Author Gayle Roper ~ Revisited

Gayle Roper is the award winning author of more than 40 books, the latest Fatal Deduction (Multnomah). Her romantic suspense and mystery novels have won the RITA Award, three Holt Medallions, Book of the Year, a Reviewers Choice Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award, the Award of Excellence, and she has been cited by several writers conferences for her work in training writers. She is the past director of both the Sandy Cove Christian Writers Conference and the St. Davids Christian Writers conference. She and her husband Chuck have two great sons, two wonderful daughters-in-law, and the world's five greatest grandchildren. Gayle enjoys reading, doing crossword puzzles and sudoku, gardening, and eating out whenever she can talk Chuck into it. Gayle and Chuck divide their time between southeastern Pennsylvania and Ontario, Canada.

What is your current project? Tell us about it.

Fatal Deduction is romantic suspense/women’s fiction. Libby and her estranged twin sister Tori receive a considerable inheritance from their Great Aunt Stella, but to claim it they must live together in Stella’s colonial Philadelphia house for six months. If one leaves, they both forfeit. The second day they’re there, a dead body shows up on the doorstep, a note lying on his chest for Tori, a crossword puzzle with a message embedded.

When my editor asked for an urban setting, I wasn’t very happy. I’ve lived within an hour of Philadelphia my whole life, but I am so not a city person. How would I get right all those little things someone who lives in a large city knows but outsiders don’t? Worry, worry, worry. Then my husband and I went to a play in Philadelphia, arrived early, and walked around to kill time. We stumbled on an alley or lane of authentic Colonial era houses several blocks from the Historic District and Elfreth’s Alley. Bingo! I had my setting. The little lane was like a small community, and my main characters would be living there temporarily, Libby because of Aunt Stella’s legacy and Drew because he was on a sabbatical doing research on Ben Franklin and involved in a house swap.

I’m not certain where the crossword puzzle idea came from. I enjoy doing puzzles, and they just sort of worked their way into the plot. Read a review of Fatal Deductions here.

What’s the best or worst advice (or both) you’ve heard on writing/publication?

Worst: Write to the market

Best: write the story of your heart

What is your favorite source for finding story ideas?

There’s no one place to find ideas. They’re all around. The trick is in seeing them and adapting them to your book. I find all writers cannibalize their lives and the lives of those around them. It’s just that the real experience or story is changed to fit the story being told. The collapsing bed in Autumn Dreams is based on my experience. The needlewoman who does window treatments in See No Evil is based on my daughter-in-law, the difference being that Cindy never looked out a window and saw a murderer and my character did. The honor killing in Allah’s Fire is based on an article I read in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Libby’s house in Fatal Deduction (not Aunt Stella’s house) is the house I grew up in, and the town is my hometown renamed. So it’s not so much getting ideas as adapting life.

Have you ever had one of those awkward writer moments you’d like to share with us, the ones wherein you get “the look” from the normals? Example, you stand at a knife display at the sporting goods store and ask the clerk which would be the best to use to disembowel a six foot man…please do tell.

I like to give my characters occupations that friends have so I can interview them and pick their brains. For the price of a dinner, I get all kinds of good stuff. We have a friend where we vacation, Bobb Biehl of the Masterplanning Group. I knew he was a business consultant, just the person to talk to about Dan, the hero in Autumn Dreams. We did dinner with Bobb and his wife, and he gave me all kinds of great stuff to use. It was later that I learned that Bobb was a Business Consultant, capital letters, who charged Big Bucks, capital letters, for the information he gave me for a dinner. Sort of embarrassing.

Dean Koontz recently shared his take on the concept on “the writer’s sacred duty.” What comes to your mind at the mention of “the writer’s sacred duty?”

To write to the best of your ability to bring honor to the Lord

Do you have a dream for the future of your writing, something you would love to accomplish?

I’d love to win a Christy (I’ve finaled three times), another RITA, and make the best seller list. Realistically I’ll be happy if my books touch people’s hearts, give them an exciting read, turn their hearts toward God, and make them think a bit about choices and consequences.

What is your favorite and least favorite part of being a writer?

Favorite: writing a great character, scene, story that I’m pleased with. That means lots of rewriting to get it right, but I enjoy rewriting. Least favorite: putting the story down on paper for the first time. That ex nihilo creation is painful for me.

What aspect of writing was the most difficult for you to grasp/conquer? How did you overcome it?

Perhaps making the characters come alive as vivid, unique people. The thing that helped me most was writing some junior novels where the main character was just like my one son, obedient on the outside but sassy as all get out inside. That sense of character followed into my adult novels and allowed me to make characters of greater depth.

What is the first thing you do when you begin a new book?

The first thing I do is write chapter one. I go back and add to it multiple times as the story develops in my mind, but it gets me started with a situation and a character.

Writing rituals. Do you have to sit somewhere specific, complete a certain number of words, leave something undone to trigger creativity for the next session? Some other quirk you’d like to share?

Does playing spider solitaire count?

Plot, seat of pants or combination?

Combination. I write mysteries and romantic suspense, so I need to know the bad guy from the beginning so I can plant clues both real and misleading. But I don’t know the details or many of the scenes when I start. They come to me as I write and as I think about the story situations.

What is the most difficult part of pulling together a book? Ex. Do you have saggy middles, soggy characters, soupy plots during your first drafts…if so, how do you shape it up?

Maybe my biggest difficulty is that I don’t think linearly all the time. I’ll get an idea for a scene out of time sequence, and I’ll write it while the idea is fresh. Then I’ve got to figure out where it fits best and slip it in with proper lead in. This tendency requires lots of jumping around in the ms and makes keeping the time line a challenge. Also I find my first writing of any scene (I never write the whole book and then go back) is pretty barren. No depth, no humor or pathos (at least of a believable sort). I end up doing a lot of rewriting, but that’s fine with me because I love rewriting.

Have you received a particularly memorable reader response? Please share.

I don’t have any great you-saved-my-life stories or any wonderful salvation stories, just regular comments. A woman wrote that Autumn Dreams made her laugh for the first time in a year. A woman with a gay son wrote that Spring Rain touched her like no other book on the topic, fiction or nonfiction. Many have written that they lost a night’s sleep because they just had to finish, something I consider a great compliment.

Have you had a particularly memorable peer honor? Please share.

I’ve received several awards that mean a lot to me including a RITA for best inspirational romance of the year for Autumn Dreams. I’ve finaled three times for the Christy Award, and I hope someday I win one. I’ve gotten Book of the Year for Summer Shadows, a Reviewers Choice Award for The Decision, and three Holt Medallions as well as several others awards. I’ve also received awards from several writers conferences for my work teaching writers.

While I appreciate every one and quite frankly would love more, I’d keep writing without them. If I ever write because I think I have an angle that might win something instead of being true to the story I’m telling, I will be of no more use as a story teller.

How much marketing/publicity do you do? Any advice in this area?

Personally I hate promotion and PR. I am not good at it. I’m very uncomfortable blowing my own horn. I do keep a mailing list and send out announcements. I attend ICRS, the annual trade show, to meet store owners and sign books. If my publisher sets up events like signings and blog tours, etc, I’m more than willing to participate. It’s the setting them up that I dislike. Also the time involved in setting these things up takes away from my writing time, and that’s already being bombarded by regular life demands.

Parting words? Anything you wish we would’ve asked because you’ve got the perfect answer?

The thing I always tell writers and which is good for any life situation is that it takes preparation, perseverance, and prayer to accomplish your goal. There are no short cuts to preparation. Conferences, classes, and reading, reading, reading. As to perseverance, more people fail because they give up than because they aren’t good enough. In prayer the idea is to pray not for publication but for God’s will for you writing (or whatever your life’s work is). God doesn’t ask for success. He asks for obedience.