Valerie Wolzien

Hi. And welcome to my part of our web site. My name is Valerie Wolzien and I write two mystery series. The first stars Susan Henshaw, housewife and amateur sleuth. The sixteenth book in the series, Death in Duplicate, was published in March. Josie Pigeon is the protagonist in my second series. Josie is a single mother, carpenter, and the owner of a contracting company. The seventh book in that series, Death at a Premium, was published in September 2005.

MY LIFE STORY

Well, not all of it. I was born in Akron, Ohio and grew up in New Jersey. I went to college in Denver and at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. An English lit major, I can't remember a time when I didn't want to write. But write what? After years of temp jobs and unfinished manuscripts, I discovered mystery novels.

I grew up surrounded by mystery novels, but I didn't read them until my husband and I were living in Wisconsin in the early seventies. I walked into the local library one day and there was a display of Agatha Christie's works. Those same books were on the shelves in my parents' house, but this time I picked one up and checked it out. An addiction was born. And an idea: I could write a book like this.

It took years. My first manuscript was rejected. Then a second and a third. But, to eliminate a long and boring story, my fourth manuscript was published. It was Murder at the PTA Luncheon and became the first book in the Susan Henshaw series. That was over sixteen years ago. I've been writing mysteries ever since.

There is more to my life than reading and writing. I live about twelve miles outside of New York City on the Hudson River. My home was built during the Civil War and needs lots of care and attention. Writing about a contractor has helped pay for all the plumbers, electricians, and various talented workmen who keep my home standing. I've been married to the same man for thirty-three years and we have a twenty-seven-year-old son. I don't put family members in my books—not the human ones. But Clue, Susan Henshaw's golden retriever is a tribute to Karma, a dear, sweet golden that was with us too short a time. And Loki, the mixed breed dog in Murder in the Forecast, is based on our Loki who moved into our house in the middle of the night five years ago. Urchin, the brown Burmese feline that Josie and her son own, is really Styles, a wonderful cat who lived with us for over a decade before retiring to my parents' home in New Jersey.

I love to read. And garden. And bake. And knit. And I've recently started taking watercolor classes. But once or twice a year I find myself rereading Agatha Christie. I'm still hoping to write a mystery as good as one of hers.

INSPIRATION

A writer writes. Ideally, a writer writes every day. But there are some days when the idea of spending one just more minute alone in front of the computer sounds more like punishment than pleasure. And as for being productive... Well, enough said.

That's when I turn to one of my favorite web sites: Bartleby.com. Bartleby is an excellent resource for a writer. It provides access to Bartlett's Quotations, The Columbia Encyclopedia, The American Heritage Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, three different books of quotations, Strunk's Elements of Style, Gray's Anatomy and a host of other books. Each day a short biography of a writer is offered, as well as a definition, a poem, and a quote which may or may not relate to the date or the writer. For example, when I was feeling that one more moment reviewing the copy-edited manuscript of my next book might kill me, I jumped over to Bartleby and read Virginia Woolf's "Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top." Ah, a literate excuse for a nap!

On the other hand, on November 21, 2001, Voltaire was quoted as saying "We must cultivate our own garden… when man was put in the Garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest." Better stop sleeping and get back to that manuscript!

And allow me to share a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle printed in May 2002: "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." Now there's something for all writers of mystery novels to ponder!

ADVICE

Finishing your manuscript is very exciting. It's difficult to get a mystery published these days and every time Nuns, Mothers and Others makes a public appearance, we answer questions about finding an agent, choosing a publisher, e-publishing and the like. But no one has yet asked the one question I am uniquely qualified to answer: How to you choose a pen name? Please, benefit by my mistake: I should not have used my own name. In the first place, mysteries are usually shelved alphabetically. Coming so near the end of the alphabet, my books are almost always found near the floor. And secondly, no one knows how to pronounce Wolzien. A friend in advertising tells me that consumers will not ask for a product if they are not assured of pronouncing its name correctly. While I like to think that books aren't detergent, I know that any edge you can get it today's book market is worth while.

So that's my bit of advice.

Oh, and the answer is that Wolzien is pronounced like wool zine (as in magazine).

Valerie Wolzien can be contacted at valerie@wolzien.com

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©2005-06 by Lee Harris, Jonnie Jacobs, Lora Roberts and Valerie Wolzien.