Three Questions and a Cover — a short interview with one of my favorite authors, along with one of the author’s covers.
Julie Wray Herman is the author of the Three Dirty Women mystery series, but most recently she has turned her pen to writing middle grade mysteries, including her latest novel, BURNED. She lives on a small organic farm outside Houston, TX where she and her ever-patient husband ride herd on the ever shifting population of the farm. At last count they had two retired quarter horse mares, six hens, two cats, and the creature that lurks in the pond. Julie serves as a Chief Horse Management Judge for the United States Pony Clubs. You can learn more about Julie and her books by visiting her website, www.mysterygarden.com
1. After your Three Dirty Women mysteries, you chose to write a middle-grade mystery. Why?
I switched gears after a long hiatus, during which I quit writing at least 5 times. Seriously, going that long without a manuscript I could feel proud of was tough. But during the last of my can’t-not-write episodes that led me back to writing regularly again, I started thinking about all the kids I work with in Pony Club. (Think Scouting for kids with horses.) They were amazing, always solving…”Wait a minute,” I told my formerly oblivious self. “They’re pretty good at solving crimes. And my favorite childhood reads were Trixie Beldon and Nancy Drew. Why not try to see if I can come up with a set of kid characters who solve a crime.
That took me awhile. Longer than I thought. Writing books for children isn’t just making both the page count and the characters shorter. There is a complexity to the elements that make up a good children’s story that are similar to, but also vastly different from writing for adults. First off, we need to keep it age-appropriate. That doesn’t mean NOT tackling big themes, it means making sure that the child winds up safe in the end, and that they are the ones to solve the problem. You don’t quite have to make the adults in the story into adult characters like you find in a Charlie Brown cartoon, “Wha, wha, wha…” but you do have to keep them from fixing everything for the children.
Then there’s the whole viewpoint of a child thing. That turned out to be a delight. Think back to a time when you were about 8 or so, and how you felt riding your bike someplace. What were you family meals like? Where did you go to hide so nobody bothered you when you were really really mad at the world. What was a moment of joy like? I got to relive all of that, but at a safe distance. And then use it to fuel the characters in Sophie’s world.
2. What was the biggest/best/worst surprise about publication?
The whole world of publishing had changed from the Three Dirty Women Landscaping Inc. series days until when BURNED came out. Quite a lot of the publicity that I was able to do with the adult mysteries just didn’t apply to kidlit. Fortunately since half of the royalties from the sale of the book benefit the United States Pony Clubs, they sold it on their website and it had a good run.
3. Go ahead–tell us why Pony Club is better than chocolate.
When your chocolate goes missing and you ask “Where is my chocolate,” no one ever tells you, “It’s at the confession stand!” the way one young competitor told me at a Pony Club Rally when I asked him where his brother was and why he hadn’t taken care of his pony. And the kids all give me chocolate at Rally anyway, so really the two might be the same?