MysteryAuthors.com is proud to have bestselling mystery author Courtney Mroch with us for an interview today. Thank you for joining us. M.A.: Tell us a little about your featured mystery, Beneath the Morvan Moon.
C.M.: Beneath the Morvan Moon is a romantic suspense set in the Burgundy region of France. The French have a saying that goes “No good wind and no good people ever came out of the Morvan.” (The Morvan’s located in the Burgundy region.) Basically, my main character, Gretchen Lauterbach, has kin from the Morvan. Her grandmother grew up in Brevard, then fled when the people of her village murdered her fiancé because they believed him to be a werewolf. They buried his head separately from his body to make sure he would not come back to life. On her deathbed, Gretchen’s grandmother gives her a map marking the locations of her fiancé’s graves and asks her to set this wrong right by burying his head with his body. But there are a lot of other people with shady motivations in Brevard at the same time, and Gretchen suddenly finds herself trying to separate more than one fact from fiction in order to keep her life.
M.A.: Can you share with us (without giving anything away, of course!) a personal favorite moment or line in your book?
C.M.: I love when Gretchen and Zach, her love interest in the book, are arguing. Zach suspects she’s trying to claim a cloak with the powers of transforming a person into a werewolf and ends up searching her room and creating a big brew haha even though Gretchen keeps proclaiming her innocence. (And getting mighty irked that he won’t believe her.) At one point she tells him, “Believe it or not, Ripley.” It cracked me up when I wrote it because at that point she was speaking through me. That was totally the character talking and the first time that had ever really happened to me. I got a huge kick out of it.
M.A.: Why mysteries? What makes them so compelling for you to write?
C.M.: I am not the most avid mystery lover. I fully admit it. I went through a Nancy Drew phase pretty hard growing up, but when it fizzled I leaned more towards horror. But my mom always loved mysteries, and so did my dad, and I felt like I should attempt mysteries for them. Why, I don’t know. I guess because they always admired the writers who could craft such clever plots, and more than anything I wanted my parents to consider me clever, too. For me mysteries don’t come naturally and are very hard to write, but I hope to one day craft one that could be considered clever. Not only by my parents but by the reading community, too.
M.A.: What about other work? Do you write in any genres other than mystery?
C.M.: Yes, I write in horror, romance, and fantasy as well.
M.A.: What was your funniest writing-related moment?
C.M.: I can’t think of anything funny that’s ever happened to me while writing. I have a lot of funny stuff that happens to me that I write about, but I’ve never been privy to a funny writing-related incident. Never been asked to sign someone else’s book at a signing or anything like that. Darn.
M.A.: So, what’s your current writing project? Is it a mystery, too?
C.M.: I finished a manuscript called The Ghost of Laurie Floyd over a year ago. It’s kind of a romantic mystery too, but like I did with Beneath the Morvan Moon I mixed too many genres together. (In addition to mystery and romance, there’s light horror, fantasy and paranormal intertwined in BTMM.) Or, rather, the mystery doesn’t dominate, nor does the romance or paranormal aspect so no publisher wants it. I’ve had interest but all have walked because it’s not paranormal enough for one place, not mystery enough for another, etc. So I put that aside and am trying to finish a couple others I have started. Both are definitely single genre works, one a horror and the other a romance, so I’m hoping for better luck.
M.A.: Other than MysteryAuthors.com, do you have any websites where readers can find out more about you and your work?
C.M.: Well, when I’m not writing fiction I am a Senior Blogger for Families.com where I write about the harmony and strife of married life in the Marriage Blog, and about animals big and small in the Pets Blog. For a listing of my articles I encourage people to visit this link http://members.families.com/petscribe/blog. And there’s always my website at www.courtneymroch.com.
Thanks again for agreeing to take a Minute for Mystery by joining us here today.
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