Interview Dorothy Bodoin

by

Linda Wallace

1) I read the excerpt posted on your Web site, www.dorothybodoin.com, from Ghost Across the Water and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to finding out what happens to Joanna. The excerpt begins with a hostile encounter en route to Spearmint Lake. Have you yourself ever been a victim of road rage?

Fortunately, I’ve never had an experience like Joanna’s, but I’ve heard of many similar incidents that resulted in serious accidents and even death. Once, on my own street, an impatient male driver yelled at me to “Turn, lady, turn!!”--into my own driveway in oncoming traffic. He couldn’t wait a few minutes to pass me. I’m glad he didn’t have a Vodka bottle or a gun. That disappearing lane on I-75 is real, though. I’ve had many adventures driving north on that freeway, like turning on the North ramp instead of the South ramp at night and exiting in the middle of a virtual wilderness. All of them have found their way into my writing. I-75 was an ideal place for me to begin Ghost Across The Water.

2) You write mysteries and romantic suspense. Do you plot your mysteries from true crimes? Or are the murders in your books all your own?

The murders are all my own. Once I read an article by Mary Higgins Clark in which she suggests that aspiring mystery writers look to the newspaper for story ideas. I’ve never had much luck doing this, although a very old story about a vengeful woman who had condemned a horse to die is the basis for a sub-plot in my May book, The Witches Of Foxglove Corners.

3) You mention in your biography that you belong to several professional writing organizations and have a strong support group of friends. Do you also have one special mentor?

My special mentors are people I never met: Phyllis A. Whitney whose articles and books on writing taught me my craft; Velda Johnston; Victoria Holt; Ray Bradbury; and countless others.

4) You have written many books. How has your writing changed now that you have several novels under your belt?

When I first began writing for publication, I used to write my first draft quickly--in two or three months. Then I revised for another two months, after which I retyped the entire manuscript. My computer changed the way I work. Now I revise a chapter thoroughly before moving on to the next one. When I’m finished with the manuscript, I go back to the first page and revise again, but lightly this time. I keep the book in the same document, so there’s no need to retype another 300 + pages. I’m a much better critic of my own work than I used to be. I can tell immediately when I’ve slipped into “tell” mode, when a scene isn’t working, or when something a character says doesn’t make sense. What I don’t catch, my friends and critique partners, Susan Shaw and Marja McGraw, will. Also, I’m working on my eleventh book now, and I have to be particularly careful not to repeat names and favorite, overused words or expressions.

5) Your heroine in Ghost Across the Water is a writer. Did you gain any insights into your own work by assigning a character the same career?

At first, Joanna was going to be a mystery writer. Then for fun and originality, I made her a cozy-time travel-gothic writer who had selected a dreary time and place for her WIP--Early twentieth century Detroit during the Influenza epidemic. She found herself suffering a severe case of writer’s block. But she was lucky. She had an intriguing mystery and a great romance to inspire her. This isn’t true for most of us. What insights did I gain? A cottage near a lake is a wonderful place to write a book, even when it’s haunted. Now I wish I could afford to buy one.

6) Has writing changed the way you read other authors?

Often I can’t turn off my internal editor. Other writers’ mistakes are more obvious to me. I find myself analyzing what works for them and what doesn’t. Why, for example, the last book I read for pleasure was basically a “tell, don’t show” book, but it still kept me turning the pages. For my own enjoyment, I read books with dogs in them and anything that sounds like a Gothic novel, but then I always did.

7) Describe your typical writing day.

I’m always up early. At 4:00 o’clock in the summer, at 4:30 or 5:00 in the winter. After checking my e-mail, I have breakfast and start writing. Morning is the best time for original writing. Afternoons are better for revision. Whenever I have free time during the day, I read over my pages and make changes. If I have appointments, I try to schedule them for mid-morning, and always have a notebook with me to take my mind off waiting. Usually before going to bed, I read what I’ve written and make a corrected copy on the computer. With the whole day to write, I think I should accomplish more, but this slow pace seems to be ideal for me these days. I try to average about a chapter a week, consisting of about 10-12 pages, unless some other writing task such as editing interferes.

8) Is there a common theme or motif that runs through all of your work?

All of my books have Gothic elements: the mysterious old house or isolated log cabin; the haunted radio; in Ghost Across The Water, the sound of water that haunts Joanna’s cottage. All of my books have canine characters.

9) In your Foxglove Corners series you’ve peopled a whole town. Do you have any special tricks to keep track of all the details of the setting and characters?

I keep lists. My Foxglove Corners series has its own special notebook, a green 3-ring binder. Inside is a handmade map of the area around Jennet Greenwood’s house on Jonquil Lane. I write down the names of the roads Jennet travels on, the restaurants she visits, and the characters who appear in each book, together with brief summaries of the plots. At present there are six books in the series, and I don’t want a character’s house to suddenly appear in another location; or, if I refer to a previous event, I want to have the facts close at hand.

10) Foxglove is one of my favorite flowers. It self-seeds all over my garden. Why did you choose Foxglove Corners as the name for your series? Does the plant have a personal meaning for you?

I love foxgloves and their cousins, delphiniums and snapdragons. Only the delphiniums come back every year. My foxgloves don’t know that they’re supposed to reseed themselves, so I always add new ones in the spring. The idea that they were poisonous worked well with my first book, Darkness At Foxglove Corners. I wanted to give my real life setting a cozy, country name and started thinking about something that would go with “Corners”. Foxglove Corners! Those two names were meant for each other. Then, fox hunting flourishes in my setting, so the “fox” in “foxglove” fit right in.

11) What’s next for Dorothy Bodoin?

In May, The Witches Of Foxglove Corvers will be released by Wings ePress. Beverly Forehand, my reviewer at Roundtable Reviews, has already volunteered to read and review it, and her mother is waiting patiently for it to go on sale. Like Ghost Across The Water, my WIP is a novel of romantic suspense with Gothic elements. Its title is Secret For A Satyr. I’m revisiting Maple Creek, the setting of The Cameo Clue, with different characters and a different “all my own” murder. At present I’m on Page 203 with a third of the book left to write.

Next on the agenda is another book in my Foxglove Corners series. I’ve jotted down a few plot ideas but don’t have a title yet. Then, ever since I finished my first book, Treasure At Trail’s End, I’ve wanted to write another Gothic romance with a western setting. A few readers and reviewers have said they wished there was a sequel. So do I. So it’ll be Secret For A Satyr, my seventh Foxglove Corners book, and (I hope) a sequel to Treasure At Trail’s End.

Thanks for asking such interesting questions, Linda. I am so grateful to Wings for giving my series (and my two other books) a home and consider the Wings family my very best support group.