Robin Patchen Interview

Q: Let me start with asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself.

A: My husband, Ed, and I have been married for twenty-three years. We’re both from New Hampshire, but we’ve lived in Oklahoma for over twenty years. All three of our kids (19, 17, and 15) were born here.

Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

A:  As long as I can remember, I’ve loved to write, even more than I loved to read. But when I was young, I didn’t have the confidence to admit my desire to be a writer. It seemed easier to study something else, something that, if I were to fail at it, wouldn’t crush me. I never admitted to anyone that I wanted to be a writer until I chose to major in Journalism, and even then, I concentrated in public relations, not newspaper journalism, because I didn’t believe I could make it as a writer.

Q: Could you give us the highlights of your professional writing career including how you got your first writing break?

A: After college, I worked in marketing and PR until my first child was born. Then I put away my dream of writing to raise my kids. I home schooled for years, but halfway through what would be my last year of home schooling in December of 2008, I got a laptop for my birthday. I’d had a story bouncing around in my brain for years, and I decided, almost on a whim, to try writing it down. Well, over 300,000 words—and just three months—later, I completed that epic, terrible novel, and I was hooked on writing.

I joined a local ACFW chapter a year later, met a few bunch of excellent critique partners, and concentrated on improving my craft. In 2011, I heard about a publisher looking for Christmas novellas and wrote One Christmas Eve. I submitted it to Pelican, and miracle of miracles, they liked it. It wasn’t until then that I decided that I really might be able to make it as a writer—whatever “make it” means.

That fall, I decided to try my hand at NaNoWriMo and penned the first 50,000 words of the book that would become Finding Amanda. That manuscript landed me an agent, and when no publisher picked it up, became my first indie published novel. Last year, it was nominated for a Carol Award and won the Lyra Award for Women’s Fiction.

Q: Would you tell us about your current book release, Twisted Lies?

A: Twisted Lies is the second in the Hidden Truth Series. It’s the story of one of the secondary characters, Nate, from the first book, Convenient Lies. Here’s the blurb:

She thought they’d never find her.  And then her daughter vanished.

Marisa Vega’s life as an adoptive mom in a tiny Mexican village isn’t what she’d dreamed while growing up in New York, but as the target of a man who’s convinced she stole millions of dollars from his financial firm, Marisa believes hiding is her only way to stay alive. When her daughter is snatched and held for ransom, Marisa must discover who really stole the money in order to rescue her.

Months after being kidnapped, tortured, and left with PTSD, Nate Boyle is ready to live a quiet life in rural New Hampshire. When the source of his breakout newspaper article—and the woman who haunts his dreams—begs for help, he gets pulled into a riddle that’s proved unsolvable for nearly a decade.

Can Nate and Marisa unravel the years-old mystery and bring her daughter home?

Q: Where did you get your inspiration for Twisted Lies?

A: Such a good question, such a hard question. I never really know what inspires my stories. I knew I wanted to write about Nate, because he was such a heroic character in Convenient Lies, but in the end, he felt like he’d failed. He was a reporter, so I knew his story had something to do with his job. I decided the heroine was somebody from his past, and thought about what had been going on in New York since Nate had started his career. That led me to think about the real estate collapse. The rest—I have no idea. My stories feel like they come from the air. And since I can never really explain how I got the ideas, I always have this niggling fear I’ll never come up with another one. And then I remember, God’s in control.

Q: What is the main thing you hope readers remember from this story?

A: I hope they remember what Nate learned, that heroes aren’t fearless. They don’t wear capes and big S’s on their shirts. Heroes are regular folks like you and me who, despite their fear, do what they are called to do.

Q: What inspires you to write?

A: When I was young, I used to sit with pen and paper and try to think of something to write. I didn’t have anything to say back then, but the inspiration to write feels like something I was born with. Now, the stories I am given—and they do feel like gifts—inspire me to write. Sometimes, a lesson the Lord has shared with me inspires me to write. But ultimately, I write because I cannot not write.

Q: Would you share with us what you are working on now?

A: I’d love to! I haven’t written the official blurb yet for book 3 in the Hidden Truth Series, but here’s a broad brush description. The heroine is Samantha, one of the supporting characters from the first two books. The hero is Garrison, who was introduced in Book 2. Garrison’s son, Aiden, is an addict, and he takes Aiden to New Hampshire to get him away from the negative influences of home and figure out what to do about the addiction. He chose New Hampshire because he’d become friends with the characters from Book 2—especially with Sam, whom he’s attracted to. What Garrison doesn’t know is that his son’s friend has hidden something in their car—a package some very bad guys are willing to kill to get back.

Q: When you’re not writing what do you like to do?

A: I love to travel, and if I could, I would gallivant around the globe all the time. But most of my free time isn’t spent traveling, unfortunately. I love to read, I love to cook and entertain, I love to hang out with my family, and I love to join friends for lunch as often as people will meet me. Between my writing and my freelance editing business, my husband and my kids, my home and our pets, there’s not a lot of time left over for fun.