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| Lynn Albrecht, Author DYING FOR SEX |
Mystery
author Lynn Albrecht brings us DYING FOR SEX touted by reviewers as a “Great mystery, great humor” and “Sex, drugs, and
an old folks home? How could it get any better?” Albrecht values humor—which
comes through in her interview—but understands that a mystery with lots of
twists, turns, and red herrings creates an entertaining book.
Albrecht originally worked in broadcasting and then in the field of
corporate communications—a career I pursued for more than 25 years. (I, too,
did not do well with the power suits.) So I can appreciate her career change to
become a social worker. Today she continues to work part time as a social
worker and lives in Canada with her husband.
Be sure to check into her "Huge Kindle Giveaway" posted at the end of the interview. You could win a Kindle Paperwhite!
Q: Your reviewers praise the mystery in
DYING FOR SEX. How did you conceive it? What inspired it? Was it based on real
events?
Lynn Albrecht: I had tried to
write novels in my thirties––a romance and a historical novel. I never got very
far. Many years passed until the urge to write a story came over me again. This
time I knew that in order to succeed, I had to write about what I knew. When I
started writing DYING FOR SEX at the age of fifty-four, I
figured I knew about quite a few things. I’d had some career changes, a couple
of kids, a failed marriage, fallen in love again, and watched my formerly toned
youthful body morph into something I barely recognized. I worked with the elderly
as a social worker and realized that as we age the twenty-year old voice inside
us is still there despite what is happening on the outside. I wanted the main character to be older
and going through the stuff that we go through as we age. And I wanted the
seniors in the story to be fun and have distinct personalities just like in
real life.
I
also knew that I had to have the whole swinger scenario in the story somehow.
Most of my adult life I have heard a lot of rumors and stories about the swinger
lifestyle. When I started researching it for the book, I was astounded to learn
there was actually an “adult lifestyle club” in the heart of the city I lived
at that time. The more I looked into it the more I realized that a) it was more
popular than I ever realized, and b) for me, it’s a subject that inspires
hilarity. Could I ask for more? Let’s
face it, sex can just be downright funny.
Q: How
important is humor to telling your story?
Lynn Albrecht: Very. My main goal was to make people
laugh. I have always loved Janet Evanovich’s and Laura Levine’s books. I
started reading the Stephanie Plum series in my forties and I can tell you
those books saved me from plunging into total insanity some days. My son wanted
to get his gazillieth piercing, my daughter announced she was leaving
university to learn how to massage horses, and my boobs were starting to droop
so badly they slapped me in the face when I jogged. So I would lose myself in
one of Janet’s books and the world suddenly didn’t look so bad anymore,
although the whole boob thing remained very disconcerting.
Q: Your
reviewers point out the successful integration of intrigue and humor in DYING FOR SEX. How did you keep readers
in suspense and laughing?
Lynn Albrecht: I had to keep reminding myself not to
get too serious. I knew I had to have lots of twists and turns in the plot and
a few red herrings, but I kept the voice of Lindy in the forefront. She just has a way of turning a
potentially serious situation into mayhem. DYING FOR SEX is not a scary book.
No blood, no gore, but a good mystery that I think, keeps you guessing as well
as laughing.
Q: How do you
create credibility for your amateur sleuth, Lindy Sutton, to the extent that we
believe she can solve the mystery? Why do readers care what happens to her?
Lynn Albrecht: She’s a lot like you and me. She’s just
this woman who’s been drawn into helping solve a mystery by the victim’s
brother. She has absolutely no idea how to go about it. So she pulls in her
best friend and her sister to help, as well as this old gay guy named Chappy Lowton,
who lives at the retirement home where the victim worked. They’re all just
ordinary people, bumbling along asking questions, and getting into trouble in
the process. Along the way, life intrudes. Her son brings home this
outrageously ugly bus and parks it in their driveway, her long dormant hormones
fire up for the very annoying detective on the case, and her sister constantly
makes fun of her. Lindy’s not particularly brilliant or brave, she’s hard on
herself, and uses humor to cover up her insecurities. She doesn’t solve the
mystery in a concise, methodical way, because she’s not like a Kay
Scarpetta. But she does solve it.
And I think she does it the way you or I might, and I think that’s why people
like her character.
Q: Did you write DYING FOR SEX purely for
entertainment? Or were you trying to educate your readers? Deliver a message?
Lynn Albrecht: My goal was to entertain and hopefully,
keep people guessing about the identity of the murderer and what was going to
happen next. Any messages that are in the book are pretty simple I think.
Seniors are not staid, used-up, people with nothing to offer. The elderly
people in DYING FOR SEX, all have very different, and I think, interesting
personalities and they are important to the storyline. Fifty-year old women can
be funny, still have a lot to offer and think about sex. People are diverse and
therefore diverse in their tastes and proclivities. Mothers will protect a
child no matter how old either of them get. Laughter just makes life better.
Nothing too pithy. DYING FOR SEX
ain’t Dostoyevsky after all.
Q: How helpful
is the concept of villain versus hero to telling your story? Do the actions of
your villain result in the heroic responses of the protagonist?
Lynn Albrecht: Lindy is not
the typical kind of hero you see in a lot of mysteries. This is a light mystery
so Lindy isn’t going to grab a machine gun and take out a gaggle of assassins
or anything like that. I tried to make it believable even though Lindy tends to
end up in some ridiculous situations. She’s kind of a chaos magnet, but
believable chaos. I think because it is a light mystery, the idea of the
villain is less intense but still does bad things. Lindy reacts to that, but
again, in a way that you or I might.
Q: Is any of
DYING FOR SEX based on real events? Is the back story based on your own
experiences or did you need to do research?
Lynn Albrecht: Well as I said earlier, I am a little
older than Lindy. So I did base some of her thoughts, feelings on things I have
been through, especially her relationship with her son Brent, how she feels
about her changing body, sexuality, and her love of Spanx of course. The swinger part of it required a whole lot of
on-line research, which needed nerves of steel and a few stiff drinks. But I got
through it.
Q: Did your
characters push you around and make you write what they wanted? Or were you in
control? Did you start with an outline?
Lynn Albrecht: I sat down
one Easter weekend and wrote out the entire plot on index cards. Then I started
writing, going from one card to the next. At first it was a struggle to let the
characters’ voices come out. It took me a while before I relaxed and just let
their voices take over. I kept control of the plot and where the characters
were going, but I let the characters take over control of the dialogue and the
narrative feel of the book. In particular, I felt that Lindy’s voice had to be
strong and consistent.
Q: What’s next?
Lynn Albrecht: I still work
part-time as a social worker and I’m working hard to promote DYING FOR SEX. I’m a novice when it comes to things
like twitter, face book, and well, blog tours. It’s a steep learning curve. My
publisher does help, but really the onus is on me to get the book noticed. But
I’m learning and it’s another adventure. I’m enjoying it.
When
I am not promoting DYING FOR SEX, I am working on the second Lindy Sutton
mystery. The same characters are in it––Lindy, Patty, Toni, Dixie, and of
course, Chappy Lowton.
Q: Tell us about Lynn Albrecht. What do
you like to do when you’re not writing?
Lynn Albrecht: Not a hell of
a lot. Give me a good mystery and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and I’m happy. I
do travel with my husband when we have the time and money to do so. I love
Sedona, Arizona in particular so we try to visit there once a year. I periodically
bug my two adult children in a valiant effort to make them remember I’m still
around and have relevance in their lives. Sometimes it works. And I spend an
inordinate amount of time sussing out sales on Spanx and trying to figure out why my knees have started to droop.
About
Lynn Albrecht
Lynn C. Albrecht started her career in
broadcasting. Quickly realizing she was not going to be the next Lisa Laflamme,
she entered the world of corporate communications. After years of writing
videos, speeches, advertising, and dressing in power suits with shoulders pads
that made her look like Hunter Hearst Helmsley, she had a great epiphany. She
ditched the shoulder pads and returned to school. Five years later, she was
released into the unsuspecting healthcare system as a social worker. She works
at St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener, Ontario.
Lynn lives in Baden, Ontario with her
infinitely patient husband, John Belton.
DYING FOR SEX is her first book. She
is currently hard at work on the second Lindy Sutton mystery.
About
DYING FOR SEX
Lindy Sutton has her hands full. In between
having her clown act clobbered by pint-sized critics, keeping a group of
sex-crazed octogenarians from starting brawls in the raciest bar in town, and
trying to keep her crazy Aunt Pip from being tossed out of Laughing Pines
retirement home, she still has to contend with her son’s garish band bus parked
in her driveway. Could things get any worse? Yup! Margaret Quaid, the social
worker at Laughing Pines is found dead of an apparent overdose and the drop
dead handsome detective on the case, thinks she stole the drugs from the
retirement home and was pretty active in the world of wife swapping to boot.
Lindy’s temper soars, along with her long dormant hormones, as she sets out to
clear Margaret’s name, find the murderer and make the sexy detective eat crow.
Aided and abetted by the aging but flamboyant Chappy Lowton, her eccentric and
sarcastic sister, her best friend Patty, and that hoard of sex-crazed
geriatrics, Lindy wades into the world of swingers only to find that there are
plenty of people with a motive to kill the social worker. http://lynncalbrecht.com
Links
Social
Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lynncalbrecht
Where
to Purchase:
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| For more click here |
First Prize: Kindle Paperwhite and an autographed copy of Dying
for Sex
Second Prize: $50 Amazon Gift Card and an autographed copy of Dying
for Sex
Third Prize: $25 Amazon Gift Card and an autographed copy of Dying
for Sex
Hello Joyce,
ReplyDeleteOn behalf of Lynn Albrecht and Book Marketing Services, I would like to thank you for hosting Lynn today on Strand’s Simply Tips. She is thrilled to be here today. After reading your interview with her, she would love if some of your readers left a comment or question. She will be by later in the day to respond to everyone.
Lynn is having a giveaway during her tour. 1st prize: Kindle Paperwhite, 2nd prize: $50 Amazon Gift Card, 3rd prize: $25 Amazon Gift Card. Remember to enter for your chance to win one of these fabulous prizes http://tinyurl.com/k5l5dg4.
Please join Lynn tomorrow, Tuesday, December 10th, 2013, when she will be in the author spotlight on Mary’s Cup of Tea http://www.mmbearcupoftea.com/.
I found your great blog through the WLC Blog Follows on the World Literary Cafe! Great to connect!
ReplyDeleteWow.princesspainsbookblog.blogspot.co.uk