Welcome Anne Louise Bannon to Writer Wednesday

I met Anne on social media but had the privilege of meeting her in person last September at the Bouchercon Mystery Conference in New Orleans. We got to know one another and had a few laughs. Anne is not only a writer of several mystery series but also a journalist. Find out more about this amazing author, her writing, and where you can purchase her books.

1. If your protagonist could live in another era, which would she choose and why?

It’s hard to say because Maddie Wilcox is so thoroughly a woman of her time. That being written, I think she’d find it now very interesting. All the advances in medicine would thrill her no end, especially modern imaging, blood testing, and antibiotics. But she might be a little disheartened that women are not truly equal with men yet, and that many of the ills of her society, such as bigotry and poverty, are still with us.

2. If you had an argument, who would win and why?

If Maddie and I had an argument??? Oy. If she has any advantage over me, it’s that her verbal sparring matches are thought out completely by me. And when I’m angry, I tend to get tongue-tied.

3. How long have you been writing? What was the motivating factor that got you started?

I wrote my first novel when I was 15. I was doing a lot of daydreaming and figured that I could get away with it if I was writing what I daydreamed.

4. Tell us about your perfect writing day.

It’s any day that I can clear the decks and just write. Most days I have to pay attention to social media, do office chores, house chores, find something to eat, take care of the dog and cats. My husband is very good about giving me space when he can, but I can’t really blame him for getting annoyed when he’s sticking to the floors because I’m too busy causing mayhem in fictional realms. What I really need is a self-cleaning house, but until then, I have to balance writing with scooping cat litter and getting dinner on the table. And laundry.

5. What is the last book you’ve read purely for pleasure?

Pleasure reading is all I’ve been doing lately for a lot of reasons. “Life” recently happened to my husband and me, and while we’ll be all right, in the meantime, I’m hanging with my old faves. Right now, I’m working my way through the Amelia Peabody series, but Elizabeth Peters.

6. What themes do you regularly employ in your writing?

Family always seems to find its way into my stories. It is the most intimate of our relationships, and the one with the highest stakes. Our family backgrounds play an enormous role in who we are as people. But also, back when I was a beginning writer, it didn’t make sense to me that certain characters didn’t have families. It was as if Nero Wolfe stepped out of the sea foam, completely formed without any hint of who or what had formed him. Even Sid Hackbirn, who is utterly alone when we first meet him in That Old Cloak and Dagger Routine, came from someplace.

Oddly enough, I had originally imagined Maddie as completely estranged from her family, but that didn’t last. And in book six in the series, Death of a Proper Bostonian, she goes home and visits with most of the family members we’ve been hearing about in the first five.

7. What is the most challenging area for you as a writer?

Describing things visually. Descriptions are the most boring part of a book for me, and I tend to hear things before I see them. I can listen to my characters do their thing all day long and pound happily away, recording it on my keyboard. I really have to work to get the visuals right.

8. What motivates you to write?

I can’t not write. When I’m not writing, I’m generally pretty miserable.

9. What was the best writing advice you ever received, and why was it valuable?

I can’t think of any specific nugget that made me sit up and say wow, possibly because I can be a touch on the headstrong side. It’s not that I haven’t gotten tons of advice, and much of it has been excellent. But it’s all been part of the larger process of me growing in my craft, part of a larger evolution than any one or two bits of information that I’ve received. And even the bad advice out there has helped me at times. I remember a teacher who insisted that her editing system was the only one anyone should use, and all I could think was that if I did that, I’d never get the book done. On the other hand, I used her system once when a scene was giving me trouble, and it helped. This taught me that it’s always worth it to consider everything I’m given. At the very least, I’ll get an idea of what doesn’t work for me, and I might find something that does work, even if it’s only occasionally.

Author Anne Louise Bannon’s husband says that his wife kills people for a living. Bannon does mostly write mysteries, including the Old Los Angeles Series, the Freddie and Kathy series, and the Operation Quickline series. She has worked as a freelance journalist for magazines and newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. She and her husband, Michael Holland, created a wine education blog, and she co-wrote a book on poisons. She and her husband live in Southern California with an assortment of critters. Visit her website at AnneLouiseBannon.com.

Anne’s Latest Book: A Deadly Homecoming

It’s August 1873, and at long last, physician and winemaker Maddie Franklin Wilcox makes the journey home to her beloved native Boston. Her business is to deliver her ward and apprentice, Elena Ortiz, to the local women’s medical school, and that also includes visiting her father, her sister and her family.

But at a dinner with the family of Maddie’s late and very much unlamented (at least, on her part) husband, young John Wilcox, a cousin there to entertain the guests with his nature talk, is shot. Then the next morning, the eldest of the Wilcox brothers is found shot in his bed. Maddie quickly concludes that the shooting of the oh, so charming naturalist was but a distraction for the shooting of her former brother-in-law.

Chased by a corrupt Boston police officer, confronted again and again by the relentless prejudice of the city’s medical practitioners, and in danger of losing her heart to young John Wilcox (who had plenty of reasons to want his cousin dead), Maddie’s happy homecoming becomes a morass of suspicion with someone willing to kill her and the people she loves.

Links:

Website: https://annelouisebannon.com/death-of-a-proper-bostonian/