Ask the Author: Meera Lester
Answered Questions (10)
Meera Lester
I have two new ebooks coming out: Sacred Journeys and also How to Live with Intention. These are self-help, not mysteries. I'm currently writing a new mystery set in the rural Missouri countryside where I grew up.
Meera Lester
I'd return to the Amish country. Except for the religious aspect, the simple farm life is one I know well having grown up on a farm without running water or electricity. I didn't live in a house with central heat, indoor toilet, and electricity until I was about ten years old. What would I do there? Ponder story ideas with that world as a backdrop.
Meera Lester
An antique silver cake server went missing following a family gathering after the naming ceremony for our son years ago. It had been passed down through family members for several generations. Once it disappeared from my kitchen that day, it never showed up again. Why had that piece of silver been taken. For the value? Or something more sinister?
Meera Lester
Thank you for asking. My next book is The Murder of a Queen Bee, and it comes out in hardcover September 29. Amazon has it listed for pre-order now and released on September 27. We'll be doing some giveaways of The Murder of a Queen Bee and other promos over summer.
Meera Lester
If I truly get stuck, I sometimes force my fingers onto the keyboard, close my eyes, and start typing something . . . anything to get the tap open. It's often junk that gets deleted, but it starts me into a story of some kind. If it doesn't work (and it almost always does), I'll do something physical, like taking a walk, throwing scratch grains to my chickens, donning my beekeeper's suit and checking my hives, or baking some yummy dessert. When I return to the computer, my brain has had a refresher period and is usually ready to return to work.
Meera Lester
I love my characters and enjoy spending time working through the good and bad choices they make while trying to solve the mystery of whodunnit. Although I've been involved much of my life doing conferences, seminars, or working in ICUs and ERs, I think by nature, I'm solitary and contemplative. I love the peace of my orchard and garden where I often read or cogitate on some story idea.
Meera Lester
Write every day. Even if you aren't working on your novel, write a blog, a letter, a short story, or a book proposal . . . just write. You are using the language. The more you use it, the more precise your word choices become, the more natural your sentences will sound, and the more you'll open yourself up to all kinds of new ideas. Then when you finally have a novel in progress, join or form a writers' support group. Ensure that the group has published, professional writers in it so that your work will benefit from those critiques.
Meera Lester
I am currently finishing novel three, Hive of Homicides, in my Henny Penny Farmette series of cozy mysteries and working on a couple of ideas for other books in the series. I've also got a mystery/suspense novel in progress as well. It's interesting to do one of those because the genre is different from the cozy (the latter restricts any profanity or graphic sex and violence) and the former is so much darker in tone and suspenseful.
Meera Lester
I don't require a lot of inspiration to write or to beckon the muse. I just write every day as a daily discipline. That said, I love to read in other genres and that gives me inspiration and new ideas. I think reading widely informs one's own writing projects.
Meera Lester
The Murder of a Queen Bee (follow up to A Beeline to Murder) evolved from my memories of living in the Santa Cruz mountains on a ten-acre ranch. Seems like a lifetime ago, but I'd heard about an old nudist camp and also communes hidden deep in those woods. Drawing upon my life on a real world farmette and my knowledge of herbs and bees along with two real-life murder mystery stories that stuck in my head, I was able to develop a new story bringing those elements into play.
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