Welcome, Patricia! Tell us about what you write.

I write short stories and novellas, though I am also working on a novel. My first published work of fiction is this thriller-romance novella, Stranger in the Storm.

When did your writing journey begin?

My writing journey began early; writing must have been in my genes. My father let me type on his Underwood typewriter when I was five years old. He never got it back. In first grade, we learned to read with Dick and Jane books. At home I wrote a similar series named Jean and Jerry. In later grade school years, my younger sister and I wrote stories together, each of us “playing” with different characters.

What was your inspiration for Stranger in the Storm?

One source of inspiration was a novel I read as a teenager—The Floods of Fear by John and Ward Hawkins, a dramatic thriller about a huge flood and a good escaped convict who rescues another convict and a young woman. It inspired me at the time to write a short story with similar characters but in a hurricane rather than a flood. Decades passed. I went to college, earned a PhD, and became a college English teacher; during those “publish or perish” years I wrote academic books and articles. When I retired, I turned again to fiction. Going through old papers I found that early story and turned it, with major changes, into Stranger in the Storm.

Do you find inspiration in your own life for your writing?

Oh, yes! The setting of most of Stranger in the Storm is based on my parents’ cottage on Great Sacandaga Lake; I watched dramatic storms on that lake. My main female character, Janet, who has earned a masters of fine arts at NYU, is partially drawn from my experiences as a graduate student in English at Columbia University in New York City. The character of Jack, the professor with whom Janet is involved at the beginning of the novel, is an amalgam of different academic men I’ve known—along with a big dose of imagination.

Tell us about Stranger in the Storm.

ibook ~ Amazon ~ Nook

The blurb above tells the basic conflicts of the story. They arise in part out of my interest in psychology. Stranger turns to the concept of a dual or split personality, as in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The plot also involves identical twins, a phenomenon that involves a literal splitting of person/egg into two. Many studies of identical twins note how they behave similarly even when raised in different environments. But in this story we have two very different twins raised in the same environment.

Tell us about your experience with the publishing process.

Not wanting to go through a possibly lengthy process of finding an agent, I went the small press route and submitted Stranger in the Storm to the Wild Rose Press. Editor Kaycee John thought it had potential and suggested I read James Scott Bell’s Revision and Self-Editing for Publication and revise. That book gave helpful advice that I took—and my next draft was accepted. I learned even more about writing fiction during editing process with Kaycee. I feel very lucky that I decided to go the small press route with Wild Rose.

Any new projects on the horizon?

I am working on a contemporary romance set in Georgia, where I now live.

What was the hardest part to research?

Of course I did a lot of research for Stranger in the Storm on different subjects, but perhaps the most alien one for me was guns—the practicalities of which I knew nothing. I had to google a lot and also question friends about them. One friend I talked with always carries a gun. He pulled out the one he had with him that day and showed it to me—a small, silver-plated, beautifully engraved little thing, almost a work of art. I had never thought of guns that way before.

Excerpt:

The doors on each side of the patrol unit opened. Two uniformed men with badges and guns burst out. They aimed their guns at Wes and shouted an order at him. He raised his hands. The one with the sheriff’s badge grabbed him, and pushed him against the side of the car in spread-eagle position while the other, a deputy, covered them with his weapon. Wes was patted down, then handcuffed with his hands behind his back. The covering deputy lowered his gun and walked to the truck. Reaching in, he turned off the ignition and took out the keys. He picked up Wes’s wallet and phone and returned to the sheriff.

            Janet jumped out of her car and ran up to her side of the fallen tree. “Stop!” she cried out. “There must be some mistake!”

            “No mistake, miss,” the sheriff said, sounding grim. “You’d best get away from here. This is one of the escaped convicts.”