LEMON TART: AUTHOR INTERVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

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LEMON TART
BY JOSI S. KILPACK

ABOUT THE BOOK:

A Recipe For Murder

5 families living on Peregrine Circle..

1 flowered curtain tie-back...............
1 missing child.................................
1 body in the field............................

Mix a long list of suspects and top with two very different detectives. Increase heat until only the truth remains.

***********

Cooking aficionado-turned-amateur detective, Sadie Hoffmiller, tries to solve the murder of Anne Lemmon, her beautiful young neighbor—a single mother who was mysteriously killed while a lemon tart was baking in her oven. At the heart of the tragedy is Anne’s missing two-year-old son, Trevor. Whoever took the child must be the murderer, but Sadie is certain that the police are looking at all the wrong suspects—including her!

Armed with a handful of her very best culinary masterpieces, Sadie is determined to bake her way to proving her innocence, rescuing Trevor, and finding out exactly who had a motive for murder.

For an added treat, original mouth-watering recipes are sprinkled throughout the book. RECIPES INCLUDED:
--Mom’s Lemon Tart
--Cinnamon Ginger Cookies
--Cream Cheese Frosting
--Homemade Alfredo Sauce
--Sadie’s Better Brownies
--Carrot Cookies
--Granny’s Gingerbread

Read an excerpt here!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Josi S. Kilpack grew up hating to read until her mother handed her a copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond when she was 13. From that day forward, she read everything she could get her hands on and accredits her writing “education” to the many novels she has “studied” since then. She began writing her first novel in 1998, while on bedrest with a pregnancy, and never stopped. Devil’s Food Cake is Josi’s eleventh novel, and the third book in the Sadie Hoffmiller Culinary Mystery Series. The other novels, Lemon Tart (Book 1) and English Trifle (Book 2) were released in 2009. While the books all feature Sadie Hoffmiller as the main character, they stand alone in regard to plot and can be read as a set or as individual titles. In addition to her writing, Josi enjoys reading, baking, traveling, and snuggling with her sweetheart, Lee. They now live in Willard, Utah with their four kids, a dog, and a varying number of chickens.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW:

1. Thanks to Josi Kilpack for agreeing to answer a few questions for an interview. First here is some background on Josi:

Josi S. Kilpack grew up hating to read until her mother handed her a copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond when she was 13. From that day forward, she read everything she could get her hands on and accredits her writing “education” to the many novels she has “studied” since then. She began her first novel in 1998 and hasn’t stopped. Her seventh novel, Sheep’s Clothing won the Whitney Award 2007 for Mystery/Suspense. Her most recent book, Devil’s Food Cake, is the third book in the Sadie Hoffmiller Culinary Mystery Series. Josi currently lives in Willard Utah with her husband, four children, one dog and varying number of chickens. For more information about Josi, you can visit her website at www.josiskilpack.com or her blog at www.josikilpack.blogspot.com

2. What is the next or current book/project you are working on?

I am currently working on book 5 in the Sadie Hoffmiller series, Blackberry Crumble. In this one Sadie will be going to the Pacific Northwest to determine whether or not a death was actually a murder. This is the first time that Sadie has been hired to investigate a case, and presents a whole new set of circumstances she hasn’t encountered before. I’m only about fifty pages in right now, but so far so good!

3. What have you just finished reading?

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. I haven’t yet made my official determination of it. I liked the writing and I loved learning about the Chinese culture in the eighteenth century, but I didn’t find the story inspiring or even all that positive. I didn’t put the book down with a smile on my face and I felt some of the scenes and references were both gratuitous and slightly offensive to what I believe the true culture would reflect. That said, I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit, so it definitely made an impression. I’m just not sure how to ‘rate’ it in my own mind.

4. What books would you say have made the biggest impression on you, especially starting out?

While I write mystery, it’s actually suspense that gets most of my attention as a reader and it’s usually suspense novels that I put down and say “Dang, I wish I’d written that!”. I love Sue Graphton, John Grisham, and Mary Higgins Clark—plot driven novels with well written characters. That said, I don’t love all their books, but they are the authors that inspire me the most. I read very critically and I think this was a big part of my ability to write in the beginning because I chopped every book I read into little pieces so I could identify each element and decide how that one little part influenced the over all story and my over all enjoyment of it. Because of that, I think every book I’ve ever read has influenced my writing in one way or another.

5. What gets you started on a new book? A character or story idea or….?

Any and all of the above. Most of my ideas come from other people’s ideas. Not that I’m stealing, but a character will catch my attention, or a story on the news, and it sparks something that I then ponder on. That initial idea grows and morphs until I can fit a story around it. Some of my books have been started by a single scene I’ve thought about, others are inspired by a topic I want to address or a character that moves into my brain and won’t go away. Sadie’s stories have been inspired by a variety of these things but are additionally moved forward by the recipes that are spotlighted in each of the books.

6. What is something about you that you would want people to know about you that we probably don’t know?

That my life isn’t perfect and I don’t wake up or go to bed smiling every day. I have a good life, don’t get me wrong, but it seems that most people assume that I write because I have time with nothing else to do. They assume that it comes easy, that the words just flow, and that the rest of my life fits around my writing nicely. Like anyone making room for something they are passionate about, it isn’t easy. A lot of my writing is done at 4:30 in the morning, at my kitchen table before the kids get up. Right now, I don’t know my plot for the story I’m writing, which is not a good feeling and causing me all kinds of angst. My daughter was sick yesterday, which through my whole week for a loop since I had to stay home from work and will have to find a way to make that up (we own our own business and I do the bookkeeping). I love to write, which is why I do it, but it doesn’t fit in nicely, rather it’s shoved and molded into the nooks and crannies of my life. But I’m very glad to have found those nooks and crannies. I wouldn’t be who I am without it.

7. What is your best advice to anyone, including young people, who want to be writers?

First, ask yourself why you want to write. Money isn’t a bad motivator, but most writers I know have a day job for many years as they wait for their career to take off and so if money is your only motivation, you will likely burn out before it feels like you’ve succeeded. If you want to change the world, that’s a good motivator too, but remember that there are 50,000 books published in the US every year. A lot of them are trying to change the world. The motivation, therefore, that everyone needs is to love it. If you love to write it can work, but if the love of it isn’t there, then you’ll make yourself crazy with unfulfilled expectations.

Second, drown yourself in writing experiences. Write anything you can, read about writing, attend writing conferences, become part of a writing group, enter writing contests, and show the people in your life that this is real by treating it as such. Writing is not easy but if it enriches your soul and gives purpose to your life, then pursue it with fervor and embrace the challenges it presents with a can-do attitude. I don’t know anyone who had a publisher knock on their door and say “I hear you like to write?” you have to be the one to put yourself out there; only then can you be discovered.

8. What is something you would like to share with us about writing your favorite genre in general?

This series is my first writing experience with a mystery and has presented it’s own challenges that I hadn’t anticipated. In suspense, the reader usually knows more than the main character. In Mystery, the reader knows either as much as the main character, or even a little bit less. This is why Mysteries usually have only one point of view character as opposed to suspense novels which will often go back and forth between several characters, including the antagonist. I found it very challenging to write only what Sadie knew and realized that because of that, I didn’t know what was going to happen either. With every book in this series I’ve been a good 2/3rds of the way through the book before I figured out who did it, let alone how they did it. It’s both fascinating and frustrating to be so unaware. I’m sure other authors don’t do it that way, but I haven’t yet figured out how to do it differently.

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