Where do those ideas come from? My favorite question”¦
By Julie Eberhart Painter
Of seven books I’ve had published and the two waiting in the pipeline, every one of them came from a life experience that I “set to music.”
I was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the product of a single, older mother, age 28. What was she like? How did she fare after my birth father “had” her? She must have tiptoed back to her family, extremely ashamed of herself, and they of her. That was 1936, a time of moral righteousness.
When I was 60, I tried to find out more, but only received the non-identifying information. Putting it together with things I’d heard and learned. We writers are eavesdroppers and voyeurs. I decided to make her life the focal point of my novel Tangled Web, book two with Champagne Books. The most gripping emotions to emerge from writing the seduction scene that produced me, is that I felt more like a horrified reporter than a writer. Suddenly, I was the embryo on the wall watching this handsome Lothario take my mother’s virtue and alter her life forever. A gotcha story with a happy ending, because I couldn’t leave Catherine, in reality Laura Jones, whose name I didn’t learn until a few years ago, stranded in her life.
My first Champagne book, my fourth in the world, was Mortal Coil. That novel came from my experience as a volunteer coordinator and Community Ombudsman for long-term care facilities, in other words, nursing home reality. In Philadelphia, when my 98-year-old Grandmother landed in “one of those places” for six years, she rode the elevator with a murderer. Maggie lived a charmed life, treated him with good manners, and never became his victim. But he killed three women there and was apprehended two years after she died. That became the spinning off story for my romantic suspense.
The world of graduated institutionalized care has changed dramatically since I began as a volunteer in 1972 in Cleveland, Ohio, moved on to Atlanta, Georgia, and later volunteered in Daytona Beach, Florida. My hospice years in Florida provided me with a clear view of the politics, a reality check that encompasses behind the scenes nursing home and hospice planning. My characters fell onto my pages to be immortalized and re-loved by me and my readers. Believe it or not, Mortal Coil is a funny book as well as an expose of what’s happening to the money in these facilities. It’s a cozy whodunit.
My most recent novel, Kill Fee, is much funnier. It addresses the world of duplicate bridge as played by senior citizens living in an “upstairs” assisted living, where gossip is juicer than crime””until it’s not. My sixty years of playing bridge and directing and owning an ACBL (American Contract Bridge League) franchise came into play to give my main character, Penny, a hobby as well as her career as an environmentalist and field inspector.
This cozy mystery uncovers action and reactions to my young heroine when she inherits fifteen million dollars from the man she has come to love as her uncle, only to find he’s had an ongoing affair with her mother for 30 years. Fortunately, Cole, a believable hero and ordinary guy, is her uncle’s attorney. He’s there to buffer the shock. Together they chase down the crazies, the greedy, the egomaniacs and the grossly inefficient cops who warp justice for their own ends. Their Florida beach town will never be the same.
Life provides us with wild and wonderful opportunities. All we must do is pay attention, take notes and write what we know.
Julie Eberhart Painter is the Champagne Books author of Mortal Coil, Tangled Web, and Kill Fee released in October 2011. Visit Julie’s Web site at www.books-jepainter.com
Also available are The World, the Flesh and the Devil, American Castles and Tahitian Destiny.. Julie’s nonfiction e-book, From the Inside Out, a volunteer looks at staying motivated, is in online at e-book stores.
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