An Interview with Author Dorothy Bodoin

Author's Website
Dorothy Bodoin on Goodreads

Why did you start fiction writing and what genre(s) do you like to write?
I started writing fiction as soon as I learned to write words and draw pictures to illustrate them. In other words, before I entered elementary school; and I never stopped. I write mysteries because that’s what I always liked best to read.

Why this/these genres? What attracts you to them?
As I grew older and after seeing the movie, Jane Eyre, I was attracted to the Gothic elements in mystery stories. They still fascinate me, along with old science-fiction movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still and Where Have All the People Gone?

Generally speaking, what is the driving force behind your characters? Have any of your characters changed in dramatic way from what you imagined at the start during the writing process?

My heroine, along with other characters in my series, is driven to help collies in distress and their people, while her husband, Deputy Sheriff Crane Ferguson, has dedicated his life to keeping law and order in his corner of the world. My readers tell me that Jennet has changed over the course of the series. They find her bolder, more willing to take risks, more humorous, and they think she has more confidence in herself. One day I’ll reread my series and see if I can detect these changes.
The first book in my series, Darkness at Foxglove Corners, was intended to be a stand-alone so I didn’t give much thought to how Jennet's character would change.

What do you find the most difficult in finishing a story and approximately how long does it take for you to write a story?

Maintaining enthusiasm for a project is the most difficult aspect of the writing process for me. It takes from four to five months for me to finish a book, depending on what interruptions life throws at me.

Are there other types of writing you do such as non-fiction, or short fiction?
I only write full-length books because I rarely read short stories. I like to spend more time with my characters than the short length allows.

Has your writing affected you in any way and what would you recommend to someone wanting to start writing fiction?

I was always on the introverted side, and my writing has made me more so. I’m happiest when I can stay home and concentrate on my work-in-progress.

I’d advise any one aspiring to write fiction to read. Read in your chosen genre and read anything else that catches your interest. I learned the craft of writing from books like the late Phyllis A. Whitney’s Guide to Fiction Writing and articles in The Writer. Also I studied the work of other writers. If I were beginning a career in fiction writer, I’d take advantage of the many sources for writers on the Internet, including online classes given by successful authors. 

More About All The Pretty Little Collies

The discovery of poisoned meat on the horse farm of her friend and neighbor, Sue Appleton, is only the beginning of the reign of terror that strikes Foxglove Corners one summer.  It seems that anyone owning a collie is a target of the mysterious poisoner who proves impossible to track.  While this is going on, a young girl who has a beautiful blue merle collie named Sparkle to show receives messages warning her to withdraw her dog from all competition or risk losing her.  Jennet vows to help Sparkle's owner and to find and stop the person who is terrorizing Foxglove Corners' collie owners.  But can she do the seemingly impossible?

All the Pretty Little Collies

Now Available!

Twenty-seventh story in The Foxglove Corners Series 

Spring brings danger to the collies of Foxglove Corners when poisoned meat begins to appear in their yards. Another collie is threatened with dire consequences unless her owner withdraws her from all future shows. In the meantime, a ghost moves into the wildflower field planted at the site of the burned down Victorian house on Huron Court.

Dorothy Bodoin lives in Royal Oak, Michigan, with her blue merle collie, Layla. Dorothy worked as a secretary for Chrysler Missile Corporation for six years, two of which were spent in Italy. On returning to the states, she attended Oakland University, earning Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English literature.  For several years she taught English in a Michigan high school before leaving education to write full-time. She is the author of the Foxglove Corners Cozy Mystery series, six novels of romantic suspense, and one Gothic romance.

What They Are Saying About All the Pretty Little Collies:

All the Pretty Little Collies is the twenty-seventh installment in Dorothy Bodoin’s Foxglove Corners Mystery Series. Filled with surprises, twists, and turns, it is another winner that will keep you riveted until the last page.

The book begins with Jennet Ferguson, an amateur sleuth/teacher, visiting a friend’s horse ranch to take her turn caring for her friend’s collies. The dogs discover a slab of raw meat tossed into the grass. Alarmed, Jennet manages to grab the meat before the dogs touch it. Worried, she has it tested by her deputy sheriff husband and discovers that it’s been poisoned. Who could be trying to kill dogs in Foxglove Corners?

Heightening the suspense, Jennet learns that her friend, Annica, has seen a ghost, a young girl picking wild flowers on the site where a pink Victorian house once stood. Intrigued, she investigates the phenomenon.

As if that isn’t enough to keep Jennet busy, she learns that Minta Maynard, owner of a prize-winning blue-merle show dog named Sparkle, is receiving threatening messages in her mailbox. If Minta continues to show Sparkle, the collie will be harmed.

Readers will be perched on the edge of their chairs wondering how these storylines will be resolved. I highly recommend this new addition to the Foxglove Corners Mystery Series.
It is exciting to note that the collie on the cover of this new book is the author’s own blue merle collie, Fantasy’s Bell Bottom Blue—Layla.  —Suzanne M. Hurley, Author of The Christmas Rose, The Dream Smasher and many others.

The Deadly Fields of Autumn

This month Wings released Dorothy Bodoin's twenty-fifth cozy mystery book in the Foxglove Mystery series. What an accomplishment, Dorothy! Congratulations!

I haven't read all twenty-five of these stories, but quite a few, and can attest that they are well written and suspenseful stories. The first book got me hooked on the characters Jennet Greenway, and Deputy Sheriff Crane Ferguson, who from the very first time he stopped her for speeding, showed an incredible attraction to each other. Another aspect I love about Dorothy's books is the Michigan setting, probably because I live in Michigan, but what Dorothy writes about the beauty and weather of this state is accurate.

Now I realize how much catching up I to do. I bought the Kindle edition of this story. Jennet and Crane are married now, but Jennet remains an independent woman, who teaches high school, loves collies, has unusual metaphysical encounters, and of course, finds irresistible mysteries. Surprise! She has seven collies now. She also has a female deputy sheriff stalking Crane, and at a yard sale finds an older rescue collie for sale  along with a haunted antique TV. Good start. 

Books by Rhobin

The Silver Sleigh

By Dorothy Bodoin
Mystery/Crime, 397 pages, cover art by Pat Evans
 
Blurb:
Rosalyn Everett was missing and presumed dead. Her dogs had been rescued, and her house was abandoned. But a blue merle collie haunts her woods and a figure in bridal white traverses her property.

How do the mysteries at River Rose connect to Jennet's purchase of an antique silver sleigh?

Excerpt:
Every time I stepped on River Rose land, the snowswept expanse seemed more bizarre.

Or was 'bizarre' the best word to describe it? Haunted would be better; forbidding better yet. Once before I'd had the feeling that Rosalyn's abandoned house didn't want us invading its rooms.

Now that was bizarre.

This afternoon the usual otherworldly silence greeted me. Scattered animal prints and fallen branches marred the snow. The festive Christmas wreath still adorned the front door in mid-January, its ribbon crisp and bright. A discernible pall hung over the deserted kennel buildings, and the dark woods behind the house rose to meet a sullen sky. They appeared to issue a voiceless warning:

Don't come any closer.

Leaving the Taurus idling, I grabbed a bag of beef chunks and made my way up to the house calling Icy's name loudly.

An echo flung it back to me, an echo followed by a deep bark. Then another. I'd hoped for a response but hadn't expected one.

I called again. "Icy! Treat!"

He emerged from the side of the house near the blue spruce where I'd first seen him. And oh, he was magnificent! Large and majestic with a silvery-blue coat that shone in the last of the afternoon light as if it had been freshly bathed and brushed. Impossible, of course.

The Quicksliver Collie.

I held my breath, hoping he wouldn't move.

A piece of light green material dangled from his mouth. A rag?

"Are you hungry?" I rattled the bag, a sound that unfailingly drew my dogs from all corners of the house.

He tilted his head, licked his chops.

I tossed a chunk of beef into the snow. He lounged for it, swallowed it in one gulp, and stared at the bag in my hand.

"Poor hungry baby."

I tossed two more pieces and eyed the material that had fallen into the snow.

Focused on devouring the beef, the collie didn't object when I bent down to pick it up. Wet and torn, definitely the worse for wear, it was still recognizable as a woman's blouse or shirt, probably silk.

Whose?

The leap was inevitable. Who but Rosalyn Everett would have worn this blouse found on her property?

From somewhere a snippet of information floated into my mind. Sue Appleton saying, "Rosalyn often wore green. It was her favorite color."

Icy had apparently brought the blouse from the woods. If I could find the place… There might be other garments there. There might be a grave.

I showed Icy the empty bag. "No more. Sorry."

He sniffed at it warily, then dashed off back to the yard, up the incline, and into the woods.

Still carrying the blouse, I followed him, followed his imprints in the snow, crossing treacherous roots that reached out of the ground cover to entrap me. Soon I'd lost sight of the dog but not his tracks. He must have come and gone this way often enough to create a path of sorts.

The trees grew close together. Hungry branches reached out for me, snagging my sleeves. In an alarmingly short time, my breath grew ragged and my heartbeat raced. Just when I thought I could go no farther, I caught sight of Icy. He had come to a stop in a clearing at a large nest of branches. His makeshift home or…

Something had disarranged the neat order of the branches, scratched or clawed them aside to expose more green material.

I stopped quickly and grabbed onto the trunk of a slender tree for support, still breathing heavily as the significance of the discovery caught up with me. This was Rosalyn's grave. I had found her.

The collie lay down close to the nest, panting, waiting with the air of one who has completed his mission.

Rosalyn's grave. At last. But shouldn't I make certain her body lay beneath the branches?

Yes, but I didn't want to touch a corpse unless there was no alternative. Not when I was alone in the woods except for a dog who wasn't mine. Not when I had my cell phone in my pocket and access to an officer of the Foxglove Corners Police Department.

Just move the branches aside with your boot, I told myself. You won't have to touch anything.

No. I couldn't be that disrespectful.

Keeping my eye on the gravesite and the guardian collie, I called Lieutenant Mac Dalby.

The Hunt for Avon’s Ghost

By DB Dakota
Cozy Mystery, 239 pages
Cover art by Pat Evans

Excerpt:
From down the hall, Jorge hurried forward. “What took you so long?”

“It was that El Ecbat what’s-his-name guy that Jake rescued.”

“Do tell. Name? Can’t help you. I don’t keep lists.”

Thornburgh said, “I can tell you who it was not, and that name, I’ll swear, is Jester Yorick. Not him, not Yorick. The guy I’m bettin’ on who did the thieving—Gwen Bonnard told me his name is Vuelta Attar Hakim.”

“Pleased to hear that, except I don’t remember the character, haven’t heard of him. Now, how about me running along? I’ve got another case that—”

“Wait a minute. You know what? I take it back about Yorick. He still could be— Think clockwork.”

“I will, I will.” Prima frowned. “I did. Now what?”

“One half of the heist team. Yorick waited outside in the bushes while Hakim waited in the closet.”

“Everybody’s waiting. Waiting for what?”

“For the guard in the lobby, Brad Hardy, to leave,” she replied. “His shift ends sometime around midnight.”

“What happened after that?”

“How’s this? There’s only one way Hakim could have done it. He sneaks out of his hiding closet inside, this one right here that I was just in, and walks back through the empty building, the totally vacant conservatory…sneaks back to the lobby, grabs up the lighthouse, trots back to the little back-end service door and with the lighthouse in the bag, squeezes out onto the grass in the bushes, fastens the latch and, wow, outta here.”

“What about the clockwork Yorick person?”

“That’s my question too. What about Yorick? We don’t need Yorick. Hakim didn’t use him. Did it all by himself. So, okay, he fastens the latch, Hakim does, and—”

“He’s gone from here.” Prima chuckled. “By himself, alone, solo. Gotcha.”

“Makes a run for it, yep.”

“Where to?”

“El Ecbat, don’t you imagine? Think you anyplace else?” Thornburgh asked.

“Fine. But if you have plans to go there, you can’t, we can’t, so we won’t.”

“I know, I know, it’s a colony, whatever, foreign territory, a country, a nation inside a state of the United States, man, is that cockeyed or what? And we have to show a pass or something to get in, I assume.”

“I’d rather have a ticket to Disneyland. Who wants to visit a towel-headed miniature I-ran?” Prima noted. “You just want to catch Little Sire Hakim and make him cough up the lighthouse.”

“Is it getting sticky in here?”

“Awkward and hairy somewhat, yes it is sticky, and smelly. What say we send for the Marines to march across that pasteboard colony border, just storm in there and drag that kleptocrat outta there?”

“What we’ve got to figure out is what Hakim’s black market is.” She stared at the floor. “He can’t peddle it. There’s no market for a lighthouse, I wouldn’t think.”

“That means he already has a customer for it, for that particular lighthouse. Meaning, yes, he can peddle it. Gwen Bonnard knows of people who bid for it.”

“If she doesn’t have a list of would-be buyers,” Prima observed, “we’ve got to get a list together, haven’t we? But do with it, what? Start dogging each customer on the list, each one that lost out on the bidding? Impossible…wouldn’t be reliable. People lie, hide their swag. How about we wait till we hear of a mysterious explosion?”

“A lighthouse blowing up? Then we’d know. We sure will know who stole that lighthouse. Jorge, I keep thinking about the Joe Crystal call to Gwen, warning about the bombshell in the model. On some level, the two people, Crystal and phone caller, had to be acquainted. That person had to have put in a bid for the lighthouse. It was gone, already sold. So why did the caller call?”

“Sour grapes?”

“Said the fox. Thank you, Dr. Aesop. We’ve talked about that. But why the call? To frighten buyers away from the lighthouse, drive it onto the flea market table so it can be picked up for a song. Anyhow, the burglar turned out to be Hakim, an El Ecbatski, according to the candy bar wrapper, a student who was into Shakespeare lore off and on. His education is Western, Hakim’s is. There are bound to be others like him, Americanized. I can’t believe he stole the lighthouse for his personal pleasure.”

“Can you believe he stole for someone else?” Prima asked. “Or that he’s got a partner? A fence, maybe?”

“Had to have! That’s right, an accomplice. Not talking about Yorick, though. I will lay dollars to Danish there’s not a solitary soul in El Ecbat who cares one whit or even knows about Shakespeare and that lighthouse, except—”

“A fence. I already said that.”

“That’s a question, isn’t it, Jorge?”

“I’m thinking like you’re thinking, yeah, sure, no penalty in me being stupid, is there?”