Veronica Heley Interview

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

A. I always knew I could write but had to wait till I’d grown up and learned a bit about the world before I had anything to say and could settle down to learning my craft. I might have been an actress, or a teacher – but ended up as a writer. I think that’s the best career of all – for me.

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

A. When I was a child. I made up stories in my head all the time. It was years before I learned that other people didn’t do that, too.

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

A. When we got married my husband asked if I’d mind if he changed career to retrain and I said yes – and everything in the house broke! But, we managed. Then, when he got his first new job, I asked if he’d mind if I didn’t go back to work, but tried to see if I could make it as a writer. That took two years. . .

Q: Would you tell us about your current book release Murder With Mercy.   This is the 14th in the series about Ellie Quicke, an older woman with no great opinion of herself, who investigates whether certain deaths in the community are natural, or not. At the same time, turning a large old house which she has inherited, into a hotel, is delayed by sabotage – and suspicion falls on the difficult twelve-year old Mikey, whom Ellie has taken in. Social Services threaten to remove him into care.Meanwhile, Ellie’s ambitious, bullying daughter is juggling problems caused by the slow convalescence of her estate agent husband – who is in a wheelchair. What nobody knows is that an elderly lady has come across some drugs and is using them to ease people in pain out of their misery.

Q: Where did you get your inspiration for Murder with Mercy?

A: The question of helping people to commit suicide has been much in the papers recently, and I wondered what would happen if an elderly lady went about helping people . . . with the best of intentions, of course.

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

A:  I would like them to think hard about the rights and wrongs of helping people to die. I also want to show that people like Ellie, who tend to think they muddle through, can make a big difference to their world.

Q: What is your favorite scene/chapter from the book?

A:  The one in which Ellie successfully routs the people from Social Services who want to take Mikey into care. He is certainly up to something, but not what they have him down for.

Q: What inspires you to write?  

A. God gives me ideas for stories. The hard work comes in writing them in acceptable fashion.

Q: How has being a published novelist differed from your expectations of the profession?

A: The money is far less than I imagined it would be. I did think I could mend a leaking roof by writing at one time. Well, that story got turned down – but we managed.

Q: What advice or tips do you have for writers who are just getting started?

A:  Learn your craft. Deliver on time and to the right word count. Read everything you can lay your hands on – and read widely, outside your own genre. 

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

A: I’ve just finished proof reading a Bea Abbot story (I write a Bea Abbott and an Ellie Quicke story alternately). This is FALSE DIAMOND, and will be published at the end of November 2013, 3 months later in the USA. Bea runs a domestic agency, but gets involved in mayhem and murder through her business activities.  

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

A. To read. To play patience with real cards. To garden when the weather is clement. To meet with friends for a coffee.

Q: Where can readers find you on the internet? 

A.  www.veronicaheley.com  I have a monthly newsletter, too, which you can sign up for using the button on the home page of the website. Part of this goes forward onto my blog later in the month.

Q: Anything else you’d like to tell or share with us? 

A. Ellie and Bea are Christians, dealing with some of the worst problems of this world, but they keep going with a light touch and some humour. I would like to state here that my own daughter is nothing like Ellie’s daughter Diana, who is a bully. I thought I’d invented Diana, but it turns out that she’s alive and kicking all over the world – or so my readers tells me.