Tristi: Thank you! I’m glad you’re enjoying getting to know them.
I didn’t have a lot to do with their creation – they just popped into my head fully formed. They each have different aspects that remind me of someone—mostly me—but no, they’re pretty much individuals.
2. Ida Mae, the MC, is my favorite. How do you get a reader to connect with a character like Ida Mae from the get-go? Tristi: She took over in that department. She just started talking, and I wrote down everything she said. She has so much personality that she made my job easy.
I would have to say, though, that when it comes to writing a character, to be sure to include a lot of emotion and internal thought so the reader can really “get” where the character is coming from. Someone like Ida Mae could come across wrong if it weren’t for those moments of internal thought and peeks into her motivation.
3. The plot stems from real life in the LDS world and takes it to a humorous, entertaining level. Did you find this to be easier to write than your earlier historical novels?
Tristi: It was so much easier, I can’t even tell you. When you’re writing historical novels, there’s so much research that goes into it, and you have to watch your timeline to make sure that everything is happening right when it’s supposed to. You can’t throw in a war where you want one – you have to work with the war that already happened. With Secret Sisters, I just gave the characters their head and ran along after them, taking notes.
4. What did you do to add plausibility to the silly choices these ladies make?
Tristi: I’m not sure I did add plausibility. The whole book is one comedy of errors and you’ve got to prepare to go along for the ride. But I did try to leaven it with a little bit of seriousness from time to time, again dictated by the characters. For instance, I didn’t know that Ida Mae’s own family situation was so troubled until she told me.
5. Several people spying on a family in the ward made for humorous situations, but was this also the best way to add tension to the story?
Tristi: This aspect of the story came with the package—it chose me, rather than me choosing it. In fact, that’s how the series came to be. I overheard someone make a comment that they felt as though their home teachers and visiting teachers were sometimes a little too nosy, almost like they were spying on their assigned families. My brain being what it is, it took off from there—what if they really were spying on their assigned families? And then Ida Mae, Tansy, and Arlette appeared in my head, and I’ve been having a ton of fun ever since.
6. Can you share a tip on adding conflict to a light-hearted mystery?
Tristi: In this story, it was a matter of finding the conflict that already existed and then just bringing it to the forefront. You’ll always have conflict whenever you get a group of people together and ask them to work on the same project, and there’s always conflict within the boundaries of a ward. Because Ida Mae was the Relief Society president, she knew about certain issues in the ward that wouldn’t be immediately obvious to the other members.
The main thing you want to do is make sure that the elements you emphasize are already present, or that they occur naturally. There are some genres in which you can throw in an elephant attack or a zombie apocalypse and no one bats an eye, but in this type of writing, you need to take the situations that already exist and then just build on them in order to make them believable. It is a lighthearted story, but every character has their trials, and that’s where you find the conflict.
7.What do you want readers to get from this series? How many more are coming? Tristi: There are a total of five books in the series. Book #2, Dearly Departed, just barely came off the press over the holidays, and I’m so excited to get my author copies in my hot little hands. I have nearly finished the final editing phase of book #5, and then I’m starting a whole new series, which promises to be just as much fun.
As far as what I’d like readers to get … well, first, I want readers to have more options when it comes to clean fiction. It seems it’s becoming harder to find. I also want them to enjoy the little quirks of our Mormon culture. We are a peculiar people—in a lot of ways, and not just in our religion. We’re fascinated by potatoes. We won’t shop on Sunday, but we’ll head out to the store at 12:01. It’s fun just to step back and say, “You know, we are quirky, but we’re so loveable.” I hope my series accomplishes that—a greater sense of contentment of who we are, while appreciating our quirks.
8. You seem pretty organized. Care to explain the headless chicken thing? What else would like us to know about you?
Tristi: I’m laughing right now. I am not organized. Right now, my Christmas tree, which is still up, is jabbing into my left hand from its place next to my desk. There are Legos all over the living room, I have no idea what’s for lunch, and I keep getting distracted by Facebook. But I’m determined, and so I keep pressing on.
We all know the expression, “running around like a chicken with its head chopped off.” Well, that’s me—I am the headless chicken. I run over here and write a chapter, then I run over here and wash some dishes, then I run over here and tie a shoe. And I lose a few feathers along the way. I might even lay an egg. You just never know with me.
Join me next Monday for the first entry about my writing journey. Have a great week!
