Please welcome today's guest, Author Michelle L. Levigne. Her new cozy mystery, The Unwelcome Wagon, came out April 1, 2022. I hope you enjoy my interview with Michelle.
Which
of your characters was/is your favorite? Why?
Right now, my favorite character is M'kar. She's
based on my Star Trek "persona," when I was in a Star Trek club in
California. We had such fun making up adventures, writing "ships
logs" and sometimes utterly silly adventures, where our characters roamed
the galaxy. M'kar is a Talent, focused on animals, assigned to the AFV
Defender, in a galactic civilization known as the Alliance. (Yes, a lot of
similarities to the Federation …) The Defender has a reputation of being a
misfit kind of ship, with misfit luck, but they always come out on top despite
truly bizarre adventures. The series is called (surprise!) The AFV Defender,
and has a Middle-Grade series spin-off called Young Defenders, which is about
the children growing up below decks, with all their adopted aunts and uncles
teaching them how to be heroes, despite their youth.
I have a lot of fun with M'kar because she comes
from a barbarian culture. Her father is a mountain of a man, and when he left
his homeworld to protect his half-breed daughter and her scientist mother, he
chose to become a writer of children's books and poetry, just to defy the
stereotyped barbarian image. He's loud and outrageous and children adore him.
M'kar is snarky and can't quite understand why the children on the ship adore
her. She teaches them self-defense and survival skills and growls a lot. I am
currently working on the 3rd AFV Defender book, titled "All the
Boys I've Loathed Before," which follows M'kar's growing up years and all
the problems she has being a half-breed, and all the power-seekers and
politicians who try to use her questionable status for their own profit. Until
she gets the better of them. Somewhat by accident.
Do
you write in more than one genre? If so, which genres?
Oh, yeah. Science fiction, fantasy, romance -- and
then variations in Young Adult and Middle Grade, romantic suspense,
inspirational romance, and now my newest foray, cozy mystery, with The
Unwelcome Wagon, Book 1 of the Book & Mug Mysteries.
What
made you decide to become a writer?
Short answer: Semester exams.
Long answer: I went to a college prep high school,
and we had semester exams, 2 a day for a week, very important part of our
grades. I had a bad habit of finding a movie or TV show or book that snagged my
imagination and just daydreaming variations of the story, rewriting it, or
coming up with new adventures or episodes. Well, semester exams were coming up
and I needed to study. So, I had always managed to kill stories before when I
wrote them down, so I wrote this book idea down …. And that was more than 40
years and 100-plus novels and novellas ago.
I LOVE story. I love adventures, and putting
characters into situations and seeing how they react and survive. Or not
survive. It's an obsession, sometimes. The rest of the time, writing is my
mental health exercise.
Which authors have most influenced your writing?
Homer -- although maybe I should really blame the
Kirk Douglas movie, "Ulysses," because it snagged my interest when I
was in junior high, I did some research and learned about The Odyssey, and
found a really good translation and read
it and one of my first published novels was Penelope's side of The Odyssey.
CS Lewis -- of course -- reading about Narnia and
the Space Trilogy "baptized" my imagination, much as he said George
MacDonald baptized his. I wanted to go to other worlds and explore and have
magical adventures. Some of my favorite books that I've written have some
aspect of a portal fantasy in them.
Terry Pratchett -- silly, snarky British humor
Neil Gaiman -- have only read a few of his books,
but they're awesome. I especially love listening to him read the audiobook
versions of his own books. Gave me the courage to do my own narrating, turning
my own books into audio.
David Eddings, Anne McCaffrey, Janet Evanovich, Meg
Cabot, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ann Crispin, Mary Stewart, Patricia Wrede, Diane
Duane -- each have contributed something to my imagination, and given me
imaginary worlds to explore or characters to want to be like when/if I ever grow
up ….
How
many books have you written?
Last time I stopped to count, over 100. A good
number of them are out of print, and I'm hoping to "redeem" and
revise most of them and get them back into print.
BLURB:
Saundra Bailey has a rough few first days after moving to Camden Township to be the new children's librarian. First a strange man who smells of cheap cigars tries to get into her apartment, then she’s caught between two Welcome Wagon teams, which results in her feeling rather unwelcome. When Cigar Man later tries to steal her purse, she meets Kai, owner of Book & Mug, a coffee shop and bookstore. Cigar Man tried to break into the building Kai owns with his cousins, Eden and Troy, after trying to hire Eden, an investigator, to find lost family documents.
As Saundra settles into her new job and home, she learns about the political and social feuds and alliances in town. Then Cigar Man breaks into the Book & Mug building in the middle of the night, falls from a fire escape, and dies. The hunt is on to figure out what he was looking for, who was the other man with him when he fell, and whose side the mysterious accomplice is on.
Head Trustee Roger Camden, descendant of a founding father, has a growing list of grudges against the cousins and gets in the way of their investigation. Their building used to belong to his family. He accuses them of being in league with Cigar Man, who apparently was seeking Camden family documents. The foursome scramble to put together clues and identify Cigar Man’s accomplice before he hurts more people and makes more evidence and clues vanish.
BIO:
On the road to publication, Michelle fell into fandom in college and has 40+ stories in various SF and fantasy universes. She has a bunch of useless degrees in theater, English, film/communication, and writing. Even worse, she has over 100 books and novellas with multiple small presses, in science fiction and fantasy, YA, suspense, women's fiction, and sub-genres of romance.
Her official launch into publishing came with winning first place in the Writers of the Future contest in 1990. She was a finalist in the EPIC Awards competition multiple times, winning with Lorien in 2006 and The Meruk Episodes, I-V, in 2010, and was a finalist in the Realm Awards competition, in conjunction with the Realm Makers convention.
Her training includes the Institute for Children’s Literature; proofreading at an advertising agency; and working at a community newspaper. She is a tea snob and freelance edits for a living (MichelleLevigne@gmail.com for info/rates), but only enough to give her time to write. Her newest crime against the literary world is to be co-managing editor at Mt. Zion Ridge Press and launching the publishing co-op, Ye Olde Dragon Books. Be afraid … be very afraid.
www.Mlevigne.com
www.MichelleLevigne.blogspot.com
www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com
www.MtZionRidgePress.com
@MichelleLevigne
Look for Michelle's Goodreads groups:
Guardians of Neighborlee
Voyages of the AFV Defender
Neighborlee Streets
NEWSLETTER:
Want to learn about upcoming books, book launch parties, inside information, and cover reveals?
Go to Michelle's website or blog to sign up.
The Match Girls: Humorous inspirational romance series starting with A Match (Not) Made in Heaven
Enjoyed reading your interview, Michelle! Congratulations on the neww book. Looking forward to reading it soon.
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