Ask the Author: Amber Foxx
Answered Questions (13)
Amber Foxx
The scratching at the window wouldn't stop, so she opened it to let the cat in. What came in wasn't the cat.
This isn't a story, is it? It's a beginning that popped into my head with this prompt. This was a fun experiment. I could use the idea of a two-sentence story to come up with opening lines for books or chapters.
This isn't a story, is it? It's a beginning that popped into my head with this prompt. This was a fun experiment. I could use the idea of a two-sentence story to come up with opening lines for books or chapters.
Amber Foxx
I would slip into M.L. Eaton's Mysterious Marsh Series, set in the Romney Marsh area of England in the 1970s and in time-slip travels to the past in this same evocative setting. I'd get to be very good friends with Hazel, the protagonist, so I could not only enjoy this lovely English village but get pulled back into history with her as well. I love mystery and history, so what could be better?
Amber Foxx
Situations in my life have turned out to make great instigating events for mysteries, rather than wholeplots. Discovering a psychic ability is the instigating event in my Mae Martin series. I started dreaming the future and having accurate premonitions when I was twelve years old. I told my father and he was very accepting of it, explaining that his grandfather had the same gift. He seemed pleased that I’d inherited it. (Other people have been more skeptical, of course.) In The Calling, my protagonist first experiences her psychic ability when she’s thirteen, and her mother is far less understanding than my father was, warning Mae that “the Sight” is a wicked and dangerous thing that runs in the family and cautioning her not to use it.
A number of years ago, I met a woman at a neighbor’s dinner party who could hold an object of yours and go into a trance to answer a question for you. Rather than viewing the future, she could have a vision of something from your past, or of something or someone connected to you in the present, seeing at distance. This was more detective-like for a mystery, so I gave my protagonist a variation on this ability rather than one like my own.
In the fifth book in my series, Ghost Sickness, I introduced a twelve-year-old Apache boy, Ezra Yahnaki, who has the gift of dreaming the future. His dreams add layers to the mystery. Like mine, his dreams can be literal, an exact representation of something that will happen the next day, or symbolic but detailed previews of something in the near the future. In that book and the one in progress, I use the interaction of these two characters’ different psychic abilities along with some logical problem-solving and sleuthing to work through the mysteries—which are never murders. I suppose that’s another way my life shows up in my books. I’ve never encountered a murder, but I’ve run into people with layers of secrets. Mystery doesn’t have to be a violent crime.
A number of years ago, I met a woman at a neighbor’s dinner party who could hold an object of yours and go into a trance to answer a question for you. Rather than viewing the future, she could have a vision of something from your past, or of something or someone connected to you in the present, seeing at distance. This was more detective-like for a mystery, so I gave my protagonist a variation on this ability rather than one like my own.
In the fifth book in my series, Ghost Sickness, I introduced a twelve-year-old Apache boy, Ezra Yahnaki, who has the gift of dreaming the future. His dreams add layers to the mystery. Like mine, his dreams can be literal, an exact representation of something that will happen the next day, or symbolic but detailed previews of something in the near the future. In that book and the one in progress, I use the interaction of these two characters’ different psychic abilities along with some logical problem-solving and sleuthing to work through the mysteries—which are never murders. I suppose that’s another way my life shows up in my books. I’ve never encountered a murder, but I’ve run into people with layers of secrets. Mystery doesn’t have to be a violent crime.
Amber Foxx
It’s hard to pick just one. My favorite couples appear in two very different mystery series, but I enjoy reading about their relationships for similar reasons. The couples are Jim Chee and Bernadette (Bernie) Manuelito in Tony and Anne Hillerman’s Navajo Mysteries, and Mma Ramotswe and Mr. JLB Matekoni in the Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency series. These are couples who are friends as well as lovers, well-matched in values and culture. They don’t get together through tumultuous whirlwind romances, but by getting to know each other over time. Although they sometimes disagree, they support and understand each other and see each other through hard times. In the early Tony Hillerman books, Jim Chee goes through some passionate romances of the opposites-attract type before he realizes that Bernie is the one for him. Their love is intense, but more believable to me than the way love is portrayed in romance novels. I’ve admired how Anne Hillerman writes this healthy marriage and keeps the scenes strong. (It’s easier to get material out of a conflicted and unhealthy relationship than a good one.) And Alexander McCall Smith also gets some solid stories from his protagonist’s relationship. Mma Ramotswe and Mr. JLB Matekoni are extraordinarily considerate of each other’s feelings and sometimes the humor and conflict come from their kindness.
I hope the next question is about favorite friendship pairs in fiction. I’ve got two of those, too.
I hope the next question is about favorite friendship pairs in fiction. I’ve got two of those, too.
Amber Foxx
I do (along with nonfiction and literary fiction). My books are so far off the beaten track in my genre, I almost feel as though I'm reading in a different genre when I read other mysteries. They don't influence my writing except for making me notice technical things that can help me. I observe how well certain authors handle transitions between scenes, or how awkwardly obvious some of their plotting can be. More often, I notice the good things.
Amber Foxx
I get ideas from so many sources--news articles, people watching, conversations, past experiences, the ongoing progression of my characters' lives, even scenes cut from previous books--I'm never short of inspiration in that sense. I wouldn't say I need to feel inspired in an energetic or emotional sense in order to write, though. Inspire can also mean inhale. Writing is like breathing. I do it, regardless of mood or any sense of the touch of the muse. I figure if I show up, the muse will also.
Amber Foxx
My most recent publication isn't full a length book; it's the free short story The Outlaw Women. The idea came from two places.
I wanted to offer readers a free introduction to my series with short story, but I was at a loss for an idea. The Calling is so clearly the beginning of Mae’s journey as a psychic and healer, I thought nothing could come before it, and yet, if I set a story between books, it would be either be a spoiler, or confusing. I asked my critique group members for suggestions and they independently came up with exact same idea—a short story set during Mae Martin’s childhood, featuring the grandmother whose special gifts she inherits. As soon as I realized I was going to wrote about Rhoda-Sue Outlaw Jackson, I knew the story. It had been on my back burner a long time, from another source altogether.
When James D. Doss—one of my favorite authors—died I wished he’d written something that wrapped up the relationship between Daisy Perika, the elderly Ute shaman, and the young woman she’d been training, Sarah Frank. The relationship between Charlie Moon and Sarah reaches a satisfying ending in the final book in the series, but not the Sarah-as-shaman’s heir story. As both fan and writer, I kept imagining what he might have done with that story line. That led me to write about the folk healer Rhoda-Sue’s last days, and her concern for passing on her gift. The story isn’t a mystery, but it is mysterious.
I wanted to offer readers a free introduction to my series with short story, but I was at a loss for an idea. The Calling is so clearly the beginning of Mae’s journey as a psychic and healer, I thought nothing could come before it, and yet, if I set a story between books, it would be either be a spoiler, or confusing. I asked my critique group members for suggestions and they independently came up with exact same idea—a short story set during Mae Martin’s childhood, featuring the grandmother whose special gifts she inherits. As soon as I realized I was going to wrote about Rhoda-Sue Outlaw Jackson, I knew the story. It had been on my back burner a long time, from another source altogether.
When James D. Doss—one of my favorite authors—died I wished he’d written something that wrapped up the relationship between Daisy Perika, the elderly Ute shaman, and the young woman she’d been training, Sarah Frank. The relationship between Charlie Moon and Sarah reaches a satisfying ending in the final book in the series, but not the Sarah-as-shaman’s heir story. As both fan and writer, I kept imagining what he might have done with that story line. That led me to write about the folk healer Rhoda-Sue’s last days, and her concern for passing on her gift. The story isn’t a mystery, but it is mysterious.
Amber Foxx
Ready for a really long answer? This topic gave me food for thought, so I really got going with it. Actually, I feel as if I’m always both in and out of the mystery genre. I’m a genre nonconformist. My series not only blends genres within books, but shifts genre to some extent as it moves along.
My decision to write this way came after I tried to write about crime, death, and violence and realized I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t going to be a happy writer, and my protagonist was going to be damaged by repeated exposure to things like that. I read murder mysteries but that’s a different level of involvement than creating them. There are more ways in which life presents mystery than murder, and some periods of life are more romantic, other more suspenseful, others full of family difficulties and personal growth, and there’s often something going on that we don’t understand—a mystery, but if we’re lucky, not a murder. Human behavior is often bewildering. And those phenomena we can’t explain—shared thoughts, psychic experiences—those are their own kind of mystery. My protagonist is psychic.
In The Outlaw Women , the free short story (available on Goodreads and all e-book retailers) that’s a prequel the series, there’s precognition and a psychic connection, but no mystery to solve. The story is classified as literary fiction and contemporary fiction, which may be a good way to find readers who enjoy what I write.
The Calling has been reviewed as literary fiction, or realistic fiction with paranormal elements, and as mystery in the sense of finding out secrets, but not a whodunit. All true. I put a tag line on my series, No Murder, Just Mystery, so readers won’t be waiting for the body, the shot, the explosion, the kidnapping, the more violent elements of a standard mystery. In The Calling the only things that blow up are people’s relationships and hopes and plans—and ideas of about the nature of reality. Shaman’s Blues gets closer to a conventional mystery. There are missing people, and a puzzling death in the past, but still no violence. The real mystery in this book is a person, in a twist on romance that turns most of the elements of that genre upside down. The third book, Snake Face, coming out in the fall, gets close to being a suspense novel.
Why all these genre shifts? Different things are asked of Mae Martin as she develops as a person, and as a psychic and healer. In the fourth book, Soul Loss, now in progress, the mystery surrounds events happening to other healers and psychics, and Mae’s role is that of a professional in those fields, asked to help in a realm only such a person can access. The fifth book (working title, Haunted) is looking like it will have a streak of horror in it (spiritual and psychological, not gory) when woman studying a healing tradition find herself entangled in its shadow side. The sixth book—no working title yet and only a few chapters written—revolves around a mystery in art authentication, art theft, and a stolen parrot. Detective work, but no murder. Rolling through genre according the pattern of my protagonist’s development, I still see a foundation of mystery under it all. Sometimes the question is, “who are you, really?” or what someone has done, rather than “whodunit,” and when Mae is finding out who did something, it’s not who killed someone. No murder, just mystery.
As for writing entirely in another genre, I've got a couple of attempts on the back burner, a horror short story and a fantasy novella. I wouldn't say it was technically harder in terms of plot, but it's been harder to make the revision and publication of these a priority.
My decision to write this way came after I tried to write about crime, death, and violence and realized I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t going to be a happy writer, and my protagonist was going to be damaged by repeated exposure to things like that. I read murder mysteries but that’s a different level of involvement than creating them. There are more ways in which life presents mystery than murder, and some periods of life are more romantic, other more suspenseful, others full of family difficulties and personal growth, and there’s often something going on that we don’t understand—a mystery, but if we’re lucky, not a murder. Human behavior is often bewildering. And those phenomena we can’t explain—shared thoughts, psychic experiences—those are their own kind of mystery. My protagonist is psychic.
In The Outlaw Women , the free short story (available on Goodreads and all e-book retailers) that’s a prequel the series, there’s precognition and a psychic connection, but no mystery to solve. The story is classified as literary fiction and contemporary fiction, which may be a good way to find readers who enjoy what I write.
The Calling has been reviewed as literary fiction, or realistic fiction with paranormal elements, and as mystery in the sense of finding out secrets, but not a whodunit. All true. I put a tag line on my series, No Murder, Just Mystery, so readers won’t be waiting for the body, the shot, the explosion, the kidnapping, the more violent elements of a standard mystery. In The Calling the only things that blow up are people’s relationships and hopes and plans—and ideas of about the nature of reality. Shaman’s Blues gets closer to a conventional mystery. There are missing people, and a puzzling death in the past, but still no violence. The real mystery in this book is a person, in a twist on romance that turns most of the elements of that genre upside down. The third book, Snake Face, coming out in the fall, gets close to being a suspense novel.
Why all these genre shifts? Different things are asked of Mae Martin as she develops as a person, and as a psychic and healer. In the fourth book, Soul Loss, now in progress, the mystery surrounds events happening to other healers and psychics, and Mae’s role is that of a professional in those fields, asked to help in a realm only such a person can access. The fifth book (working title, Haunted) is looking like it will have a streak of horror in it (spiritual and psychological, not gory) when woman studying a healing tradition find herself entangled in its shadow side. The sixth book—no working title yet and only a few chapters written—revolves around a mystery in art authentication, art theft, and a stolen parrot. Detective work, but no murder. Rolling through genre according the pattern of my protagonist’s development, I still see a foundation of mystery under it all. Sometimes the question is, “who are you, really?” or what someone has done, rather than “whodunit,” and when Mae is finding out who did something, it’s not who killed someone. No murder, just mystery.
As for writing entirely in another genre, I've got a couple of attempts on the back burner, a horror short story and a fantasy novella. I wouldn't say it was technically harder in terms of plot, but it's been harder to make the revision and publication of these a priority.
Amber Foxx
My least favorite thing about writing is having dysgraphia. It's like dyslexia on the output side. I have to stop and repair what I produce after every few paragraphs so I'll know what I wrote. Many of my errors defeat spell check, and might confuse me if I didn't correct them right away. On the bright side, though, this process makes me notice other things I could improve--word choices, sentence structure, etc. (And it certainly keeps me from making hot responses in social media.) So, even though it slows me down, all in all it may be making me a better writer.
Amber Foxx
Write every day. Don't wait to be inspired, just write. Describe some tiny detail in your environment as if you'd never seen it before, record an encounter with an interesting or annoying person, tell a story from the point of view of your dishes--anything, as long as you write. Read books on writing. And join a writers' organization for your genre. The best decision I ever made as a writer was to join Sisters in Crime a few years ago while I was still working on the first draft of my first book, (even though my mysteries are not about murder and crime). This group has helped me learn my craft, and through them I've found critique partners, a great editor and a wonderful cover artist. SinC continues to give me access to support and education I couldn't get anywhere else.
Amber Foxx
I'm almost never bored. Everything is material. Being a writer makes me interested in watching people's expressions and mannerisms, and listening to how they choose their words. I'm always picking up small details in my environment that I may need in a book. I once heard a great meditation teacher describe the meditative state as "aware of everything, distracted by nothing." It's good state of mind for a writer.
Amber Foxx
Writer's block? I have to make myself stop writing. My files of ideas and works in progress are so full I wonder if I'll ever know what writer's block is.
Amber Foxx
My newest book, Snake Face--book three in my series, is with the editor right now. I'm working on book four in the Mae Martin series, Soul Loss. It takes place in Santa Fe, among a group of healers and psychics, as Mae faces the most difficult work she's ever taken on in that field. I'm in the revision stage after working with one reader's feedback before sending it to the next.
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