Interview Kay LeGrand

by

Linda Lattimer

1) Kay, I am so glad I get to interview you. The blurb to your upcoming book, When Evening Falls, sounds very interesting. Would you like to tell us something about it? Is this one a gothic romance? Do you enjoy writing romantic suspense or gothic romance the best?

I’ve been writing romantic suspense for years, but I think my first love has always been the gothic. That’s the kind of romance I grew up on, Frances Parkinson Keys, Phyllis Whitney, etc. These days I find it hard to write anything without some kind of ghost, or angel, or mystical being in the plot.

2) Do your fans' comments and letters influence you in any way?

Definitely! So far I seem to be getting only positive feedback, which is a really good thing. I love to get those cards and emails about stories that have meant something to a reader, or touched them in some way. It helps to keep me on the right track.

3) How much of your personality and life experiences are in your writing?

LOTS! I think every heroine I write has a little bit of me lurking inside somewhere. It’s how I deal with my insecurities and quirks. And the heroes seem to always have something in them of my dream man. As for the ghosts I seem to be doing so often lately, my grandmother lived in a well-haunted house, so even there some personal experience creeps in.

4) What is your writing routine once you start a book?

I can only laugh. Really, I have no routine. I just get an idea and it takes off. From that point on, I have a really hard time stopping until I’m finished. I’m one of those people who writes with only a minimal outline, so a percentage of my writing time is jumping back to fix something that doesn’t quite work when a new idea takes over. Usually I like to let a new book sit for two or three weeks once it’s done, before I start to re-write. I think it’s easier to see what doesn’t work once I’ve taken some time away and distanced myself a little bit from the story.

5) Where do your ideas come from?

All over the place! I’ll see a face on the street, or an interesting-looking house, or visit someplace new, and an idea will just pop into my head. For When Evening Falls, a conversation with a sister-in-law reminded me of something that frightened me terribly when I was in first grade. An old Catholic school in Chicago burned, and I was attending a school much like it. We started having fire drills every week after that, and within six years they had torn down my school and replaced it with a new one. That has stuck with me all these years, and finally became what I think is one of my best stories ever.

6) What are some of your favorite things to do?

I love to travel, and camp. There are so many things to see and do. And all of them are so interesting. As for camping, there’s nothing like sitting around a campfire in the Rocky Mountains for getting the creativity flowing.

7) What book for you has been the easiest to write? The hardest? The most fun?

Only Yesterday had to be the hardest. It was the very first book I ever wrote. I was only fourteen and on vacation in the Thousand Islands. I really didn’t know what I was doing, but the story stuck with me so much that years later I pulled it out and after a massive re-write, it turned out great! Tall, Dark And Wwstern had to be the most fun. I have a cousin a lot like the heroine, Bethany. Whatever she touches seems to go haywire, and she has the most interesting life because of it!

8) Are you in control of your characters or do they control you?

No question. The characters do their thing, and I just type as fast as I can trying to keep up.

9) Tell your fans something about you they would never guess.

Another reason Tall, Dark And Western was so much fun to write is that I have this secret fantasy about stealing a police car. I have this real, sometimes almost irresistible urge to do it. Luckily, the presence of police in the vicinity always keeps me from doing it!