Episode 13: Heather Weidner

Destination Mystery

Debut author Heather Weidner melds together the lighthearted fun of a cozy mystery with the action and juicy cases that come with the territory when you're a private eye in her first novel, Secret Lives and Private Eyes. Heather has been steeped in mystery all her life: she's a policeman's daughter (she mentions how she donated crayons to the SWAT team) and she's currently the president of the Central Virginia chapter of Sisters in Crime. Plus she has a kickass Pinterest board! Too much fun. She also gives a big shout-out to several writers who helped her along the way: Mary Miley, Mary Burton, Teresa Inge, Lyndee Walker (LyndeeWalker.com) and Maggie King (MaggieKing.com). And of course, The Poe House. As always, if you'd rather read than listen, the transcript is below. Enjoy! Transcript for Interview with Heather Weidner Laura Brennan: My guest today is a debut author Heather Weidner. Her mystery, Secret Lives and Private Eyes features PI Delanie Fitzgerald, who is thrilled to take on an assignment that doesn’t involve straying husbands. She’s less thrilled when it turns into a high-profile murder case. Heather is also a short-story writer and the president of the Central Virginia chapter of Sisters in Crime. Heather, thank you for joining me. Heather Weidner: Thank you so much for having me Laura. LB: Congratulations on your debut novel. HW: Thank you! It's been a long time coming. LB: Well now, you are a short story writer too. That's a very different genre. HW: It is, it's very contained and you're limited in the number of characters that you can have, and the subplots. So I like writing both. I get to experiment with different characters and different styles. But in a novel setting you have many more characters and plot lines that cross and zigzag and sometimes look back on themselves. LB: Now, Delanie, how did you come up with that particular character? HW: I am part of Sisters in Crime in Central Virginia and we have a lot of speakers that come to talk to us. And we had a female private eye and I had just started my story and I thought, wow, this would be a great opportunity. I wanted a female sleuth, I wanted someone that was strong and that was willing to take some chances, take some risks and have some fun. So, it would give her some freedom -- she's not really law enforcement so she can poke around and things and get herself into some situations, sometimes that she probably shouldn't, but... LB: Yes, Delanie does have a knack for getting herself into things. HW: Sometimes it's humorous and sometimes it's dangerous. She's sort of my alter ego, except she gets into way more trouble than I do. LB: One of the nice things about the book is that it's not your typical lone wolf PI with no ties to the community. She's very tied. HW: Right. She grew up in Central Virginia. Her father was a police officer, her parents are deceased. She has two older brothers who like to be very protective and don't like her job, they don't like what she does so they're constantly giving her feedback about get a real job, stop doing this. She has a partner that she's known since college but he has an alter ego as an ethical computer hacker, so she tries not to ask too many questions about where his information comes from. And they have a sidekick that was in the office, which is Duncan's dog -- her assistant, her helper -- and he has an English bulldog named Margaret. LB: It's just an interesting mix of genres because the PI novel tends to be sort of a very lonely place for your protagonist. And more traditional mysteries or even in the cozy world, it tends to be more a more connected world. Did you deliberately mixed genres? HW: I'd like to take credit for it but I think it just happened naturally. I tend to read a lot of cozies, so I tend toward that side. I've loved the British tradition but I also like the hard-boiled, American detective fiction of the 1920s and '30s. So I think there's a little bit of all of that.