I'm back at my blog for an interview with author Helen Grochmal who writes the Carolina Pennsbury Mystery series. I asked her the usual questions, but her wonderful answers melded into one beautiful piece, so I left the questions out.
I am so impressed with Helen's writing. She is a "late Bloomer" like many of us. It's never too late to be really good! Here she is in her own words:
I never liked writing anything for 60 years. I enjoyed
doing my yearly taxes more. However, I
churned out the required departmental reports for 25 years in boring
“educational speak” and even wrote journal articles for library periodicals. Then I went through a life altering
experience of the most unpleasant kind that was the equivalent of a journey
through the underworld. Unlike Odysseus,
who had more fun, I woke up one day after two years with a desire to write. Yes, it was just like that. Was it worth it? I presume you are clamoring to know but are
just too polite to ask. The answer is
no, I would prefer to have skipped the experience and stayed in my very nice
condo where I watched TV and scrubbed the bathrooms in peace. I write cozies because I am a little old lady
who took that old advice about writing what you know. And I love Agatha
Christie.
I have been writing now for five years since I moved to
my first retirement home with my cat. It
came upon me with inspiration, almost like channeling or what I suppose that to
be. Of course it is a craft too that I
had to learn, I mean writing fiction. I
am still learning and hope I am a quick study since I don’t have 50 years to
perfect my art. (Why is everyone
encouraging only young people to write?
It seems like we senior people who start writing need as much help as
quickly as we can get it.) Cozy Cat was
there when I needed encouragement. I
have a new and better mystery novel ready to be published but have to write
about another 20,000 words to finish it, difficult in these times of my
terseness. This last year I have been
trying to learn new forms and genres. My
eyes are still stuck wide open at what has changed since last I looked, around
1973 I guess. Steampunk and slipstream
and such. I have been writing flash
fiction and horror stories and comic stories and other different short forms to
improve my overall writing. I am shocked
at my horror stories, which I think are my best. How embarrassing.
I take the Fifth on whether I am like my
protagonist. I am a mixture of several
of my characters but want to be like Carolina Pennsbury the most. I met librarians like her in the old days who
would tell me about going about on tramp steamers with other women teachers
because teaching didn’t pay for luxury trips and they had the summers off and
wanted to travel around the world. I
guess that was between the wars (I and II).
My style is mainstream.
I try to push boundaries sometimes in my experimental ventures but
always end up understanding everything I write no matter how hard I try not
to. I write as the spirit moves me, but
writing has deserted me lately and I am frantic about it. I feel somewhat like the main character in
“Flowers for Algernon” or the movie Charly. Our new gifts might vanish as quickly as they
came. I used to relish how easy
inspiration came and now I am paying for it.
I think it is being lost in the short story slush piles that have done
me in. Do you all remember how wonderful
it was when the act of transcribing your thoughts couldn’t keep up with the
wonderful things you were trying to take down?
When I can’t write, my typical day consists of watching TV and taking
out the garbage. I have a balance disorder that keeps me close to home. My neighbors are kind people and are hoping
that I make good.
I live in an independent living community with assisted
care nearby. I chose it because my place
is a little cottage a bit like Miss Marple’s, I like to think. I would rather be in St. Mary Mead
though. I don’t talk about the most
exciting thing that ever happened to me, although I plan to write about it
someday under a pseudonym.
Hobbies: I watch
TV about as much as Peter Sellers did in that famous movie Being There. Of course, I am surrounded here by all of
the characters I have read in literature and have seen in movies. Don’t worry, I know they are only in my mind.
So far my work has been published by Cozy Cat Press
(fine people there, by the way) and a short piece in With Painted Words. I have
about 22 short stories out but they keep sending them back like bad children,
or I never hear from the magazines at all.
Learning how to use computer programs and such is harder for me than
writing fiction but I am willing to learn if it is not too hard. My friends
here consider me a computer expert, isn’t that nice of them? Blogging might be fun, although it sounds
like it is very improper. I never do
anything improper.
Thank you, Helen for sharing so much of
your life with us. You do it so well that I feel like I just spent the
afternoon with you, sipping tea and sharing stories. Here is Helen’s first
book, Manners and Murder, available at Amazon.
Retired librarian Carolina Pennsbury is quite content living
in a retirement home. She just wishes that her meal time tablemates felt as she
did. However, all seem to have their own complaints. But those complaints are
put on the back burner when one of the retirement home’s residents is stabbed
to death in her apartment and the police arrest one of Carolina’s tablemates,
Margie, for the murder. Carolina, knowing her friend cannot possibly have committed
such a deed, sets about to prove Margie’s innocence––a difficult feat for an
elderly woman with a cane. Knowing the real killer is probably still roaming
the halls, Carolina uses her wits and her wit to investigate, and
ultimately––after a fake fire alarm and a lengthy blackout––manages to ferret
out the killer. But clearing Margie and getting her out of jail is not the end
of Carolina’s tasks. She has work to do for all of her tablemates and she won’t
quit until they are all happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment