Interview with Gayle Carline

“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