A visit with Dana Fredsti

Hotbuttonpress: Meet Dana Fredsti, author of The Peruvian Pigeon, the first almost-cozy mystery in her Murder For Hire series. Set in modern-day California, the book parodies 1940’s pulp detective fiction through the theatrics of a local acting troupe. They hire out their talents as fundraising entertainment for business and area high society, and along the way find a few dead bodies to complicate the plot. It’s clear the author knows her stuff when it comes to the acting world. Dana, how far back does your acting interest go? Elementary school? High school?

Dana: I would have to say my acting interests go back as far as elementary school, at least to the best of my recollection. My fifth and six grade teachers were very ambitious and put on Antigone and Hamlet, respectively, as the class plays. Oh yeah, and Julius Caesar. I played Antigone, Queen Gertrude and an extra in the crowd for Marc Anthony. The “we come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” speech. My cousin Sandy made my costumes and I loved my blue flowery pseudo-Grecian Antigone costume. I had really long hair back in those days and remember using my pony tail quite dramatically, flipping my hair this way and that as I gave my speech, before being dragged away to be entombed alive.

I also have very fond memories of the scene in Hamlet when Hamlet confronts his mother in her dressing room as Polonius hides behind a curtain to spy and is subsequently killed by the twitchy Prince of the Danes. When Polonius uttered his dying words, “Oh, I am slain!”, they came out as wooden as only an elementary student with no acting ability could deliver them. “Hamlet” and I looked at each other and got the giggles, which quickly spread to the audience and eliminated any possible drama in the rest of the scene.

I pretty much decided I liked acting from that point on. It was definitely my main interest in high school and the only class I didn’t want to ditch. Yes, I ditched classes occasionally to go get donuts at Winchell’s down on Clairemont Drive or to see dollar matinees at the Clairemont Theater with my friend, Maureen. The same Maureen who later became my partner in crime with Murder For Hire, by the way. At any rate, I was in every play except one during my three years of high school (our drama teacher, Mrs. Curran, believed every actor should work tech on at least one play), did community theater, and later went on to act in some really bad movies when I moved to Los Angeles.

Hotbutton Press: So acting was really a career path for you?

Dana: Back when I was younger and more naive, I thought acting was going to be my career. I rapidly discovered I did not have the drive to put up with the bullsnit you have to go through even to start to make it. I have always been easily distracted. I’d go through phases of sending out headshots and resumes, went through a couple of agents without any real results, watched as the required dress size for an actress shrunk while her boobs grew disproportionately, and found I got more satisfaction from writing and eating what I wanted. I did come very close to getting a boob job, but didn’t follow through on it. It’s funny ‘cause when I first moved to Los Angeles, my size was considered normal for an actress. In a world where Brittany Spears was termed “obese” by some fans when she made her ill-advised wardrobe choice for the 2007 MTV Awards, I’d be Jabba the Hut. Okay, not that bad, but I was never a size 2 or 4. Except possibly when I was a toddler.

Hotbutton Press: What do you do now for a living? I mean besides write novels.

Dana: I’m currently working at a Venture Capital company (sustainable, green, health and wellness type investments) as their office goddess (i.e. manager). My co-worker recently told me writing was my real job and my day-job was my steady side-gig. Heh. I like the way she thinks. I actually really like the company, my co-workers and our office. All in all, it’s a great job and I’m very happy there. It’s like the anti-VC firm, with a really eclectic and creative group of people and they’ve all been extremely supportive of my writing. That, I’ve found through past experience, is a rarity in the workplace. Plus we have a really cool Nespresso maker and I make killer Belgian chocolate mochas every morning.

Hotbutton Press: Speaking of chocolate, your characters are seriously into it! Where can we find a recipe to tide us over until the next book?

Dana: This is an easy one! For the best hot chocolate ever, take two squares of Belgian chocolate and click here.

Hotbutton Press: I can see this mystery series adapted for TV. Would you ever consider that?

Dana: Oh, yeah! As long as it didn’t affect my writing more books in the series or any funky legal mess with the rights.

Hotbutton Press: What next?

Dana: Let’s see. I have both my sequel to MFH (working title Murder for Hire: The Big Snooze) and a supernatural thriller/romance/mystery started. That is to say, I’ve done basic plot and character notes, the barest skeleton of outlines, and some research for the latter. Also, another edit of a screenplay and I’ve made a solemn vow to post on my blog at least twice a week, preferably three! None of this is counting bookstore signings and other promotional appearances for MFH. 2008 will be a very busy year!

Hotbutton Press: Getting that sequel written for your impatient fans is the most important job. We’re dying to know what happens next, especially with the dangling romances you wickedly set up. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and have to say I didn’t suspect who the villain was right up until the conclusion. It was a definite cliffhanger for me.

Don't miss out! There will be a drawing at the end of the tour for three free copies of The Peruvian Pigeon… but only if you leave a comment here or at the other blog book tour stops listed below:

Sunday, January 20th Elysabeth’s Emerald City

Monday, January 21st Blogbooktours

Tuesday, January 22nd Kat's Random Thoughts

Wednesday, January 23rd Chrysalis Stage

Thursday, January 24th Kitty Litter: A Mystery Writer's Rants & Raves

Friday, January 25th Pointless Drivel

Saturday, January 26th Redzilla Attacks!

And the winners are:

Zoggirl

Shelli

Diesel

Steven Prosapio

Email our author at zhadi at aol dot com to make arrangements for your winning copy of The Peruvian Pigeon. Congratulations all!

And you can buy the book by clicking here. Enjoy the rest of the tour.

The Peruvian Pigeon

Coming soon we'll interview Dana Fredsti about her premier book in the Murder For Hire cozy mystery series. Here's a bit of the synopsis:

Connie Garrett has a lot on her plate. Her mystery-oriented theatrical troupe, Murder for Hire, has been hired as entertainment for Emerald Cove’s first annual Fall Festival, a series of events held to honor local authors and raise money for the newly opened Emerald Cove Library.

This year’s Festival post mortem honoree is Shay Randell, creator of the famous hard-boiled detective Mick O’Mallet. The publicity generated for the Festival is better than previous years because a new television series featuring O’Mallet is now in the works. The publicity from the Festival could be invaluable to Murder for Hire. One of the actors, Connie’s boyfriend Grant, is even being considered for the role of O’Mallet in the new series.

You can read more here.

Even more fun, listen to the author read the prologue by clicking here.

Preaching to the Corpse

Roberta Isleib is in the midst of a very interesting and creative blog book tour, and I'm visiting each tour stop she makes. I've just finished the first book in this series, Deadly Advice, and it was a page-turner, make no bones about it. I can hardly wait to get my hands on the next corpse! You can check out her entire tour schedule here, and I'll post my favorite stops with live links so you can hop over direct.

First, stop at The Dark Phantom Review to read the excerpt.

If you're a writer, don't miss the interview at Fiction Scribe.



Author Bio

New Jersey born clinical psychologist Roberta Isleib took up writing mysteries to justify time spent on the links. Her first series, featuring a neurotic professional golfer and a sports psychologist, was nominated for both Agatha and Anthony awards.

Roberta's new series, starring a Connecticut psychologist and advice columnist, debuted in 2007 with DEADLY ADVICE and PREACHING TO THE CORPSE. She has also had many articles and short stories published. "Disturbance in the Field," published in SEASMOKE by Level Best Books, was short-listed for both Agatha and Macavity awards.

Roberta is the president of International Sisters in Crime and the past president of the New England chapter. She is also a member of Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and the Authors Guild. She lives with her family in Connecticut.

All about me(me) and reading

Elsa Neal, that brilliant fiction editor at BellaOnline, tagged me for this meme and what could be more appropriate for a blog about books?

What have you just read?
Deadly Advice by Roberta Isleib.

What are you reading now?
Why We Read What We Read by John Heath and Lisa Adams.

Do you have any idea what you'll read when you're done with that?
Preaching to the Corpse by Roberta and Dana Fredsti’s premiere novel, which has a great title, but hasn't been in front of my face often enough for me to instantly recall. It's the first in her Murder For Hire series. And this situation is exactly why authors must put their latest title after their names everywhere in the world, every chance they get. Repetition, repetition, repetition.....wait, I've almost got it..... The Peruvian Pigeon!

What's the worst thing you were ever forced to read?
An Editing How-To eBook – the first eBook I ever bought – that was so full of errors I should have edited it and sent it back to the author! I did complain to the publisher who laughed and replied that they should have hired me to edit the thing. I was not amused.

What's one book you always recommend to just about anyone?
Not the editing book, that’s for certain! I think my all-time favorites are Mary Stewart’s books in the Merlin Trilogy. I never tire of reading them. The fourth book, The Wicked Day, is one of my very least favorites.

Admit it, sadly the librarians at your library know you on a first name basis, don't they?
Not sad at all, as I love the added attention and service!

Is there a book you absolutely love, but for some reason, people never think it sounds interesting, or maybe they read it and don't like it at all?
I like Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Riders of Pern series, but many people don’t.

Do you read books while you eat?
Rarely.

While you bath?
Never, since I shower. What a mess that would be.

While you watch movies or TV?
I don’t watch TV and when I watch the occasional video, I concentrate on it. I can’t even knit for very long, before I'm completely engrossed and staring at the screen like an idiot. It's not a pretty picture.

While you listen to music?
No.

While you're on the computer?
I don’t know how people can do this! I mean, isn’t it like trying to read two things at once?

When you were little did other children tease you about your reading habits?
Not other children, but my mother used to kick me out of the house and tell me to go play. I would hide a book in the clothes hamper, which was in the bathroom, and then use the potty excuse to get in a few pages of reading.

What's the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn't put it down?
Alas, I simply haven’t been able to do this since my cataract surgery earlier in the year. I still remember my marathon session with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I think I had pizza delivery three times over two days. Huge pizzas. Mushroom with double cheese.

Have any books made you cry?
You mean have many books made me cry? Yes. The last was Garden Spells. And I just read an article in AARP magazine that had tears rolling down my cheeks. I have that author, Ann Harleman, on my To Read list now.

So I’ve tagged these good folks, and you can read their answers here:

Dana Fredsti
Ann Parker
Doris Baker
Diana Vickery

All about me(me) and blogging

Straight From Hel tagged me to participate in a meme about blogging and I simply couldn’t refuse because I’m so completely sold on the idea. Thanks for choosing me, Helen. Here are my answers to the five questions:

1. How long have you been blogging?

Only about a year. The online youngsters don't call me Old Noob for nothing!

2. What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors?

I loved reading good blogs even before I had my own. I have a collection I read regularly, but it wasn't until I went to the Women Writing the West Conference that a writing pal and I offered to post conference doings on their new blog so all the members could vicariously enjoy the gathering. We did and it was so easy and fun! Next, I actually started a yahoo discussion group, and just for holiday kicks, set up a 360 degree blog in that community called Queen of Christmas. Before I knew it, I had started several blogger blogs for various reasons, and suddenly I found myself reading professional blogger newsletters to get all the hot tips on improving my own sites. There's still so much to learn. I don’t know if I’d call them mentors exactly, but Chris Garrett and Yaro Starak certainly provide some excellent information to their readers.

3. Are you trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun?

I don't close the door on blogging to make money, though I hate the look of most click-the-link advertising. Visual clutter is tough on an artist’s eyes. Without question, blogs are marketing tools, whether to promote a book, a stained glass commission, the latest yarn shipment a store has received, the loveliest fused glass bowls, whatever. Everyone likes being up on the latest, and this is a simple way to impart information. There's a reason that newspapers have blogs and were first to jump on the blog bandwagon. Added content. Easy peasy added content that doesn't require high-tech knowledge. Family albums, store bulletins, town hall news - anyone could benefit from the use of a blog. Did I mention blog book tours? This one is linked to a squidoo lens for added impact.

4. What 3 things do you struggle with online?

I don't feel like I know enough yet to really have the online presence I'd like. I want a website with a shopping cart for my own products, but don't feel like I'm quite competent enough to handle that on my own. Blogs have been a nice stepping-stone in that direction.

I don't understand a lot of aspects like cloaking urls, html code, and other nitty-gritty regarding search engine optimization, but I am developing the courage and even interest in pursuing it further thanks to blogging. It's a bit like living in a foreign country. When you immerse yourself, you eventually learn the language and the practices.

Like anyone who is fascinated with the potential of the medium, I spend too much time on the internet exploring its vast horizons. It takes a bit of discipline fitting it into a normal busy life. Paradoxically, it also takes a bit of discipline to continue regular posting once the novelty has worn off a bit.

5. What 3 things do you love about being online?

First, reading the news without having to sit down with a real newspaper. Nothing gets dumped or goes up in smoke.

Second, having vast repositories of research information available at the touch of a button, including library card catalogs.

Third, connecting to communities of like-minded people via the written word. I'm out in the sticks and for the most part, feel pretty much like an alien from another galaxy. The internet connects me to kindred spirits.

I'm interested in reading what others have to say, so I'm tagging these good bloggers for their input:

Kittlog

Riehlife

Groovy's Ruminations

Community of the Land

Donna Druchunas

Ms. Karen's Place

Be sure to go read what they have to say, and bookmark their blogs which are always packed with interesting interviews, essays, tips, insights, and even recipes. Did I mention humor and good photographs? What about gorgeous standard poodles? And a very special treat for kitties and their people.

A blog book tour in retrospect

Last week we hosted Susan Wittig Albert on her first-ever virtual book tour. Susan is a long-time web aficionada who for many years has utilized various internet tools like e-letters, websites, and a marvelous Lifescapes blog of her days in the Texas Hill Country. We were curious to know her reactions to the blog book tour experience and here are her responses:

How did this experience compare to your live tours?

Much less physical effort! I could stay at home and work, instead of driving for hours, giving a couple of talks a day, sleeping in a different bed every night, eating other people’s food (not my own cooking).

Did you feel you connected to your readers?

Actually, yes, although I didn’t expect that. I received a great many email comments and notes, as well as the comments on the blogs. And since I was seeing the names/email addresses of the people who dropped in on the drawings, I got a sense of the “attendance”—that part of it, anyway. Turns out that fewer than half of the people who read the blog entries participated in the drawings.

How much work/time involved compared to a live tour?

The up-front time was actually fairly comparable. I manage my own live tours, so I choose the venues (much as I chose the bloggers, by soliciting invitations), book my own motels, do my own maps. On a live tour, I have a couple of talks and repeat them (to the point where I’m pretty sick of them when it’s over)—the prep time is minimal. On the blog tour, each stop was a different prep, most of which required maybe 2-3 hours of writing, revising, doing photos, setting up links, and so on. Also, Peggy (my wizard of a webmistress, She-Without-Whom-Nothing-Happens) clocked quite a few hours in developing the program for the drawings, setting up the tour schedule webpage, etc. The big thing that was missing: the driving! On a live tour, I usually try to book two events a day, which usually means 4-5 drive-time hours, sometimes more.

How do the tour costs ($$) compare?

Hey, how do you spell M-O-T-E-L? $100 a night? Also, gas ain’t cheap nowadays. A 10,000-mile-tour (like the one I drove, yes, me myself and I, in 2005) would probably cost around $1200 in today’s gas, plus the daily tab on the rental car (or the wear/tear on a personal car), and a couple of plane fares, getting me where I couldn’t drive. I’m a cheap date where food is concerned, though. I’m perfectly happy with McD’s salads. Sometimes publishers pick up the costs, but an author who is paying her own way is chalking up a big tab.

What do you see as the greatest advantage of the virtual tour over a live tour?

Less time on the road, more time in my own bed (with my own DH), and lower cost. The carbon footprint is distinctly smaller, which counts for plenty, seems to me.

I got to spend some quality time with nine great blog hosts (thanks, guys!). We worked out problems together, figured out what sort of post to create, and communicated—more or less successfully. My live tours are longer and more hectic, and I never feel as if I really get to know the tour hosts.

Also: I got to “meet” some blog readers who would never in the world have made the effort to attend one of my live events—people who are regular readers of the host blog, who had never heard of my/my books before. If they read the post and remembered it, they might be inclined to remember that, the next time they run across my name/book title. Or they might go to the library to pick up the book. Or even look for it on a bookstore shelf. You never know. So I think the chances of picking up a new reader may actually be higher in a blog tour than a live tour. (I have no statistics on this, so don’t hold me to it.)

Plus: When you do a live tour, it’s in-one-ear-out-the-other. People remember the event, but not what I say. Also, the audience is fixed: it’s the folks who came that night, and that’s it. On the web, the tour posts hang around for a long time. People stumble over them much later. The audience is larger than the audience that showed up at the original time of the post. That’s a big plus, seems to me.

Disadvantages?

I’ll try to be systematic about this. Forgive me.

1) Impact on the attendees. Seems to me that a reader who makes the effort to come out to a bookstore or a library or wherever to hear me is going to remember the occasion longer than someone who comes to one of the blog stops. I’m guessing here, but I think that’s probably the case.

2) Non-blogging readers. I have a great many older readers who don’t do computers and stick their fingers in their ears when they hear the word BLOG. (They think it’s an obscenity.) On live tours, I reach them through libraries, garden groups, reading groups, herb societies, and Red Hatters. I can’t reach them through a blog tour.

3) Media impact. When I do a live tour, I put some up-front effort into encouraging the tour hosts to get strong local media for the event. Usually, I have pretty good luck: newspaper coverage, some local radio (by phone), some local TV. Also, the event is promoted in the host’s newsletters and website. Even though I may see only 40-50 people at an event, it’s likely that 400-500 have seen a notice of it, read something about it, or heard about it from a friend. On last year’s tour, I did a benefit for a university alumni event. There were a couple of hundred people at the event, but 5,000+ people all over the U.S. got a mailing from the university, with the book cover/my photo/all that good stuff. You don’t get anything like that with a blog tour.

4) Book sales. Let us not forget the point of this exercise, which is to sell books. Live tours sell books—not just the books I sign/sell at the events, but the books that I sign at various local bookstores, where I’ll do drop-ins whenever I can fit them in. Signed books sell, so when I leave a stack in a bookstore, I can figure they’ll be sold eventually. Blog tours, on the other hand, are more like advertising. You’re just putting the word out there, raising awareness, getting people’s attention. You can’t measure whatever sales you might achieve.

What did you love about the Blog Book Tour?

Getting all over the web! I have a Google Alert on my name (how’s that for chutzpah?) and I was delighted to see it flashing across the sky. That’s why I did this. I think it worked.

What did you loathe about it?

Nothing, really. Oh, yes: I got really impatient when the posts weren’t up by 8 a.m. Eastern Time, as I asked. That’s because I knew that readers would be there before the posts appeared, which feels really counter-productive to me. But then, I’m a former English teacher. I’ve been known to lock the door of my classroom at two minutes after the hour. (Not quite, but almost.)

How did you track your statistics throughout the tour?

That’s hard. I had to depend on self-report (not always accurate, and a couple of bloggers forgot to tell me that they didn’t have a statistics package). But on this tour, I had two other statistics of my own: the number of people who came to the tour schedule page, and the number of people who entered the drawing for each blog event. Those are my “hard” numbers. I’ll be curious to see if my next blog tour brings in more traffic—or less.

Thanks, Susan, for giving so generously of your time and insights once again.

An interview with Susan Wittig Albert

Unlike Susan Wittig Albert, I had a most unfortunate childhood. I did not learn to read with Beatrix Potter books. I was introduced to them much later in life, when as an aspiring children’s book writer, I took a job as a gift rep selling Random House books. In the many boxes of book samples I received weekly, one held a re-print of a Beatrix Potter book. Immediately enchanted by the story, I was even more taken by the illustrations. Potter’s skill as a naturalist artist is legendary. It is her life-like imagery in completely fantastical scenarios that makes the stories so mesmerizing for children and adults alike. One truly feels transported into another world.

It was certainly another world when Beatrix made a career of her little books, first by self-publishing and soon after through her publisher, Frederick Warne & Co. Much has been written about this part of her life, but today we’ll discuss the art and book publishing from a different angle as we visit with Susan Wittig Albert, author of the recently released The Tale of Hawthorn House. This is the fourth book in The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter series. The charming cozy mysteries for adult readers are set in the Lake District that Beatrix so loved, and features Bea with a supporting cast of real and imaginary characters.

Author Susan Wittig Albert

The Tale of Hawthorn House

Dani: Susan, most fans of Beatrix Potter know quite a bit about her life, but one question that nags is why was Beatrix so intent on publishing the books?

Susan: Well, I think most artists—people who feel they have a talent and want to share it—are compelled to find an audience. Beatrix Potter was no different. As a child, both she and her brother Bertram were encouraged by their parents to develop their artistic aptitude. In her mid twenties, Beatrix sold some of her drawings as greeting cards and shared her gift of storytelling through the picture letters she wrote to her former governess’s children. As time went on, she wanted to share more widely, and came up with the idea for a book about Peter Rabbit, which she published herself when it was turned down by other publishers. After that, one thing led to another, and before long, she had an audience which demanded her work and a publisher who was eager to promote her. But even Beatrix was surprised by Peter’s acceptance. When the sixth printing was ordered, she wrote to her editor, Norman Warne, “The public must be fond of rabbits! What an appalling quantity of Peter!” Tongue-in-cheek, of course, but I think she was always amazed by her commercial success.

But the commercial success of her art meant something else: the possibility of personal independence. Beatrix noted more than once how nice it was to have some money of her own. She used her earnings to buy Hill Top Farm, which gave her the opportunity to escape from London and from her parents’ demands on her time.

And finally, there was her editor, Norman Warne. Beatrix wrote the early books (through 1905) in collaboration with him. He became increasingly important to her, and since her parents would not allow her to have any other connection with him, the books were a way of sustaining their relationship

Dani: What role did her fiancé, Norman Warne, the youngest son in the publishing firm, play in promoting sales and ensuring the financial success of the ventures over the long term?

Susan: I think the role Norman Warne played in shaping Beatrix’s stories was far more important than the role he played within the firm. Yes, he did go on extended sales trips to booksellers in various cities, soliciting orders for books—that was part of his job.

But more importantly, he was a mentor to Beatrix. He guided her in her choice of projects, encouraging her to develop her own original stories, rather than simply illustrate nursery rhymes, as she originally wanted to do. He offered suggestions for the drawings and the text. He was knowledgeable about the printing process and about ink and paper, and when she had changes or corrections to make, he saw that they got made. He also probably ran interference for her with his brothers, Harold and Fruing, who sometimes wanted her to do things she didn’t want to do, such as to illustrate another writer’s book.

Most importantly, Norman was a supporter, a cheerleader (a wonderful, wonderful quality in an editor!) and her friend. Without him, it’s entirely possible that she wouldn’t have gone past the first book or two. And it took real courage for her to go on working after his death.

Dani: Did Beatrix set the stage for merchandise sales related to the books long before Disney padded its fortunes this way? Any idea how much success the publisher had with these add-on sales?

Susan: In the early 1900s, there was (as Beatrix said herself) “a run on toys copied from pictures.” English and German toy-makers were using storybook characters as models for their wares, and she was afraid that her popular characters would be copied. So in 1903, Beatrix patented her Peter Rabbit doll, with whiskers pulled out of a brush and lead-weighted feet, and urged Norman to find a manufacturer to make the doll. She created a board game, wallpaper, and other book-related merchandise, to the point where (as I suggest in The Tale of Hawthorn House) there were almost more “sideshows” than she could keep track of. However, she was always more keen on licensing toys and other items than her publisher was, and after 1906 or so, she became increasingly frustrated with Warne’s seeming inability to keep up with her creative ideas.

Dani: Warne owns most of the rights to artwork and images of Beatrix to this very day. How did they gain such control over it all? Was it difficult getting permissions for your series? Did you discuss with Warne using Beatrix’s own artwork for your book?

Susan: When Beatrix died in 1943, she bequeathed her shares in Frederick Warne and the rights and royalties in her books first to her husband, Willie Heelis, and after his death to Norman’s nephew, Frederick Warne Stephens. These were later given to the publishing company as a way of honoring her relationship to Norman and her long friendship with the Warne family, which continued long after Norman’s death. (You can find more details about this in Linda Lear’s biography, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature.)

In 1983, Frederick Warne was acquired by Penguin, which also owns my publisher, Berkley. So when I needed to get a license to use Beatrix’s characters (Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and so on), the legal folks were able to work it out. I don’t think we ever discussed using Beatrix’s art. From a marketing point of view, that would have been a good thing, but I want The Cottage Tails to stand on their own, and prefer the freedom to develop the art for the series.

Dani: I love the images you ended up developing for your own books, which capture the spirit of BP without copying. Can you tell us about the process of choosing that artwork and who the artist is?

Susan: Normally, authors don’t have any say in their cover art. This was the case with the first book in the series, The Tale of Hill Top Farm. The artist did a nice job, but I was deeply disappointed, because there was no image of Hill Top Farm, one of the most famous houses in England. Through a friend, I found artist Peggy Turchette, and commissioned her to do the art for the Cottage Tales website and other advertising materials, including a postcard for the second book, The Tale of Holly How. My editor saw it and liked it and asked Peggy to do the cover art. So we’ve worked together ever since—certainly a happy arrangement for me. All of the art work that you see on the Cottage Tales website also comes from Peggy’s talented brush. You’re right—her animals are reminiscent of Potter’s without being duplicates—that’s important. For example, Peggy had originally put a shawl on Jemima Puddle-Duck for the cover of the editor at Frederick Warne (who approves my manuscripts and our art work as part of the licensing arrangement) asked us to take it off. The shawl made my Jemima look too much like Beatrix’s Jemima. That’s the sort of thing we get into.

Dani: Thanks, Susan!

Also, plan to visit all the tour stops for more interesting interviews and guest posts by Susan Wittig Albert. The entire blog book tour schedule is posted here.

You can read the prologue to The Tale of Hawthorn House by clicking here.

Buy the book by clicking here.