The House on Crow Mountain by Rebecca Lee Smith

Please welcome Rebecca Lee Smith author of The House on Crow Mountain

Rebecca Lee Smith will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

The House on Crow Mountain

by Rebecca Lee Smith

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GENRE: Mystery

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INTERVIEW:

What or who inspired you to start writing?

Growing up, I was the kid with her nose in a book (unless I was watching TV), and I’ve always loved stories. I think the inspiration came one day when I was reading a romance and thought, hey, I could write a better book than this one. I ate those words pretty fast, but by then, I’d started writing and found it fun, whether I ever got published or not.

How did you come up with your idea for your novel?

I live in the mountains of East Tennessee, and some of my favorite scenery in the world is where the Appalachian and the Blue Ridge Mountains meet on the Tennessee/North Carolina border. It’s wild and craggy and breathtaking, and I knew I wanted to set a mystery there someday. My obsession with long-buried family secrets gave me the nugget I needed for the plot. Because you can bet your sweet tea and biscuits that even the most upstanding families alwayshave a few juicy secrets tucked away.

What expertise did you bring to your writing?

I worked in theater for over forty years either as an actor or a director. I think it gave me a good ear for snappy dialogue and honed my sense of timing. As a director, “Pick up the pace,” was one of my favorite notes. I found it can be good advice when writing books too.

What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?

I can do a fabulous imitation of a lighthouse.

As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

I used to write romantic suspense (and I’m proud of the two books I got published in that genre), but with The House on Crow Mountain, I realized that writing cozy mysteries is what makes me happiest. So I want to do more of that. Maybe get a series under my belt.

Do you belong to a critique group? If so how does this help or hinder your writing?

I don’t. Years ago, when I was writing romance, I entered a writing contest. One of the judges marked through every simile and metaphor I had written with a red pen, then scribbled in the margin, “You don’t need this.” And I thought, Yeah, I do. That’s how I write. It kind of put me off from letting someone else read my work in the early stages. It works for a lot of writers, though.

When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?

No one encouraged me. I had always secretly dreamed of writing a book and seeing my name on the cover. It took a lot of years (and three manuscripts) before I got published. But I knew if I didn’t jump in the lake, I would never, ever learn how to swim.

What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)

The best advice is something the great Nora Roberts said (and I have framed on my desk): “You can fix anything but a blank page.” Many times, it has kept my butt in the chair when I would rather be anywhere else. The worst? Only write what you know. If I did that, I wouldn’t be writing about murder in small towns.

Do you outline your books or just start writing?

I really want to be an outliner. I do. I try and try and buy more 3 x 5 cards, and try again. But in my heart, I’m a pantser. Writing mysteries has forced me to figure out some things ahead of time. Like who gets killed and how and why. I plot mysteries backward until I hit a snag. Then I let my imagination fly and hope for the best.

Who is your favorite character in the book. Can you tell us why?

Mrs. Etta Shipley, an elderly nursing home resident who becomes my sleuth Emory’s friend. She helps Emory solve the mystery through her love of crossword puzzles and anagrams. She reminds me of my grandmother, but my mother was the puzzle person. She solved the crossword puzzle in our local paper (and the cryptoquote) every day until she was almost ninety. She said doing it woke up her brain. She also never went to bed without a book.

Are your plotting bunnies, angels or demons?

I must not be on Twitter nearly enough because I had to Google “plot bunny.” Definitely angels, though.

BLURB:

When her aunt suffers a stroke, New York portrait artist Emory Austen returns home to the North Carolina mountains to mend fences and deal with the guilt over her husband’s senseless death. But that won’t be as easy as she hoped.

Someone in the quirky little town doesn’t like Emory. Is it the sexy architect who needs the Austen land to redeem himself? The untrustworthy matriarch? The grudge-bearing local bad boy? Or the teenage bombshell who has raised snooping to an art form? Even the local evangelist has something to hide. Who wrote the cryptic note warning her to “Give it back or you’ll be dead?” And what is ‘it’? As the clues pile up and secrets are exposed, Emory must discover what her family has that someone would kill for.

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EXCERPT:

Could it be something of Kent’s they were after? Something he’d kept hidden? He was good at keeping secrets. In fact, he’d been a master at it. After his death, I’d packed the few possessions he hadn’t moved out of the apartment and sent them to his parents. I’d kept nothing except the gold wedding band he’d thrown at me from across the room and his cell phone.

Kent’s death.

Hard to even think those words, much less say them out loud. It was all still so surreal.

Maybe everything that had happened in Bitter Ridge was karma. Maybe the Universe was finally giving me exactly what I deserved. Kent’s death had been my fault. And no matter how much he had deceived me, or betrayed me, or reduced my sad little trusting heart to shrapnel, I could never forgive myself.

I laid my head on my knees and closed my eyes. I rocked my body back and forth, like a child trying to soothe itself when sleep will not come. Then at last, in the cool dark shadows of the night, I began to cry.

Oh, God, I was so sorry.

I hadn’t loved Kent for a long time. At the end of our marriage, I hadn’t even liked him. But I had never wished him dead.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Rebecca lives with her husband and a dog named Wilbur in the beautiful, misty mountains of East Tennessee, where the people are charming, soulful, and just a little bit crazy. She’s been everything from a tax collector to a stay-at-home-mom to an award winning professional actor and director. She loves to travel the world (pre-pandemic) because it makes coming home so sweet. Her Southern roots and the affectionate appreciation she has for the rural towns she lives near inspire the settings and characters she writes about.

www.rebeccaleesmith.com

Twitter: @rbeccaleesmith

Facebook: Rebecca Lee Smith

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3zOrNsb

Barnes and Noble: https://bit.ly/39JTJTl

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3unX18j

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

Rebecca Lee Smith will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

RAFFLECOPTER:

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f3949