Join Pamela Fagan Hutchins, author of the mystery/women’s fiction, Saving Grace, as she tours the blogosphere January 2 – March 29 2013 on her first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book! This tour is part of a huge Kindle Fire HD Giveaway. You can enter HERE.
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Pamela Fagan Hutchins writes award-winning mysterious women’s fiction and relationship humor books, and holds nothing back. She is known for “having it all” which really means she has a little too much of everything, but loves it: writer, mediocre endurance athlete (triathlon, marathons), wife, mom of an ADHD & Asperger’s son, five kids/step-kids, business owner, recovering employment attorney and human resources executive, investigator, consultant, and musician. Pamela lives with her husband Eric and two high school-aged kids, plus 200 pounds of pets in Houston. Their hearts are still in St. Croix, USVI, along with those of their three oldest offspring.
Her latest book is the mystery/women’s fiction, Saving Grace.
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About the Book:
If you’re at all inclined to be swept away to the islands to fall in love with a rainforest jumbie house and a Texas attorney who is as much a danger to herself as the island bad guys, then dive headfirst with Katie Connell into Saving Grace.
Katie escapes professional humiliation, a broken heart, and her Bloody Mary-habit when she runs to the island of St. Marcos to investigate the suspicious deaths of her parents. But she trades one set of problems for another when she is bewitched by the voodoo spirit Annalise in an abandoned rainforest house and, as worlds collide, finds herself reluctantly donning her lawyer clothes again to defend her new friend Ava, who is accused of stabbing her very married Senator-boyfriend.
Interview:
Welcome to The Dark Phantom Review, Pamela. It’s great to have you here. Tell us, would you call yourself a born writer?
Definitely. Writing is my go-to form of expression. When my husband and I were dating, he wooed me with his spoken words. I would stare back at him, big-eyed and speechless. He worried that I didn’t feel the same way he did. It wasn’t that I lacked his feelings. It was that I needed to write it down to “say” it to him. He received some lovely letters for me before I found my physical voice.
What was your inspiration for Saving Grace?
I lived in the Caribbean for nearly ten years, part of that time in a big jumbie (ghost) house in the rainforest. My experiences in that amazing house inspired me to write Saving Grace and the rest of the upcoming Katie & Annalise series.
What themes do you like to explore in your writing?
I am intrigued by the struggle to master oneself, to achieve growth and self-control while remaining serene enough serenity to release the things that are outside of one’s control.
How long did it take you to complete the novel?
I started the Katie & Annalise series five years before I published Saving Grace, the first novel in the series. The actual book took me six months to write.
Are you disciplined? Describe a typical writing day.
I am driven more than I am disciplined. I may go weeks without working on a book, although I write every day for other, smaller projects. But when it is time to meet a book deadline, I write around the clock, stopping for nothing but food, ibuprofen, and ice.
What did you find most challenging about writing this book?
Saving Grace was my debut novel, but, by the time it was published, I had finished writing the entire series. In writing the series, I found that I had to go back and completely (and I do mean completely) rewrite the story of Saving Grace. I salvaged 15,000 of the original 85,000 words and ended up with a fresh 85,000-word book. So, for me, the hardest part was letting go of the original version, pulling out that proverbial blank sheet of paper, and having the oomph left to do it one more time when I was really ready for a break. When I did the rewrite, though, it was magic and flowed like nothing I’d ever written before.
What do you love most about being an author?
I love feeling the rightness of words flowing one into another, of perfect images that bring a secret smile to a reader’s face, of crying and laughing out loud as I write a story. I love living it. I become my protagonist. My entire family prays for me to finish the book so we can all quit living out the drama of the scenes, one by one, over and over.
Did you go with a traditional publisher, small press, or did you self publish? What was the process like and are you happy with your decision?
I am an author-preneur who indie published with SkipJack Publishing (http://SkipJackPublishing.com). Since I have been told I am a control freak (perish the thought), I know that indie publishing was the right path for me. I have been elated with the results, although the process was long and hard. I had to learn the business of publishing from soup to nuts, and I still have a lot to learn. But it went so well that we will be open for submissions at SkipJack later this year, for women’s fiction and mysteries for women.
Where can we find you on the web?
Thanks, Pamela, and best of luck with Saving Grace!
Thanks for having me here!
[…] Interview at The Dark Phantom […]
I enjoyed this book 🙂