Hello there:

Glad you are all still here, even though my getting these
newsletters out isn't very timely. I have to let you
know that I'm still here and that true to my word, I'm going
to start bringing you more intimate portraits of writers
and their lives.

This time I've chosen Pat Crossley, who not only writes
beautiful works of fiction but is a world class traveler.
Pat does so much for her fellow man, I wanted to share
some of her life with you.

Before I do, let me remind you that I have just been notified
that Pretend Mom, my very first novel of romance to be
published is once again out with Double Dragon Publishing
and that Heart of the Wild is now in print, you can get
your copy at www.writers-exchange.com/ebooks/rita-h.htm

Now I want you to meet and get to know my friend and fellow
writer, Pat Crossley.

Here's the one on one interview I did with her:

Interview with Pat Crossley

Pat, Dancing with the Devil is a Romantic Suspense, how did
You get into writing that particular genre.

Rita, I have to confess to you that I wasn't trying to write a romantic suspense when I started out. There has been a mystery of some kind in each of my books. Kurt, in 'A Suitable Father' was a murder suspect when he turned up on Maggie's doorstep.
Aidan, the time traveler in 'Journeys End' is threatened by a villain who wants to steal the stolen art work (okay, you have to read the book) and in 'Beloved Stranger" there is not only a two hundred year old mystery to solve, but Sarah nearly loses her life when the mystery unravels. So this time I decided I would write a true suspense. You know, feisty heroine, loads of red herrings, gritty settings, lots of mayhem. I found my heroine and my premise and set to work. The hero appeared quite unexpectedly in the first scene. 'Let me loose here' he said. So I let him in, and, wouldn't you know it, it was soon obvious that he and the heroine, Jazz, just couldn't keep their hands off each other. (Sigh) So I have a romantic suspense.

What are your newest books coming out and when?

Dancing with the Devil is an ebook right now and will appear in print in a couple of months. I have a short story out for consideration for an mystery anthology and two other short stories are available as downloads and are also under consideration as TV movies. I've just started a short paranormal romance,set I the area where I live.

What would you like to tell your readers about you?

I was born and brought up in London, England. I was a real city kid, my life defined by tube stations and double decker buses. Very few people owned a car when I was little and if I traveled it was by long distance bus or steam train. No motorways then, of course, so everywhere, even just on the other side of London, was a very long way away. The countryside seemed a magical place, but the family only went outside the city at holiday times. My parents favored the south coast and I had an uncle with a dairy farm in Devon which I adored. I went back there two years ago and found the old stone farmhouse and the tiny village virtually unchanged. This farm was the inspiration for the Godwin House in Journey's End, although I had to move it many miles closer to London in the story.

I've been hooked on reading ever since I learned to decipher the easy words at the age of four. I was a frequent visitor to the public library and often read a whole book on my way home. Much to my disgust, they only let you take out three books, I think it was, and you weren't allowed to exchange a book the same day you took it out.

In my teens I spent a great deal of time in France, living and working with French families and attending university. Although I learned French very young as a second language, it seems to me now that I have always spoken it equally with English.

I grew up reading Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart, Jane Austen and particularly loved the "fictionalized history" where real people were brought to life. When I did my degrees, I was immersed in the literatures of France and Germany. Much of that literature is about the relationships between men and women, some of it rather cynical. This taught me an appreciation not only for the structure of a book, but also for the analysis of the relationships between people, and the observation of character.

If you are born in Europe, you cannot help but be steeped in history. My parents later lived near St. Albans, where there is an inn dating back to Roman times and which has therefore served ale continuously for over sixteen hundred years. The cockpit is now a bar. A new road being put through unearthed the remains of a magnificent Roman villa. Day trips when I was a child were to Museums, the Tower of London, Hampton Court. History to me was a part of life, and I think that is why I try to bring historical detail into my books.

I became a second language teacher, married an engineer, whom I had first met when I was eighteen (another story) and had a daughter. When she was still a baby, we moved to Montreal, where I found my bilingual skills in great demand. My other two sons are Quebecers. When I moved to Canada I was fortunate enough to live in the most historic area of the country, where Jacques Cartier landed in 1535. There was a seamless transition from the history of Europe to that of the New World. I was fascinated by the culture of Quebec, where for many years people were routinely isolated, physically and emotionally. They were first cut off from France, the source of their language and culture, they fought to survive in a hostile climate of extreme cold for half the year, they battled to retain a French presence in a sea of English. All these are reflected in the music and literature in Quebec. All the family loved Quebec, and I have used some of the scenes and history from an area just outside Montreal for my paranormal romance, Beloved Stranger.

The family spent two years in Philadelphia when the children were small, and five wonderful years in Baden Baden, Germany, before moving to Vancouver, British Columbia. I worked at a demanding job in educational administration in Vancouver and then for the university in Victoria before deciding to try my hand at fiction. I'd always written a lot: stories for kids, reports, articles, but never had the time to do what I wanted to do, that is let my imagination soar. I've made up for it since! My husband Rod had a sailboat for a few years and he races during the winter. I went along for the warm, summer cruises and worked on my books when not helping with sails and steering.

With a foot on both sides of the Atlantic I feel that I can draw what I need from either well of information. In nearly all the places I have lived since my marriage I have been a "stranger" either by birth or language. This creates a new mindset and way of observing life. It gives me a wealth of experience to draw on, enriching my own life as well as my writing.

You can perhaps imagine that nomads like us find it very hard to settle for long. Since we had reached the edge of the North American continent, Rod and I set off for new adventures. From September 2001 until March 2002, we volunteered in an educational organization in Kenya. This organization is called the Canadian Harambee Education Society or CHES for short. This was truly a life changing experience. We lived in a rural town in Western Province about sixty kilometers from Lake Victoria and the same distance from the Ugandan border.

I was responsible for administering scholarship funds for bright, needy girls to go to high school. All schools in Kenya are fee paying and the economy is such that fewer and fewer parents can afford the costs. If any child is able to attend school it is likely to be a boy. Don't misunderstand me, the plight of boys is desperate too. But there are so many demands, that CHES limits itself to girls.

I and another agent had to liaise with the schools, select girls for scholarship for the coming year, deal with their heartrending problems and pay their fees. The plight of girls and women in such countries is far from easy. They contend with polygamous families, early marriage for the bride price, backbreaking labour in the fields and the scourge of disease and lack of good medical treatment. Yet they have a vibrant faith and optimism that drives them to persevere against seemingly impossible odds. Please believe me when I say that few North American students would have the courage and determination to stay in school faced with the obstacles some of our girls contend with. We gave a scholarship to two girls who had been forced to work as maids to earn their primary school fees, and had no way to continue their education. There were girls whose fees had been paid by poorly remunerated primary school teachers and who were brought to us by one of the teaching staff. We helped orphaned girls who lived with a frail and aging grandmother and who dug in other people's fields to earn less than a dollar a day for food.

Needless to say, the poor transportation, the crumbling infrastructure, the prevalent disease and abject poverty gave us a new appreciation for all the blessings we take for granted in the west.

We have been invited to return to Kenya to work in the schools of the local Anglican diocese and we are seriously considering this possibility for next year. I have a travelogue of my Kenyan experience with pictures at my website and invite you to take a look. I plan to weave these short pieces together with other memories into a book

Pat with your busy lifestyle, how do you find the time
To write while traveling to such exotic places?

Like so many of us, I write when I can. Even if my fingers aren't on the keys, I'm constantly plotting, turning over ideas. I must also give some credit to my wonderful critique group. If I want their feedback (and believe me, I want it) I have to produce. I am fortunate, too, in being able to concentrate very hard when I have something to do. When you work in a large school and are juggling many balls in the air at the same time, deadlines have to be met and problems dealt with. I think I learned then to not let myself be distracted by what was going on around me.

One of the biggest questions going
Around these days is why did you choose e-publishing

When computers began to appear in schools, I was an enthusiastic participant. From the very beginning I could see the wonderful advantages of the software. And then came the
internet! What a revelation! When I first began writing seriously, in the early nineties, print was the only option and I tried very hard to break in. It soon became very apparent that I was coloring outside the lines, so to speak, for the main publishing houses. For example, my time travel "Journey's End" moves from the present, to the past, to the future. The big houses found this disconcerting, although they were always complimentary about the writing and characterization. Since "Journey's End" has been e published, it's been selling well. There have been lots more compliments, and even four stars from Romantic Times. So readers like it!
In epublishing I was able to find people who loved my writing and my stories, were willing to offer support and encouragement by the bucketful. I also love the fact that I don't have to write the same book over and over. I can move from contemporary to paranormal to suspense as I wish. Of course, the royalties are nice, but nothing like the remuneration of print authors-yet. I have watched epublishing ride up and down over the past three years or so and, like the stock market, the tendency is always up, slowly but surely. In the not too distant future, more and more people will be won over to ebooks, and my titles will be there, waiting for them.


What's in the future for Pat Crossley.
More writing, that's for sure. I've started my fiction and am planning out my non-fiction book. I'm reading galleys for 'Dancing with the Devil's print edition and the first draft of the German translation of 'A Suitable Father'. By the way, this was my first book and refuses to fade away. It has also been contracted to the UK for a large print edition.
I've redone my website which was so sadly neglected while I was in Africa, and have started a newsletter. I want this to be very reader friendly, so I point the recipients to another author and give them a short 'postcard' story to read. I'm inviting my fellow authors to contribute each month.
I have a website with extracts from my books and review snippets. I also have a newsletter and run a contest every month. Two months ago it was African necklaces, this month an ARC of Journey's End and I think in September I'll offer a CD of the Symphony Splash in Victoria. I have lots of free downloads too, from cookbooks to whole novels. Take a look at http://www.patriciacrossley.com

A Suitable Father (New Concepts:
www.newconceptspublishing.com/asuitablefather.htm (ebook now, mass market
paperback next year)
Journey's End (New Concepts: www.newconceptspublishing.com/journeysend.htm
(ebook now, mass market paperback next year)
Beloved Stranger (NovelBooks)
www.novelbooksinc.com print & e
Dancing with the Devil (AtlanticBridge)
www.atlanticbridge.net ebook now, print in a couple of months.

I hoope you enjoyed getting to know Pat a little better
and hope you'll come back for more of my up close and personal
interviews with authors.

Feel free to visit me at:
<http://ritahestand.romance-central.com>
I've got a few more articles coming out soon and
plenty of romance, so I hope you'll enjoy visiting
with me anytime. Feel free to e-mail me with
comments and if you have a favorite e-author you'd
like interviewed, let me know. I'll be happy to
do it!

This newsletter was brought to you by Rita Hestand
hestand@airmail.net
Ya'll come back now, here!