This month, In THANKSGIVING to all our readers, we are introducing you to a writer you may not have met or read yet and hope you will find a whole new stack of books to add to your To-Be-Read pile. And I have the honor of welcoming C. Hope Clark who writes some of my favorite mysteries.

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C. Hope Clark thrives on mystery and writes from Lake Murray and Edisto Beach in her beloved South Carolina, alongside her federal agent husband she met on a bribery investigation. Bourbon in hand, water on the horizon, she spins tales of serious, hard-nosed female sleuths.  Hope also motivates writers to step up to their careers and is founder of FundsforWriters.com, awarded 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer's Digest Magazine each year for over two decades. Her weekly publications reach 28,000+ readers.

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Skye: What or who inspired you to become an author?

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        C. Hope Clark: There never was one person who motivated me. I loved the power of words since I could write. I learned early on that people were more impressed and respected you more the better you wrote. I am not one to have idols. I just loved every author I read who thrilled me with the power of their words and storytelling.

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Skye: Do you have any animals or pets and have any of them become models for four-legged characters in your writing?  Do you have any working or service animals in any of your stories?

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        C. Hope Clark: Funny. I love animals. I own two dachshunds who run my household, and I manage 24 chickens for eggs (I never eat my chickens). I occasionally put an animal in a story but never in the forefront. To be honest, I do not read books where I know an animal is forefront, because I’m sensitive to how animals are treated by humans. To show you how stirring that is for me, I also refuse to see any movie with animals, and my only charities I donate to are rescues. Recently, I introduced Horse, a Harlequin Great Dane in my Edisto series, but he will never get hurt, trust me. He will likewise never be the hero, so he isn’t endangered.

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Skye: I know you have three popular mystery series: The Carolina Slade, the Edisto Island, and the Craven County series. Any hints on what you’re next writing project might be? Have you ever considered starting a new series? Or perhaps a stand-alone story that’s been sitting there in the back of your mind just waiting to be told?

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        C. Hope Clark: I never want to write a stand alone because I adore the worlds I’ve built. I prefer reading series, so that’s where I live and write. And three series are enough to keep me occupied, trust me, so there’s no need for a fourth. The fans of the three series would not be very happy at my pushing one of their next reads into another year or two.

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        Currently, I’m working on book 14 of The Edisto Island Mysteries. The Craven County Series has three books that tie up well. I could consider another book there, but my main readership is on Edisto Island. Carolina Slade has six books, also tied up nicely with room to add if I wanted. But again, as long as the Edisto stories flow in my head, they will be my priority.

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Skye: Of All the characters you’ve created, who is your favorite and why?

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        C. Hope Clark: I still like Carolina Slade. She’s more daring while being sensitive. She makes mistakes while still saving the day. She loves her family, and she is loyal. Written in first person, she flies by the seat of her pants while trying to always do the best and right thing. A lot of character.

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Skye: All of your series are set in your home state and in places I’m sure you are very familiar with, but have you ever considered writing a novel set somewhere else?

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        C. Hope Clark: I never want to write about another place other than South Carolina. It’s what I know. To write elsewhere would dilute my stories and my brand, plus, I know these places well. In my prior life I worked all over the state and know more than the average person about South Carolina. There is so much there that I’ll never be able to absorb it all in my stories, so I have enough fodder to keep me busy. It’s who I am, so why pretend to be something I’m not?

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Skye: Some of my readers have asked to be in my stories and I’ve obliged when creating my supporting cast. Sometimes I only use their names and sometimes I model the character in part or completely after the reader who has asked (and given me permission.) Has this ever happened in any of your stories?

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        C. Hope Clark: Many times. A few of these characters are close to real people I know. Many of them are composites. Many are just pieces of one character, just enough for me to “see” them in my head while the public has no idea. Some characters are people I’ve just encountered and I loved the way they talked or looked or behaved, and they made it into a future book. Life is too full of “character” not to capitalize on it. I have never used real names, though. Maybe pieces of names.

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Skye: What are two things you know now that you wish you knew when you started writing?

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         C. Hope Clark: First, every character, chapter, scene, paragraph and line of dialogue has to have energy and move the story forward. Now, I used that from my very first book, but I wished I’d known it when I started writing. I was one not to publish until I felt I had things right. From the beginning I never wanted my first books to sound novice compared to my subsequent books, and I had it in my head to write 40-50 novels in my lifetime. I’m up to 23, writing 24.

       Secondly, editing is what puts life in a story, not the writing. And one stage of my editing includes a full oral edit. I didn’t learn until 3-4 books in that oral editing is remarkably important.

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       Skye: What are you reading now? What’s in your “To Be Read” (TBR) pile right now? And how many TBR piles do you have? Who is your favorite author and why? What are your keeper books? How often might you reread them?

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       C. Hope Clark: I have about 30 books in my TBR list. I am currently reading William Kent Krueger’s Apostle’s Cove in his Cork O’Connor mystery series. I adore Karin Slaughter, Lisa Gardner, Anthony Horowitz, and lately Richard Osman. I’ve read everything by Slaughter and Sue Grafton. When I want to study craft, I read Raymond Chandler and Howard Browne for my love of noir mystery. I try to stick to mystery and suspense. Keeper books are those that pull me in story-wise yet give me great craft that I admire and want to go back and study. I keep copies of Slaughter, Chandler, and Browne. I have a few autographed copies of books by Pat Conroy and Sue Grafton because they used to be some of my favorites. I go back and study books for craft but never to reread them. There are just too many good books out there and so little time.

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       Skye: What’s the number one item on your bucket list and why? (Whether you plan to retire from writing or just take more time off for personal fun.)

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      C. Hope Clark: What writer wants to retire? It’s who I am and what I love. My entire life consists of scouting for new ideas and new ways to tell them. I take a month off between books, but I am never not writing. I still manage FundsforWriters which fills the in-between. I’m always writing an essay or a feature for someone like Writer’s Digest. Words are my jam, so I have zero need to escape them. I would like to see my work on the screen, any size screen. We had a contract for cable last year which put a little money in my pocket until the production company closed five of its studios, to include the one starting my series. So I would like that to happen again. It’s still being shopped around.

      But I have told people that if I get to the point that I cannot write, or find myself wandering into thoughts I can’t come back from, I hope I wind up lost in the worlds of the stories I created. That would be a great way to go out.

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Hidden on Edisto is her most recent release.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Goodreads

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Hidden on Edisto - With burglaries at one end of the town and a CBD store on the other, Police Chief Callie Jean Morgan is stretched thin juggling small time crime on Edisto Beach. But someone stops the burglaries ahead of her, someone whose methods remind her of someone all too familiar. Vigilante justice only adds more issues to her plate as lines blur between criminal and hero. The problem is that the vigilante has an attraction for the chief. And she's not too eager to put the cuffs on him.

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The Edisto Island Mysteries – Callie Jean Morgan left her home state of South Carolina to spite her parents. Fifteen years later she left Boston after her husband was murdered. Vowing to leave law enforcement, she finds herself sucked back into it on a tiny tourist beach town called Edisto, in the South Carolina Lowcountry. She sees crime nobody else does and does her best to keep the town publicly crime-free while solving some serious crime behind the scenes. A wide cast of secondary characters turn these stories into colorful tales of mystery.

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The Carolina Slade Mysteries – Carolina Slade is a loan officer for the US Department of Agriculture, until a farmer offers her a bribe to help him illegally nab a piece of land. She reports him and an agent arrives. Through this series Slade quickly learns she loves crime-solving, and Agent Wayne Largo learns he loves her. The two solve assorted rural crime throughout the state of South Carolina with Slade doing so by the seat of her pants and Agent Largo attempting to keep her between the lines of the law.

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The Craven County Mysteries – Quinn Sterling is the last heir of the oldest family in the oldest county in the state of South Carolina. Her father runs Sterling Banks, a 3000-acre pecan operation, and her uncle, who lost his inheritance in a nasty divorce, is the Craven County Sheriff. Quinn’s father allows her to study law enforcement and leave the family farm, to sow her oats, so to speak. But when he is murdered, and the uncle bumbles the investigation, Quinn is forced to leave the FBI and return home to run Sterling Banks. Grabbing a private investigator’s license lets her keep one toe in crime, and soon she becomes the resource to manage Craven County crime since her uncle, who isn’t fond of her abilities, cannot.

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If you would like to learn more about Ms Clark and her books, you can visit her at the following sites:

www.chopeclark.com

www.facebook.com/chopeclark

www.instagram.com/chopeclark

www.bookbub.com/authors/c-hope-clark  

www.goodreads.com/hopeclark

www.fundsforwriters.com

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Now lets meet a few more great authors:

Meet   Sophie Claire with Anne Stenhouse

            Debra Clewer with Sally Odgers

          Sharon Booth with Helena Fairfax

and    Jay Levy with Bob Rich