Sharon Dunn Interview

Q: Let’s start with you telling us about your professional writing career and how you got your first big break.

I started writing when my kids were babies. I wrote in short blocks of time while my kids napped, my husband watched them or they played at my feet. I don’t know if there is such a thing as a big break with writing. There is just the agreement with yourself and and God to show up at your computer, to complete projects and to send them out. For me my big break has happened over the last ten or so years that I decided to take myself seriously as a writer. It wasn’t one particular event.

Q: As a person who has read all of your books, I am amazed at the creative titles that you employ. Did you come up with these titles and if so, how did you convince your publishers to use them?

The first book in the Ruby Taylor series, Romance Rustlers and Thunderbird Thieves, was originally called Stolen Vows. My editor requested a title change so I gave them a brainstormed list. After that, were decided that each book should make a reference to a classic car and have the double alliteration. With the Bargain Hunters series, Death of a Garage Sale Newbie popped into my head and then I wrote the book to go with it.

Q: In your first three books, Cow Crimes and The Mustang Menace, Romance Rustlers and Thunderbird Thieves, Sassy Cinderella and Valiant Vigilante, you use first person for your sassy main character. In your most recent release, Death of A Garage Sale Newbie, you chose third person. What thoughts went into making this decision?

When I started writing Romance Rustlers, I heard Ruby’s voice in first person. I don’t think I had a choice. Later I found out that it was a bad idea to try and sell a book written in first person, if it is your first book. But I didn’t know any better.

I did Garage Sale Newbie in third person for a change and because multiple POV opens up your options quite a bit. Every one says first person is hard, but I think third person has challenges too. It’s is easy to get out of control with the number of POV characters that you have and each POV has to have a unique voice. Also, with third person your choices as to plot direction are limitless. I like the control of first person, that you can only go where main character can go. Sometime fewer choices is better. Like when you go to Wal-Mart and there are 8 billlion lipstick shades. I get a headache trying to decide between mauve and berry blush.

Q: One aspect of Death of A Garage Sale Newbie that I most admired is your ability to write realistic characters of many varying ages. What techniques, research, etc. did you use to so successfully capture the various stages in life?

Thank you for saying that. It was a nice challenge to try and get each character to ring true. The key is to create characters that you like and admire and then give them goals worth fighting for. For example, the character of Arleta is so spunky. Being 75 hasn’t stopped her from taking a self defense class. I love that she hasn’t given up on life even though she is fighting loneliness since her husband died.

Q: Tell us how the Death of A Garage Sale Newbie’s plot came about.

The book combines two of my favorite things. The hunt for a good deal and a solid follow the clues mystery. If I remember the process correctly, I started with a what if question. What if you went garage saling and one of the things you bought revealed a twenty year old crime and put you in mortal danger? The plot sort of starts to write itself at that point in that once Mary Margret goes missing, her friends must retrace her steps and connect each garage sale item she bought with a seller and figure out if there is something suspicious each person.

Q: If your readers could take away only one message from Death of A Garage Sale Newbie, what would that be?

The theme of the book is how Christians deal with finances. My books are not preachy, but I think the different struggles character go through might get readers thinking about how they view money in relationship to their faith.

Also, I think the book has a really sweet love story between the empty nesters Ginger and Earl. Most romance cover people meeting and falling in love and getting married. I wanted to chronicle that process of rediscovery after you have been married for years and you get a chance to fall in love all over again.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about the next book in the Bargain Hunters Series?

Book two is called Death of A Six Foot Teddy Bear due out in Jaunuary 2008. Ginger and the other Bargain Hunters head down to the fictional town of Calamity, Nevada for the world largest garage sale. Also, the hotel where they are staying has a series of tunnels that feature bargain basement outlets. They go to Nevada to help Earl, Ginger’s husband, market his invention at an Inventors’ Convention?and there is a squirrel lovers’ convention taking place in the same hotel. Lots of opportunity for mystery, mayhem, clearance sales.

Q: What do you think a good mystery is comprised of?

Aside from the elements that all good stories should have: tight plots and good character development, I think a good mystery should have a unique crime and a sleuth that builds on mystery tradition while bringing something new to the genre. When I came up with my amateur detective, Ginger Salinski, she fell into the older female sleuth like Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher. But she is different because her faith affects her choices and she has a husband who is still alive and four grown children. The fact that she has a PHd. in bargain hunting was a character quality I hadn’t seen before.

Q: What Christian suspense/mystery authors do you read?

Brandilyn Collins and Mindy Starns Clark. I have just started Linda Hall’s Black Ice and really like it. That is the first Linda Hall I have read, but I think she might become a new fave.

Q: Do you have a favorite book?

Favorite book of all time Les Miserables (though I must confess that I listened to the abridged audio version, my husband said I would want to jump off a building if I tried to read the original text)

Favorite Christian fiction-Francine Rivers Redeeming Love

Q: What inspires you to write?

Deadlines.

Before deadlines, I told myself that writing was my job (unpaid at the time) I needed to punch the clock and do my shift. Sometimes the writing was good, sometimes it was not. But I showed up for my job and I did my best.

Q: What changes have you seen in the Christian suspense/mystery market since you started writing in it? Any thoughts on what the future holds for this genre?

When I first became a Christian twenty some odd years ago, I couldn’t find a Christian mystery. I read a lot of Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Sue Grafton and Sharyn McCrumb. Now I read almost exclusively Christian fiction because there is so much good stuff out there. I keep adding books to my TBR (to be read pile). When I first tried to sell Romance Rustlers starting around 2000, the book got turned down with the comment, “the writing is good but we don’t know how to market a mystery.” Now we have tons of mysteries. Cozy and romantic suspense seemed to be the most flourishing genres, but I really think there will be an expansion of that into hard boiled and police procedurals. Also, when I do read a secular mystery, they seem a little empty. If the only conclusion you can draw when faced with death and its aftermath is that its good to have friends who support you, that is kind of a shallow theme. As Christians, issues of the value of life and the need for justice run deep through our worldview. In that way, we are well positioned to write great mysteries. It would be nice to have Christian writers moving into the mainstream in order to answer some of those deep cries of the soul.

Q: You use humor in all of your books. Would the people who know you best consider you laugh-out-loud funny or are you more a tongue-in-cheek kind of person?

I have been told I can be quite sarcastic. However, if I was a flavor of ice cream I would be vanilla. When I am with people, I tend to be a listener and an observer. I don’t think anyone would describe me as the life of the party or the person who tells the best joke or the funniest stories. The weird thing is when I sit down to write, it just comes out funny. I never set out to become the lady who writes the humorous whodunits, I focused on putting together a solid mystery and having three dimensional characters, humor was a by product of that.

Q: What’s God been doing in your life lately?

Oh my goodness, I have been going through what I am calling The Beautiful Crisis. I have become a bit lazy in my spiritual life, expecting to be entertained when I went to church and putting faith in pastors that I should have put in God. I have gone through periods of sadness and even anger. I ask God each day what I need to do to get through this. He has led me back to reread some of the classics I read when I first became a Christian starting with Mere Christianity.

The writing schedule too has caused me to become a little isolated and disconnected from God’s people (which I am sure had something to do with the crisis in the first place). With deadlines, I have to keep a tight schedule which doesn’t allow for a lot of social or church activities. Writing is by nature a solitary activity, but I think my life has gotten a little out of balance and I am trying to correct that.

Fellowship is so important. But I don’t want shallow mask wearing relationships. God has given me a taste of what transparent, safe relationships with other Christians looks like and I want more.

Q: Do you have a main scripture verse that expresses your writing message?

When I was trying to sell my first book, I was striving so hard and it didn’t sell or it would almost sell. I was running out of publishers to submit to. I shook my fist at God and said “I thought you wanted me to write this book.”

I am not one of those people who hears God on a regular basis, but in that moment of honesty, I sensed that God was telling me that the writer was in the way of the word. I wanted the book to sell, so I could feel good about myself. I had fallen back into an old pattern of getting identity from achievement. It is so easy for pride to seep in. I constantly have to make an attitude adjustment and remind myself that I am the reader’s servant. The book is not for my ego or to take care of some self esteem problem, it is for the reader.

The verse that spoke to me at that time was Philippians 2:3-4 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility considers others better than yourself. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Q: How and when did you realize you could write a full length novel? And did you ever imagine it would be published?

With the first book, I just sort of picked away at it over two or three years when I didn’t have other shorter writing projects. Thinking about writing a whole book would have overwhelmed me, so I just focused on doing the next two or three pages. Once it was done, I thought maybe I should send it out. Of course, it got rejected. I didn’t know anything about marketing and proposals. If I hadn’t gotten positive feedback on it from an agent, an editor and a published writer at writer’s conference, I probably wouldn’t have pursued getting Romance Rustlers published.

Q: What’s one thing about becoming published that was not what you thought it would be?

I think every writer secretly hopes that words like run away bestseller and breakout novel of the year will be attached to their work. But hey, that didn’t happen with my first book? or my second book. I wasn’t totally in fantasy land. I knew I wouldn’t be putting in the pool and hiring a maid with the first book, but still you expect more dramatic changes than I have seen. The reality is I am a working writer. I slowly build my audience book by book. I show up faithfully at my computer to get my work done. I still clean my own toilets, mop my own floors and toss random things in my grocery cart hoping they will magically turn into meals because I am thinking about my book instead of meal planning.

Q: Any advice for a writer who’s striving for publication?

Do not stake your identity on your success or failure as a writer, that needs to come from Christ. This business is too fickle and too filled with emotional ups and downs to do that. No matter how many books you sell, rejection is always part of the business. Even if you never sell a book, you are loved by the Savior of the universe, precious and honored in his sight and he is enthralled with your beauty. Paste that on your forehead. Tape it to your computer. Hang it in a waterproof bag in the shower.

Second, seek out the encouragement and community of other writers. No one understands a writer like another writer. The support and mentoring I received from ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) and my local writers group was invaluable to me.

Q: Anything else you would like to tell our readers?

Sure, if they want to know more about me or my books they can go to www.sharondunnbooks.com . Also because the new series is about bargain hunting, there is an interactive place where they can leave their favorite money saving tip. Just click on Bargain Hunter or Bargain Hunting Tips on the home page.