Christine Carbo’s Montana mysteries combine nerve-ending suspense with serious questions of the human heart - like whether frayed lives ever mend, or loneliness ever ends.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Christine talks about why the West is seen as a place of personal reinvention in the American psyche, and why she – like Steinbeck – “loves Montana.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

• How third grade shyness nearly sabotaged her dreams . . .

• And Steven Spielberg's (podcast) advice saved them

• The West as a place of personal re-invention

• Why 'saying Yes' helped her get started

• The writers she admires most

• And why unpublished writers should writing conferences

Where to find Christine Carbo:

Website: http://www.christinecarbo.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christinecarboauthor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/@christine_carbo

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christine.carbo/

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

But now here’s Christine

Jenny: Hello there Christine and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us…

Christine: Thank you so much, it's great to be on your show.

Jenny: And just so readers are aware- you're in Montana and I'm in Auckland- we're linking across the globe! You're entering fall now aren't you - is it late summer or early fall?

Christine: It's still pretty hot- it's late summer, there's no signs of fall yet but it won't be far away! I would say within 6 weeks, we'll be starting to get into some fall.

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning - was there a “Once Upon A Time” moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction? And if there was a catalyst, what was it?

Montana suspense author Christine Carbo

Christine: This is a difficult question for me, because I don't remember any very specific kind of turning point. Once I heard this quote on a video by Stephen Spielberg, and he mentioned your dreams kind of whisper to you; they don't push out to you, you just have to kind of listen.

I don't think I heard that whisper properly until I was in late high school, beginning college and there was a vague sense that I wanted to write a book, or a novel.  I just kind of had these stories in my mind that I could kind of see in my head playing out.

I had this notion that I wanted to write them down - they weren't even short stories, they were long. I knew that if I ever did it, it'd have to be a novel. Yet I totally didn't have the confidence to do that, I was not prepared to do that. I wasn't even a huge, well read teenager at that point.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that, but I kind of had this approach avoidance thing with reading going on for a long time. When I was little, I was told in third grade that I couldn't read, and they were thinking of holding me back because they thought I had trouble reading.

I kind of did have a little trouble reading, but mostly it was shyness because in those days they would make you stand up and read in front of the whole class. It seemed like that was the way maths was done too- stand up and "what's 8x7?"

I would completely freeze. Well, the same thing would happen when they made me stand up and read in front of the whole class; I was just painfully shy. I couldn't do it. So that was the barometer- can she read or not? And actually, I was able to read, and I was not that person  they were seeing, I would just kind of get gun shy that I wouldn't be able to do it. To cut a long story short, they didn't hold me back but I think that little voice...

Grace Burrowes is a New York Times best-selling romance author who started out writing for the sheer fun of amusing herself.  She’d written close to two dozen books and two million words before she ever thought of publishing anything.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Grace talks about why ”the joy of the pen” is its own reward,  and being  a multiple RITA finalist and  author of more than 70 Regency and Scottish romances.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Her amazing output before she published anything

Why Regency is so popular with readers

How  romance has changed in the last decade

The way romance saved her from despondency 

The writers she admires most

What she'd do differently second time around

Where to find Grace Burrowes: 

Website: http://graceburrowes.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Grace-Burrowes

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/grace-burrowes

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Author Grace Burrowes

Jenny: But now, here’s Grace .  Hello there Grace and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Grace: It is wonderful- and I do mean wonderful- to be here.

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning - was there a “Once Upon A Time" moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if there was a catalyst, what was it?

Grace: Well I think I have recounted elsewhere, the idea that I came upon a book - I was saving it for a cold, dark, lonely night and the book just didn't do the job. It was a little disappointing and I had the thought, the same as many of us have; I bet I could do this, I bet I could write a book. I did begin to write.

A catalyst though would have been my Master's degree. I am a lawyer, but I went back to school to get my masters degree in conflict, and conflict resolution. My adviser asked me, "if you could write anything in the world for your master's thesis, what would you write?"

I told him, I would write a novel. That novel would have two lawyers as the protagonists- one of them would love the legal system, one of them would see it as a necessary evil and would have had experience with many of the ways it's flawed. I'd make it a romance.

So my adviser said, well why don't you do that! I wasn't expecting a graduate adviser to advise me to write fiction, but I just had the best time. It wasn't my first attempt at fiction- but it was a catalyst in the sense that the book had a theme; 'what is justice?' That made writing the romance more of a challenge and more fun.

So I'd say putting together that manuscript was a turning point for two reasons; first of all, because it was a more complicated process then simply "writing a love story because that's what I love to write". Also, my adviser read it when it was finished, and to that point I hadn't been writing for anybody else to read, I'd just sort of been writing for fun. So that was the catalyst story. It may not be the first book that I wrote, but it was a turning point book.

Jenny: That's so interesting that they even did accept it as a master's thesis. That's fantastic actually!

'Romance' thesis - with a child welfare lawyer

Grace: Well, it was 400 pages. It certainly held up in terms of weight compared to anything that was being written in that department at the time. The book turned out to be I think The Sweetest Kiss. It was published years later in a revised form, and I think it did a good job in showing that when the American legal system works, it can achieve justice. Too often, it does not work and the results are tragic. So I hit those wickets too.

Jenny: But that was probably a contemporary, was it?

Grace: Yes, that was a contemporary.

Jenny: But you've very much made your world now in the Regency period with the romances you've been doing in more recent times.

Grace: Yes.

Grace Burrowes is a New York Times best-selling romance author who started out writing for the sheer fun of amusing herself.  She’d written close to two dozen books and two million words before she ever thought of publishing anything.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Grace talks about why ”the joy of the pen” is its own reward,  and being  a multiple RITA finalist and  author of more than 70 Regency and Scottish romances.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Her amazing output before she published anything

Why Regency is so popular with readers

How  romance has changed in the last decade

The way romance saved her from despondency 

The writers she admires most

What she'd do differently second time around

Where to find Grace Burrowes: 

Website: http://graceburrowes.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Grace-Burrowes

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/grace-burrowes

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Author Grace Burrowes

Jenny: But now, here’s Grace .  Hello there Grace and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Grace: It is wonderful- and I do mean wonderful- to be here.

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning - was there a “Once Upon A Time" moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if there was a catalyst, what was it?

Grace: Well I think I have recounted elsewhere, the idea that I came upon a book - I was saving it for a cold, dark, lonely night and the book just didn't do the job. It was a little disappointing and I had the thought, the same as many of us have; I bet I could do this, I bet I could write a book. I did begin to write.

A catalyst though would have been my Master's degree. I am a lawyer, but I went back to school to get my masters degree in conflict, and conflict resolution. My adviser asked me, "if you could write anything in the world for your master's thesis, what would you write?"

I told him, I would write a novel. That novel would have two lawyers as the protagonists- one of them would love the legal system, one of them would see it as a necessary evil and would have had experience with many of the ways it's flawed. I'd make it a romance.

So my adviser said, well why don't you do that! I wasn't expecting a graduate adviser to advise me to write fiction, but I just had the best time. It wasn't my first attempt at fiction- but it was a catalyst in the sense that the book had a theme; 'what is justice?' That made writing the romance more of a challenge and more fun.

So I'd say putting together that manuscript was a turning point for two reasons; first of all, because it was a more complicated process then simply "writing a love story because that's what I love to write". Also, my adviser read it when it was finished, and to that point I hadn't been writing for anybody else to read, I'd just sort of been writing for fun. So that was the catalyst story. It may not be the first book that I wrote, but it was a turning point book.

Jenny: That's so interesting that they even did accept it as a master's thesis. That's fantastic actually!

'Romance' thesis - with a child welfare lawyer

Grace: Well, it was 400 pages. It certainly held up in terms of weight compared to anything that was being written in that department at the time. The book turned out to be I think The Sweetest Kiss. It was published years later in a revised form, and I think it did a good job in showing that when the American legal system works, it can achieve justice. Too often,

Best selling Australian author Tea Cooper lives in a time warp – a postcard-perfect village two hours from Sydney with 19th-century sandstone buildings, and timber slab cottages which leave you feeling you could be back in the 1830s.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Tea talks about how her surroundings inspire her popular historic fiction, and what she’d change if she was doing it all again.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Why her first schoolgirl fiction nearly got her expelled 

How 'alpacas and proteas' provided fuel for rural romance

Her passion for Wollombi -  the Gateway to the Hunter Valley

Her gradual morph from romance to historical mystery

The writers she admires most

What she'd do differently second time around

Where to find Tea Cooper: 

Website: http://www.teacooperauthor.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeaCooper/

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: But now, here’s Tea. .  Hello there Tea and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Tea Cooper - Historical mysteries author

Tea: Thank you very much for the invitation, it's lovely to be talking with you.

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning - was there a “Once Upon A Time" moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if there was a catalyst, what was it?

Tea: I can't really remember a time when I didn't want to write stories.  I was one of those little girls who stayed in her bedroom, and made little books, sewing the sides together and things like that. But I guess the light bulb moment was when I was in boarding school, and a group of us decided to write a story on the school gardener. It did get us into trouble, and we had to go our separate ways! The power of words if you like, and how believable a fiction story can be. So I suppose if there was a catalyst, it was that. Two of us actually did go onto work as journalists, so it honestly had an impact on us.

Jenny: Just allowing myself to be diverted for a moment- these days if girls started to write stories like that, they'd probably be congratulated on their initiative, wouldn't they!

Tea: It was a long time ago, things have changed a lot since then!

Jenny: Was the gardener particularly spunky?

Tea: No! He was bald and probably forty, which seemed really old. It was an all girls school, so he was the only male on the premises, the poor guy.

Jenny: It's funny; I had a similar sort of education and even the guys that came in to lay the carpet - well men were so rare that you ogled them all, didn't you?

Tea: Yes, absolutely! I'm glad you understand. Some people look at me a bit sideways and say well did you have a problem? But I think that was the catalyst actually. It wasn't a nice story!

Jenny: But you didn't get expelled I hope?

Tea: Yes- let's not go there! It was a long time ago. Some people got expelled and others stayed, but it wasn't very nice so we left afterwards. I would like to point out that we're all still very good friends. So that's quite interesting!

Jenny: Absolutely, a bonding experience. No long term damage hopefully! So it's understandable then that you were drawn into romance when you started to write?

Tea: It was a long time ago when I first decided to write a contemporary romance. I found a Mills and Boon competition in the Women's Weekly, so I wrote a story and sent it off. It was a very rainy school holidays, because I was teaching then. Anyway, I sent it off and I won second prize. I won a bottle of perfume but I didn't get the contract I was hoping for. I don't really know why I started with contemporary, because history has always been my first love. Where the mystery bits come from I'm not quite sure- that sort of evolved. Perhaps I thought it'd be easier to write a contemporary romance.

Best selling Australian author Tea Cooper lives in a time warp – a postcard-perfect village two hours from Sydney with 19th-century sandstone buildings, and timber slab cottages which leave you feeling you could be back in the 1830s.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Tea talks about how her surroundings inspire her popular historic fiction, and what she’d change if she was doing it all again.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Why her first schoolgirl fiction nearly got her expelled 

How 'alpacas and proteas' provided fuel for rural romance

Her passion for Wollombi -  the Gateway to the Hunter Valley

Her gradual morph from romance to historical mystery

The writers she admires most

What she'd do differently second time around

Where to find Tea Cooper: 

Website: http://www.teacooperauthor.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeaCooper/

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: But now, here’s Tea. .  Hello there Tea and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Tea Cooper - Historical mysteries author

Tea: Thank you very much for the invitation, it's lovely to be talking with you.

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning - was there a “Once Upon A Time" moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if there was a catalyst, what was it?

Tea: I can't really remember a time when I didn't want to write stories.  I was one of those little girls who stayed in her bedroom, and made little books, sewing the sides together and things like that. But I guess the light bulb moment was when I was in boarding school, and a group of us decided to write a story on the school gardener. It did get us into trouble, and we had to go our separate ways! The power of words if you like, and how believable a fiction story can be. So I suppose if there was a catalyst, it was that. Two of us actually did go onto work as journalists, so it honestly had an impact on us.

Jenny: Just allowing myself to be diverted for a moment- these days if girls started to write stories like that, they'd probably be congratulated on their initiative, wouldn't they!

Tea: It was a long time ago, things have changed a lot since then!

Jenny: Was the gardener particularly spunky?

Tea: No! He was bald and probably forty, which seemed really old. It was an all girls school, so he was the only male on the premises, the poor guy.

Jenny: It's funny; I had a similar sort of education and even the guys that came in to lay the carpet - well men were so rare that you ogled them all, didn't you?

Tea: Yes, absolutely! I'm glad you understand. Some people look at me a bit sideways and say well did you have a problem? But I think that was the catalyst actually. It wasn't a nice story!

Jenny: But you didn't get expelled I hope?

Tea: Yes- let's not go there! It was a long time ago. Some people got expelled and others stayed, but it wasn't very nice so we left afterwards. I would like to point out that we're all still very good friends. So that's quite interesting!

Jenny: Absolutely, a bonding experience. No long term damage hopefully! So it's understandable then that you were drawn into romance when you started to write?

Tea: It was a long time ago when I first decided to write a contemporary romance. I found a Mills and Boon competition in the Women's Weekly, so I wrote a story and sent it off. It was a very rainy school holidays, because I was teaching then. Anyway, I sent it off and I won second prize.

Todd Borg’s private eye Owen McKenna has been acclaimed as a hero who walks in steps of classic gumshoes like Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe and Lew Archer. But his best-selling  - and award winning - Tahoe series has one attraction its predecessors lack – and that’s Owen’s side kick – a good natured Great Dane called Spot who’s become a big hit with readers.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Todd talks about how he came to have “the best job in the world,”  why Tahoe is a great locale for a mystery series, and the reasons readers keep coming back for more.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

How Owen McKenna is different from his famous predecessors

The unexpected success of side kick Spot

The 'feel good' factor in successful writing

Self pub versus trad pub - and where he sits

The importance of multiple books 

Todd's pick for the classic detective series of all time

Where to find Todd Borg: 

Website: toddborg.com/

Blog:  http://toddborg.blogspot.com/

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: But now, here’s Todd. .  Hello there Todd and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning - was there a “Once Upon A Time" moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if there was a catalyst, what was it?

Tahoe mystery author Todd Borg

Todd: You know what? There wasn't any great "once upon a time" moment; I had no epiphanies or anything exciting like that. I got serious about writing in my late twenties. I always felt I came to this whole novel business late, and I remembered when I started writing novels that when I was twelve years old, my best friend said to me once "you know what? I think I'd like to be a novelist when I grow up". I actually thought that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard!

It seemed obvious to me that writing a novel would be far too much work, and you'd have to have some kind of specialised imagination. I could never do such a thing. So when I started writing seriously in my late twenties, I thought back on that.

But with time, I remembered back in the sixth grade I wrote a mystery play and we performed it in front of the parents of the kids. When I was in fifth grade I wrote a little short story. I have a younger sister, and when my family would go on car trips and she would sort of get a little restless, she and I would sit in the backseat of the station wagon and I would tel her a story- I'd just make stuff up.

It was literally a "once upon a time" kind of thing. Of course all those stories were probably ridiculously stupid, but clearly as I think back on it, I always kind of had it in my blood you know. I was probably a good liar as a kid, making up stuff but I don't remember that very well.

Jenny: And tell me, that friend who said he was going to become a novelist- did he ever become one?

Todd: No! No, he didn't. It's so funny the way those things work! For me, it always seemed like the idea- when I started to get serious about it- at that point as I got older I was like "if you could actually do this and pull it off, it'd be the greatest job on earth!" Because you could sit around drinking coffee, making up stories. You would have no boss, and you could sleep in for as long as you want, for as late as you want. It seemed like a pretty good way to go through life, and I had a lot of imagination! So I just dived in.

Jenny: And has it turned out to be the best thing you could possibly do? Is it like that- do you sit around drinking coffee?

Tahoe Deathfall - Book One Owen McKenna series

Todd: Absolutely! It's absolutely the best thing I could ever imagine. I've had other jobs, and writing is a dream job. When you think about it, we've all read books by people with illustrious careers. It's axiomatic that people with other careers- once they ...

Todd Borg’s private eye Owen McKenna has been acclaimed as a hero who walks in steps of classic gumshoes like Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe and Lew Archer. But his best-selling  - and award winning - Tahoe series has one attraction its predecessors lack – and that’s Owen’s side kick – a good natured Great Dane called Spot who’s become a big hit with readers.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Todd talks about how he came to have “the best job in the world,”  why Tahoe is a great locale for a mystery series, and the reasons readers keep coming back for more.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

How Owen McKenna is different from his famous predecessors

The unexpected success of side kick Spot

The 'feel good' factor in successful writing

Self pub versus trad pub - and where he sits

The importance of multiple books 

Todd's pick for the classic detective series of all time

Where to find Todd Borg: 

Website: toddborg.com/

Blog:  http://toddborg.blogspot.com/

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: But now, here’s Todd. .  Hello there Todd and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning - was there a “Once Upon A Time" moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if there was a catalyst, what was it?

Tahoe mystery author Todd Borg

Todd: You know what? There wasn't any great "once upon a time" moment; I had no epiphanies or anything exciting like that. I got serious about writing in my late twenties. I always felt I came to this whole novel business late, and I remembered when I started writing novels that when I was twelve years old, my best friend said to me once "you know what? I think I'd like to be a novelist when I grow up". I actually thought that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard!

It seemed obvious to me that writing a novel would be far too much work, and you'd have to have some kind of specialised imagination. I could never do such a thing. So when I started writing seriously in my late twenties, I thought back on that.

But with time, I remembered back in the sixth grade I wrote a mystery play and we performed it in front of the parents of the kids. When I was in fifth grade I wrote a little short story. I have a younger sister, and when my family would go on car trips and she would sort of get a little restless, she and I would sit in the backseat of the station wagon and I would tel her a story- I'd just make stuff up.

It was literally a "once upon a time" kind of thing. Of course all those stories were probably ridiculously stupid, but clearly as I think back on it, I always kind of had it in my blood you know. I was probably a good liar as a kid, making up stuff but I don't remember that very well.

Jenny: And tell me, that friend who said he was going to become a novelist- did he ever become one?

Todd: No! No, he didn't. It's so funny the way those things work! For me, it always seemed like the idea- when I started to get serious about it- at that point as I got older I was like "if you could actually do this and pull it off, it'd be the greatest job on earth!" Because you could sit around drinking coffee, making up stories. You would have no boss, and you could sleep in for as long as you want, for as late as you want. It seemed like a pretty good way to go through life, and I had a lot of imagination! So I just dived in.

Jenny: And has it turned out to be the best thing you could possibly do? Is it like that- do you sit around drinking coffee?

Tahoe Deathfall - Book One Owen McKenna series

Catherine Robertson writes funny books about intelligent strong women, and it’s got her into trouble with people who think humorous women’s fiction should never veer from the pink and fluffy.

Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Catherine talks about escaping labels, her new book Gabriel’s Bay which gives men a bigger voice, and bridging the gaps between ‘literary’ and genre fiction.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

How many complete MS she wrote before she published one

Why the 'chick lit' category makes her mad

Being a cheer leader for creativity

The incredible value of critique groups

Why she loves stroppy women

What she'd do differently second time around

Where to find Catherine Robertson: 

Website: https://www.catherinejrobertson.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nzcatherinerobertson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/cjrauthor

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: But now, here’s Catherine. .  Hello there Catherine and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Catherine: Thank you Jenny, it's really nice of you to invite me.

Jenny: It's really nice to have a fellow countryman or countrywoman, because most of these interviews have been done with people overseas. So we wanted to have a little bit of balance with it!    Beginning at the beginning - was there a “Once Upon A Time" moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if there was a catalyst, what was it?

Catherine Robertson, author

Catherine: I think I had always thought about writing fiction much in the same way as I'd thought about winning lotto. I hadn't actually found anything about it, like buy a ticket or indeed do any creative writing. I had children quite young, and I was self employed when I was 26.

There never seemed to be enough time to do anything, like writing. But when I moved overseas, the family moved overseas in 2000 and I found myself out of a job because we'd gone to work for a Dotcom and just at the time the market tanked. My husband still had a job, but I didn't. The children were at school, and I suddenly had one of those 'now or never' moments; I looked up creative writing courses and found one at a local community college. So I started that, and that is when it started. That did give me the confidence to keep going.

Jenny: Fantastic. So that was in California?

Catherine: It was, that's right. It was in Marin County, just out of San Francisco.

Jenny: So your first book- how long did it take you from doing that course through to producing The Sweet Second Life of Darrell Kincaid, which was the first one we saw published?

Catherine: That's exactly right. Probably too long. I never want to put people off, but between that time and getting The Sweet Second Life published, I probably would have written eight full length novel manuscripts and had them all rejected; some of them more rewrites of previous ones that I'd done. I probably didn't start writing really seriously until- we moved around a bit, came back from England and again I didn't have the time to keep writing and reestablish business, all that useful stuff like earning money. I started writing probably about early 2005, so it was five years of solid effort before I got The Sweet Second Life sold to a publisher.

The Sweet Second Life of Darrel Kincaid

Jenny: That is amazing. I mean there's so many people that I talk to- there is an apprenticeship time where you find yourself developing in confidence and you obviously went through that in quite a real way.

Catherine: Well I think, I mean I really like the Stephen King book on writing and he thinks that bad writers are unteachable because they don't know that they're bad, so they can't be taught. But you can teach competent writers to be good. He also thinks that genius writers are born,

Catherine Robertson writes funny books about intelligent strong women, and it’s got her into trouble with people who think humorous women’s fiction should never veer from the pink and fluffy.

Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Catherine talks about escaping labels, her new book Gabriel’s Bay which gives men a bigger voice, and bridging the gaps between ‘literary’ and genre fiction.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

How many complete MS she wrote before she published one

Why the 'chick lit' category makes her mad

Being a cheer leader for creativity

The incredible value of critique groups

Why she loves stroppy women

What she'd do differently second time around

Where to find Catherine Robertson: 

Website: https://www.catherinejrobertson.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nzcatherinerobertson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/cjrauthor

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: But now, here’s Catherine. .  Hello there Catherine and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Catherine: Thank you Jenny, it's really nice of you to invite me.

Jenny: It's really nice to have a fellow countryman or countrywoman, because most of these interviews have been done with people overseas. So we wanted to have a little bit of balance with it!    Beginning at the beginning - was there a “Once Upon A Time" moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if there was a catalyst, what was it?

Catherine Robertson, author

Catherine: I think I had always thought about writing fiction much in the same way as I'd thought about winning lotto. I hadn't actually found anything about it, like buy a ticket or indeed do any creative writing. I had children quite young, and I was self employed when I was 26.

There never seemed to be enough time to do anything, like writing. But when I moved overseas, the family moved overseas in 2000 and I found myself out of a job because we'd gone to work for a Dotcom and just at the time the market tanked. My husband still had a job, but I didn't. The children were at school, and I suddenly had one of those 'now or never' moments; I looked up creative writing courses and found one at a local community college. So I started that, and that is when it started. That did give me the confidence to keep going.

Jenny: Fantastic. So that was in California?

Catherine: It was, that's right. It was in Marin County, just out of San Francisco.

Jenny: So your first book- how long did it take you from doing that course through to producing The Sweet Second Life of Darrell Kincaid, which was the first one we saw published?

Catherine: That's exactly right. Probably too long. I never want to put people off, but between that time and getting The Sweet Second Life published, I probably would have written eight full length novel manuscripts and had them all rejected; some of them more rewrites of previous ones that I'd done. I probably didn't start writing really seriously until- we moved around a bit, came back from England and again I didn't have the time to keep writing and reestablish business, all that useful stuff like earning money. I started writing probably about early 2005, so it was five years of solid effort before I got The Sweet Second Life sold to a publisher.

The Sweet Second Life of Darrel Kincaid

Jenny: That is amazing. I mean there's so many people that I talk to- there is an apprenticeship time where you find yourself developing in confidence and you obviously went through that in quite a real way.

Larissa Reinhart’s funny smart Southern mysteries introduce heroines who are sassy, strong and funny – and generally have an “ex” from some past disaster hanging around like “forbidden fruit.” Perhaps it’s not surprising then that when the award winning and Wall Street Journal best selling author started out, she thought she was writing romantic comedy.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Larissa talks about why she loves funny dialogue and redemption stories and why she's working on a paranormal series set in Japan  - when she gets a spare moment from her three mystery series.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Why journalism didn't work for her as a career

How living in Japan' has helped her writing

Her secret 'paranormal project.

The big part humor plays in her mysteries

The writers she admires most

Why her favorite characters are 'tough dudes wishing to redeem themselves'

Where to find Larissa Reinhart: 

Website: https://www.larissareinhart.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/larissareinhartwriter

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/larissareinhart/

Facebook Group: The Mystery Minions

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: But now, here’s  Larissa .  Hello there Larissa and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Larissa: Thank you so much Jenny, it's great to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Larissa Reinhart - author

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning - was there a 'Once Upon A Time' moment when you decided you just had to write fiction - and if so what the catalyst?

Larissa: Well really as far back as I can remember, I've been creating stories mostly in my head. I can remember about the age of four writing lists of words that I knew, and in first grade I was putting together little books and then selling them in second grade to my neighbours. I've always been into this book business I guess! I won some awards for writing when I was younger, but then I never thought seriously about becoming a writer as a career. I worked from my local newspaper in high school, and I really hated interviewing people and calling them up.

I'm a little introverted, so that was really difficult for me. Thoughts of journalism that I'd been kind of toying with in high school disappeared with that, and I did take some creative writing courses in college but mostly I just focused on my major which was History and Art History. So I didn't really take it seriously.

But about seven or eight years ago, my family was living in Japan and I had been a teacher, but I was no longer teaching. My daughters were young, but they were in school for the first time all day. I've lived in Japan before, so I didn't need to take classes or anything like that.

I had this time that I'd never had before. I was reading maybe three or four books a week and enjoying that, but wanting to do more. Reading a popular series at the time, I was telling my husband how I would have written the fourth book differently because I wasn't satisfied with it. So he encouraged me  and said "why don't you get back into writing and just try?" So that's what I did! And spending those two years in Japan, I wrote one manuscript that I will probably not do anything with; it was kind of an experiment. And then the second manuscript I wrote was Portrait of A Dead Eye. I can't really remember, but I think I had it finished before we moved back to the US.

I came back with it, and showed it to a friend who was a writer and she encouraged me to look into different writing groups like Romance Writers of America, and tried to get it published. So that's what I did.

Jenny: You’re extremely productive - with three different series on the go – Cherry Tucker Mysteries, then Maizie Albright, Star Detective and Finley Goodhart Crime Capers – why did you choose the...