Interview with Author TG Wolff
- At what point did you decide to be an author and what was your path to publication?
Sometime around 2004, I lived in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio but had a project in Northern Kentucky. At least twice a month, I made the five-hour drive to my client, staying over a night or two. There is one thing everyone should know: there is nothing entertaining between Cleveland and Cincinnati. It is a straight highway with lots of corn and other fields. I began crafting stories to keep alert on the long drive. And, when I couldn’t sleep in hotel rooms, I began writing them.
Fast forward to around 2011 and I had about 10 full-length manuscripts completed, purely for my entertainment. I had no plans to publish. Writing was my fun place.
A friend coaxed me into entering a contest. While I didn’t win, I did get a referral to an acquiring editor at a publishing house. A few weeks later, I was under contract for three of my drafted works.
I was flying high, of course. But then I hadn’t learned the realities of publishing yet. Edits to things you held precious. Pushed publication dates. Your favorite editors changing jobs. Covers that didn’t really match you story. Promotion, promotion, promotion. Sales that bought me a few pairs of nice shoes but did not come close to a trip to Disneyland. And then the publisher deciding they weren’t interested in the fourth book or really anything else from me.
Crash. Burn.
Get up. Dust myself off.
I responded to an open call for submittals to my current publisher, Down & Out Books. I had the manuscript for what would become EXACTING JUSTICE finished at the time I queried. I went into this a more educated partner to my publisher. One thing that truly excited me was that Down & Out published in the genre I aspired to: mysteries. My second novel, WIDOW’S RUN, came out November 11.
I don’t know if there is a “normal” path to publication. I certainly don’t think my path fits a model. As hard as some of those lessons were at the time, I am grateful for them. They amped up my story telling, thickened my skin, and showed me that when a door closes, a window opens…you just have to find it.
- Describe your writing process. Do you outline, plot and plan, or is your writing more organic?
It is important to me that my mysteries are solvable. Many readers like to tag along with a detective on an investigation but there are a number, like myself, who see a mystery as a long word puzzle. And little is more satisfying that solving a puzzle. So, to answer your question, I fall into the plantser category. I begin with simple planning:
- Who did it?
- To whom was it done?
- Why did Who do it?
- How did Who do it?
With those basics, I begin working backwards on what clues were left behind and what false trails / dead ends fit into the premise. I create the main characters, then supporting characters.
Then I start writing from the beginning. From this point forward, it is very free form. Much like driving a car, I target the “milestones” I need to hit. It’s important that I get there but not so much how. The fun happens when the free writing unearths details I hadn’t planned on previously.
I don’t expect my style is identical to others and would hate it of someone reading this harshly judged their process (or mine!) Writing is a form of art. There isn’t a right or a wrong, there is only finished or unfinished.
- Tell us what you enjoy most about writing Mysteries.
I love writing mysteries for the same reason I love reading them: solving the puzzle. For me, arranging pieces together to make a whole is very satisfying. It is why I love jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, Sodoku, building with any material, etc. It takes a significant amount of thought and patients to both figure out what the “whole” of a mystery looks like and then to deconstruct it into the “pieces” that the reader and my detectives put back together.
- Do you identify with your main character or did you create a character that is your opposite?
I have to identify with a character on some level to write them well. My main characters are not reflections of myself, but I do empathize with what drives their personalities. In my newest release, WIDOW’S RUN, a woman suddenly loses her husband to a hit-and-run accident. Or was it an accident? (Of course, it wasn’t. There wouldn’t be a mystery to solve if it was.) I have been married for over 25 years. Just imagining how my life would change if The Husband went to work one morning and didn’t come back was a chilling, terrifying trip into my imagination. For a time, I think I would not be completely sane, not completely rational. To think he was intentionally killed could put me on a path of self-destruction. Welcome to Diamond, one name for a woman with one purpose, finding the SOB who killed her husband.
- Describe the WIDOW’S RUN in 10 words or less for people who are just learning about it.
Murder is filthy business. Good thing Diamond plays dirty.
- What is your favorite line from your book?
My favorite line is the opening line:
“They buried me today, and I had the balls to show up.”
The book opens at the funeral service for Diamond, who had faked her own death. This line is pure Diamond and sets the tone for the book.
- To date, what is your favorite (or most difficult) chapter you have ever written?
The most difficult chapter I have ever written was a funeral scene in my romantic suspense LOST IN TENNESSEE (under the pen name Anita DeVito). My editor challenged me t
o add the scene as it was needed to explain/ prompt the male lead’s leaving the female lead. It was the funeral of the male’s ex-wife. I struggled with how to connect him to a woman he no longer loved, who no longer loved him. And then it came to me: family. Death isn’t as simple as being about the one who passes, it is about those of us left behind picking up the pieces. As the male lead took in the broken faces of his in-laws, people he still loved, he understood the power of death. I cried the entire time I wrote the scene. It gave me a headache that lasted over three hours. The Husband laughed at me for getting a headache, crying over a funeral that didn’t exist.
- What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
I am a wife, mother of two teenage boys, and I work full time. Writing is my reward for everything else.
WIDOW’S RUN
TG Wolff
* Thriller *
Author: TG Wolff
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Pages: 236
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
investigate, but in the end, all they have are kind words for the new
widow. Months later, a video emerges challenging the facts. Had he
stepped into traffic, or was he pushed? The widow returns to the police,
where there are more kind words but no answers. Exit the widow.Enter
Diamond. One name for a woman with one purpose. Resurrecting her CIA
cover, she follows the shaky video down the rabbit hole. Her widow’s run
unearths a plethora of suspects: the small-time crook, the mule-loving
rancher, the lady in waiting, the Russian bookseller, the soon-to-be
priest. Following the stink greed leaves in its wake reveals big lies
and ugly truths. Murder is filthy business. Good thing Diamond likes
playing dirty.”TG Wolff’s novel is for crime-fiction fans who
like it action-packed and hard-edged. Written with feisty panache, it
introduces Diamond, one of the most aggressive, ill-tempered, and wholly
irresistible heroines to ever swagger across the page.” –David Housewright, Edgar Award-winning author of Dead Man’s Mistress
★★★★★ORDER YOUR COPY★★★★★
Amazon → https://tinyurl.com/y3eaf8ro
“Hey Diamond.” Chips crunched in my ear. “How’s Italy?”
“How’d you get this phone number?”
“I called myself from it last night.” A bag crackled in the background.
“When and where was I?”
“When you went to the bathroom. You said make yourself comfortable.”
I wasn’t gone three minutes, not three minutes. “And you took it as an invitation to steal my phone number?”
“You know, for emergencies and stuff.” Either he had shoved another fistful of chips into his mouth or he had wadded up the bag into a ball and was gnawing on it.
“Dix, you put one more chip in your mouth and I’m going to swim across the Atlantic and give you a chip bag colonoscopy.”
He laughed. “That’s something old people get, right? Something like a camera up the butt?”
It’s hard to physically intimidate someone who lived day in, day out with violence. You know. Been there, done that, got the black eye. The one he’d gotten for his birthday still had days until it would fade.
“Yeah, Dix. I hear it comes with good drugs though. So, who is she?”
This time he glugged liquid, finishing it with a sloppy lip slap. “Who is who?”
“You know who.”
“Do who know you?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Dix, you’re making my head spin. You texted me you know ‘who she is.’ Tell me who she is while I’m still young enough to care.”
“Oh. Her. Ilsa Dumanovskaya. I’m not making it up either. Musta sucked to spell her name in kindergarten. Least her parents gave her a short first name.”
I leaned against an ice-cold plaster wall, prepared to commence head pounding. “Why should I care?”
“Because of Doc.” Doc. That was the nickname the kids at the YPF gave Gavriil. He liked the stories I brought home and showed up one afternoon. It wasn’t even “take your husband to work day.” I found him arguing with the science teacher over a chemical equation. They got past their chalkboard differences, created a bouncy-ball polymer, then had contests to see which formula bounced higher. The kids loved it. Gavriil came in once a week for lecture and the occasional spontaneous laboratory experiment.
“She’s the woman he met in Rome.”
My chin snapped up. My heart beat in double time. I had her face, now I had her name. I signaled Carlo for pencil and paper. “Give it to me.”
“She owns a bookstore. I have the address for her store and her apartment. Do they call them flats?”
“No idea. Give me the address.” My mouth watered with the taste of deep-fried quarry.
“Three-twenty-one valle Didochachiata.”
My pencil stayed still. “That can’t be right.”
“Maybe I’m not saying it right. Three-twenty-one Vya Deedoshakiata. Better?”
“No. Carlo? Can you figure out this address?” I handed over the phone and recommenced pacing.
Carlo alternated between speaking and listening. Then he laughed. Of course, he and Dix would understand each other. Gibberish was an international language.
area between good and bad, right and wrong. Cause and effect drive the
stories, drawing from 20+ years’ experience in Civil Engineering, where
“cause” is more often a symptom of a bigger, more challenging problem.
Diverse characters mirror the complexities of real life and real people,
balanced with a healthy dose of entertainment. TG Wolff holds a
Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering and is a member of Mystery Writers
of America and Sisters in Crime.
★ WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS: ★
Website → www.tgwolff.com
Twitter → @tg_wolff
Facebook → www.Facebook.com/tina.wolff.125
