AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR VIRGINIA KELLY'S AMATEUR SLEUTH GABI ESPINOSA

Today we sit down for a chat with Gabriela (Gabi) Espinosa from author Virginia Kelly’s Gabi Espinosa Mystery Series. 

What was your life like before your author started pulling your strings?

I was playing it safe, raising my fifteen-year-old in a small town in the Florida Panhandle. Turner’s Crossroads became a safe haven when, at age eleven, my parents died, and I moved in with my paternal grandmother. I’d been living in Peru with my Peruvian mother and American father, and although I didn’t fit in with the town, I adjusted. So when my life turned upside down, I came back to Turner’s Crossroads.

 

What’s the one trait you like most about yourself?

I don’t gossip in a town full of gossips.

 

What do you like least about yourself?

I’m big on avoiding painful emotions.

 

What is the strangest thing your author has had you do or had happen to you?

I used a wooden cutting board as a self-defense tool.

 

Do you argue with your author? If so, what do you argue about?

It’s been more of a disagreement about how to handle two people in my life. To deal with a gossipy, grumpy employee, I prefer patience. My author believes a serious talk will make a difference. She forgets I’ve tried that. Then there’s my problem patron (I’m a librarian, but then so is my author). He requires patience as well as acceptance. But when his behavior suddenly changed, I altered my approach, which meant chasing answers.

 

What is your greatest fear?

Losing a loved one.

 

What makes you happy?

My daughter and living a safe, no-more-shocks, quiet life.

 

If you could rewrite a part of your story, what would it be? Why?

My husband would not have been murdered. If he were alive… Well, my life would be totally different. I would not have moved back to Turner’s Crossroads. I would still work in a large academic library, and I wouldn’t fear losing anyone else.

 

Of the other characters in your book, which one bugs you the most? Why?

It’s a toss up between Ryker Fordham, my always-a-problem patron, and Mark Stone, the new deputy. Mr. Fordham (he was a friend of my late father’s) always complained about some library books, but his personality, odd to say the least, took a sudden nosedive. Mark Stone bugs me because I can’t figure him out. He’s impossible to read. Why he ever came to our little backwater is a mystery.

 

Of the other characters in your book, which one would you love to trade places with? Why?

Not to trade places, but I’d love to adopt my friend Rhonda’s attitude about life. She knew how to live her life fully, her way.

 

Tell us a little something about your author. Where can readers find her website/blog?

My story, an amateur sleuth mystery, is Virginia’s ninth published title. Fully indie, she regained the rights to her traditionally published books. She stumbled into my life after writing romantic suspense novels for years. Why Tangled Secrets is a mystery, is… well, a mystery. Virginia’s one of those writers who sits down to write with barely any plan—a pantser. You can find more about her and her other books at her website. 

 

What's next for you?

Virginia’s putting me through another journey to, as she calls it, “complete my character arc.” It’s a rather daunting process, one I’m not sure I can handle. But she’s pulled others I’ve met in her books through their character arcs, so I’ll continue to believe in her ability to guide me through mine.

 

Tangled Secrets: A Gabi Espinosa Mystery

 

Turner’s Crossroads, where nothing happens… Until it does.

 

Reeling from her husband’s murder, librarian Gabriela Espinosa took her young daughter and sought refuge in the perceived safety of her tiny hometown in the Florida Panhandle. Six years later, the murder of her best friend shatters her sense of security and threatens the walls Gabi built to protect herself from grief.

 

Suspicion falls on an old friend of her late father’s. Though the man is troubled, Gabi believes he’s incapable of violence. In his defense, she begins asking questions which put her at odds with the local sheriff’s department and a mysterious new deputy. 

 

As she uncovers a tangle of complicated relationships, there’s a second murder. With fear resonating through the town’s sleepy façade, Gabi confronts a dark past that lays bare Turner’s Crossroads’ secrets, putting her, and her daughter, in danger.

 

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