“Housecleaner-turned-private investigator
Peri Minneopa takes a routine case: a rich husband suspects his wife of
infidelity. Coincidentally, bad things start happening to her.
Peri's boyfriend, Detective Skip Carlton, investigates
the death of Peri's elderly neighbor. It looks like a heart attack.
Coincidentally, her husband died of a heart attack two weeks ago.
The elderly couple left legal papers on the table,
involving a year-old real estate purchase. Coincidentally, there is a note
attached from Peri's client, a real estate developer.
Except, Peri and Skip don't believe in coincidences.
When their cases collide, she begins poking her nose into police business,
butting heads with her boyfriend.
Stonewalled by Skip and the police, Peri turns to an
unlikely partner for help, an annoying little
man who is obsessed with Dean Martin.
If she can keep her sanity and her life.” -Hit or Missus.
That’s
the back cover blurb of August Author of the Month Gayle Carline’s first Peri
Minneopa novel. After a synopsis like that, how could one resist buying it?
15) Gayle, your
former workaday life for 25 years was in software engineering. Have any of your
experiences in that field informed or inspired your fiction?
My latest book, MURDER BYTES, does harken to my days
as an engineer, as it has to do with a fabulous gadget that may or may not work
and may or may not be stolen by someone. Other than that, I do give a little
credit for one of my characters, Benny, to be based on some engineers I have
known, in that he’s on the spectrum and let’s just say a lot of engineers have
interesting ways of processing life.
Most of my inspiration for mysteries comes from my
laconic husband. He’s a man of few words, so I’ve spent almost 30 years trying
to figure him out!
14) For those
who haven’t read about her adventures, describe Peri Minneopa. What makes her
tick, what are her strengths and weaknesses and why do you think she makes such
a compelling detective?
I have always enjoyed protagonists that are both
stubborn, in that they will pursue their goal, and yet always questioning
themselves and whether they’re making the right move. I love Peri’s sass and
her willingness to go into danger, not because she’s brave, but because she’s
persistent. Like, she’ll walk through the lion’s den because that book she
needs is over on the far wall.
13) You closed
out the Minneopa mystery series last February with Murder Bytes. Are there any plans to start another mystery
series in the future?
Oh, yes. Without spoiling anything, Peri will be
back in a new mystery series with a slightly different angle.
12) You’ve
mentioned on your blog and Amazon author page that you’re writing the third
installment of a fantasy trilogy but I can’t seem to find the first two. Have
they been published, yet, and what’s the through line of this trilogy?
I’ve never written a trilogy before, and it is MUCH
different from a series. Two of my trilogy-writing friends told me, “Finish all
the books before you publish, or you’ll regret it.” I only partially listened—I
finished the first one and thought I’d publish it. Then I started writing the
second one and realized I’d need to make some changes to the first one to make
the two books work together. Then I realized why my friends told me that. So
the short answer is no, the first two have not been published. I am almost
halfway finished with the rough draft of the third book. They’ll be published
eventually, in staggered doses.
The through-line is, “It’s the Count of Monte Cristo
meets Pirates of the Caribbean, with girl pirates and dragons.”
11) It all
started with your husband giving you your first horse riding lesson and since
then, you’ve blossomed into a dedicated equestrian. Aside from your 2014
standalone romantic mystery, Murder on the
Hoof, how much have
horses impacted your fiction and why?
My husband’s gift awakened a long-buried passion I
had for horses. I was a horse crazy girl, but was kept from them by my
overprotective mother. Once I started riding (at 45), my other passion, writing
appeared. I had written little things here and there for years, but now really
wanted to WRITE. My first gig was journalistic pieces for Riding Magazine. I
should add that I also have a book, From the Horse’s Mouth, which is my
horse’s memoir of being a champion show horse, becoming injured, and working his
way back into the show ring.
10) As with so
many of my subjects, you turned to fiction after retirement. What was the most
difficult aspect for you in writing fiction in the beginning and what is it
now? What was/is the easiest?
Well, the easiest part is that I love to make stuff
up. The most difficult part is that I also write a humor column for my local
newspaper (and of course I was still writing the journalistic stuff for the
magazine for quite a while). These styles don’t play well with fiction—in an
essay, you’re telling the audience a story. In fiction, you’re putting your
reader INSIDE that story. You know, show, don’t tell.
9) Has the
pandemic affected your output and, if so, how? How about book sales?
The pandemic at first slowed my writing. I had JUST
released MURDER BYTES in February and had a score of fabulous events lined up
that were all canceled when the world shut down. It really hit me in the “get
out and market your books” gut. I still have my column to write, so I couldn’t
shut completely down. Once I started working on the fiction again, I really
wanted to stay in that world I’d built and leave everything else behind. But
I’ve begun to want to do marketing and publicity again.
8) Describe your
typical writing day. Do you draft your novels by hand in a notebook or directly
onto a laptop? Do you set word/page goals for yourself and so, what are they?
I usually start in a notebook with my characters.
Who are they? What do they want? What do they need? What kind of journey do I
THINK they’ll go on? Then I have a basic template on my laptop. I open it and
just start writing—I start with a scene and don’t worry about whether it’s the
right scene. I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time in 2020 and was
impressed with my ability to set word count goals and meet them. Lately I’ve
set and scheduled word counts for each day, even if it’s only 200 words. And I
schedule no writing days. That way I don’t feel guilty when I don’t write.
7) Who were your
favorite authors growing up and had any of them become influences on your own
work?
I don’t think I write like any of these people, but
my favorite authors are James Thurber and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Burroughs
definitely taught me to end a chapter at a cliffhanger! I read all the Walter
Farley (The Black Stallion) books and
Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. I also
liked Jack London and John Steinbeck and J.R.R. Tolkien. I guess I wasn’t a
very girly kind of reader.
6) Unlike any of
my previous Authors of the Month, you’re also a humorist. How challenging has
it been to retain your sense of humor and find appropriate subject matter
during the worst pandemic in over a century?
People are constantly pointing out all these
comedians who make people laugh yet suffer from depression. I’m lucky enough
not to be saddled with that illness, but there is a sense of, “if you can’t
laugh at something, you’ll drown in the weight of the world.” In January 2020 I
was named City of Placentia’s Citizen of the Year, so there’ve been a lot of
jokes about the year I ushered in!
5) Your retired
horse, Snoopy, “wrote” his own memoir in a children’s book, From the Horse’s
Mouth, after his
forced retirement. How difficult was it for you to get into the mind of a
horse?
Not difficult, actually. I was the kid who was
convinced I could understand what my dog was saying. Horses have a lot of
personality. It doesn’t take a lot—you watch them interact with their
surroundings and it feels pretty obvious what they might be thinking. When I
began writing his book, however, I did reread Black Beauty, War Horse,
and The Art of Racing in the Rain to
see how other authors captured an animal’s thoughts.
4) Plotter,
pantser or plantser?
Plantser with my mysteries, pantser with the
fantasy. There’s something about dragons that makes me just want to be
inventive and creative and not let plotting interfere.
3) You’re an
Illinois native who’d long since been transplanted to Placentia, CA. Is the Orange
County locale inspiring for you and how?
A friend of mine and I were talking about our
childhoods in the Midwest, and how we both just KNEW we belonged in southern
California. I mean, it inspires me because I’m meant to be here. There’s an
open quality to this place, in terms of sitting on my patio to write because
it’s March and there’s no snow or walking down to the coffee shop in the middle
of our downtown historic, very Hispanic district and writing about a different
world because I’m IN a different world.
2) What advice
would you give to mature novices to fiction-writing?
You need more practice than you think. I’d been
writing since childhood and thought I knew how to do it. I didn’t, not for big
fat novels. Write a lot. Edit what you write. Edit it again. Read a lot. Study
what you read. Did you like it? WHY? Did you hate it? WHY? Be specific. Read
books about writing (I can recommend some). Attend writer’s conferences. Make
friends with other writers and talk about writing.
1) So, what’s next
for Gayle Carline?
Well, I have to finish this
trilogy, edit the trilogy, get the trilogy published. I also have a sequel
planned for Murder on the Hoof, and there is the new edition of the Peri
mysteries. Don’t worry, I’ll keep myself entertained!
If you’re interested in Ms.
Carline’s work, then follow the links below:
1.
My website and blog.
2.
Amazon author
page
3.
Facebook
4.
Twitter handle: @GayleCarline
5. Instagram
