1. When did you start writing?

I’ve never not written. As a kid, I enjoyed essay tests, and, as an eight-year-old, tried to write a novel. I started writing fulltime about 20 years ago, taking as early a retirement I could in order to have health insurance, and took off to live the life. Starting with freelance writing, I wrote fiction as a hobby on the side, but rejection quickly made me freelance fulltime and focus on FundsforWriters.

It took dinner with another mystery author who was signing at a local bookstore, for me to realize I still loved writing mystery, so I pulled out the manuscript, retained an outline of it, and tossed the book away to start over from scratch. It amazed me how in that four-year gap that my writing had graduated to such a higher level from the incessant deadlines and articles I’d written.

2. What was your journey towards becoming an author like?

It was trial and error, like a writing journey is supposed to be. I didn’t follow anyone else’s path, just assumed my own. I entered my book in contests to get a feel for whether it had merit. After I’d won and placed in a few, I pitched agents.

After 36 pitches I stopped and rewrote the book. I had an 80 percent reply rate, most with comments, so I felt the story still had merit. After the rewrite, I pitched another 36 times to other agents, focusing the direction toward agents who were Southern, represented Southern writers, went to school in the South, or understood the South in some manner. I’d learned the first go around that most NY agents had no clue.

Number 72 took me on. We came close in NY so many times, but I also began learning how cold and calloused NY could be, so when I learned of a mid-sized publisher opening a mystery imprint, I sent the name to my agent and the rest is history. I have been with Bell Bridge Books for every one of my 17 novels. Now I just keep a book in progress and expect to do so until I can write no more.

3. What can you tell me about your latest book? (Feel free to include an excerpt.)

I already had an amateur sleuth at the Federal level with Carolina Slade’s mysteries, and a police chief with Callie Jean Morgan (Edisto Island Mysteries), and I felt I needed a private investigator for the trifecta. I love Quinn Sterling, and this is her third book in the Craven County Mysteries. She has to mix running a multi-million dollar pecan plantation and being a PI. She inherited the plantation after her father’s murder which made her leave the FBI, and now she delves into crime as she sees fit, often against her uncle who is the slip-shod, good-ol-boy county sheriff. She grew up with her two best friends, one whose father worked for hers on the farm, the other who is the current caretaker. The three of them are tight, making for great stories. Their childhood frequently comes back into play.

From the cover:

In the blink of an eye…

Quinn Sterling—part-time investigator and owner of Sterling Farms—expected the day to go well. Expected all of Craven County to put in an appearance at the much-anticipated, annual Fourth of July celebration on the farm grounds. Expected the temperature would hit hot enough to peel the paint off a pickup truck.

What she did not expect was the appearance of a long-lost uncle and new cousin.

And she certainly never expected the county sheriff to seriously question her childhood friend, deputy Ty Jackson, for the suspected murder of his ex-wife Natalie in the next county over. When Ty is carted off mid-celebration by his boss and in front of his eight-year-old son Cole, Quinn realizes that she may be the only one willing to believe in his innocence regardless of damning evidence to the contrary.

With the murder out of her county, Quinn has no contacts to lean on. She has no standing in the investigation.  What she can do is make sure Ty has the best defense attorney in the state while she finds a way to prove what her heart knows.

Even if that means crossing every line she's ever drawn for herself in pursuit of the real killer.

Craven County Line is now available at this link

4. What sort of methods do you use for book promotion?

I use social media, and I appear wherever I can – museums, libraries, schools, bookstores, book clubs, and so on. I also keep my freelance work active which once had a bigger name than my fiction, and I make sure my bylines contain information about my novels.

A lot of people ask how do I promote and how did I get almost 1000 reviews for my first book. It’s called doing it daily. Writing, promoting, reaching out for appearances, and so on. It cannot be a hobby or you reap the rewards of it being a hobby. Promotion takes diligence and putting your name everywhere. Attend the occasional conference and OWN who you are. When people ask what you do, say you are an author.

5. Where do you get your ideas for stories?

I was an internal investigator and my husband was a federal criminal investigator, and that’s where most of Carolina Slade’s stories come from since she and her sidekick are similar to us. For the Edisto series, I study the place, and I mean intimately. My stories are known for their detail and intimacy with the setting, and that comes from research. The local bookstore must sell 2,000 copies of my book a year.

I also read and watch mysteries religiously. I talk what-ifs with my husband. I watch true crime. I love solving puzzles. I love my genre. I’m not one that believes in reading across the board, not when I need to be well-versed in what makes for a good mystery.

6. What are you working on right now?

I am about to turn in Edisto Bullet, book ten in that series. Once turned in, I will start on another Carolina Slade. It might be her last, though it doesn’t mean she won’t make appearances in the other two series. I tend to let my protagonists get to know each other.

7. Any advice for other authors?

Write daily. Read ravenously the kinds of books you wish you’d written. Don’t jump into self-publishing quickly. If you do not feel your book is worthy of a traditional publisher, it isn’t ready to be published period. Attempt to publish traditionally unless you are well-versed in self-publishing, and I mean VERY well-versed. And then be prepared to work as much on the promotion as the writing. I work hard on my promo, but I have a sound publisher that edits my work and does the cover and formatting and distribution. That leaves me so much more time to write. But if you want to self-publish, own it. It needs to be a business for you. And you must have a website.

ABOUT HOPE:

C. Hope Clark is author of 17 mysteries, the most famous being the award-winning Edisto Island Mysteries. Her first, Murder on Edisto, was chosen by the state of SC as its representative for Route One Read. Hope makes appearances at libraries, schools, bookstores, bookclubs, and conferences both about writing fiction but also about her success as a freelance writer. She is editor of FundsforWriters, a website and newsletter combo that has won Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers for 23 years in a row. Her newsletter reaches 26,000 readers. She writes regularly for Writer’s Digest, Writer University, SC Wildlife Magazine, and Chapin Neighbors, and has written for dozens others. You can find more about Hope at www.fundsforwriters.com and www.chopeclark. She lives in central South Carolina on the banks of Lake Murray, and visits beautiful Edisto Beach, SC at her every chance.