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This is a new part of the blog I’m calling the “Author Spotlight.” Once per month, I’ll be showcasing another lesfic author, introducing you to her (or occasionally his) work and including a short bio and interview. My hope is to introduce you to some authors you might not know of and promote the lesfic genre in general. This is the first of such posts, featuring lesfic mystery author Anne Hagan. Enjoy!
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Anne Hagan is best-selling Amazon author. An East Central Ohio based government employee by day and an author by night, she and her wife live in a tiny town that’s even smaller than the Morelville of her first fiction series Though it’s an ultra-conservative rural community, they’re surrounded there by family, longtime friends and many other wonderful people with open hearts and minds.
Anne and her wife enjoy spending time with Anne’s son and his wife, with their nieces and nephews (and their great-nephews that they’re really still too young to have but, it is what it is) and doing many of the things you’ve read about in her bestselling books or that will be ‘fictitiously’ incorporated into future Morelville Mysteries and Morelville Cozies series books. If you’ve read about a hobby or a sport in one of her books, they probably enjoy doing it themselves or someone very close to them does.
About Anne’s Books
Anne primarily writes mysteries that feature ladies who love ladies. Her principal series is the Morelville mysteries, which is subdivided into a series of strict mysteries and a series of cozies. She has also written a few romance novels, including a short story series called Loving Blue in Red States.
You can get the first Morelville mystery novel, Relic, for free here.
The Spotlight
Why did you choose to write in your particular field or genre? If you write more than one, how do you balance them?
I’ve been a mystery reader since grade school so for more than 40 years, ahem! I gravitated to that naturally. It was wanting to write primarily for a lesbian audience that got me to include a romantic storyline in my Morelville Mysteries series. Romance is, by far, the most popular genre among lesbians. It’s not even close. I was taken to task for books one and two of that series containing only fade to black sex (book 1).
I do read romance…not as much as mystery fiction, but I read it. I decided to try my hand at writing some. It’s actually harder (for me) than writing mysteries but I’m getting the hang of it and my readers seem to like my stories. I won’t be writing ‘straight’, heterosexual romance any time soon though. I read a little of that – a lot less than I read of lesfic romance – but I don’t have any real interest in writing it.
What is the biggest thing that people THINK they know about your subject/genre, that isn’t so?
I’m going to talk about lesfic as a genre here. There are two things. One, many straight men hear the word lesbian or see a bookseller category labeled ‘lesbian’ and they instantly think ‘porn’. It’s not true…at all and we all know that. Conversely, there are lesbians out there who will tell you that it isn’t lesfic if it doesn’t contain sex; the sex is what makes it lesbian. Over the last couple of years, I see that latter stereotype crumbling a bit but lesbians with that mindset are still out there.
Who are some of your favorite authors that you feel were influential in your work? What impact have they had on your writing?
I’m a huge fan of female mystery writers like Patricia Cornwell, Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky and later, of Ellen Hart. I love the strong female characters they write who go out there and do the job and who maybe have some insecurities but they sure don’t take any crap from anybody. They all influenced me to write mysteries and Ellen Hart influenced me to make at least some of what I write lesbian themed to boot.
What projects are you working on at the present?
I’ve always got a Morelville Mystery for my lesfic mystery/romance series on the burner. As I write this, there are nine of those books out and one due out. My plan for those going forward is to do two new books a year.
Ditto the Morelville Cozies. Two books are out, a third is in the works as I write this, and I’ll be adding two books a year to that series. I’d like to do more of those but there’s so much more involved with writing them than with writing the mysteries. They have to be entertaining without including sex, violence, etc. There’s a lot more dialog and ‘wit’ required.
I’ve committed myself to do more short stories, especially romances. I had 15 specific stories planned for 2017 in three different series that were supposed to start releasing in early March. The first story in the first series, Loving Blue in Red States: Sweetwater Texas, didn’t get published until the middle of April so I’m about 45 days behind but I’m enjoying doing that series and the readers seem to like it. I’m working on the 4th book in that, at this writing.
What do your plans for future projects include?
I plan to continue doing the Morelville Mysteries series for a few more years or so but, going forward, I plan on doing only a couple a year. With nine out and one due out at this writing, it’s already a long series. The Morelville Cozies will continue for quite some time yet. I only have two of those out, at this writing, and one due out. My plan is to do a couple of those a year for quite some time so it will be some time before it has as many books as the original series.
I’ve got a lot of short story romance planned for release. There’s the ‘Loving Blue in Red States’ series that started releasing in April of 2017. There will be five of those this year and more in 2018 – until I run out of ‘red states’ to stage stories in. The way things are going, that may be a while. I also have two more short story series planned for other parts of this year (2017). They’ll get five stories apiece or so this year, if I can stay on track. Those two can get new shorts for a long time to come. While we’re talking about romance, I also have a couple of lesfic New Adult (NA) novellas planned. One will be released after Thanksgiving this year. The other, is plotted but not written. I’d planned it for July but, since I’m backed up on mysteries right now, that might move to 2018.
The third Morelville Cozies mystery, The Conjuring Comedienne (due out soon, as I write this in late May of 2017), involves some elements of the paranormal. I hadn’t touched on that before so it was pretty interesting to write. I’m spinning a part of that story line off into an all new series that will get at least three books and maybe more, ‘The Craft College Conjurers’. We’ll see how it does before I commit to doing more than three books. I’m pretty excited about it though. I’ve already got three basic plots templated out in my outlining/templating process. Look for them to start coming out in the last quarter of 2017.
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