Heather Graham talks to BYS about her Halloween and The Seance.

My mom came over Dublin when she was a teenager with her family. When I was a child, my great-grandmother would warn us that if we didn't behave, the banshees would get us in the outhouse--she was good. We were fairly old before my sister and realized that we didn't have an outhouse...I believed leprechauns were just as real Frenchmen, Italians, or Arabians!

I loved Hammer films, Edgar Allan Poe, Twilight Zone, and everything spooky out there.

My family attends Universal Haunted Horror Nights every year. I can't help but walk through the houses and imagine an instance in which one of the performers was real! But as to ghosts themselves, I think that as people, we want them to exist. It's a sign that we might see loved ones again, a sign that we might go on to another life.

I acknowledge my folks for my ability to make a living as a writer. My dad was huge on non-fiction, war stories/movies (US Navy in WWII) and musicals. My mom was the history buff, and she also brought home Anya Seton, Victoria Holt, and many more. My first great love was for Gone With the Wind--I rewrote the ending immediately. Scarlet and Rhett just had to get back together!

I came from a theater background. A tough one--working hours and hours, bartending to supplement what we were being paid, singing back-up on entertainers albums at ten dollars a shot to get by. When my third child was born, I literally couldn't go back to work--couldn't afford to do so. Well, the house is, was, and will always be a total disaster. I can't sew a hem straight. In desperation I turned back to a second love, writing. Back then, it was absolute trial and error. Companies asked for completed manuscripts, and you just waited until someone got to them. I trace my career through my kids--started writing with Derek, finally published with Bryee-Annon; my first advance came in time to pay part of the hospital bill when she was born.

I still read insanely. I don't think I could fly, sit in a waiting room, or even park outside Chynna's school and wait for her to get out if it weren't for books. I read everything, non-fiction, mystery, romance, horror, suspense, graphic novels--everything! I can't mention who I read, because I'd forget someone. Two of my favorite books of all time, however, are Killer Angels by Shaara and A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens. The first goes into the hearts and minds of the real men--old friends who had once served together/gone to school together turned enemies by the reality of war. And the second, well, “Tis a far better thing I do...”
   
I reread--and have always reread--everything my kids were assigned in school. (Even when I hated it the first time!) But that is what's so wonderful about the written word and stories--we get to be subjective. I may love it, you may hate it. My tastes may not be yours, and yours may not be mine. But it's a huge world out there, so there is room for everything!

Right now, I'm working on a series due out next fall. The first is Deadly Night, a story taking the eldest of three Flynn brothers (who have just formed their own PI agency) and putting him into a position where he must deal with a Tarot card reader he doesn't trust in the least. Takes place in New Orleans, where, having just completed a missing persons' case successfully, he begins to find bones--one of them on the aging and decrepit plantation he and his brothers have just inherited. It coincides with Halloween.

The next story is Deadly Harvest, and take the second brother up to a very strange case in Salem and it's environs where scarecrows in corn fields prove to be murder victims.

I love to use places and bits of information that come my way in my stories. New Orleans has long been a favorite haunt of mine, and we do a "Writers for New Orleans" workshop there each year now. (Hurricane totally devastated parts of my home area, and we learned it takes a good decade to get a place back up; we have eight years to go! Please check it out at theoriginalheathergraham.com if you're in the area or interested. Labor Day, each year!) Also, I've long "haunted" Salem, Mass, myself--my husband's Italian family all moved into Massachusetts, so we're there pretty constantly.

The Seance, and a Christmas suspense, The Last Noel, are on sale now. The Seance takes place in my home state, up in the center, where Christina Hardy has just returned to take possession of an old house left to her by an Irish grandmother. Friends come to join her for a home-warming and pull out a Ouija board. Meanwhile, a body has just been discovered, murdered in like fashion to a string of killings that had happened years before, but had been blamed on a cop who had been shot while standing over the body of the last victim. Jed Braden had been a cop himself--one who had gotten rich on a fictional account of the killings, using the cop, Beau Kidd, as the murderer. A copy-cat killer is on the prowl--or someone was mistaken in the first place. Christina finds herself roped in by the results of the Ouija board, while Jed, stricken with a sense of guilt, must join with her to find the truth before they both wind up between this world and the next–permanently.

In The Last Noel, a family, bickering in a dysfunctional manner, suddenly find themselves snowbound–with a pair of killers stranded in their house for holiday turkey. They must learn to communicate once again if they have any hope of surviving to the next holiday season.
   
I love ballroom dance and scuba diving, travel, and doing things with my children. They, and their friends, have given me so much to write about! The Florida Keys are one of my favorite destinations--I can reach a good dive boat in less than an hour!

Thanks so very much. Oh, and to new authors, I have very simple advice. Do it. Don't talk about it. Do it. Be smart, join a group, know where to send your work. But have some work to send! Even if you are busy, busy, busy, have work and kids, make writing be the one luxury of time you allow yourself. Don't wait for a muse. Sit down and start a page! Even if you find you've written a bad page, it's a page--and it can be fixed, and it might have led you to all kinds of ideas. Never stop reading. Never stop marveling at the talent of others. Write to the best of what you read, and never say to yourself, "This is awful! I know I can write that!" If it's awful, you don't want to write it. Give yourself a goal, even if it's only a page a day or a word count. It's like dieting--if you miss a day, it doesn't mean you have to consume three pounds of Godiva the next. Get right back on the horse, no matter what!  And you might want to buy a copy of Writer’s Digest Writer’s Market--it has a wealth of information about who is buying what and where you should be sending your work. Attend any workshop of any kind that you can--suspense writers, romance writers, and sci-fi writers might all have the same editor. Be a sponge--take in all that you can, and wring out whatever just won't work for you.

Keep all the good!


© 2007 Interview by BetweenYourSheets.com

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