About
Trudy, Deeply Madly . . .
Human
lie detector Charmaine Digby is having a bad year. After eating her way through
a divorce, she's out of work and up to her eyeballs in debt. In need of a life
makeover Char comes home to the senior citizen haven of Port Merritt,
Washington, and is ecstatic when she parlays her eye for lies into a job as the
County Coroner's new assistant. But her joy is short-lived when a hunky doctor
at the hospital reports the suspicious death of Trudy, Port Merritt's beloved
Story Lady. Even more stunning, Trudy isn't the only recent patient whose heart
mysteriously stopped.
Is
it mad to think that dear old Trudy could be the latest victim of a serial
killer?
With
no physical evidence of foul play, Char's on the case, much to the irritation
of Detective Steve Sixkiller, who doesn't want her to stick her pretty nose for
trouble in his investigation. But she's a woman on a mission to uncover the
truth, and she'd better keep her eyes open or the next body on the way to the
morgue could be hers....
DONNELL: Hi Wendy,
welcome to Get Lost in a Story. (Great picture) Wow, I
can’t pass up a blurb like that. I’ve already
added Trudy, Madly, Deeply to my to be read pile! A human lie detector. Wouldn’t that be something? Tell us what that entails. And how did you work it into your character?
WENDY: Thanks for
inviting me to join you today, Donnell! Your reaction to the idea of a
protagonist who is a “human lie detector” is exactly the same as mine when I
“met” someone online with this ability. I thought then just as I do now, what
an asset this would be in relationships, in business, and because I was an
emerging mystery author, how fun it would be to give my naturally curious
sleuth this ability. My research soon led me to a study project led by Paul
Ekman and Maureen O’Sullivan in which they found only 50 out of the 20,000
subjects they tested had this unique ability—many of them from non-law
enforcement backgrounds, just like my protagonist, Charmaine.
I knew I wanted to place Charmaine in a non-technical working
environment, and I thought a rural county coroner’s office would be a perfect
fit. I had hoped to find a small-town setting not too far away from where I
lived in Seattle, so when my research led me to Jefferson County in Washington State,
where the population and the budget of the county is so small that there isn’t
a full-time coroner, I thought I was really on to something. Then, when I
discovered that one elected official served as both the County Prosecuting
Attorney AND the County Coroner, I felt like shouting, “BINGO!” This was even
more true after I interviewed the Jefferson County Prosecutor/Coroner, told her
about my fictional human lie detector and asked if she would hire my story
person if the right job opened up. When I heard a resounding “yes,” I knew I
had the green light for my mystery series.
DONNELL: Your
protagonist is a coroner’s assistant, did you do research to write this
character? Am I looking at the next Kathy
Reichs or Patricia Cornwell?
WENDY: Yes and no. My
research included a couple of site visits to Jefferson County. In addition to
meeting the Prosecutor/Coroner and her staff, I took a tour of the mortuary
that serves as the morgue, just like in Trudy,
Madly, Deeply. I needed to invest the time to soak in sufficient sights and
sounds to make my characters believable in their fictitious settings, but like
Charmaine says in Trudy, Madly, Deeply,
“my skill set requires working with people who are still breathing.” Truly, she’s
the kind of “low man on the totem pole” type of assistant who doesn’t want to see
any dead bodies and, as a former pastry chef, knows about the science of baking
instead of forensics, so you’re definitely not looking at the next Kathy Reichs!
DONNELL: Complete
this sentence. When I’m not hard at work
writing, you’ll find me at a) the bowling alley, b) Mount Rainier, c) doing
dishes.
WENDY: Since I’m
often trying out new pie recipes that I can feature in an upcoming book (for
pie happy hour, a daily event at the local diner) as well as my website, you’d
probably find me either c) doing dishes to clean up the mess I made, or d) on
my treadmill to work off some of the calories I’d just consumed!
DONNELL: (I'm afraid to ask.) What’s in
your refrigerator right now?
WENDY: A big jar of
pickles, three heads of lettuce, cucumbers, spicy brown mustard, turkey, eggs—aka
diet food. All that pie tasting wasn’t kind to my hips! There’s also a bottle
of diet chocolate syrup. It was an ingredient in a diet chocolate mousse recipe
I found, and not one that I’m recommending. Thanks for the reminder to clean
out my fridge, Donnell!
DONNELL: (you're welcome!) If you could
live anywhere, where would it be, and why?
WENDY: It’s hard to
beat the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, where I live, but I freely
admit that the gray, rainy winters get old. I’d love to split my time between
Seattle and Kauai, the Garden Island of Hawaii. I don’t think that’s going to
happen anytime soon, but as I like to remind my husband, I can write anywhere!
DONNELL: You write
mystery, therefore you must be brave.
Name the bravest thing you’ve ever done.
WENDY: No, my
characters are brave. Me—not so much. The bravest thing I’ve ever was probably
singing in a talent show back in junior high. I was accompanying someone who
was much braver and more talented than me, and no, we didn’t win.
DONNELL: If you could
meet anyone, past or present, who would it be, and why?
WENDY: This is a
tough one. Honestly, I’ve often thought it would be fascinating to have the
opportunity to meet my grandfather when he was young. He’s been gone for many
years, but he used to tell stories about working for the US Forest Service
during WWI and flying reconnaissance with one of the Wright Brothers. How
amazing it would be to see him take off in that airplane, and how I’d love to
talk to them both after they’d landed and know him as a vibrant man who played
a small role in my nation’s history, not just as my sweet old granddad.
DONNELL: Finally, Wendy, it’s your turn to ask readers a question.
WENDY DELANEY: Readers, besides your Kindle or iPad (or good old-fashioned
book), what’s the one thing you can’t do without when you travel on vacation or
business?
Please let us know if you’ll do a book giveaway.
Yes! One ebook copy of Trudy,
Madly, Deeply.
Wendy's contact information:
Links:
***Note: Offer void where prohibited. Prizes will be mailed to North America addresses only. If an Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) is available, the author may utilize that option for International participants. Odds of winning vary due to the number of entrants.
