MEET THE AUTHOR: MICHELE DRIER

I’m pleased to introduce you to multi-published author, Michele Drier, today. When I went searching for a little background info on Michele I found two things, first she’s had a very interesting life, and second, she seems like a funny lady.

Here’s a little blip from Michele’s Amazon web page:

I spent seven years as a staff writer with the San Jose Mercury News. After returning to Humboldt State University to complete school and work on a master’s, I fell into my second career, as a non-profit administrator.I spent time as a reporter and editor for daily papers in California. I was the city, metro and executive editor for daily newspapers in California’s Central Valley and managed non-profit agencies, including a legal organization serving roughly 10,000 senior citizens in Alameda County. I’m a member of the Society of California Pioneers and Sisters in Crime and live in California’s Central Valley with a cat, skunks, wild turkeys and an opossum (only the cat gets to come in the house).

Michele Drier was born in Santa Cruz and is a fifth generation Californian. She’s lived and worked all over the state, calling both Southern and Northern California home.  During her career in journalism—as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers—she won awards for producing investigative series.

SNAP: All That Jazz, Book Eight of The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, was published in June 2014.  The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles paranormal romance series includes SNAP: The World Unfolds, SNAP: New Talent, Plague: A Love Story, DANUBE: A Tale of Murder, SNAP: Love for Blood, SNAP: Happily Ever After?, SNAP: White Night and SNAP: All That Jazz.  SNAP: I, Vampire, Book Nine in the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles is scheduled for publication early 2015.

She also writes the Amy Hobbes Newspaper mysteries, Edited for Death and Labeled for Death. A third book, Delta for Death, is coming in 2015.

Do you outline your books or wing it?  Describe your process.

Oh, I’m a flier all the way!  My mind doesn’t work well in a format, it’s all over the place. Even in high school when you were supposed to write an outline then the paper, I always wrote the paper then outlined from it. I don’t just wander around in the story, though. I always have an opening and I know where I’m going to end up. The journey in the middle…sometimes I’m on the freeway and sometimes a small road catches my eye.  As I take a detour, I’ll meet interesting characters who tell me they’re part of the story.  In SNAP: All That Jazz, book eight of the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, a couple of small-time gangsters kidnap Jazz. As I was writing those scenes, the couple appeared in my head and I saw their house, their dogs, their wants and needs. They became criminals, but had humanity as well.

I sit down, start with page one and write until the story ends. The Chronicles are a series, so I pick up the characters for their next adventure.

How do you decide on setting?

When I began writing novels, I was writing mysteries. The protagonist is a small-town newspaper editor (which I was for several years) so they take place in the fictional town of Monroe. It’s in California’s Central Valley (I live in Sacramento) so there’re a lot of area characteristics. I write about the Delta, the Sierra foothills, the San Francisco Bay area.

For the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, I put the headquarters of SNAP, the celebrity gossip magazine/tv empire that’s owned by the Kandeskys, in LA. I’d lived in Southern California so it was familiar.  When Maxie, the protag, gets invited to the Kandesky’s castle, I set it in Hungary, a place I’d spent some time in.  Some settings for the SNAP series I’ve been to (Paris, London) and others I researched (Kiev, Krakow, St. Petersburg). Thank you Google!

What genre(s) do you write in?  Why?

I write in two genres, traditional mystery and paranormal romance. I’ve always loved mysteries, they’re like putting together a puzzle, so when I knew I had to write, that’s what I chose.

I told my son-in-law that my first book was going to be published and he said, “Why mysteries? Go to a bookstore and see how much space mysteries take up and how much vampire books do. Then write a vampire book!”

I’m still very fond of Amy Hobbes, the newspaper editor, but OH! those vampires! The SNAP books are absolute fiction and tremendous fun to write.

What is your favorite part of writing?

Living with my characters. They lead lives much more exciting than mine. And the Kandeskys! They’re beautiful, mesmerizing, ageless, have more money that Bill Gates and live a jet-set European life.

What is your least favorite part of writing?

The middle third of any book. The first third (roughly) is setting the stage for the action, building the tension, introducing the characters; the last third (roughly) is reaching the climax and wrapping up all the loose threads of action. And for the SNAP books, writing a Happily Ever After, or at least a Happily for Now, ending. The middle third is how I get from the beginning to the end and tie it all together. There’s a balance of revealing enough to keep the action moving and not revealing so much that the reader doesn’t bother to finish.

Some writers edit excessively as they write; others wait until a novel is finished to do the bulk of editing.  How about you?

Since I’m a pantser, I reread the last complete chapter before I begin writing each time. At that time, I do most of my editing so the story is seamless. I also belong to a critique group and edit with their suggestions and changes as we read each other’s work.

At the end, I read it two or three times completely to pick up any inconsistencies and do minor editing.

What’s the strangest thing you have ever done in the name of research?

Gotten down on the floor with my granddaughter to see if the attack scene I wrote was physically possible. It wasn’t. And it turns out she’s much stronger that I thought!

The best was spending time in the UC Davis vineology library, looking at 150-year-old grape leaves pasted in a huge hand-written volume. It’s the way they told what the variety of grape is, and that method is still used today.

E-books, print, or both?  Any preferences?  Why?

I always publish in ebook format first. Because of the genres I write, my ebook sales far outstrip my paperback sales. Then, as I can, I do the paperbacks.

Please tell us your experiences with social media.  What are your favorite and least favorite parts of it?

Wow, I don’t think I have any favorite part. I have personal, fan and street team pages on facebook, I use Twitter, I’m on Linked-in and Google, I belong to Goodreads groups (and I’m a Goodreads author) and I’m also a member of a few organizations that have big listservs so I receive about 200 emails a day.

It’s most of my marketing, so it’s necessary, but it sucks big chunks of time I’d rather use for writing.

What do you read? Do you read different genres when you’re writing versus not writing?

I’m an omnivorous reader and always have been. I read mysteries, some romance, literary fiction, best-sellers. I also read a fair amount of non-fiction; history, biographies, humor (love Bill Bryson), travel (Paul Theroux) and anything by Antonia Fraser.

I write three books a year, so I’m pretty much always writing, but I also read two or three books a week. The written word is my job and my passion.

Excerpt from SNAP: All That Jazz

CHAPTER THREE

NIK

Smoke hung so low in the nightclub it curled around the heads of the four men sitting at a table in a back corner.

The club, an after-hours place in the outskirts of Kiev, was packed with men—why Nik chose it for the meeting. He had a flash of memory from a club he’d gone to with Jazz during his only trip to California. SoCal was way too sun-drenched for him, but he appreciated that smoking was outlawed there.

Tonight, he had business with these men, these solid, menacing, dark and hairy men scraped from the bottom of the region’s gene pool. An insistent bass rhythm pounded out, a spot hit the small stage, and the second stripper of the show began winding around a pole. This guaranteed the audience wouldn’t pay any attention to their small table. Nik was having difficulty keeping his guests’ attention away from the stage, in fact.

“So who’s forging the end-user licenses?” Nik leaned toward the center of the table to make sure they heard him over the music and the sounds of whistles, catcalls and obscene suggestions coming from the audience.

One of the men, dressed in a cheap Russian-made blue suit so tight he couldn’t cross his arms, said “What makes you think we know? For that matter, why would we tell you?”

Nik leaned back in his chair and smiled. A big smile. So wide that even in the dim, smoky room, his fangs glistened. He didn’t often play the vampire card, but loved the reaction when he did.

He watched as the three beefy men paled. They looked as though they might lose the quantities of watered vodka they’d been downing.

“Don’t make any fuss.” Nik pulled back his suit jacket slightly and rested his hands on the table, a move that allowed the Sig Sauer in his shoulder holster to catch a gleam of light. “I’m not here to eliminate any of you. We need to track down the forger, though. He’s going to bring a lot of scrutiny to Kandesky Munitions, and we don’t want that.”

“We don’t know, we’re just middlemen. We just pass it along when there are some available.” A slightly less hairy man who looked like the youngest of the group managed to choke the words out. Nik heard that he spoke Ukrainian with an accent…maybe Russian? This part of the world it was hard to tell where everybody was from and the accents were tinged with dialects.

His friends nodded. “Omelchenko says the truth,” blue-suit said. “We just put the parties together…you know, the buyers and the sellers. Just think of us as a business, a shop. We don’t make the inventory and we don’t care who buys it.”

Nik threw his head back with a laugh. “Right, you guys don’t ask any questions. You know Ruslan?”

The three men glanced at each other, daring someone to go first. Finally, the one they called Omelchenko said, “We know Ruslan. We heard he was retiring. A few bad deals.”

“Well, that’s one version. We’ve had some talks with him and showed him our health insurance plan.” Nik put one supple, long finger next to his nose and winked.

“Kandesky Munitions has an insurance plan?” The silent one now spoke. “So what? What does that have to do with us?”

“It really only has one benefit,” Nik continued in a quiet voice. “It allows the person and his family to stay alive. And we think the premiums are low for that benefit.”

In the silence at the table, the oxygen seemed depleted. Jeers and yells from the audience built in volume. The stripper was now down to a pair of heels and as she wrapped one leg around the pole and leaned backward, her shaved pubic area glistened. Nik was afraid that the room would erupt in a riot until he noticed all the huge guys in black tee shirts and pants who’d quietly moved in to ring the stage.

Nik’s guests had been holding their breath and now let it out in a single exhale.

“Are you threatening us? What do you mean by the premium?” Omelchenko was the first to get a normal rhythm back in his lungs.

“We ask only one thing. That the minute, the second, you hear about new forged end-user documents being available, you call us. And, that you always ask the supplier who’s forging them and how you can get more. Seems a small price to pay for a long and healthy life and safety for your wives and children.”

As the audience began a surge toward the line of bouncers and the stage, Nik stood. “It’s been nice doing business with you. Here’s my card, please call so we can continue our relationship.”

By the time the trio read the card and glanced up, Nik was nowhere in the crowd of loud, angry drunks who were pelting the now empty stage with glasses, ashtrays, shoes and whatever else was handy.

Outside, he pulled out his slim cell, punched a button, said “Now,” and waited a couple of heartbeats until the Mercedes limo pulled up.

Vladmir, the demon at the wheel this evening, nodded. “How did it go?” The Americanism sounded odd in Ukrainian.

“Fine.” Nik hit another button. It was four a.m. in Kiev, late afternoon in California. He knew it wasn’t an ideal time to call Jazz, but he needed to hear her voice after the last hour he’d spent with scum. And he was sickened and depressed with the show. What kind of a woman would put herself up to be leered and yelled at by a room full of drunken, unwashed slime? That was a question for another night and he shelved the thought as Jazz’ voice slid in his ear, soft as velvet.  “Hello, Nik, I was just thinking about you.”

Nik smiled to himself. This woman’s voice, coming from half-way around the world, aroused him instantly, something a naked stripper couldn’t do after fifteen minutes of dancing.

“I’m glad, because I’ve been thinking of you for the last two hours.” In truth, Nik had selected this night and that place to meet with the gang leaders, hoping an edgy business talk would take his mind off Jazz. At night, while he was doing business, holding meetings, traveling to the Czech munitions factories, watching the grey and black markets, she’d slip into his consciousness and give him a jolt. More than once, Jean-Louis had to send a message and bring him back. He was on the verge of obsession, not a good thing for either of them.

And during the day, when he tried to sleep, she was with him, her voice in his ear, her arms wrapped around him, her smile making him forget…everything.

A dangerous thing.

A great excerpt, Michele! How about you? Mystery or Vampire Chronicles? Share your favorites with us.