Author interview with Greta Boris

What inspires you to write?

I'm inspired when I read other people's stories. I was the kid with the flashlight under the covers, reading past lights out. I devoured mysteries, fantasy, sci-fi, horror -- basically anything I could get my hands on. Things haven't changed much today, except that I now tend to consume my fiction in audio. I love the rhythm of well-written prose. 

How do you develop your plot and characters?

Plots and characters arrive in seed form in my brain. They come through random input. Sometimes it's a newspaper story or an interesting historical factoid. Settings will also suggest plot lines to me. I've tried many different plotting methods, but have trouble sticking to outlines. These days, I generally use the story beats from Save the Cat for Novelists for my first pass, then add more detail as I begin each act. As for characters, I use the Enneagram Institute for primary characters. I actually teach a workshop on this. It's a lot of fun and a good way to save yourself from having to do extensive edits at the end of your first draft.

Could you share some of your challenges as a writer?

Oh, where to begin? Plots, characters, marketing, imposter syndrome, bad reviews, good reviews, ego, finances . . . . I could go on. One of my most constant challenges is that when I get to about the halfway point of any story, I'm sure it's the stupidest book anyone has ever written. It seems every idea I have moving forward is trite, overused, and amazingly predictable, and I should get a job at Costco checking receipts at the door instead of finishing. After a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth, I finish anyway. Then, I decide it's not bad. 

Tell me about your protagonist. What's your favorite trait and/or weakness?

The protagonist for the Mortician Murders was inspired by The Ask a Mortician Show, a YouTube sensation created by Caitlin Doughty, a real-life mortician with a mean sense of humor. I'd been noodling around with ideas for an amateur sleuth who'd have a real reason for running into dead people. It's my experience that there aren't that many in coffee shops, libraries, and knitting stores. Since morticians only get corpses whose deaths have either been investigated or deemed accidental or natural, I had to come up with a way for her to become suspicious when the professionals weren't. So, Imogene Lynch gets the final sensations of the dead when she touches their hair. Of course, she begins book one as a hairstylist who's asked to do her dead client's hair and makeup for her funeral. And so the fun begins.

What are your current/future projects?

I'm currently finishing up The Mortician Murders. Book 8 is with the editor, and I'll be starting book 9 in a week or so. After that, I plan to write a spinoff series starring my MC's cousin, who is a veterinarian with her own strange supernatural gift.

If you could go back in time and give yourself advice, what would it be?

Start writing sooner. I worked for several magazines, both in production and marketing in my pre-baby years, and later as a writer. For some reason, I thought article writing was a more realistic career. I believed novelists belonged to a small and unusually blessed club, and I didn't know the secret handshake. The truth is, both careers are difficult. Humility, persistence, and grit are what it takes to break into any segment of the entertainment industry.