Tricia Sanders convinces us that
Murder Is a Dirty Business!
Thank you for stopping by. Make yourself comfy. I have four tea flavors and two coffee flavors. Which is your favorite?
Tricia: I’m a chamomile girl. Unless you have peach-mango.
No mango in this house. I’m highly allergic! This chamomile is all yours. Enjoy! Help yourself to the apple cinnamon bread or pumpkin cookies.
Tricia: Ummm, that’s a tough choice, but I’m a dunker. I’ll go with the cookies. As in plural. May I have two?
Of course! What’s that you have? Looks like a gift… What pretty wrapping… for me?
Tricia: Why yes, it’s a gift certificate for a two-night stay at a bed and breakfast in the lovely town of Wickford, Missouri. It’s the quaint inn featured in my debut cozy, Murder is a Dirty Business. Oops! I’ve said too much. It’s a different inn. Really! Anyway, the owner has had a run of bad luck, so she’s discounted all the rooms. Ignore the crime scene tape dangling from the porch posts. That may or may not be leftover from Halloween or a… murder.
Uh, thank you? Maybe I should leave a trail of clues before I settle in for the night at the hotel. Your book teaser is great and gets us right into the style of the story.
“Between hot flashes and divorce papers, a middle-aged woman reconsiders her outlook on life when she butts heads with a hot detective during a murder investigation.”
If your main character, Cece Cavanaugh, showed up right here and could only use one sentence to describe herself, what would she say?
Tricia: Cece would say she’s classy, sassy, and a touch of kickassy all rolled into a one-woman sideshow.
I notice from your website that you have participated in blog tours and Facebook parties to help promote your book. Did you find those helpful? Any words of advice to other authors thinking of using those methods of book promotion?
Tricia: To early to tell in terms of book sales, but I’ve met a lot of great people, other writers and fans. Those events have led to other events being scheduled. Since this is my debut novel, I had no idea how to run a Facebook Release Party. I passed up that opportunity with my own book, but I participated in a fellow author’s party and picked up many great tips and ideas. I feel like everything I do is a learning experience that I can use for my next book release. The one piece of advice, especially for a newbie, is make sure you are comfortable with whatever you choose to use. The Facebook Party was a no-brainer. All the authors wrote in the same genre as me. The fan base would be familiar with my type of story. I knew several of the authors, so that helped put me at ease. I also went last. I could see how the others were interacting with our guests. And it gave me time to tweak my presentation. I think you must find your niche and what you’re comfortable doing. I’m somewhat of an introvert, so Facebook and blog tours are easier for me than in-person events.
Here’s your fun book trailer:
https://youtu.be/OXRJSRSmTjg
Share how that came to be: the music, choosing text to scroll, which images to use, etc.
Tricia: The music was a fluke. I had listened to dozens and dozens (a gross, I bet) of tunes and decided to go without music. The songs were either too creepy or too upbeat. Nothing had the mood I visualized. I wanted mysterious and quirky. A friend posted her book trailer, and in the credits, she had a music site listed I hadn’t tried. On a whim, and not expecting to find anything, I listened to three tunes and knew the third one matched my video.
The text was easy. I am a writer. I storyboard most of my novels. That’s a hangover from my curriculum development days. I knew my trailer had to be short, so I wrote a short overview of the novel and broke it vignettes. The rest was finding the images to go along with my text. It took a couple of tries and some wording changes, but I think it all came together. Before I finalized it, I ran it past my critique group for their feedback, and I made a few tweaks based on their comments.
The timing and text scrolling took me longer than everything else combined. I’d tighten down one place, and another would get out of whack. Then, I’d fix that and something else would go haywire. Several years ago, I went to a videography retreat where we ultimately made a short movie. Being able to fall back on that experience help tremendously.
What is the most unusual item on your desk right now?
Tricia: Well that’s a toss-up. You choose. I have a knife. It puts me in the mood. {Insert evil laugh}. I have a cast iron flying pig. Though, he doesn’t actually fly—too much cast iron. He’s my muse. And I have a Kodak Brownie Bull’s Eye Camera (1954) that I picked up in a vintage market. Oh, I can’t forget the magic wand in my pencil cup, in case I need to summon up a magic spell or cast off an evil spirit.
What’s Cece’s favorite movie of all time?
Tricia: It’s a bit before her time, but she’s a sucker for Robert Redford in The Way We Were. She looked him up on IMDB and watched all his movies.
What grammar or punctuation item sends you into a tizzy?
Tricia: I can conjugate a verb with the best of them. Punctuation is my downfall. Colons and semi-colons kill me. I mean you’re either a colon or you’re not. Don’t be wishy-washy about it. And the stinking comma, he’s like the stalagmite of punctuation hoping to become an apostrophe.
Any other thoughts to share? Oh, and please take the rest of the cookies with you!
Tricia: My main objective with Cece is to show women they CAN. If circumstances are bad, they can change the circumstances. If someone tells them something won’t work, they can find a way to make it work. It takes Cece a while to figure this out. She stumbles, and she falls, but she does it with humor. And in the end… Well, you must read the book to learn the end. And come back for Book 2 to see what kind of trouble Cece gets into when she agrees to clean a hoarder’s house. It’s in process now. I hope to have it to my publisher by February.
Yum, thanks for the cookies. They are divine. I must have your recipe.
Absolutely! And it has been such a pleasure to visit with you. I hope you come back soon!
Thanks! You’re a great hostess.
Huge thanks to Tricia for stopping by. Check out her links below to leave a comment and learn more about her mystery.
Book link: http://amzn.to/2i3pSKX
Synopsis:
When Cece Cavanaugh’s husband empties their joint bank account, steals her designer luggage, and runs off with a younger woman, Cece must decide whether to ask her manipulative mother-in-law for a handout or get a job. Choosing the easier path, Cece lands a job cleaning a crime scene where a high school coach was murdered. When his wife is implicated—a young woman Cece practically raised—Cece finds herself mopping floors, balancing an empty checkbook, and ferreting out a killer. Amid all this messy business, Cece bumps heads with a handsome detective. She tries to ignore her growing attraction to the detective, but he gives new meaning to the term “hot flash.” After she stumbles onto a clue that could vindicate her friend, her elation turns to panic when she haphazardly confronts the killer. Through the danger and romance, Cece discovers self-reliance and inner strength. And that crime—at least someone else’s—does pay the bills.
Tricia L. Sanders writes about women with class, sass, and a touch of kickass. A former instructional designer and corporate trainer, she traded in curriculum writing for novel writing because she hates bullet points and loves to make stuff up. And fiction is more fun than training guides and lesson plans. she is working on a mystery series set in the fictional town of Wickford, Missouri. Another project in the works is a women’s fiction road trip adventure. Her essays have appeared in Sasee, ByLine, The Cuivre River Anthology and Great American Outhouse Stories; The Whole Truth and Nothing Butt. She is a proud member of The Lit Ladies, six women writing their truths into fiction.
Visit Tricia here: http://triciasanders.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authortricialsanders/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tricialsanders