An Interview With Rosalie Spielman

by Grace Topping

It’s amazing how a brief encounter at a meeting can lead to a friendship. I met Rosalie Spielman at a Chesapeake Chapter of Sister in Crime meeting when she was just starting her career as a mystery writer. Since then, her career has taken off and she has written eight books in two mystery series and won an award for her writing. Please join me in welcoming Rosalie back to Writers Who Kill and hear about the December 10, 2024 release of her latest book, Home for the Homicides.

 

 

Home for the Homicides

It's Christmastime in Army retiree Tessa Treslow's small Idaho hometown of New Oslo, but someone is determined to play a grinch this season and is robbing local businesses of their holiday cheer!

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In the midst of preparing for the first annual Running of the Grinches, a fundraiser to support the Sergeant Santa Toy Drive and the local historical society, a string of unfortunate incidents hit the townsfolk hard. It starts with broken windows then progresses to car theft, assault, and arson—each instance accompanied by a clue that clearly ties the crimes together.

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Tessa organizes a watch patrol for New Oslo, and during her first shift she helps rescue a victim from a fire. Unfortunately, it is clear to Tessa that the woman was already dead before the fire was set. Did the arsonist accidentally kill her...or is something more heinous and less in the spirit of the season at hand? It's up to Tessa to find out before tragedy strikes again!

                                                www. https://www.rosalie-spielman-author.com

 

 

Welcome Back to Writers Who Kill, Rosalie.

 

Hi, Grace. It's so nice to talk with you again. Thank you for inviting me to stop by my old stomping grounds at Writers Who Kill.

 

Home for the Homicides is a gripping tale with suspense on nearly every page. Was it a challenge writing a book that involves murder and mayhem set during the holiday season?

 

Well, the holidays are usually filled with mayhem, am I right? Usually not murder, of course. The biggest challenge was to remember to feel Christmassy and that there would be snow on the ground and Christmas music, etc., when it was actually in the 90's outside. I put the Holiday Baking Championship or holiday movies on for background noise to keep me in that zone.

 

Three of your characters are military veterans, including a disabled veteran, and you write about their challenges and involvement in Veterans’ programs. What prompted you to create characters who are veterans?

 

It felt natural for me to talk about veterans since the military has been such a big part of my life. I was a military brat, then active duty, and then a military spouse for 24 years. My father, sister, and brother were also in the military. I felt a little like I could be a hostess to allow civilians to take a peek inside the veteran experience.

 

I've recently added a page to my website with links to veteran organizations and small businesses. If I can get eyes on some of those groups, or create a little name recognition for them, give them a little lift up, it will make my efforts worth it. (I also have some Idaho- and women-owned links.)

 

You feature a number of holiday observances in New Oslo, but the one that I thought really clever was the Running of the Grinches. Is there such a run, and if so, have you ever participated in one?

 

There are some Grinch runs out there, so I can't take credit for the idea. There are also running Santas, elves, candy canes…people love themed runs. I chose the Grinch so that a bad guy could mix in with the group and not easily be recognized. But no, I haven't done any, though I may have talked my husband into doing the "Santa Speedo Run" in Annapolis. And yes – that is exactly what it sounds like. People running in red speedos and Santa hats and beards. And to avoid burning my retinas, I have never attended or witnessed it.

 

The Military Writers Society of America awarded you their Gold Medal Award. Please tell us about this organization and your award.

 

I came across the MWSA about this time last year. It is an organization for military writers, as in active duty and veterans who write. The purpose of the organization is to help veterans tell their stories. And there is a conference every year, with an awards banquet. I attended the gathering in San Diego at the end of September and met a bunch of really awesome and inspirational people. 

 

I'm very proud of the gold medal that Welcome Home to Murder was awarded, for two big reasons. One, the awards are determined by three reader-reviewers who score it against a set of standards. (How very military.) But what that means is that books are not scored against other books, but rather, judged on their own merit according to the decided standards.This also means there could be multiple gold, silver, and bronze awards. 

 

This is also an important aspect because I wasn't sure a cozy mystery was something the reviewers might want. But luckily, my apprehension was short lived. Once I posted the book information, three reviewers snatched it up within hours, which the coordinator told me was highly unusual. My theory is that they were happy to see something a little different from the normal fare. Welcome Home to Murder was one of two cozy mysteries submitted for review, and I think we were possibly the first ones in their history. 

 

A complete list of the award winners can be found here: https://www.mwsadispatches.com/2024-award-winners As you can see, out of over 100 books submitted for review in different genre categories, there are 14 gold medal winners, 22 silver medals, and 14 bronze medal winners. 

 

Your motto is “Providing an escape…one page at a time.” I read Home for the Homicides during a particularly stressful time, and I absolutely found it provided escape. Do you keep escapism in mind as you write? 

 

I'm so happy to hear that, Grace. That makes my heart happy to have help eased yours. Yes, it is my goal, both in my own reading and my writing, to escape the minutia of the real world. I don't like reading about heavy or awful things because you hear enough of that in the news. It's why I gravitated to cozy mystery, as well as other favorite genres of magical realism and fantasy. Granted, I do watch true crime occasionally—and actually true crime is where I got one of the plot point ideas for this book. 

 

The plot for Home for the Homicides has a very involved plot. Do you plot your stories before you start writing?

 

No, I am still terrible at plotting. The idea for this one came from a true crime show, as I mentioned above. Just one, tiny aspect caught my attention, and I thought it would work perfectly with a traditional holiday item (No spoilers). The rest of the plot bloomed around that. The timing worked out for this to be a Christmas book, so I was off and running. 

 

The extent of my plotting is to make a sort of roadmap of plot points I want to hit, then I "pants" between them. To keep with that metaphor, I will have some potholes and trouble with speed (aka plot holes and pacing), but once I get the whole story out, I go back and smooth out everything. Occasionally that will mean an overhaul. And usually, I hit a mid-book roadblock where I have to go through and rewrite the map a little. This particular book didn't have a roadblock, and once I got the timing of events down, it came out pretty cleanly. 

 

The four books in your Aloha Lagoon Mysteries feature Kiki Hepburn. In March, you will be writing about a new main character. Please tell us about this new character and why the change.

 

After I finished my fourth Aloha Lagoon contribution, Death at the Spring Fling, my publisher, Gemma Halliday, asked if I would be interested in further Kiki Hepburn books. I was scared to death to tell her no, afraid it would affect my Hometown series. But I was up front with her and explained I had only planned a four-book character arc and didn't want to go further with them. (I had been planning to use the "extra time" (ha ha) to work on proposals for new series.) Her response was to ask if I wanted to write further Aloha Lagoon books with new characters—as long as Kiki and crew were peripherally involved. So, my new main character, Nelly O'Hare, is Kiki's college roommate who has come to the island to work on a scientific study. And, of course, fan favorite Auntie Akamai is around too. Currently, I have a two-book contract for Nelly, with both of them scheduled to release in 2025. 

 

Your two series are very different in tone. How do you keep one from spilling into the other?

 

That's a great question. I have been alternating writing between the two series for about three years now. I don't have much trouble because the main characters and settings are so different. By the time I'm done with one book, I've got character fatigue and it's refreshing to move back to the other. Alternatively, I have no idea how writers, who have written the same characters for decades, do what they do.

 

The bigger problem I'm having is trying to remember details from book to book in the separate series. I do keep an extensive spreadsheet for the Hometown mysteries, and asked for a volunteer to go through all four books to make sure the spreadsheet is correct. Shoutout and many thanks to Renee Wilson for her help. Renee did find a couple of inconsistencies, but thankfully mostly things like truck model years and a name of a character's mother who never appears in person. 

The Aloha Lagoon family of writers has their own bible, so our characters can visit the same restaurants and local sights. It isn't nearly as detailed for each individual character, so I keep a notebook for my own characters. 

 

You make a number of public appearances throughout the year. How do you balance writing, especially writing two books a year, with doing promotion?

 

Good question. I mean, really, I have no idea. I feel like the duck who looks all peaceful on the surface of the water, while underneath, the feet are madly paddling away. It's not too unlike having a couple of toddlers, and I survived that. So I guess it's more survival than balance?

 

I try to hit my word count for the day—I keep an app that tells me how many are needed for a certain day, based on what I did the day before and when the deadline is—before I "mess around" with promo. Many days my good intentions go out the window, such as newsletter prep days. I still try to get that word count down though, since without the words, all the rest of it is moot.

 

Social media does take a lot of time, but can be very rewarding. At the beginning of October, I got together with nine other cozy writers to start a Facebook group, "Murder, They Write." We all were in the same agency, and that has been a lot of fun. I know our agent, the late Dawn Dowdle, would have been tickled to see us working together.

 

I've recently been looking more "outside the box" for promo opportunities, like pop-up holiday shops at my local community center and partnerships with other military spouses and their bookish enterprises. (Sign up for my newsletter to keep on tab with my activities and partnerships at www.Rosalie-Spielman-author.com.) One of my most recent brainstorms is to try to build a relationship with a mobile bookseller in my area. Together we can help each other grow.

 

Thank you, Rosalie.

 

For more information about Rosalie Spielman, visit her website, Providing an escape...one page at a time. www.Rosalie-Spielman-author.com

 

Also, check out Rosalie’s Bookshop storefront at

https://bookshop.org/shop/YouKnowTheSpiel

 

 

Grace Topping is the author of the Laura Bishop Mystery Series.