Interview with Lynnette Baughman

by

 Kenneth E. Baker

Lynnette Baughman's new book,"Vegas Centennial, An Olivia Wright Mystery," is available now from Wings ePress in ebook and trade paperback. It's her fourth published mystery.

Lynnette and her husband moved about 1 and 1/2 years ago from New Mexico to Sequim, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula. As she writes, she can look across the Strait of Juan de Fuca toward the San Juan Islands and Victoria, British Columbia.

Learn more about Lynnette at her website, www.vegascentennial.net. She welcomes notes from readers at nmauthor@juno.com.

When did you start writing?

I majored in English and Drama in college, at New Mexico State University. My first efforts at "real" writing were plays. I wrote a few children's plays, which were published, and two adult plays that were performed a few times readers' theater style. I wrote two novels in about 1980, but I had NO idea what I was doing. They were pretty bad. One of the great regrets of my life is that I didn't find a group of active writers then and learn HOW to write commercial fiction. If I'd found Romance Writers of America and Sisters in Crime twenty years ago, my career would be amazingly better. But--oh well. Woulda Coulda Shoulda!!!

I really learned how to write when I started freelancing for newspapers. I consider that my apprenticeship. Then I got a job writing publicity for a hotel/casino in Las Vegas, and learned a lot more. I was a newspaper editor for several years and I also wrote for magazines, including Reader's Digest.

Why do you write?

I think writing is a way to try to make sense of life, to put order and satisfaction into what is usually the opposite of that. It's the same reason I read.

Where do ideas come from?

Everywhere! I'm always amazed at how many variations there are on basic ideas. And that's because people's lives are so different and yet human needs are much the same throughout time, place, class, etc. People have wanted justice, for example, since the first humans stood upright.

Why did you choose an e-publisher?

My first two books were published by a conventional publisher, but the third and fourth had to come out more quickly, and e-publishing was the answer. "Lost Almost" is a bio-terrorism thriller, written before Sept. 11, 2001. When Wings brought it out in 2002 it won the Golden Wings award two straight months and was named a finalist for the EPPIE Award. "Vegas Centennial" is fiction based on a real-life event, the upcoming centennial of Las Vegas, so it also needed to come out more quickly than conventional publishers work.

What's your writing schedule like?

I can't do little bits and pieces every day. I have to have good solid stretches of time where I can concentrate. When I'm really cooking I'll get up at 4 a.m. and sit down at the computer and still be sitting there in my pajamas at 4 p.m. Because I'm really embedded in the story that way, I don't have to waste time reintroducing myself to the characters and action. "Vegas Centennial" is a mystery, and I have to remember who knew what when. Literary novels can wander and explore. A mystery has to move move move.

A very high priority in my life is to spend quality time with my grandchildren, so when they're visiting me in Washington state, or I'm visiting them in Utah or Connecticut, writing is not on my list of things to do. Teaching them to love books and remembering my own childhood visits to libraries is way up there on my list.

What are you working on now?

I'm moving away from the mystery genre toward romance, and the first one is set in Seattle, the first time I've used my new home.

What's on your reading table?

I just finished "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd and I'm stunned and humbled. What a terrific book!