Interview Billie A. Williams

by

Jo Burman

1) Hi Billie. It is a great pleasure for me to interview you today. First of all, The Pink Lady Slipper is such an intriguing title. I’m dying to know the premise of the story behind the title. Can you share a brief overview of the story with me without giving too much away?

The Pink Lady Slipper is about two women confronting their pasts and their own personal demons, as they try to overcome town criticism and cynicism and renovate The Lady Slipper into a bed and breakfast. The building’s past is what the town religious zealot calls tainted, at best. It was an underground railroad for run away slaves and black market booze, a brothel, a stagecoach depot and a vacation spot for Mafia’s top echelon. The struggle with ghosts from the past involves encounters with bones, skeletal remains, and newly dead bodies as yellow crime scene tape continually decorates The Lady Slipper and property. Ghosts, witches, and other things that go bump in the night are only some of the things Trudy Moncha inherited when she inherited The Pink Lady Slipper after her mother’s suspicious death. Trudy starts out searching for the cause of her mother’s death and winds up in a race to save her own life from whatever evil it is that lurks the hallways of The Pink Lady Slipper.

2) I’m fascinated with how authors develop their stories. How did the idea for The Pink Lady Slipper come about?

It’s funny really. My husband and I were on our way to visit my sister in upper Michigan. We both love old houses, so we are always looking for them. There was a sprawling log cabin with several acres on the river a few miles from my sister’s house. At that time she lived at Zero Cemetery Lane… the address I used for The Pink Lady Slipper. We asked her to inquire about the owners and if they were looking to sell. She eventually found them. Siblings fighting over the exact disposition of the place had put a stalemate on any plans to sell. The fight had apparently gone on for years. That winter, the snow overload caved in part of the roof of the structure. In the spring my sister took pictures of it and of the wild orchid Pink Lady Slipper that was growing wild all over around it. The place had been a stagecoach depot and a brothel--How could I not write about it? <VBG>

3) Is your setting, Orenda, MI, real or made-up? And as a follow-up, if the town is imaginary, what other settings influenced its development?

Orenda, (means Magic Powers) is a figment of my imagination (very fertile ground). I lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula most of my growing up years. I know the area like the back of my hand. The bluffs around there will rival any mountains for their treachery and beauty. It’s always been Iron Ore Mining country--now copper mining. But the people are tenacious and wonderfully warm and friendly. A perfect place to find the characters I needed to populate my story.

4) What makes Trudy Moncha, your protagonist, unique?

Trudy is very independent and yet in a certain way dependent. She relied heavily on her mother’s approval. Though she and her mother had a falling out, they were each other’s mirror. Trudy had moved away and became a rodeo rider with her husband. When her husband was killed by a bull, because the clown didn’t do what he was supposed to do, she became a rodeo clown determined no other rider would loose his or her life because a clown didn’t do her part.

5) What about your other characters? What will readers either love, or love to hate, about them?

I have some very fun characters in this one. I am hoping my readers will respond well to them. Trudy, as I mentioned is a rodeo clown. She is confident, but needing to work on her self-image. Her confidant, Alexandra Eldride is a building contractor--they are great together, they feed off each others strengths.

The religious zealot, the wife of the resident pastor of Orenda, Faith Yachnee, is a bubble off plumb and teeters on the brink of madness; however she is a character that is easy to empathize with and feel sorry for. The people, who have read the story so far, want to whisk her away to safety, to health, to love.

I also have a witch named Raphaella, who plays an important part in the story. Then there is Trudy’s sister Linda Karel, Beatrice Able the mother’s best friend, and a sheriff that thinks women should be barefoot in the winter tending to the home fires and pregnant in the summer to be sure they know where they belong. Needless to say, Trudy and he do not see eye to eye on any issue.

6) Without giving too much away, can you share a little about one of your favorite scenes in the book and what makes it special to you?

There is a scene where Trudy goes to talk to an artists group that her mother belonged to. They are Greenwich Village types, a little hippy, a little eccentric, but they loved her mother. She finds out they thought she was vibrant, youthful and energetic. They saw no reason she should have died from a heart attack.

Here Trudy meets Xavier Stewart. The way he talks about her mother, the way he describes her, is wonderful. It makes Sally Serefina (the mother) come alive. I do not know where his lines came from, other than to sound like a crazy person and say he spoke them--another writer would understand--but this scene pulled a lot of things together for me for the rest of the story.

7) What type of research was required for the book?

I did do some research into Wiccan rules and methods, and the history of certain events that happened during the era The Lady Slipper was in operation--more for my own information than using it in the story. It did however give me a reason for the ghosts that haunted her halls. My research of the plant, the Pink Lady Slipper revealed it harbors a poison in the roots of this beautiful wild orchid. It takes four years for it to bloom the first time and if the blossom is picked it dies. All that fed into my story. I had grown up seeing these beauties and never knew anything about them. What I found out blew me away, because I had already decided the title for the story was to be The Pink Lady Slipper and it fit so perfectly.

8) I’m working on a mystery novel myself right now, after completing two historical romances. I have to say that mystery/suspense seems tough to me, because there are so many threads to keep track of and intertwine. Do you find it gets easier now that you have several finished suspense novels under your belt, or is each work as challenging as the previous one? Please share your challenges.

I envy you being able to write historical romances--Isn’t that a kicker? As for suspense and mystery, it seems to be the way my mind works. Part of the twist and suspense is, I think, because I use the Marshall Plan for Novel Writing. Marshall Evans outlines a method for writing in sections; he tells you how many section parts each viewpoint character needs to have in the total novel cut into these sections. He does a chart for how many sections (based on how many view point characters you have) for the beginning, then a surprise, then the middle, and half way through the middle another surprise, at the end of the middle another surprise, then the number of sections to the end.

By following the number of scenes and throwing in each devastating surprise--it challenges you to pull out all the stops. He recommends that you develop seven ideas for each surprise (or plot twist) then toss them all out and use the eighth one that you will now come up with.

9) What projects are you working on now?

I have a project on the back burner for another addition to the candlelight series--Candlelight Vigil.

I also have a series of three books on writing, The Mystery of Writing… Book one is Compelling Characters, book two, The Mystery, and book three, Spice up your Writing. Book one is expected out in the early part of 2006, and the others will follow approximately over a six-month period.

I also have another romantic suspense I’ve been working on titled Tracker that I hope to have finished before the November NaNoWriMo (National Write a Novel in a Month challenge) so that I can do a romantic suspense I’ve had in my mind for that challenge called Tumbleweed. That is a western.

I also am taking a romance novel writing course. The novel I’m writing for that is titled The Skye’s the Limit. It takes place on the island of Skye in Scotland--that too is a romantic suspense.

10) Finally, do you have any other finished works that are due to be released?

I have a contract with Wings for Bed and Breakfast Murders, January 2006; The Power Stones of Ebony, June 2006; and Knapsack Secrets, January 2007. I do have two other romantic suspense to be released in October from another publisher; one is part of a paranormal romantic suspense anthology.

11) Thank you for sharing more about yourself and your work with me. I look forward to getting my hands on a copy of The Pink Lady Slipper.

Thank you for all your interesting questions. I enjoyed answering them.