Special Guest – W.A. Tyson – Author of The Seduction of Miriam Cross (Giveaway)

I am pleased to welcome Author Wendy Tyson and her
Virtual Book Tour to Escape With Dollycas Today!!

The Writing View

W.A. Tyson

I was recently asked about my writing space: where do I like to write and what type of environment inspires creativity?  The questions gave me pause.  The truth is, I can write almost anywhere.  I bring my laptop and a notebook along on car trips, doctor visits, baseball games.  I’m the nutty lady sitting in the schoolyard on a folding chair with my laptop teetering precariously on my knees.  I have to be flexible because of my schedule.  If I want to write, I have to fit it in between the other events in my daily life.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have preferences.  And my prime preference is for a view.

When I stopped to really think about the creative process, about when I do my best work, I realized that all of my books have one thing in common: I started them while on vacation.  And not just any vacation, but trips that had us sequestered somewhere away from so-called civilization, where nature trumped buildings and the noise of crickets or surf or coyotes or nothing at all replaced the city-sounds I hear during my day-to-day.

For example, Delilah and her team of female investigators were born in Driggs, Idaho,  during a family vacation to the Grand Tetons.  We were staying in a house on the prairie (although not the house on the prairie), and while the house was modest, the view of the mountains and the surrounding ranches was not.  At night we heard cattle mooing, coyotes howling and any number of other animal sounds that an East Coast girl like me didn’t recognize.  After a run-in with a herd of runaway cattle, I had the idea for a female investigator who grew up in a town like Driggs, where self-sufficiency and a love of the outdoors would be important.  By the time we left Driggs a week or so later, I’d written several chapters of The Seduction of Miriam Cross and had sketched out most of the characters.  Below is the view that inspired me.

Similarly, last summer we had the opportunity to stay in Chamonix, France.  My husband was working on a project abroad, and we took our family and rented a house in the Alps for two weeks, allowing him to be closer to work (or at least in the right time zone).  Again, the house itself was modest, but the view was unbeatable.  While there, I started a novel titled SUNRISE AT THE NO NAME INN, a literary mystery that takes place in Corfu, Greece (another place with a view!).  I will eventually finish SUNRISE AT THE NO NAME INN, but for now I have to be content with the opening chapters and character sketches I wrote while staying in a foreign country, on a back road that led to a mountain trail and a tiny inn that offered respite for tired hikers and skiers.   Even though the novel I started doesn’t take place in France, it was the view (below) of Mont Blanc, the feelings of awe and isolation, that inspired a new idea.

And as recently as last March, during the Easter holiday, my husband and I took our family to Maine for a long weekend.  It’d been a rough winter and we all felt like we needed a break.  We rented a tiny cabin on a pond near Camden, Maine, just off the rocky coastline.  It was gray and overcast for most of the trip, but every morning I walked down to the pond wrapped in a heavy winter coat, spread a blanket on a rock by the water’s edge, and wrote.  That’s how MURDEROUS LOOKS, the second novel in the Allison Campbell mystery series (published by Henery Press), came to be.

Now obviously I can’t always be on vacation.  And my own house is in a fairly urban neighborhood about ten miles from the Philadelphia city limit.  At night I hear ambulances and police sirens, and during the day, cars.  And while we’ve planted a massive garden on our property and have flowers everywhere in the warmer seasons, there is no getting away from the fact that we are not isolated.  And that’s okay.  In fact, although many of my ideas have been sparked by the distance and perspective that comes with travel, the meat of those stories are written in the heart of my house, surrounded by people I love and the familiar sights, sounds and smells of home.

But my home computer is positioned under a window.  And that window frames a view of a sycamore tree.  During the year, that tree marks the seasons for me.  Dogs underfoot, hands on my keyboard, I watch its buds form in spring, the squirrels and birds dance in its branches in summer and, like now, its leaves fall as the nights grow longer and the sun shines less.  It’s my own little bit of nature.

And that inspires me, too.

~Wendy

The Seduction of Miriam Cross
by W.A. Tyson

• Genre:  Traditional Mystery
• Number of Pages:  358
  

Synopsis:

A sordid sex tape.

A venture capital firm.

A secret society of women.

A Catholic nun.

Can Delilah figure out who killed Miriam Cross . . . . before she becomes the killer’s next target?

Miriam Cross, author, feminist and philanthropist, disappears from her Philadelphia home.  A year later, a lonely recluse named Emily Cray is brutally murdered in her bed in a small Pennsylvania town.  Miriam and Emily are one and the same.

As Delilah and her staff of female detectives – a militant homemaker, an ex-headmistress and a former stripper – delve into Miriam’s life, they become submerged in an underworld of unfathomable cruelty and greed with implications that go far beyond the gruesome death of one woman or the boundaries of one country.  Eventually Miriam’s fight for justice becomes Delilah’s own …. and Delilah’s obsession with finding the truth may prove just as deadly.

About The Author

W. A. Tyson’s background in law and psychology has provided inspiration for her mysteries and thrillers.  The Seduction of Miriam Cross, to be published by E-Lit Books in November 2013, is the first in the Delilah Percy Powers mystery series.  She has also authored Killer Image (Henery Press, October 2013), the first novel in the Allison Campbell mystery series.

Check out my review of Killer Image here.

Author Links:

•    Twitter – @Wendy Tyson
•     Facebook – www.facebook.com/wendytysonauthor
•     Goodreads – Wendy Tyson
•     Website – www.WATyson.com

Tour Participants

November 1 – rantin’ ravin’ and reading – Review, Interview
November 2 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – Guest Post
November 4 – A Blue Million Books – Interview
November 5 – THE SELF-TAUGHT COOK – Review
November 6 – readalot – Review
November 7 – Dru’s Book Musings – Guest Post
November 8 – Omnimystery – Interview
November 9 – Musings and Ramblings – Interview
November 10 – Brooke Blogs – Interview
November 11 – Shelley’s Book Case – Review
November 12 – StoreyBook Reviews – Review

Special Guest Reviewers: Elaine and Debbie

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Thank you Wendy for being my guest today!!!