I thought it might be fun to do interview a fellow author and have her interview me. So I sat down on a Saturday afternoon for a Facebook chat with fellow writer Wendy Burke. Wendy is the author of 6 books including the recent Safe at Home.
Cyn: Ready to do this thing?
Wendy: Sure…I’m just looking up what an OHP hat is called…other than ‘hat’.
Cyn: Let’s talk a little about ourselves. I’m a mystery writer and Wendy writes… What would you call your particular romance genre?
Wendy: Porn.
Cyn: Lady porn?
Wendy: Erotic romance. Mommy porn works too.
Cyn: I once had a male coworker complain that guys
can’t sit in the lunchroom thumbing through Playboy,
but ladies can read romance novels and nobody
cares.
Wendy: With a novel — the pictures are in your head…not in print! And for the most part, women paint a better mental picture than men do.
Cyn: Most romance novels are spicier than Playboy. Especially yours.
Wendy: True– but mental pictures aren’t interrupting the daily work flow.
And mostly go unnoticed …especially since the invention of eReaders!
Cyn: We’ve known each other for like one million years.
Wendy: and a half, I think
Cyn: What’s one question you’ve always wanted to ask me about my work?
Wendy: Are there people in your head that pretty much talk to you all day long?
Cyn: Oh yes. The inside of my head is like a Robin Williams routine.
Wendy: Less hairy, I would imagine!
Cyn: There’s some hairy people in there, too.
Wendy: you keep them impeccably well-groomed from what I can see…
Cyn: I’ve always wanted to ask you when you wrote your first story.
Wendy: When I was old enough to realize there were people in my head more fun than those around me. I would imagine it was BEFORE I even knew what ‘writing’ was. As for concrete writing, most likely late grade school– as for thinking I could make money off of it — 10 years ago. I always ‘wrote’…
Cyn: Me too. I distinctly remember drawing a little book about two brothers who lived in a windmill. I had confused a windmill with a lighthouse because they had boats.
Wendy: What author do you admire most?
Cyn: The first author I ever truly loved was Laura Ingalls Wilder. I wrote Michael Landon angry letters over the TV show Little House On The Prairie versus the book. Like a 7-page letter. Robert B. Parker is a huge influence on me as well. The way he writes dialogue, how prolific he was. How he keeled over while writing at this desk. Who inspires you?
Wendy: Poor guy…not the way I want to go.
I’m not really ‘inspired’ by any one writer — as I don’t read what my writing genre is.
I like the story like of a Brad Thor and James Rollins. I’m more inspired to ‘write’ by something that happens during the day. I like sad heroes.
Cyn: Me, too. I collect little bits of every single day to use in stories.
Wendy: you know how that works in my head!
Cyn: We’ve both worked in newsrooms and that’s a great place for plots in general
Every single crime in any of my books has been inspired by a similar real-life crimes. Even the awful things that go down in What The Chat Dragged In
Wendy: Because a newsroom is also filled with ‘characters.’ All with have their own weird flaws
Cyn: More specifically what inspired what you’re working on now?
Wendy: I”m going to have to plead the 5th on that one–as it stemmed from a real life conversation with a real life law enforcement officer — some would say an ‘inappropriate’ conversation from an elected official! But ‘he’ probably didn’t realize my reaction to it…just a simple innocent comment –which pushed the people in my head in to high gear! And just remember — text me at 2 a.m, for no apparent reason — you’re in a book…
Cyn: The hazards of dealing with writer folks. For me it was tamer, a visit to the Cirque de Soliel. I was sitting in the audienc eand was impressed that the clown band was playing their own instruments and singing
Wendy: Ah—Killer Clowns From Out of State!’
Cyn: And I started thinking, wow these are super-talented people. I wondered what their lives were like when not performing. What do accordion playing clowns do in their off time?
By the end of the performance, I had most of the book.
Wendy: And our poor spouses wonder what’s going on in our heads!
Cyn: That’s the dual track running in a writer’s life. Watching and liking the circus, writing a book, too. On the drive home, my husband said, “You’re writing in your head, I can see the way your eyes are moving.”
Wendy: Some would call that schizophrenia
Cyn: My friend the psych nurse tells me my eyes move exactly like a schizophrenic’s when I write
Wendy: Scary! I just blurt things out now…and the old man gets it. Like how looking over the treetops into Green Bay in WI’s Door County — I just said, I want to sit here and writer forever — in my head I was doing just that — could see the characters on the deck having a conversation…people just don’t get that
Cyn: My husband gets it. He usually just brings me coffee when he sees it taking over
Knowing you in real life, you would be the person I would least likely peg as a romance writer
Wendy: Why?
Cyn: You are super-duper practical. How did you find your genre? Crime, I’d buy in a minute.
Wendy: I had promised to write a cheesy baseball romance for a friend…
And so I did. I’m a romantic at heart — people don’t see that side of me. I still want to write a political thriller — but with sex ….lots of sex…in it!
Cyn: People tend to think the opposite about me. They think I am chipper. So, the dark edge to some of my work surprises them. At least I think I am regarded as chipper.
Wendy: Knowing you– didn’t surprise me!
Cyn: I’ve yelled at you more than most people! All in the line of duty at work. Newsrooms are intense places.
Wendy: It’s sometimes difficult to be ‘nice’ in a setting like that — which is why I’m glad I don’t have the responsibility I once did in a newsroom
Cyn: I wanted to ask if there was another genre you’d like to explore, but you already answered. So for you it’s a political thriller?
Wendy: I wanna be Brad Thor or James Rollins when I grow up! But for now, I would rather just work in the realm of fantasies — too much of that political crap right now.
Cyn: I’d really like to be able to write a good piece of sci-fi or fantasy. I love that genre, but I don’t feel that I write it well. I have a half finished book called Araknj’s Quantum that’s a steampunk mystery about time-traveling murderous robot chefs. I let my friends pick my National Novel Writing Month project by naming random things and that’s what happened.
Wendy: See…I can’t write something that doesn’t ‘exist’ or can’t actually ‘happen’…just the way my head works.
Cyn: You wouldn’t believe the research I did for that book, the real world research to create a feasible alternate reality. In that world, India was part of the Holy Roman Empire because I expanded the Pourtugese influence that exist in part of India to most of India. I researched Catholic Indian names.
Wendy: And here I am looking for a hat. My brain doesn’t work that way — I can’t relate to it.
Cyn: I was also researching how you resign from the Ohio National Guard today. When you can do it, what the procedures are…. That may be a spoiler for my next book.
Wendy: I got it figured out! Deputy Hottie?
Cyn: We’ll see. Speaking of books… I will ask an impossible question. Which of your books is your favorite?
Wendy: Probably The One He Chose, Haste Ye Back a close second. Of course, I like them all…but those two stick out to me for some reason. You? Which of yours?
Cyn: Probably What The Chat Dragged In. Because it was so hard to write, but I think I pulled it off.
Wendy: You did, very well.
Cyn: We need to promote ourselves a little
Wendy: You know how NOT good I am at that.
Cyn: So, talk about what you have out now and what you’re working on
Wendy: Safe at Home has been out a couple of weeks — a story I really enjoyed writing, because, although the ‘seed’ for it was much more baseball oriented – it still came out as the story I was looking for. Currently I’m now in love with two new characters ELI & ZOE — he’s a widowed sheriff and she’s a newsroom ‘jack of all trades’ — they’ve never met — but OH they will…they SURE will!
Cyn: Right now, I’m finishing up the final edits on Killer Clowns From Out of State.
Wendy: Such a great title! Reminds me of the ICP incidents.
Cyn: It’s about a small town female police chief that runs over a circus performer
who may or may not be connected to a murder. Did I mention that he’s handsome?
Wendy: The circus performer?
Cyn: Yes.
Wendy: With or without clown make up?
Cyn: Without, he’s only a fill-in clown. He’s actually an assistant stage manager who knows how to play the accordion. I’m proud of how it all comes together and makes sense.
Do you remember a few years ago, me telling you before the morning news meeting about a dream I had about a guy who had a dream and woke up to find that things in real life were happening in the dream. I dreamed the whole story in one night as a dream?
Wendy: Yes…I read part of that one.
Cyn: It’s a novella, and it’s going to be out soon as well.
Wendy: Title?
Cyn: Oh yeah, that’s helpful for promotion. The Girl of His Dreams, A little different for me.
Though there is a mystery, it’s just not a murder mystery,
Hey, when are you ever going to write that book about NASCAR we talked about?
Wendy: Eventually maybe.
Cyn: So many ideas, so little time.
Wendy: I know.
Cyn: That’s the hardest part of being a writer, don’t you think?
For me, not what to write, but when to write.
Even if I had every hour of the day free to write, I don’t know that I could get it all down.
On that note, we decided to end our conversation and actually get back to writing.