by Lorie Ham

Today at the Café we have mystery author Suzanne Adair whose new book, Camp Follower, was released by Whittler's Bench Press in October of 2008. So join Suzanne in a cup of decaf and sit back and enjoy. Or, if you're like me and have to have your caffeine, we have a fresh pot of hazelnut for your enjoyment as well.

Café:
Tell us a little about your latest book.

Suzanne:
Camp Follower is historical mystery and suspense. Here's what's on the back cover:

"As the year 1780 draws to a close, the publisher of a loyalist magazine in Wilmington, North Carolina offers an amazing assignment to Helen Chiswell, his society page writer: pose as the widowed sister of a British officer in the Seventeenth Light Dragoons, travel to the encampment of the British Legion in the Carolina backcountry, and obtain a feature on Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton. But Helen's publisher has secret reasons for sending her out of Wilmington and into danger. And because Helen, a loyalist, has ties to the St. James family, whose patriarch, Will St. James, is in hot water with Crown forces, she comes under the suspicion of brutal Lieutenant Dunstan Fairfax. Filled with action, mystery, and suspense that climaxes at the Battle of Cowpens, Camp Follower is the story of a woman forced to confront her past to save her life during the War for American Independence."

Café:
How long have you been writing?

Suzanne:
I've been writing fiction since second grade.

Café:
When did your first novel come out? Tell us a little about it.

Suzanne:
Paper Woman was released in 2006. It won the 2007 Patrick D. Smith Literature Award from the Florida Historical Society. Here's the description from my web site:

"As the American Revolution batters the Carolinas, thirty-three-year-old widow Sophie Barton leaves her home in Georgia to investigate her father's murder and plunges into a hornet's nest of espionage, terror, treachery and more murder."

Café:
Have you always written mysteries? If not, what else have you written?

Suzanne:
My first completed manuscript was science fiction. I wrote a few more of those before trying out historical fiction. Then I wrote contemporary mystery. Paper Woman, my first published novel, is my tenth completed manuscript.

Café:
You certainly stuck with it. That's great. What brought you to choose the setting and characters in your latest book?

Suzanne:
In Paper Woman, the brother of protagonist Sophie Barton admits to her that he killed the husband of his mistress in a duel many years before. (By the late 18th century, duels were considered illegal, although they still happened.) The mistress intrigued me — why did she have an affair with Sophie's brother, what had happened to her since the duel, and so forth — and I wanted to write about her. How did people in the 18th century manage issues that plague us today, such as child abuse and domestic violence, before social services and modern psychology were available? How would a woman who was innately talented at writing handle a magazine feature in the field decades before women were officially features reporters? And the more I researched into the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War, the more I realized the strategic importance of North Carolina. These questions and observations formed a number of the action points in Camp Follower.

Café:
What is the main reason that you write?

Suzanne:
I can't not write. I'm just nuts, I guess.

Café:
Join the club. Do you write to entertain or is there something more you want the readers to take away from your work?

Suzanne:
I write to provide entertainment, historical education and escape to my readers. There's little published fiction available that's set during the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War. To my knowledge, I'm the only author with an entire series set there. Also, readers seldom encounter a woman's voice about this war, and when women speak up about it, a story very different from that told by men emerges. So it was time. :-)

Café:
Definitely. Do you have a schedule for your writing or just write whenever you can?

Suzanne:
For first drafts, my preferred time to write is the morning — from 4:30 or so through noon — and I try to write every day to complete the first draft. I can edit just about any time of the day as long as I have blocks of time when I'm uninterrupted.

Café:
Wow, definitely another morning person. Do you outline? If not, do you have some other interesting way that you keep track of what's going on, or what needs to happen in your book when you are writing it?

Suzanne:
I'm a "pantser" who does minimal outlining. By the time I start a manuscript, I been thinking about it long enough to know how and where it'll start, as well as where it'll end, plus I have a few checkpoints in between. My characters take over fairly soon after I start writing, and they're usually considerate enough to hit the checkpoints in the middle. Toward the end, I may jot down a few points that I need to cover, just so I don't forget, but that's the closest I come to an outline. And I revise a lot. Revision goes with the territory of not outlining.

Café:
Did you find it difficult to get published in the beginning?

Suzanne:
After I started seriously trying to get published, it was 25 years before I received the publishing contract for Paper Woman.

Café:
Do you have a great rejection/critique or acceptance story you'd like to share?

Suzanne:
1. Once upon a time, I had an agent who sent Paper Woman to NYC editors. NYC's response was variations on, "This is well-written, but was there really a Revolutionary War in the South? We don't know if there's a market for this material." Hence I'm published through a regional publisher who knows darned well that there was a Revolutionary War in the South and there are plenty of people who enjoy reading about it.
2. One month before I received the publishing contract for Paper Woman, a mystery author who is published through a big NYC house advised me to scrap Paper Woman because it was obviously unpublishable and write in a genre like romance that had a big readership. Glad I didn't listen to that author.

Café:
What kind of promotion do you find most affective?

Suzanne:
Internet.

Café:
Future writing goals?

Suzanne:
1. Continue writing this series and getting titles published.
2. Develop and implement national (v. regional) promotional strategies.

Café:
What do you read?

Suzanne:
A lot of non-fiction that qualifies as research. And I enjoy mysteries and suspense with deep characterizations and a well-defined sense of place.

Café:
What are your hobbies?

Suzanne:
Reading, historical reenacting, tai chi, qigong, ballet, bicycling, hiking, camping, gardening, cooking.

Café:
Busy person. Pets?

Suzanne:
A rat terrier, a beagle and a foxhound. Our dogs are color-coordinated. Their barks come in three sizes.

Café:
How fun, we have a Beagle too and I've always wanted a rat terrier. Family?

Suzanne:
Two teenaged sons and a significant other. Their barks come in three sizes, too.

Café:
What part of the country/world do you live in?

Suzanne:
North Carolina, USA.

Café:
Any advice for aspiring or beginning writers?

Suzanne:
You must persevere if you want to be published, and you must develop a sense of what is right for you individually on your publishing path. Otherwise you may never be published. For writers who believe they're ready to start querying, before you send out the manuscript, I strongly advise you to hire a professional fiction editor to help you tighten the book. Editors at publishing houses don't have time to coach you through extensive rewrites. If a manuscript isn't very close to being publishable, it'll be rejected.

Café:
Good advice. Website?

Suzanne:
Web site: www.suzanneadair.com
Author blog: www.suzanneadair.typepad.com

Café:
Where can people purchase your books?

Suzanne:
The usual places such as indie and chain bookstores, Amazon.com and my publisher.

Café:
Thanks so much for being with us here at the Café. Happy reading and good coffee!

©2008 Lorie Ham. All rights reserved.