene-Duckworthy-Kaye-George/dp/1477571507/)
as well as Ingram.

SMOKE
Available at:
(http://www.amazon.com/Smoke-An-Imogene-Duckworthy-Mystery/dp/1478146494/)
as well as Ingram.

BROKE
Available at:
(http://www.amazon.com/Broke-Imogene-Duckworthy-Mystery-Volume/dp/1480032328/)
as well as Ingram.
 

FAT CAT cozy series from Berkley Prime Crime, coming 2014 http://kayegeorge.com/


This just in! Kaye's most recent novel is available for purchase at the following links:

http://www.amazon.com/Kleine-Murder-Carraway-Musical-Mystery/dp/1935460641/

http://www.barkingrainpress.org/products/eine-kleine-murder/