An Interview from Cruse’N with Lonnie, the blog of mystery author Lonnie Cruse.

Morning all,

Today's interview is with author L. L. Bartlett whose new book MURDER ON THE MIND recently hit the shelves. Bartlett and I are fellow Guppys and we belong to Lethal Ladies, a group designed to promote five authors with very different books. I hope you enjoy meeting Bartlett and that you will check out her web site and book. Thanks for stopping by!

LC: Tell us a bit about your new book.

LLB: MURDER ON THE MIND is the first in a series featuring former insurance investigator Jeff Resnick. When he’s viciously mugged, he discovers the resulting brain injury has left him able to sense people's secrets. Despite Jeff's mixed feelings about his new sixth sense, he feels compelled to explore a banker's murder--using both his senses and his investigative skills. It’s also the story of estranged brothers and how they learn to trust each other.

LC: How did you find your publisher?

LLB: After a number of “close but no sale” rejections from New York publishers, my agent contacted Five Star (an imprint of Thompson Gale). It’s a big company, with a great reputation, and so far my experience with them has been nothing but positive.

LC: How long did it take you to become published?

LLB: Eleven l-o-n-g years. And oddly enough, my first book published is the first book I wrote. I never gave up on it. Every year I’d haul it out and do a rewrite (sometimes twice a year). I tossed the entire beginning, put it back in, tossed it again. Reworked the middle, chopped, restored, chopped, restored. Added new scenes, drastically changed one of the characters, pumped up a minor character to have more significance. It was the 13th draft that sold, and my editor made very few changes, telling me it was one of the cleanest manuscripts he’d ever worked on.

LC: You are a long-time member of Guppies, a chapter of Sisters In Crime for unpublished and newly published writers. Has your membership helped you to write and publish your manuscript?

LLB: Over the years I’ve been involved with various critique groups with the Guppies. Everyone contributed something valuable to my various manuscripts. One Guppy, a retired school teacher, did a line-by-line edit on MURDER ON THE MIND. It was that draft that impressed my agent and put me on the road to publication. I learned more on that edit than I’d learned in years.

Besides the camaraderie and advice available on the Guppies main list, the Web site is worth its weight in gold to new writers (and available to members only). It contains six years worth of articles on the craft of writing, networking, information about the publishing industry, promotion--contest information…just about everything a newbie can use on the road to publication. (Okay, I’m prejudiced--I helped set the site up.)

LC: Do you write full time, or do you have a day job? If you do have a day job, how do you squeeze in writing time?

LLB: I recently lost my job of many years, so until my severance runs out (about a year), I’ll be a full-time author. But it’s a lot harder than I ever imagined. Working at home has a lot of distractions, from laundry to running errands for my elderly parents. Now I believe it when I hear retirees say “I don’t know how I ever got anything done when I was working.”

LC: You are a member of the newly formed Lethal Ladies in order to promote your work. What does membership do for you?

LLB: So far we haven’t made much of a mark--but I expected it to take time for momentum to build. Cindy Daniel put a great web site together for us, and we’ve distributed flyers--but I think we’ll make the most impact if we can “appear” at several conferences in 2006. Most of us will be at Malice Domestic, and possibly Bouchercon. The fact that we’re widely spread across the country doesn’t help--but we have similar goals and I think we’ll overcome that problem and the effort we’re putting into it will bring us all greater recognition in the future.

LC: Which authors do you enjoy reading?

LLB: I could probably list a million, in many different genres, but cyberspace isn’t that large. Here’s a few, in no particular order: Lawrence Block, J.K. Rowling, John Mortimer, Anne Rivers Siddons, Jeanne Ray, Doranna Durgin, Janet Evanovich.

LC: How do you research your books, or do you?

LLB: I probably spend far too much time doing research--but as I’m a “seat-of-the-pants” kind of writer, I often don’t do my research until I need a fact for a scene. The Internet has become my main source, but I’ve found I can ask a question on the Guppies List and there’s at least one expert on any given subject who can tell me their personal experiences. Most recently I asked about small bakeries. I got two wonderful replies. Now I wish the scene had a lot more prominence. The information I received could be the basis of a great cozy mystery series. (And yes, I encouraged my informants to give it a shot!)

LC: Which is worse, writing the first draft, or rewriting it, and why?

LLB: First draft, for sure. Sometimes I sit and stare at the screen and nothing happens. Once a scene is finished, I love to tinker with it until it works perfectly, which is probably why I enjoy rewriting. But often, what I think reads just fine has problems I can’t see because I’m too close to it. That’s where a good critique partner comes in. I don’t like them to pull their punches, either. I’d much rather hear about a problem from them than my agent or editor.

LC: Is there anything else you'd like my fellow bloggers to know about you or your writing?

LLB: Check out my web site (www.LLBartlett.com), read the excerpt to MURDER ON THE MIND, and take a chance on a “new” writer. You might be glad you did.