Malice, Matrimony, & Murder, A Collection of 25 Wedding Cozy Mystery & Crime Fiction Stories contains “Sabotage and A Murder Mystery” by Lynn, published November of 2023 by Marla Bradeen. “Shrewd Women” was reprinted in Crimeucopia, Boomshalalaking, Modern Crimes in Modern Times, UK in June 2023, and published by Onyx Publications and Discovery Podcast in 2022. Bitter Love,” appeared in Crimeucopia, The I’s Have It by Murderous Ink Press, 2021, UK. “Jewel’s Hell” was in the Me Too Short Stories: An Anthology edited by Elizabeth Zelvin, published in 2019 by Level Best Books. Lynn left law enforcement to write and lives with her husband and his six rescue cats near Atlanta, Georgia, where she performs in several dance troupes.
Tell us a bit about your latest work.
An adult/ young adult sci-fi “Grams and Teddy Private Detective Agency “sprouted from a conversation with my grandson before COVID. I’m looking for a publisher.
In 2045 Atlanta, Georgia, a grandmother, and her grandson run a private detective agency in a world with flying cars, holograms, drone surveillance, mandatory senior medications, and an authoritarian government without a Bill of Rights. Widower Dorothy Saunders or Grams and Teddy, her illegal android grandson, are members of the Underground and work against the State to abolish annual home inspections and establish democratic elections. They appear to their neighbors as a fiction writer and human college student, but Jack Saunders created Teddy before he died. Now, Teddy hugs Grams at least three times a day, and they work together solving P.I. cases for extra cash. Two Underground operatives are assassinated. The case of a missing pharmaceutical rep, Jonathan Farnsworth, leads them to the dangerous conspirators that murdered the operatives, a black-market organ harvesting ring in Hawaii, and robotic gestation of human fetuses.
What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?
Subgroups and outsiders, domestic violence, and mental illness are frequent issues I dealt with on-duty as a police officer; they reoccur in my novels and short stories. Thematically, the gray areas of life interest me more than dogma and rules. I revisit the issues of actions, consequences, and the possibility of redemption or forgiveness. What is justice?
What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?
Reading piles of books from the public library every summer as a child and the need to be heard and leave a legacy. Roadblocks.What inspires you to write?
Others’ humorous stories, dialogue overheard in a restaurant, the unexplainable and undefinable, the depths of evil and goodness humankind can reach, the magic when a character speaks to you.
What would be your dream project?
Working on a screenplay to develop one of my books into a movie.
If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?
“Murder Is Food For Thought” was my first published short story about domestic violence based on the aftermath of a true crime involving my mother. I made the manuscript into a short play and produced it through FIELD at the Schwartz Center, Emory University, but I wish I’d known more about formatting, producing, and directing. The desire to learn more led me to InterPlay.
What writers have influenced your style and technique?
- Elmore Leonard, his writing style and unforgettable flawed good and redeemable bad guys,
- Jacqueline Winspear, Maise Dobbs’ psychological mastery of understanding the criminal mind
- Mark Twain, humor and personal debt made by bad investment in inventors,
- Anne Cleeves, practical, unsentimental Vera Stanhope character,
- Margaret Atwood, chilling stories of suppressing women, The Handmaidens Tale
- Robert Mosley, bravery and honesty, the whole package, The Wave
- Anne Perry, her murderous history-convicted of killing her mother,
- Eudora Welty, the southern humor in “Why I Live at the P.O.”
Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?
If a book isn’t art, honesty on some level, why bother. On the other hand, If the writer hasn’t honed his/her craft or makes me work to figure out the pretentious point, I stop reading. I think a writer must be both a mad scientist, an artist, and an entertainer.
What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
I’m a pantser and try on the back end to dot every i and cross every t. After a book is accepted by a publisher, the never-ending edits take discipline on my part. It’s boring.
How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?
We commiserate and celebrate together. It helps to have another author at a book signing event for the slow times. I promote my sister and fellow authors for their unique styles and voices.
Critique groups helped and hindered me in the beginning. Because crime fiction is a genre not everybody enjoys, many find peeking into the dark side disturbing. I learn from reading other genres, but I do find some cozies unrelatable.
What does literary success look like to you?
Probably influencing or inspiring another author to keep writing. I’m not a joiner but I joined The National League of American Pen Women to help women artist of all types make a living and gain respect for their work. Making a profit would be gratifying too.
Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?
I’m working on a historical fiction slash fantasy. A midwife in the winter of 1878 checks on a new mother in the Boston Mountains in Arkansas and wakes up in a cave with white furry creatures that emit their own light and are fed fresh vegs by the gatherers or blue-robed ones that work for the purple-robed royals. Meanwhile, the midwife’s husband is above ground searching for his missing wife, believed kidnapped by bushwhackers or Indians. The husband, an unreliable brother-in-law, and the midwife’s aunt travel to Fort Smith, then into Indian Territory. Cave myth, trains, stagecoaches, midwifery, herbal remedies, old military trials, Marshal Bass Reeves are a few of the subjects I’ve researched for this novel.
Lynn Hesse is amazing. Her books are wonderful!
ReplyDeleteYep. I really enjoyed meeting her no long ago.
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