Welcome Julie Eberhart Painter

Why don't you start with telling us a little about yourself? What genre do you write in and why?

I was raised in Bucks County, PA, a bedroom community to both New York and Philadelphia, and also home to James A. Michener. Regardless of where we went to college, Michener has been a writing inspiration for all of us former Doylestown High School graduates. He was a fine basketball player there before becoming a Pulitzer Prize winning author for Tales of the South Pacific. This inspired me to write Tahitian Destiny, a parallel time travel romance. My husband and I have visited 100 countries, Tahiti four times. For two years, I’ve been writing a travel column for a local senior tabloid.

My long fiction is mainstream mystery romance. On the extreme end, I write flash fiction. My stories can be read on www.bewilderingstories.com. Irony and humor dominate those offerings.

Duplicate bridge, adoption issues, dance and travel are my favorite subjects to include in suspense fiction. In 1972, I began a long career in nursing home and hospice work, first by both volunteering, then acting as a patient advocate, Community Ombudsman for Long Term Care Facilities. My nonfiction e-book, From the Inside Out, a volunteer looks at staying motivated, is considered a best seller.

What comes first for you when you sit down to write a book? Plot or Characters?

I place the issues that drive the plot with my characters; it’s their problem.

Do you "cast" your characters using pictures or actors to help inspire you when you're writing?

No. My characters are either serendipitous originals or are combinations of people I’ve known. Funny thing is I’ve met several of my made-up characters after having written them.

I also combine people. In my latest published novel, Tangled Web, I took my own professor of art and gave him a German accent. The accent came from someone I’d spoken with years before. I refined it with some DPs’ accents (Displaced Persons), whom I’d met in the 50s at an estate in New Jersey. They were working as household help.

How long does it take you to finish a book from start to finish?

It depends. I can write a novel in three months, but polishing it can take years. Guess I’m a perfectionist.

How much does reader reaction mean to you as an author? Do you read your own reviews?

I care a lot about how my work is received and take the reviews as guides to better writing. But like all of us, I love to hear someone say, “This was really good.”  Or “I loved your character…”

What are you working on now?

I have a book that’s truly under construction, or reconstruction. I’ve been putting together a series called The Three Penny Mysteries. The first and second are now combined into The Kill Fee. The third is a pseudo mystery about a group of hospice employees who get tangled up with a psychic. That one is called Medium Rare.

What books are currently on your nightstand?

I’ve just finished Scott Turow’s newest, Innocent, Lit by Mary Karr and The Help by Kathryn Stockett I have three Harlan Coben mysteries waiting in paperback, and am almost finished with Jonathan Franzen’s new book, Freedom. Despite the cost of the ebook, I wish I’d loaded it on my Kindle. It weighs about four pounds in hardback.

Where did you get the idea for your latest book?

I did an adoption search a few years ago and was amazed to find out that my birth mother might have been raped. I felt tainted and was concerned for my children and the genes that they carry.

My adoption was finalized when I was 18 months old, a year after my parents applied. I had been afraid to look for my mother because I didn’t want to disturb her life. But as my children grew older, I realized that they were part of that same lost legacy.  My unpublished memoir is full of the search story along with the unabridged original of the “Non identifying information.” I used that document in Tangled Web as a guide to the kind of life my birth mother might have pursued.

Everything was a secret in those days so she could have simply returned to her parents’ home and become an old maid. I’m too feisty for that, and I think she would have been, too. So I gave her a life as I hoped she would have lived it, using familiar places and interests that I could expand on. Her German professor was my wonderful professor who told me: “Not you should tell me you know nothingk. You are forty million years old, ja.”

If someone hasn't read any of your work, what book would you recommend that they start with and why?

That is a difficult question to answer. For each reader the book recommendation would be different. For an adoptee, my two most recent books, Mortal Coil and Tangled Web would be ideal. For the scandal lover any one of them would be interesting. There is scandal in all six of my novels, including American Castles, which is based on the true story of senior citizens trying to save their historic hotel (fighting City Hall) from the clutches of local exploiters.

What are three of your favorite paranormal movies/authors and why?

I loved Ghost.  I believe in ESP and angels and demons, but for me Ghost was “the one.”

Care to tell us about your latest release/coming soon? What inspired it?

My latest release, Tangled Web, is here in both e-book and paperback.

In Tangled Web the reader follows Catherine, well pictured on the cover art. It’s a story of redemption that takes place between 1933 and 1951. 

Anything you are working on you would like to mention?

I have “sold off” most of my memoir as individual stories, hoping to connect with other adoptees, only children and country girls. My flash fiction is anecdotal, some true and some based on possibilities. I’m always writing. “The Doozy” won an award at www.bewilderingstories.com

If you got to meet one paranormal creature with no safeguards. What would you choose and why?

Lestat. He’s interesting and I’d have a million questions. But if I really could contact Patrick Swayze in that great beyond, just one dance would do it.  He made that movie. In life and death, he was the picture of grace.

Julie’s articles, stories and blogs can be found on the following Web sites.

http://www.champagnebooks.com/

http://www.authorsden.com/

http://www.bewilderingstories.com/

http://www.the-authors-inn.com/

http://www.books-jepainter.com

http://www.bookbuzzr.com/

http://www.goodreads.com/

http://www.cage-den.com/

www.visitouramerica.com/

http://thewritersvineyard.com/