Interview with Veronica Heley

» Posted on Aug 10, 2011 in Blog | Comments Off on Interview with Veronica Heley

Veronica HeleyThis week I’m hosting Lacy Williams with Marrying Miss Marshal, Veronica Heley with Murder My Neighbour, C. J. Chase with Redeeming the Rogue, and Cara Lynn James with Love by the Book (will have a drawing if 10 people enter). If you want to enter the drawings, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (August 14th) evening.

Interview with Veronica Heley:

I’ve written stories – sometimes in my head, and sometimes on paper – ever since I was a child. I was amazed when I discovered that everyone else didn’t do this

I started to write in earnest when our daughter went to school. I wrote on a manual typewriter on a board in her bedroom, and cleared everything away before she returned from school each day. I was first published in l974.

I handle rejection with chocolate – and by getting on with the next story!

I write because God has given me a most peculiar brain which makes up stories. The hard part is writing them down in acceptable form.

If I weren’t writing, I’d be reading.

I’m working on my 69th book, which is the thirteenth in the Ellie Quicke series. This is Murder in Mind, which will be published next May. It takes me six months to write and deliver a book, so I’m always a year out of kilter, so to speak.

Certainly not! What I do is try to imagine myself into the heads of my characters, and proceed accordingly.

This is the twelfth Ellie Quicke, MURDER MY NEIGHBOUR, where Ellie has to deal with the disappearance of a neighbour, who had arranged to go into a retirement home – but never arrived there. A walk around the block shows that Mrs Pryce’s vegetable garden is still being cultivated, and someone has seen a face at an attic window. So who knows more about Mrs Pryce’s disappearance than they want to say? Ellie has to deal with the greed and stupidity of Mrs Pryce’s relations  – and with her own rapacious daughter Diana.

A good strong story will also catch the attention, but work hard on the craft of writing, so that it is easy to read.

Faith is central to my stories. What you believe comes out in your writing, whether you put it into words or not. My two current gentle crime series show my heroines believing, praying and trying to act like Christians in a very secular world. 

I write about believable older women living in the world of today with all its problems; I have dealt with murder, trafficking girls into the country for sex, drugs, paedophilia, charity scams, honour killing, etc.,  in the adult books; bullying, fear of water, burglary, lack of self-worth for children. My aim is to see right triumph, and leave the reader with a sense of hope. 

My favourite book has to be the one I’m working on now, which is another Ellie Quicke, as it happens. 

I get the house tidy, and settle down at my desk to read the emails and catch up with the business side of writing in the mornings. I usually edit the previous day’s work first, and then continue from where I’ve left off. I finish in time to cook supper…and then think about the next day’s work in the evenings.