Writester.net

Name: Susan P. Baker
Website: www.susanpbaker.com
Contact: snana456@austin.rr.com

Questions:

Q: Where are you originally from?
A: I was born in Houston, TX, moved to Galveston, TX when I was 4. Lived several other places after I was grown but moved back to Galveston in 1974 and lived there until I moved to the TX hill country in the winter of 2003.

Q: Can you tell us your latest book news?
A: My newest mystery novel will be released by Five Star Mysteries, a division of Thomson Gale in October 2006. It’s entitled, The Sweet Scent of Murder, A Mavis Davis Mystery. It’s the sequel to My First Murder which was published by St. Martin’s Press in 1989. My current release is Death of a Prince.

Q: How old were you when you first started writing?
A: I began writing when I was in junior high. I signed up for a creative writing course in the summer after 8th grade but it didn’t make. I wrote poetry and later would write character sketches of people when I worked in a bank, things like that. I got really serious in the early 1980s.

Q: When did you first realize you had the potential to be a writer?
A: In the early 1980s when I joined a critique group and people liked what I wrote.

Q: What was your inspiration to write your first novel?
A: My first novel or my first published novel? The first novel I wrote was a romance about two lawyers (I used to practice law). It sucked pretty bad and I have the rejection letters to prove it. The second novel I wrote was a “Woman in Jeopardy” or suspense. It was never published either. It had to do with a woman lawyer who was stalked by a client’s husband. Maybe someday I’ll revise. It was based on some scary family law cases, one in particular, that I had. The first one to be published I started just for fun. Mavis Davis is my protagonist. People laughed and enjoyed her voice. She had been a probation officer and quit to become a P.I. I used to be a probation officer…

Q: Is there anyone or anything that inspired you to write?
A: All the books in the Rosenberg Library in Galveston. My father claims he taught me to read when I was about 4 and I’ve been an avid reader ever since. I guess I thought if they could do it so could I.

Q: How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?
A: My mother took us to the library every couple of weeks. We were discouraged from watching TV. Our father was very colorful—a politician, lawyer, statesman, veteran, judge. He’s 86 and still kicking. Mom is an English war bride. They told me I couldn’t be a writer, that I had to get an education in something that would put food on the table. I think that had a lot to do with my determination, at least after I finished my education.

Q: Do you have a specific writing style?
A: I don’t think so. I have some first person things, some third person things, some essays/memoir type things, some nonfiction. I’m always learning about writing. I probably have a certain voice in particular books, but I think the voice is different depending on which protagonist it is. I suppose there is some humor in a lot of it. I’d love to be strictly a humor writer but when I focus on that I can’t do it. If I just write, it comes out.

Q: What genre are you most comfortable writing?
A: Yes. J Right now I’m most published in mystery so I suppose you could say mystery, but I’m also working on mainstream.

Q: How do you come up with the title(s) for your book(s)?
A: Some titles find me and some I have to work at. My First Murder had to do with Mavis Davis’ first murder case. Sometimes I have a working title that falls by the wayside when something else presents itself. Every title comes from a different place.

Q: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
A: Depends on the novel. Justice. Integrity, perhaps.

Q: How much of the novel is realistic?
A: There’s a part of me in every character but I am not them and they are not me. Neither are they anyone else though they may have started out based on someone else and shaped up to be themselves. As for the legal aspects of what I write, I try to make sure criminal law and criminal procedure are as up to date as I can make them.

Q: Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your life?
A: Somewhat. But the more I write, the more fantasy comes out. The kernel may have been there but evolved by the last draft into something or someone entirely different.

Q: What books have most influenced your life?
A: I read everything. Mike Shayne mysteries when I was little. True crime. Best sellers like Hailey. Rosamund Pilcher’s books. Maeve Binchy’s books. Evan Hunter. I wrote to him once and he wrote back, by the way. That was years ago when I first thought of writing. I was really thrilled.

Q: If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
A: Joan Lowry Nixon was very special to me when I first joined Mystery Writers of America as was Bill Crider. They both always had an encouraging word when I’d see them at meetings. As far as a mentor, I can’t say. That’s part of my problem. I like almost everything. I read almost everything. I’m scattered, some people say. I just want to master the craft before I die.

Q: What are you reading now?
A: The Heroine’s Journey. The Writer’s Jouney. The Women of Brewster Street.

The Essays of E.B. White, French Women Don’t Get Fat, Marilyn French’s Beyond Power (on Women, Men, and Morals), Good Harbor by Anita Diamant, Custer and Me, A Historian’s Memoir by Robert M. Utley, and Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction by Michigan State University Press. (some of these are new books but I haunt used book stores and purchase piles of wonderful books I may not read until I’m bedridden)..

Q: What new author has grasped your interest?
A: All of them and none of them, depending on my mood.

Q: Is there anything additional you would like to share with your readers?
A: Check out my web page: www.susanpbaker.com for my cool trailer on Death of a Prince, my mystery that’s out now.