Baker
of brownies and tormenter of characters, Alice Loweecey recently celebrated her
thirtieth year outside the convent. She grew up watching Hammer horror films
and Scooby-Doo mysteries, which explains a whole lot. When she’s not creating
trouble for Giulia Falcone-Driscoll, she can be found growing her own
vegetables (in summer) and cooking with them (the rest of the year.) Learn more
about Alice and her books at her website. Today Alice sits down with us for an interview.
What genre/genres do you write in:
Mystery, horror
When did
you realize you wanted to write novels?
In my college years. I wrote reams of angsty teen
poetry in high school. (It’s all been shredded. You’re welcome.) All those
30-page papers in college made me remember that long pieces can be interesting,
and those were what I wanted to write.
How long
did it take you to realize your dream of publication?
Six years. I started writing with the goal of
publication in 2005 and my debut, Force
of Habit, was published in 2011. (Got married and had kids after college.
Kids sort of take up your entire life for their first 10+ years or so.)
Are you
traditionally published, indie published, or a hybrid author?
I have traditional, trade publishing deals. Midnight
Ink published my first three mysteries. Henery Press is publishing my next
three.
Where do
you write?
My living room, out on the deck in the few Buffalo
months that aren’t buried in snow, coffee shops sometimes.
Is silence
golden, or do you need music to write by? What kind?
I can write in silence or with noise. We watch a lot
of sports in our house, which are like white noise to me. I also listen to
opera or ancient music—anything that isn’t English, so I can’t understand the
words. Swedish Death Metal is GREAT white noise.
How much of
your plots and characters are drawn from real life? From your life in
particular?
I find a lot of my plot elements in real life,
because my mysteries are set in present day. From my life, hardly anything. I
use some convent anecdotes in each book, but some of them are out of my
imagination. Others really happened. I let my readers speculate on which ones
are the real stories.
Describe
your process for naming your character?
I find cemetery and census records for the counties
my books are set in, and put together names from those.
Real
settings or fictional towns?
Depends. Cottonwood, PA, where my mysteries are set,
is completely fictional. But my characters often travel to real towns. Google
Earth is my friend.
What’s the
quirkiest quirk one of your characters has?
Sidney Martin, Giulia’s assistant, is the perkiest
Christmas Elf on the planet. She’s also all-natural. Her eco-friendly wedding
was one of the most fun events to research. If I wrote romance, I could create
an entire series with an eco-friendly wedding planner. It’s fascinating.
What’s your
quirkiest quirk?
Bad horror movies. I love ’em. The kind where you
root for the monster to eat/crush/kill all the characters because they’re TSTL (Attack of the Crab Monster) and you can
see the zipper in the back of the monster’s costume (The Alligator People). I can binge-watch them any time. Also,
RiffTrax FTW.
If you
could have written any book (one that someone else has already written,) which
one would it be? Why?
Dracula. My dream, besides a multiple TV/movie deal
with Bryce Dallas Howard and Gerard Butler starring as Giulia and Frank, is to
create a character that people will be fanficcing and writing spin-offs and
parodies about long after I’m dead.
Everyone at
some point wishes for a do-over. What’s yours?
Not to have quit piano lessons when I hit puberty. My
father, a professional musician, started teaching me when I was ten. Much too
soon, I was in the Eyeroll of Death years and didn’t want to be in the same zip
code as my parents. So I quit lessons before I could play with both hands simultaneously.
I’ve never had time to achieve that. I play guitar and flute and recorder, but
still can only use my right hand on the piano.
What’s your
biggest pet peeve?
Two-faced people. Nothing sours one’s outlook like
discovering people you thought were your friends… really weren’t.
So many possibilities for subplots and Redshirts,
though. That’s the only bright side I’ve been able to find.
You’re
stranded on a deserted island. What are your three must-haves?
Gerard Butler. (…What?)
The complete works of Charles Dickens.
A desalination machine.
What was
the worst job you’ve ever held?
Back in the 1970s I was night clerk at a fitness
center, whose women’s division was in the basement. (We most certainly have
come a long way.) The pool was also in the basement. The place had inch-long
water bugs that went snap-crunch-crackle as you stepped on them.
Then the management ripped out the old lockers and
installed new ones without fumigating. Cockroaches. Everywhere. Crawling up the
walls, crawling out from underneath my typewriter, crawling in the showers.
Everywhere. My baseline criteria for any job since has been “No bugs.”
What’s the
best book you’ve ever read?
Our Mutual
Friend by Dickens. No, wait. The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius. No,
wait. The Man Who Loved Mars by Lin
Carter.
Um… can I get back to you?
Ocean or
mountains?
Ocean all the way. When you live in a place where
winter lasts 9 months* of the year, you appreciate sand and surf and warmth and
drinks with little umbrellas in them.
*Okay, it may not literally last 9 months, but it
sure feels like it.
City girl/guy
or country girl/guy?
City. Sidewalks and streetlights are God’s gift to
humanity. Also, cows are evil and not to be trusted. I’ve seen them standing by
the sides of country roads, secretly laughing at my Clown Car, a Chevy Aveo
hatchback. I know they’re saying amongst themselves, “We can tip that little
thing over. Let’s see how the humans like it.”
What’s on
the horizon for you?
I also have a dystopian horror novel coming out with
Dark Recesses Press in May. I will be continually reminding my mystery fans
that the DRP book is NOT a Giulia Driscoll mystery!
My next Henery Press mystery, Second To Nun, comes out in the early-ish fall.
Nun Too
Soon
Giulia
Falcone-Driscoll has just taken on her first impossible client: The Silk Tie
Killer. He’s hired Driscoll Investigations to prove his innocence and they have
only thirteen days to accomplish it. Talk about being tried in the media.
Everyone in town is sure Roger Fitch strangled his girlfriend with one of his
silk neckties. And then there’s the local TMZ wannabes—The Scoop—stalking
Giulia and her client for sleazy sound bites.
On top of all
that, her assistant’s first baby is due any second, her scary smart admin still
doesn’t relate well to humans, and her police detective husband insists her
client is guilty. About this marriage thing—it’s unknown territory, but it sure
beats ten years of living with 150 nuns.
Giulia’s ownership
of Driscoll Investigations hasn’t changed her passion for justice from her
convent years. But the more dirt she digs up, the more she’s worried her
efforts will help a murderer escape. As the client accuses DI of dragging its
heels on purpose, Giulia thinks The Silk Tie Killer might be choosing one of
his ties for her own neck.
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