Paranormal and Romance Suspense author Kimberley Troutte tagged me to play a game called The Next Big Thing in which authors hold the microphone for a minute to answer ten questions about the stories they are working on, and then pass the mic on to five other authors. Because November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) I’m going to break tradition and not pass the mic on to any writer friends, since I want to hog the limelight and make it all about me. Kidding. It’s just most of my writer friends have either already been involved with TNBT or are somewhere knee deep in the 50,000 words they must write by next Friday. I hope I won’t be kicked out of The Next Big Thing Club for being so rebellious. Anyways, here goes nothing: 
What is your working title of your book? I started off with Summer People, then changed it to From Away. My latest working title is The Pause. I usually don’t finalize the title until the book is completely finished, as you’ve probably already guessed.
Where did the idea come from for the book? This book is a combination of different events that have happened to me or people I’ve known, with a few dead bodies thrown in, of course.
What genre does your book fall under? Mystery Fiction/Hen Lit. Some call it ’matron-lit’ or ‘hag-lit’, probably men. Hen-lit focuses on the 40 – 60 year-old set, the ‘coming of middle age’ group. When you consider that 39 million baby boomers are women between the ages of 42 and 60, I think Hen Lit could appeal to a pretty big demographic.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? This is a great question, because I actually thought about who would play the characters before I even started writing. It’s a star-studded cast featuring: Jaime Lee Curtis, Siobhan Fallon, Julianne Moore, Matthew Fox, Matthew Broderick and Bruce Willis, with secondary characters played by Phyllis Smith, Carey Mulligan and Shai LaBeouf.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? I’m so far away from synopsis-ready territory, but here’s what I have so far: Three women who share an old secret, small-town murder and menopause. Technically that’s not a sentence. Told you I wasn’t ready.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Self-published.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? One month. The Pause is the result of NaNoWriMo 2011.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? It’s sort of a Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants — without the pants, but with the friendship, summers and sisterhood — with a touch of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? I know that’s a movie, not a book, but I would like to capture the flavor of that movie in this novel — small town, coming of age (even if that age is 50) murder and dark comedy.
Who or what inspired you to write this book? The idea was actually inspired by the Summer People Festival held in Port Morien, Nova Scotia every year. Residents create lawn characters representing different aspects of life in Canada. Because I have a very dark sense of humor, I thought wouldn’t it be strange if one year an actual dead body was used in the creation of the lawn character? Whose dead body? Who killed him or her, and why? The story grew from there, and now I’m not even sure if I’ll use the lawn character idea, but that was the seed that started the ball rolling.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?Are you the person you dreamed of being? Have you spent your life the way you planned? Do you have any regrets? What is your biggest disappointment? How well can you really know a person? Are they capable of murder? Are you? These are the questions I hope to address in this novel.
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Tags: Hen Lit, menopause, Port Morien, Summer People Festival, The Next Big Thing
