Welcoming Guest Author Sara Rosett

Please welcome our guest author, Sara Rosett, whose novel GETTING AWAY IS DEADLY, her third book in the mom zone mystery series about a military spouse who runs a professional organizing business, comes out this week. Sara might be slightly in touch with her protagonist’s heart, being a military wife herself, though the comparisons stop when murder comes into play.
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DB: Tell me a little about your book.

SR: Ellie Avery, a military spouse and professional organizer, accompanies her pilot husband to a training class in Washington D.C. She wants a little r&r in the form of sight-seeing and shopping, but her getaway turns deadly when she witnesses a murder in the Metro.

DB: What got you writing in the genre in which you write.

SR: I’ve always loved mysteries. I grew up reading Nancy Drew and Trixie Beldon. I moved on to romantic suspense and devoured novels by Elizabeth Peters and Mary Stewart. Then I found mysteries by contemporary female writers like Carolyn Hart and Margaret Maron. Their books had modern “everyday” women as the main characters in American settings. I decided to attempt to write an amateur sleuth mystery with a mom as the protagonist. The result was the first Mom Zone Mystery, Moving is Murder. Getting Away is Deadly is the third installment in the series.

DB: Favorite thing about being a writer?

SR: I love meeting readers and booksellers. It’s so nice to connect with people who love books as much as I do! And I have to say it’s also pretty cool to open a box and see stacks of books with my name on the spine.

DB: Least favorite thing about being a writer?

SR: The day-in-day-out slog of writing the first draft, which is the hardest part for me. Once I actually get something down on paper I feel so much better. Revision is easy compared to the first draft.

DB: What is the most interesting thing that’s happened to you since becoming a published author?

SR: At one of my first book signings, a man asked me if he could have a kiss. I was thrown for a moment, until I remembered the chocolate kisses I’d put out to draw people over to my signing table. I guess they worked—maybe a little too well!

DB: Speaking of food, I like to ask guests this: What’s your favorite type of pie?

SR: Well, I’m more of a chocolate cake kind of girl, but if it *has* to be pie…cherry. J

Thanks so much for joining us today!

10 Replies to “Welcoming Guest Author Sara Rosett”

  1. Trixie Belden!!! I forgot all about her but I read a whole bunch of those as a kid.

    This whole series looks like so much fun, Sara. Do you do a lot of research for the mystery elements of your books? And did you find you had to learn how do structure and plan a mystery or was is something that just came naturally to you? (I ask this because mysteries are one of those things I love to read but just can’t imagine writing–I don’t think I have the
    “mystery gene” and it looks, well, HARD!)

    Thanks so much for coming to The Ball!

  2. Thanks for joining us today, Sara! Your series looks great! Congratulations and I’m also more of a chocolate cake kind of girl!

  3. Thanks for coming by! I was a Nancy Drew girl too. I would be interested to hear how much pre-plotting you do when writing a mystery. I’m guessing with mystery it would be far more difficult to fly by the seat of your pants. Can you tell me more about your process?

  4. We’re so happy to have you visit us! I laughed out loud at the kiss request…what would he have done if you actually kissed him? 🙂

    I used to LOVE Trixie Beldon. And like Eileen, I would love to also know how much pre-plotting you do! Looking forward to hearing more on this!

  5. Hi Everyone!

    Thanks so much for having me!

    I have to say, banana cream pie sounds pretty good, Jenny.

    Nice to know there are other Trixie B. fans out there, Danielle. I know some mystery writers who seem to just *know* how to write a good mystery, but it didn’t come instinctively to me. I read mysteries for years. It was my favorite genre and it seemed that the more I read, the more the mist began to clear and I could see how a mystery was structured.

    Jess and Eileen want to know how much pre-plotting I do. Quite a bit. I usually start with an incident, a “what if” moment. In the case of Getting Away, it was what would happen if someone was pushed off the Metro platform? After I have the incident, I begin to figure out the major players: the victim and the suspects. I have to work out who committed the crime and then think about what other people would also want that person out of the way. I don’t do an outline, but I do take a large sheet of butcher paper and write a rough timeline for the story across the bottom, then I layer in the different subplots. Eventually, it looks pretty messy, but it does let me get all my ideas on paper and I can draw all sorts of lines linking different people and situations to help me remember my initial ideas. Sometimes the book evolves and changes as I get down to writing it and other times it doesn’t. I like the graphic organizer approach because it lets me scribble all over the place and then put everything in coherent order later. I do know other mystery writers who write by the seat of their pants and just figure it out as they go along. To each his own!

    Oh, and about the kiss incident…I think if I’d tried to kiss him he would have backed away pretty quick, Jess. He was there with his girlfriend. 😉

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