Author Q&A on The Crime Warp: meet Anita Waller, author of Winterscroft, Angel, Beautiful and 34 Days, quilter and Harry Potter fan!

1     

It is my delight to introduce to The Crime Warp a very talented author who, like myself, got published later in life.  Her newest book has been in the pipeline for a very long time. Over to Anita to tell us more about herself, her work and her reading habits.

    Anita: Winterscroft is due to be launched on 24 February

Available on Amazon
Click here

2017, twenty six years after it was written. It is the story of Lavender Paulson, an eighteen year old girl killed in a car crash along with her grandparents. She was newly engaged when the accident happened, and almost six years later her fiancé is planning his marriage to his new love, Beth. Lavender returns, angry that Matt has moved on, and begins a campaign of terror that engulfs her entire family. This is the first, and only, novel I will write in the supernatural genre. When I wrote it all those years ago I wrote it on an Amstrad 8256 so only had the hard copy. I put that away in a safe place, because I knew one day I would find the courage to do something with it. I found the courage, but not the manuscript. My safe place is very safe. I rewrote it and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t resemble the first draft, apart from the first chapter. I could remember every word of that. Initially it had the title Essence of Lavender, now I offer it to my fans as Winterscroft, the name of the house where Lavender grew up.

  

   Liz: Who would you choose to play your main character should Winterscroft ever be televised?

   Anita: I’m taking Lavender as my main character, and I see the actress who played Luna Lovegood, Evanna Lynch, as perfection in this part. She looks exactly as I see Lavender.   

   The subsidiary character I loved the most was Lavender’s brother-in-law, John Broadbent. He was reliable and dependable; he loved Rose, his wife, very much and put his children above everything. I caused things to happen to him that are not good things, and I would like to make a public apology for that, John! Get well soon.

Liz:  Lets move on to your writing habits.  Where do you do most of your writing, Anita?

Anita: My favourite place to write at the moment is my kitchen, because I don’t have a laptop but I do have a desktop. I have made a corner of the very small kitchen my own, and I spend many an hour in there. Nice and handy for the kettle too. Too handy for the biscuits. However, I am about to

buy a super swish new laptop. Dave, my husband, has built me an office in our garden. Because it’s in the garden I won’t put my desktop in it, it’s not secure enough, but my laptop obviously is portable, so this year I will be making my

beautiful office my base. It has huge windows, making it very light, and I scavenged a stunning, brand new piece of cream carpet from a skip for the floor. I have an oil fired heater, a pin board where I pin my fan letters and already the shelves he put up for me need additions – they are full.

Liz: Wow- can you send your hubby over to my house to build me one... I am so jealous.   Do you follow any particular routine?

available here on Amazon

Anita:    I’m not precious about a writing routine as such, but I find that I can write so much more in the early morning. I don’t stick to the same hours every day; I have grandchildren and they don’t let me do that! However, when I wrote my second book Angel, that was written over a period of 82 days and it was because I set targets each day. I joined a group of four other ladies who all needed a bit of discipline as well. We encouraged each other, kept daily word counts and all of us successfully completed our WIPs. I now have a planner and I am aiming for 10,000 words per week – it may not always happen, because I tend to edit as I go along and that can break into writing time, but the target is set, and as I am competitive by nature, I won’t be happy if I don’t meet those targets. Our group (yes, still continuing!) is so supportive. If we’re stuck we ask for ideas, we talk over plots, and we have become firm friends.

Available here on Amazon

Liz:  So let's get down to the nitty gritty.  How about  Anita Waller the person?  Tell us a couple of things about yourself.

  Anita: Two things about myself that the reader may not know...I am 71 years old, and my first book, Beautiful, was published when I was 69. That’s the age thing out of the way. The second thing is that I make quilts, or at least I made quilts until Beautiful was published! I have made dozens, from lap quilts for sofa use on cold winter nights, to stunning king size bed quilts. I

am also a tutor in patchwork and quilting and have a bedroom full to overflowing with fabric and other patchwork associated stuff. I am currently making a hand sewn one for our king size bed, but I suspect I could be eighty before that one is finished.

    

   Liz:  Those quilts are beautiful, Anita.  You're clearly a very talented person.  Who would you say is your writing hero?

   Anita:  I could come up with the usual glib answer of Stephen King for writing heroes, and I do admire him tremendously, using his ‘On Writing’ almost as a bible. I could come up with a long list of his books, all equally good, but my real hero, and one I admire above all others is J K Rowling. How one person can be gifted with that much imagination is beyond my comprehension. It goes without saying that I adore the Harry Potter books, and I do think she initially struggled with her

adult writings. The Casual Vacancy was good; not perfect, but good. But then she became Robert Galbraith and introduced me to Cormoran Strike. Brilliant characterisation, brilliant plotlines, just ‘bloody brilliant’ as Ron Weasley would say. The woman is a legend. And then along came Fantastic Beasts...
   Liz:  I'm a huge Potter fan myself and loved Fantastic Beasts!  So, who are you cosying up with at the minute- JK Rowling?
  
 

Anita: The author I will be sharing my pillow with tonight is my man of the moment, Robin Roughley. He won’t be my man of the moment for much longer though,
because I am on to number 12 in his DS Lasser series, Dark Necessities. I only

Available here on Amazon

have one more to go, and then I will feel bereft. Totally bereft.

Liz:  So what's next for you?

Anita:  I am so tempted to write a book about my favourite place in the whole world, Florida. And it wouldn’t be about

Mickey Mouse and his theme parks, it would be about the Florida that Dave and I saw when we went for two weeks and didn’t go to any theme parks, we simply saw Florida. We loved it, and if Dave’s heart gets the all clear for a long haul flight we may go back this year. Notes will be taken, as will photographs.

Liz:  Are you a one project at a time sort of woman or can you multi- task?

Anita: I am usually working on more than one project at a time. I can’t help it. It just happens. I am at the moment

Availabe here

working on my main project, the very much requested sequel to 34 Days, (no title, it’s not arrived in my brain yet) but running alongside that is one called The Desk (working title), and very much running alongside those two is one I am co-writing with my daughter, a very talented author in her own right. I feel that if the muse strikes it’s no good ignoring it; at my age I might forget what it was about, so I get it started.

Liz: Well, that's it from the delightful Anita Waller for now.  It's been a pleasure to have her on the blog and I'm sure we'll meet again soon.