Hello, bookish friends! I’m delighted to welcome back to the blog Deb Richardson-Moore. Deb is a versatile Southern writer and speaker, who is with me today to discuss her latest novel, Murder, Forgotten. Doesn’t it have a delightfully eerie cover?

Deb, I’m so pleased to have you here today. Let’s talk books. Murder, Forgotten as a murder mystery is a departure from your Branigan Powers series. What inspired this break in tradition?

It was partly a practical decision. I love Branigan and want to return to her at some point, but I knew my publisher was pulling back. Sure enough, all of the Lion Hudson authors recently received word that the house is not accepting new titles. So you don’t want to be in the midst of a series when that happens.

On the creative side, I loved exploring the idea of an aging mystery writer who is losing her memory. I’m intrigued with the process of writing and wanted to write about that. So this idea formed of a book within a book, and a writer who learns that her ideas pulled from real-life cases may have dangerous repercussions. As one character says, “Life imitates art imitates life.”  

I loved the dual setting of Murder, Forgotten. Scotland in particular lends itself so well to an atmosphere of mystery. As a writer, I would guess that immersing yourself in that imaginary world was a joy. Care to confirm or deny that assumption?

You are absolutely right. To me, that is the greatest joy of writing – to enter another skin, another mind set, another world. The settings in this book are particularly meaningful to me. Sullivan’s Island, on the South Carolina coast, is next door to Isle of Palms where I have vacationed probably 25 times over the years. We usually drive over to Sullivan’s to eat seafood or have a drink at Poe’s Tavern.

In 2014, my husband and I spent a week at a seaside house in Crail, Scotland, so he could play golf with the locals. That’s where I wrote some of The Cantaloupe Thief.  Every day I looked out over the North Sea to the Isle of May. I upgraded Julianna’s surroundings to her own “castle,”  but that’s where the idea and the setting came from.  

This is the fifth of your published books, which include The Weight of Mercy (a memoir), the Branigan Powers mystery series, and now Murder, Forgotten, a standalone. What would you say all of these have in common? What themes reoccur?

One recurring element is that all my protagonists are decent people. I read so many books with unreliable or deeply flawed narrators, and I love that writers make me want to read even when I’m not pulling for those characters. But I seem unable to write those characters. (Yet. I’m still trying.)  

Murder, Forgotten is my first book that does not include homeless people. For 15 years, I pastored a church that included homeless parishioners. I am fascinated by that world and think it’s one that not many writers know well. The book I’m writing now is set in a gentrifying neighborhood in which homeless and poor people are being pushed out.  

In writing Murder, Forgotten, what is one aspect of its creation that kept you up at night?

Was it dark enough? Did it have enough dread? Did it have enough menace? My writers’ group members laugh that my upbeat personality wars against the kind of books I want to write.  I want to write dark, but that’s not how I live.

Tell us two unexpected things about you as a writer.

1) I never know where I am going. To me, the fun of writing is to be as surprised as the reader. So to outline or plot ahead is impossible. Actually, during an evening walk, my husband and I talked over a possible ending to Murder, Forgotten that was very good. But the characters led me away from it. When my husband read the final manuscript, he was shocked. “You completely changed the ending!” he said. Yep.

2) I was a journalist for 27 years and never could write a book. When I left newspapers for ministry, I was finally able to gain enough mental energy and perspective to write my first book. My board of directors gave me a 9-week sabbatical to finish it. I’m not sure it would have gotten done otherwise. I will be forever grateful to them.  

And as a reader?
There are many, many nights that I wake up and move to another bedroom to read for two to five hours. I love being fooled and tricked and led down wrong paths. I love being mystified by a plot. Fortunately, the only way to become a better writer is by reading, so I count it as “work time”!

Thank you, Deb! A pleasure to host you on my blog.

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About this book:

Julianna Burke, bestselling mystery novelist, has a secret that those closest to her are hiding from the world. Julianna is losing her memory, and with it her powerful gift for storytelling that propelled her to fame. 

A further devastating blow comes when Connor, Julianna’s beloved husband, is murdered. Even this is not something Julianna’s mind can hold on to, and every day her assistant has to break the heart-wrenching news all over again. 

Julianna is desperate to know what happened to her husband. As she battles her failing mind to investigate, a detail of the murder surfaces that makes Julianna question everything she’s ever known. Somehow she must fight to find the truth, even though her grip on reality is fading…

About the author:

Deb Richardson-Moore is the author of four fiction titles and a memoir, The Weight of Mercy, about her early years as a pastor at the Triune Mercy Center in Greenville, S.C.

A former national award-winning reporter for The Greenville News, Deb is a popular speaker at book clubs, universities and churches. She has won numerous awards for community involvement, including the 2017 Leadership Greenville Distinguished Alumni Award and being named one of Greenville’s 50 Most Influential People by Greenville Business Magazine in 2013.

A graduate of Wake Forest University, Deb lives in South Carolina with her husband.

Connect with Deb at debrichardsonmoore.com.

Thanks to Lion’s Fiction for providing me a free copy. All opinions are mine.

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