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Lora Roberts: My Life and Times Though born and raised in Missouri, I've lived for twenty years in Palo Alto, California, where my mystery series featuring vagabond Liz Sullivan takes place. After doing newspaper work, public relations work, technical editing, and romances, I really enjoy writing mysteries. I set most of my books where I live, to avoid all that tedious research, but my fictional Palo Alto shares only physical characteristics with the real one, and perhaps a certain mind-set. The characters and local events are made up—that's the fun part, after all. I have a couple of things in common with Liz Sullivan, my fictional sleuth—I garden, and I write for a living. My life is much duller than hers, believe me. In fact, I'm thinking of getting myself a fictional life, which I can make much more exciting. Murder in a Nice Neighborhood introduced Liz, a Palo Alto freelance writer who just happens to live in her VW bus. In Murder in the Marketplace, Liz takes on two temporary jobs, and finds that working can be deadly. Plus she must grapple with the unexpected appearance of a teenaged niece, a harbinger of family involvement that culminates in Murder Mile-High, when she travels to Denver to attempt a reconciliation that no one else in her explosive nuclear family appears to want, especially after murder complicates the picture. Next Liz discovers the hazards of domesticity in Murder Bone by Bone. In Murder Crops Up, Liz deals with murder at the community garden. The latest Liz Sullivan book, Murder Follows Money, was published in May 2000. Throughout the series, Liz takes a wry, outsider's look at the pastimes and preoccupations of her more affluent friends and neighbors. Policeman Paul Drake is one of them, and the chemistry between Drake and Liz develops throughout the series. I love writing mysteries. It's like letting your life get wildly out of control, and then—presto!—imposing order on it. Talk about personal satisfaction—I certainly can't get my real life cleaned up like that. But there's also the deeper satisfaction we all achieve as mystery readers. The books we love do involve violence, even when it's off-screen. But in fictional crime, that violence is contained, and turned from randomness to something motivated by human passions, something we can understand. And then, at the end, there is justice. That's certainly better than what we get from the newspapers or TV.
More from Lora:
Lee Harris ~ Jonnie Jacobs ~ Valerie Wolzien ©2005-06 by Lee Harris, Jonnie Jacobs, Lora Roberts and Valerie Wolzien. |