Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Fresh out of high school I took a slew of civil service tests and got a full time entry level job as a secretary with the Department of Mental Health for the State of Michigan. The job was at the Pontiac State Hospital in Pontiac, Michigan. The original name of the institution was the Eastern Michigan Asylum for the Insane upon its opening in 1873. By the time I left the hospital in 1989, the name had been changed to Clinton Valley Center. Around this same time, all other state mental hospitals were undergoing sanitized renaming. I stayed with the hospital for twenty years in various clerical and supervisory positions.
I loved the creepy, moldy, sweaty, spooky ambiance of the whole place. A medieval, sprawling structure of bricks and turrets … cavernous echoing hallways, tunnels which connected buildings to buildings … and even tunnels beneath the tunnels. By the time I left in 1989 to move to Tennessee with my husband due to the furtherance of his career, there were rumors that Clinton Valley Center would be closed and eventually demolished. It finally did close in 1997 and was totally demolished in 2000. I was sad to see it go. There is a subdivision there now. I hope it’s haunted.
In 1989 I moved with my husband to Tennessee and got a job working as a social worker in a local nursing home. I managed to survive the job for five years before I ran screaming from the building with my hair on fire. I enjoyed working with the elderly patients. I couldn’t take the politics of private healthcare. I moved on to various other positions within the field of social work. I retired in 2006 after eight years with the University of Tennessee and under contract with the Tennessee State Department of Human Services. We moved to a retirement/resort community in Middle Tennessee. It is picturesque. I do not join social clubs. So, fairly soon I was reduced to stepping onto the deck every fifteen minutes to look out over the lake. Yup, it was still beautiful. I was bored as all get out.
I volunteered for a while but tired of working for no pay. My creative juices started to flow and I discovered acrylic painting. I got to be quite good at it. The only problem with painting is that fairly soon one starts to run out of family and friends to force one’s artistic talents upon. Canvases began to stack up in closets.
Then, my aunt introduced me to quilting. I got to be quite good at it. I ended up with the same problem I had encountered with the paintings. Soon, family and friends were covered up with quilts.
I requested a laptop as a Christmas present in 2011 and rediscovered my love of creative writing. This creative outlet has proven to be a keeper. Now, my creative masterpieces fit on a little bitty flash drive thingy.
I wrote short stories during high school and my love of writing took a backseat to salaried jobs for more than 42 years. I have a lot of writing to make up for and am finding words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters of stories to be falling out of my head at an alarming pace.
I won first place with “No Wake” in Mystery Times Ten 2013. I signed a contract with Buddhapuss Ink out of New Jersey. Two eBooks followed with “Daredevil” and “Shanghaied”. Each book is promoted as “A Leslie & Belinda Mystery”. A fun, cozy mystery series; Murder She Wrote meets geriatric versions of Laverne & Shirley. Nonsensical and fun mysteries. The primary character, Leslie, sees mysteries everywhere. If one doesn’t exist, she will make one up just so she can run her best friend, Belinda, ragged trying to solve it.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The third Leslie & Belinda Mystery will be published by the summer of 2016. The title of book three is “Rambler”. Rambler was inspired by my own personal history. In 1970. I fell in love with a used 1960-something Ford Falcon. I was not yet eighteen and needed my father’s permission to buy the car. I was working my senior year of high school and had the money for the car and the insurance. My father refused to allow me to buy the car. He refused to accept that his third-born (and puniest) daughter was even capable of having a driver’s license much less owning her own car. Evidently it was okay to work a job but not drive a car.
I lost my father when I was twenty. When I see him in heaven, I’m going to cover him with hugs and kisses. Then, I’m going to punch him in the nose over that Ford Falcon.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I write continuously in my head. When I sit down to type out the words of a story or a book, I am often surprised that the words aren’t already on the page. I can’t keep up with myself.
I will often get up in the night because I need to put words to paper. I can’t sleep until I wring out whatever words and/or chapters that are keeping me from sleep.
Funny story: One night I was up quite late and I started getting very cold in my little study so I went shivering to bed. The next morning I learned that my husband had gotten up and turned down the heat to force me to come to bed. Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky husband.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
My favorite book of all time was The Black Stallion by Walter Farley. Check out my blog at lindabrowning.net. Absolutely adored that book. I also read every girl detective book I could get my hands on as a child; Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden were favorites.
What are you working on now?
I am currently working on another series. I wish to promote the series as “A Cold Case Girl Mystery”. I won second place in Buddhapuss Ink’s Mystery Times 2015. My short story, “Parlor Game”, is getting good reviews. The book series continues the characters I created in Parlor Game…minus that particular ghost.
The short story was inspired by my adolescent pajama party years and our love for messing around with the Ouija Board. Everybody loves a good ghostly tale.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
To be perfectly honest, I am lousy at promoting myself. I’m pathetic. It’s sort of like…”Hi, Want to buy my book? No? Oh, okay, sorry I bothered you.”
I also struggle with social media and the devices which follow everyone around I bought he dumbest Smartphone I could find, and I still can’t figure out the danged thing. I’m working on it.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write what you want to read and enter contests. Experiment with writing in first person, third person, etc. and stick with whatever feels the most natural. I am at my writing best when I write in first person.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Be careful with over describing a character, a room, or a scene. If paragraphs about the color of the sunset or whatever isn’t important to the story, then they are just words. I like to describe just enough for the reader to fill in the picture in their own mind and let them run with it. If I go on and on about the pink roses in the wallpaper, it’s because there is a body behind the wallpaper.
What are you reading now?
The Tenth Justice by Brad Meltzer.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Hopefully the series based on “Parlor Game”. It’s more who-done-it mystery writing than the Leslie & Belinda series. I like writing both series though because I get to employ different sets of writing skills.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
A Webster’s Dictionary and a Thesaurus. A box of pencils would be nice; otherwise, I’ll write on rocks and stuff with whatever I can find.
Author Websites and Profiles
Linda Browning Website
Linda Browning’s Social Media Links
Facebook Profile
Twitter Account
Pinterest Account