Ellen Hart

Ellen Hart's latest Jane Lawless mystery (Volume 17), The Mirror and the Mask, releases in November 2009.

From a Q & A at her website:

Q: You've been compared to P.D. James, Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell and Amanda Cross. You're a five time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery, and a three time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Best Crime Fiction. With 24 books under your belt, let's take a moment and look back. What made you first want to write a mystery?

A: The short answer is, I've always loved a good crime novel. When I was a kid, my parents bought me the entire Sherlock Holmes canon and—because I have a terrible memory—I could read the stories again and again, never remembering who did what to whom. The longer answer is that, for most of my adult life, I've wanted to try my hand at writing a novel. Actually, if I'd chosen a profession early in life, I probably would have done something with music. But living, as it often does, took me elsewhere. I ended up at a religious college in California majoring in theology. And what does a woman do when she has a degree in theology from a fundamentalist church? She marries a minister. Since that wasn't a option for me, I finally decided to go to school to become a chef.

I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that many people who love to read also secretly want to write—and that was exactly my situation. The problem was that although academic writing might have come easily for me, creating fiction (sustaining plot, character, tension, etc., for 65,000 plus words) was an entirely different matter. I'd never taken a creative writing class, but in 1987 I got an idea for a novel—a mystery. I wrote about 200 pages before I realized I didn't have a clue what I was doing. At that point, I knew I needed help. Intuitively, I made a good decision. I started reading mysteries voraciously, taking the books apart, seeing how the characters were developed, how plots were constructed, how clues were dropped, how tension was built. I teach mystery writing now and I tell my students to do the same thing. By reading mysteries, you begin to digest the format. Mysteries have a very specific architecture. They're very tight. As a matter of fact, someone once said the mystery is to fiction what the sonnet is to poetry. I believe that's accurate.

Q: What writers influenced you?

A: Well, P. D. James—first and foremost. I think she's a master and I truly admire her work. Then there's...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue