An Interview With Lena Gregory

While taking a short break from interviewing authors, I'm reposting an interview I previously conducted with mystery author Lena Gregory. Since interviewing Lena, she has come out with additional books in her All-Day Breakfast Cafe Mystery series and her Bay Island Psychic Mystery series. Read more about them at www.lenagregory.com.  

An Interview With Lena Gregory
by Grace Topping

One of the best things about being a mystery writer is meeting other writers—whether in person or through social media. One author I met via Facebook is Lena Gregory. Although we’ve never met in person, I enjoy claiming her as a friend. So it was with great pleasure that I had the opportunity to interview her and learn more about her and her series.

                                                              Scone Cold Killer

                                                                              

First in the All-Day Breakfast Cafe Series

When Gia Morelli’s marriage falls apart, she knows it’s time to get out of New York. Her husband was a scam artist who swindled half the millionaires in town, and she doesn’t want to be there when they decide to take revenge. On the spur of the moment, she follows her best friend to a small town in Central Florida, where she braves snakes, bears, and giant spiders to open a cheery little diner called the All-Day Breakfast Café. Owning a restaurant has been her lifelong dream, but it turns into a nightmare the morning she opens her dumpster and finds her ex-husband crammed inside. As the suspect du jour, Gia will have to scramble fast to prove her innocence before a killer orders another cup of murder . . .
www.amazon.com

Welcome to Writers Who Kill, Lena.

Lena Gregory

It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

In your All-Day Breakfast Café Mysteries series, Gia Morelli escapes from her ex-husband, scandal, and NYC to a small town in Florida. Trouble ensues when numerous thugs follow her there. What is it about characters getting a second chance or the chance to start over that appeals to readers?

Starting over is never easy, and I think the chance to reinvent oneself after leaving a difficult situation shows a certain amount of courage and tenacity that readers admire in a character. Plus, starting over always takes the character out of their element for a bit, which can be fun to write and to read.

In Scone Cold Killer, Gia sympathizes with the plight of a homeless man and leaves food for him outside her restaurant. He later plays a key part in her unraveling the mystery of who is out to get her. What do you come up with first—the plot or the characters?

I usually come up with the plot first when writing cozies. After that, I develop the characters as I go along, and I love bringing characters back and sharing their backstories as the series progresses. 

In her move to a small town in Florida, Gia is fortunate to have a good friend there who helps her to get established, but the locals are still slow to accept her. What is it about small towns that make the locals leery of newcomers?

I think there are two reasons locals are leery of newcomers. The first is simply that they don’t know them. When you are used to knowing everything about your neighbors and their families, it can be difficult to accept a stranger no one knows anything about. The second reason is that people are afraid of change, and when newcomers move in and bring their own customs, traditions, and ideas, I think people fear life as they know it will change. 

Did writing about Gia’s move to Florida influence your recent move from Long Island to Florida? Are the locals leery about you?

Writing about Gia’s move didn’t influence me this time, but I moved to Florida once before in the late nineties for about a year and a half, and some of the things Gia encounters definitely came from that move. The tornado that rips through town in book two, Murder Made to Order, is based on a real event. The giant hairy spider she runs into in the bathroom is based on a spider my daughter found in the bathroom at the dance studio I was working at when she went back to change. She came out screaming, and I told her to knock it off, it’s just a spider. Well, I took one look at that thing and ran down the shopping center to an open store with a man working who was so kind that he left and came down to remove it. That said, I have to say the people at that time, and again at this time, have been nothing but supportive, friendly, and kind. 

Has your move to Florida influenced your writing?

Moving from New York to Florida has definitely influenced my All-Day Breakfast Café Mystery series since I now have so many more things for Gia to encounter that I never knew about before. 

Your Bay Island Psychic Mysteries series features Cass Donovan, a former psychiatrist who pretends to be a psychic. It sounds like the perfect recipe for fun and disaster. Do you believe in things paranormal or have you had any paranormal experiences that inspired this series?

I do believe there is something beyond what most of us can see and feel, as does my daughter, but my husband and son do not. That argument is actually what inspired my Bay Island Psychic Mystery series. I thought it would be fun to write a series where one character (Stephanie) believes whole-heartedly in the paranormal, one character (Bee) supposedly doesn’t believe in anything otherworldly, and the main character (Cass) isn’t quite sure, and then follow their journey throughout the series as different things happen to challenge their beliefs. 

With Cass pretending to be a psychic, how do you keep her from appearing to be a con artist?

Cass is very intuitive and worked as a psychiatrist before moving back to Bay Island after a tragedy involving a patient. Her motivation for pretending to be psychic is always to help people, so she’s never trying to con anyone, just help them find peace. Plus, as the series progresses, Cass comes to realize her instincts might just be something a little more. 

I understand that you may have another series in the works—or at least milling around in your head—the Puzzle Solvers Mysteries. Can you tell us anything about that?

The Puzzle Solvers Mysteries is about a jigsaw puzzle group and takes place in a small town on the south shore of eastern Long Island, New York, very similar to the town I grew up in. It has been contracted and the first book, The Missing Piece, is due to the publisher on January 15, though I don’t have a release date yet. 

With two mystery series, and possibly a third coming, plus stand-alone books, how do you juggle family life, writing, and promoting your work?

It’s so hard! Lol. I always put family first, and I’m so fortunate my husband and children are all incredibly supportive of my writing. They understand when I have a tight deadline and have to disappear into the writing cave for a while. Then, when I’m not on a tight deadline, I spend as much time as possible doing things with them. As far as promotion, I enjoy interacting with readers and often do Facebook parties, and that’s fun for me. I also don’t sleep more than a few hours a night, which helps tremendously. 

Looking back to the days when you were attempting to get published, what do you wish you had done differently? Any advice for aspiring writers?

I wish I had known more about the process. I wrote the first half of my first book by hand in a loose-leaf notebook, because I didn’t own a computer or know how to work Microsoft Word. But I took the time to research everything, had my husband and a good friend who were willing to help out, and took every bit of advice I got from people who were already in the industry. I think that’s one of the most important pieces of advice I can offer; you have to be willing to listen and to learn. 

What’s next for Gia Morelli and Cass Donovan?

I am currently writing Gia’s fourth story, and she is adapting well to life in Florida and trying to embrace new customs and traditions. Of course, things don’t ever go smoothly. Cass’s fourth story was just published, and she will be moving on to work more closely with police investigations, despite Luke’s and Tank’s resistance. 

Thank you, Lena. 

To learn more about Lena Gregory, visit her on Facebook and at http://www.lenagregory.com.

A Moving Experience by Guest Blogger Lena Gregory

Moving From New York to Florida

A Guest Post by Lena Gregory

In Scone Cold Killer, All-Day Breakfast Café #1, Gia moved from New York to a rural area of Florida. She sent all of her stuff down ahead, and her best friend, Savannah, moved everything into the house for her. Let me tell you, I was wishing Savannah was real and would do the same for me a few weeks ago! My husband and I moved from Long Island, New York to Clermont, Florida with our two sons, our daughter, our son-in-law, and all four of our dogs.

We spent the better part of a week packing two PODs to move. My husband was beyond frustrated trying to fit everything in, then he closed one of the doors for a couple of minutes and when he opened it again, a bunch of stuff came tumbling out. My eight-year-old son was building box forts in the POD then getting upset when anyone took a box (but he helped A LOT when he wasn’t building). My daughter and son-in-law were trying to help my husband so they didn't get anything of their own packed until the night before we left, and my other son and I were trying to pack the things that were left all over the house that I hadn't gotten to packing yet. We did all work together, but the end result was, we needed another POD. So I ordered a seven foot POD that came the next day.

I started out so organized, everything neatly wrapped, packed, and labeled. By eight o'clock Sunday night, I was opening drawers and closets and just dumping stuff into boxes and slapping some tape on them. Even though I’d spent months packing for the move, and pretty much had a maze throughout my entire house between all of the boxes and furniture, I hadn't even started packing the kitchen yet. I started packing kitchen stuff the night before the PODs were due to be picked up. After one box, I decided I didn't really need anything from my kitchen. 

Thankfully, I changed my mind about that by the time I got home from work the next day. But my house looked like a bomb hit it, the PODs still weren't fully packed, and I was too exhausted to even think about tackling it all. I grabbed a box and started dumping all of the utensil trays (knives and all) into the box. When my daughter came in and asked if I had a box ready, I looked down into the box I’d just “packed” and found knives and forks sticking up every which way like Pick-up Stix. 

My daughter took one look into the box, looked up at me and said, “Mom, why didn’t you just leave the stuff in the trays and put the trays in the box?”

Okay, so it made perfect sense after she pointed it out.

Once everything was packed into the PODs, (whatever would fit, anyway) we had to spend ten days in our basically empty house. At least, it seemed empty, until the night we had to pack the car to leave. Then, not so much. We had to drive with our eight-year-old and our twenty-year-old crammed into the back seat. They each had a small spot on the seat, but the floors in front of them were filled to the top with stuff, so they had to sit curled up on the seats all the way to Virginia.

We needed to get our car down to Florida with us, and the drive from Long Island to Florida is getting harder and harder for my husband and I to do (especially when my husband had already been awake for 37 hours and I’d been up for more than 20 hours by the time we left) so we drove from Long Island to Virginia, then got on the auto train, while my daughter and son-in-law each drove their cars with all of the dogs. I love the auto train. We can sit back, put our feet up, watch movies, sleep, go to the dining car to eat. So much better than sitting in traffic on I-95, pumping ourselves full of caffeine so we can stay awake to drive.

They load the cars onto the train, then hook them up to the passenger cars. The full train ends up being about 3/4 of a mile long. It leaves Lorton, VA at 4pm and reaches Sanford, FL at 9am the next morning. We used to take it when we vacationed in Florida, too, since I don't fly and I like to have my own car with me. I wish they had the auto train cross country! I'd love to travel across the US that way. By that time, the stress of packing and moving and driving was all behind me, so did I relax?

Nope. Of course not. I stressed over whether or not I would like the new house. We’d bought it without me ever having seen it. It seemed nice online, and it was a perfect set-up for us with a house for us and a second house for my daughter and her husband connected by a garage, so we bought it. My daughter and her husband had seen it before we bought it, and my husband and oldest son flew down a few months later and saw it, but my youngest son and I had never been there. 

Thankfully, we walked in and LOVED it, despite the snake living in the bushes right outside the dining room window (which those of you who have read the All-Day Breakfast Café series will understand my fear of since it matches Gia’s). Now we have boxes stacked all over the place, furniture in every room except where it actually belongs, and I have spent two weeks doing nothing but painting, staining, and laying floors. And I couldn’t be happier! 

Have you ever moved? Tell me about your experience. Were you completely organized and ready to go, or were you running around like a lunatic at the last minute trying to get everything together and done?