01: What is the first story you’ve published. Tell us a little bit about it.
“The Paper Caper” placed third and was published in The Writer magazine in 1994. I got the idea a few years earlier when our bank moved its main office and its safety deposit boxes by truck from the old location to their new one. They asked us to okay relocating our “treasures. “Most people were fine with it.
02: What inspired the story?
Fear spawned the story—knowing what could happen after writing it—I removed my things until they opened the new branch. It occurred to me how vulnerable the safety deposit boxes were out there on the street, and what a great opportunity for thieves to waylay the truck and take their time inspecting the goodies from each box without the problem of being observed—or caught!
03: Do you have a writing process? If so what is it?
I’m pretty amenable to anything that’s working.
04: What do you currently have in the works? Give us a small preview.
Aside from blogging, Morning After Midnight, a saga about a clash of cultures North and South will be released in January 2014. It’s a family dynamic story.
05: Who are some of your favorite authors?
Harlan Coban, Greg Isles, Scott Turow, John Grisham, Alice Seibold, Anne Tyler, Jan Ruth, and Alice La Plant for her brilliant mystery, A Turn of Mind.
06: Do you have one author in particular who inspired your writing career? Who and why?
I have two in a manner of speaking. Hometown boy makes good, James A. Michener, whose love for the South pacific inspired me to write Daughters of the Sea. He was THE author from our hometown, Doylestown. My mentor, Robert Walker taught me structure. The authors mentioned above gave me freedom to expand on Walker’s tutelage.
07: Are your stories based on real events or people?
Most are based on real events, but “I did it my way.”
08: How much research goes into your work?
I pick familiar locations and histories and fine-tune the research after writing the first draft.
09: Have you ever killed off a character based on someone real? If so why?
Not real, but redefined. Murders took place in my grandmother’s retirement home. I based the Ponytail Perp in Mortal Coil on that case.
10: If you could visit any period in history, what time would you go to? Why?
Currently I’m stuck in the late 60s. This might have to do with my enthusiasm for Morning After Midnight. It’s a rich period with Women’s Lib, new fashions, the upheaval in the South with desegregation, and the Vietnam War that inspire the music we still listen to.
11: If you could gather together any three people in the world, living or dead, whom would you want to meet and talk with?
I don’t know how they would get along, but Peter Ustanoff (dead); Alice Seibold (alive), and my birth mother, Laura Jones (also dead). We’d have to arrange this is a Swedenborgian style after-life similar to Eben Alexander’s Proof Of Heaven venue. I wouldn’t mind including Emanuel Swedenborg (long dead) either.
12: What do you do for fun when you aren’t busy writing?
Despite the activities I’ve had to forgo, I never gave up reading!
13: What is the one thing people believe about writers that upsets you?
That we make a lot of money. Hah!
14: Is there any genre you haven’t written that you’d like to try your hand at?
Fragmented nonfiction or truly literary fiction: I do some of that in my unpublished memoir, Elephant Walk, re grieving. It would be satisfying to write a thought-filled and culturally rich book.
15: If you were independently wealthy what is the one place on Earth you’d most like to visit? Why?
I’d like to revisit New Zealand, and live there.
16: What is your favorite color? Aquamarine
17: What is your favorite food? Olives, any olives, all olives!
18: What is your favorite TV show? The Good Wife
19: What is your favorite holiday? The Fourth of July—no gifts
Bio:
Julie Eberhart Painter, a native of Bucks County, Pennsylvania and has nine books published. The tenth releases in January 2014. Previously, Julie worked with nursing homes as a volunteer coordinator and later as a community ombudsman. She spent eighteen years with a local hospice in Port Orange, Florida, her hometown for 26 years.
She is a regular blogger on The Writers Vineyard, and a columnist at Cocktails, Fiction and Gossip Magazine, a quarterly online slick. She’s a frequent blogger on http://thewriterbeat.com, where nothing is sacred.
Reach her at
Twitter: @JulieEPainter
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com (Search) Julie Eberhart Painter
http://www.linkedin.com/search/fpsearch?type=people&keywords=Julie+Eberhart+Painter&pplSearchOrigin=GLHD&pageKey=member-home&search=Search
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3AJulie+Eberhart+Painter&keywords=Julie+Eberhart+Painter&ie=UTF8&qid=1321374034&sr=1-2-ent&field-contributor_id=B005EYUYSK
Or, for paperbacks www.lulu.com
www.champagnebooks.com
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Published-Authors-Network-84480?homeNewMember=&gid=84480&trk=EML_downshift_home&ut=2V-Y8nkUGC9lg1
www.thewritersvineyard.com
http://www.books-jepainter.com
Julie’s books:
Mortal Coil uses the nursing home setting because to murder a helpless old woman in her bed, cut off her hair and repeat that crime is the antipathy of what nursing homes are about, a safe place to be treated and rehabilitated. The subplot is driven by a behind-the-scenes scandal of greed and neglect.
Tangled Web begins with a Welsh family in 1934.
The cohesive Welsh community was a haven of Protestant values and mutual support. It was also a hornet’s nest of gossip. Neither a canary’s death nor a girl’s fall from grace escaped the community chatter.
Good girls avoided the attention of the grandmothers’ grapevine by behaving--in public--as ladies were expected to behave with good manners and self-control. In private, emotions roiled, passions were explored, appetites satiated, and the end results “talked about.” Or hidden.
Kill Fee, Penny a young environmentalist and occasional bridge director shows that even a friendly duplicate bridge game can lead to murder. (Although, bridge players have been known to feel the urge.) When she inherits, a beach house and a lot of money, everything changes. Medium Rare is the sequel, set among a bunch of hospice workers who can’t stay out of trouble, or crime.
Daughters of the Sea , is set in the South Pacific where legends create magic, danger and love.
Thanks for being here Julie. I'll see you all next week. In the meantime, stay cool.:-)
