Spotlight Profile
June 2002
When diagnosed with Synovial Cell Sarcoma, a rare bone cancer that attacks the joints, and given only a ten percent chance of survival, Deb underwent two surgeries, radiation therapy and a long emotional recovery. During that time, this gutsy lady licked cancer, re-evaluated her life and goals and realigned her priorities. One of those goals was becoming a published writer.
Let's welcome Deb Baker to the Spotlight.
IC
What other changes did you make to your life after surviving cancer?
Deb
I began to take risks to realize my goals. My husband and major supporter, Jim, and I moved our family, Adam (26), Jim (13) and Ana (12) from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a country home in the northern Kettle Moraine area. I returned to college and earned a degree in English. I also began training Alaskan Huskies and am active on the Wisconsin sprint racing circuit. It's a very family orientated sport. My children race and my husband helps with the training. My daughter, Ana, is the International Sled Dog Association Bronze medalist in the two-dog class for 2002 and I finished in the top third of the Pro Class this year.
IC
What is a Kettle Moraine area?
Deb
Twenty-five thousand years ago, the last wave of the Ice Age glaciers moved through eastern Wisconsin. Kettles are depressions or craters caused by the melting ice and moraines are lines of hills or ridges made up of glacial sediment. My home is on a wooded ridge in the area known as the Northern Kettle Moraines.
IC
How long have you been writing?
Deb
I've been writing for six years. It was during a creative writing course that I became passionate about writing fiction. After the first course, I took every creative writing course the university offered. I've been writing ever since.
IC
What is your typical day like?
Deb
I'm a morning person so I write after the kids go to school from eight until eleven or twelve. This is a new schedule I've committed to and it's working out, so far. Being able to concentrate on writing for extended periods of time is very challenging for me.
Before my children come home at three o'clock and my other life as a mother begins, I take care of our animals. We have two border collies, two cats and our ten Alaskan Husky sled dogs. Training the dogs and caring for them requires a lot of time and dedication.
I also work part-time at a small library, the perfect job for me. I'm the first one to see all the new releases and every summer I have the opportunity to organize a book club for young adults.
IC
Do you write in any genre' other than mystery?
Deb
Because I was an English major, my first stories were literary fiction. Two of my short stories have been published in literary journals - The New Boy and the Pig Farmer by Passages North and Mountain Climbing by a Canadian journal called Room of One's Own. I've recently completed an adventure story for middle schoolers called White Wolf and the Cave of Death, which I entered in Hyperion's New Voices, New Worlds First Novel Contest.
IC
What made you want to write mysteries?
Deb
I'm a very eclectic reader -- everything from literary to science fiction. But my favorite genre has always been mystery and the experts always say, write what you know. I write mysteries because I love the genre. My setting is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where I was born and raised, and where I have eighty wonderful wooded acres to escape to if I need to get way.
IC
How long had you been writing before you entered Malice?
Deb
It took me six weeks to write Murder Passes the Buck. Of course, at the time I thought I had a polished manuscript. I sent it to Chris Roerden for editing, then spent another six weeks revising it before entering it in Malice Domestic. Being a runner up for Malice in 2001, was all the inspiration I needed to carry on. After that, I sent query letters to ten agents and within three weeks I had an agent.
This is it! I thought, you're going to make it! Four months later I had five rejections from the major publishing houses and was dropped by my agent. But I didn't want to throw the manuscript in a drawer. I had come close enough with it to place in Malice and an agent had enough faith in it to take me on. And I had feedback from the publishers who rejected it. I'm in the final stages of rewriting it (again), and we'll see. I think it's going to make it this round. I also have three chapters of the second in the series completed.
IC
Chris Roerden is a free lance editor and owner of Edit It. What made you consider sending your book to an editor?
Deb
I didn't have confidence in my ability to critique my own work and didn't want to send it out without knowing it was the best it could be. I'd met Chris when she taught a course on editing and was impressed.
IC
Would you use an editing service again?
Deb
Chris gave me much needed encouragement along with her great editing skills. She specializes in editing mysteries so she knows the market and all the nuances of writing in the mystery genre. There were a lot of things I missed in my final draft. She asked me who found the body and I realized I didn't have anybody discovering the murder victim! A significant oversight. There were things she recommended that I ignored only to realize after so many rejections that she was right. She thought I needed a "ticking clock" to add tension to the plot. At the time I couldn't think of one, but after enough rejections, I've finally worked it in and it's a much better book.
IC
You stated that you're a morning person and writer from about eight to twelve. Do you try for a certain page count each day?
Deb
That's too much pressure for me. Some days I write more than others. Other days I revise my outline or reread and fine tune. I know some writers start their story and never look back until they are finished. I can't do that. I tend to underwrite rather than overwrite so I go back and fill in the scenes that need more description or action.
IC
Would you care to share any techniques you use when you begin to write a book?
Deb
At first, it was kind of by-the-seat-of-my-pants. I'd start writing and hope the story went in a straight line. By the middle of the book, things weren't very clear anymore and I tended to get bogged down in confusion. Now, I write at least a one page outline listing what happens in the beginning, the middle, and the end, and also laying out pivot points. No more flying blind. However, I stay flexible. If something unforeseen happens, I evaluate it and decide whether I can get to where I'm going on that path. The outline also forces me to do most of the planning up front so I can keep writing once I start.
IC
Which part of writing is the most difficult for you? The initial idea? Plotting? Characterization? Setting? Rewriting?
Deb
Plotting is difficult for me. I usually know the beginning and the end before I start writing, but getting there isn't always easy. The most difficult is rewriting. Every time I think I am FINALLY done with a manuscript and it can't possibly be improved on, I realize I'm just between rewrites. And the only way I realize that is by putting it through an editorial process.
IC
How do you get in the mood to write every day?
Deb
When I began writing I had to be in the "mood" to write. I could no more sit down at a computer in an uninspired mood and make sentences on the page than I could have performed flying leaps along the wires on a telephone pole. As a consequence, very little was written. I guess I'm maturing as a writer because my mood doesn't factor into the equation. I write every morning, regardless. One trick, which has helped tremendously, is that I never leave the computer with my character backed into a corner or having used the last of my ideas. I work through the tough spots and end the day with the first paragraph or sentence started in a new scene.
IC
How do you find your ideas?
Deb
My ideas come from the smallest images implanted in my mind. It's a mystery to me how they evolve into concrete form. When I read All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren the image of the black Cadillac streaking down the country road was a visual image I wanted to use. My short story, Mountain Climbing, which was published by Room of One's Own, begins with a black limo climbing a winding hill flanked by cherry trees. So, I start with an image and it grows from there.
IC
Do you belong to a critique group?
Deb
When I graduated from college, I didn't think I could survive without a critique group. I was used to large groups of writers supplying me with feedback. I still lack the confidence and skill to objectively critique my own work. Chris Roerden has been a source of encouragement and has done a wonderful job of editing my finished work, but I would like to have input throughout the writing process, someone to try out ideas on. I haven't had an opportunity to join a group.
IC
You've recently finished a young adult book. Do you intend to keep writing in two genre's?
Deb
I wrote the YA, White Wolf, because I had a story idea in my head and it refused to be ignored. I think it's true - if you have an idea for an extended period of time, it needs to be written. It was a more painful writing process than Murder Passes the Buck and one I wouldn't want to repeat soon. I also have an idea for a mainstream story I hope to write one day. However, I think it's very hard to keep up with current trends in more than one genre and I love writing cozies.
IC
What made writing a young adult book more painful?
Deb
When I wrote my cozy the protagonist, Gertie Johnson, helped me write the story. She didn't exactly tell me what was going to happen next, but her personality was so real to me that at times I heard her speaking -- while I was driving, in the shower.... She'd pop up and start rattling away while I rushed to get it down on paper. Russell, the boy in my young adult book, never helped me out like that. His character remained flat. Maybe young characters don't have the same dimensions as adults, or maybe I was just very lucky with Gertie.
IC
Have you started a sequel to Murder Passes the Buck?
Deb
Yes, I've written the first three chapters of Murder Grins and Bears It. It's another Gertie Johnson mystery. Murder Talks Turkey is a glimmer on the horizon.
IC
Tell us something about the books you've written.
Deb
White Wolf and the Cave of Death is the story of a twelve-year-old Potawatomi Indian who has lost his connection with his Indian heritage. When he is abducted by two sinister kidnappers in a case of mistaken identity and manages to escape, he is forced to confront a natural world he doesn't understand and must retrace the path of his ancestors. As the parallel story of his great-great-great grandmother unfolds, he is running for his life, and the lives of three other kidnaped kids trapped in the Cave of Death.
I wrote White Wolf for my son who is a reluctant reader.
Murder Passes the Buck begins on opening day of deer hunting season in Stonely, Michigan. At the crack of dawn, Chester Lampi takes a bullet right between the eyes while holed up in his hunting blind waiting for Big Buck, the legendary eighteen-pointer. Everyone thinks a stray bullet killed Chester except Gertie Johnson, the sixty-six year old mother of the local sheriff. Blaze, named after the horse Gertie never had, is more focused on retiring than sheriffing, so Gertie sets out to bag more than Big Buck. With the help of Cora Mae, her man-hungry Wonderbra-equipped best friend, and her visiting grandson, Little Donny, Gertie fends off attempts by family and foe to stop her investigation. She gets behind the steering wheel of her deceased husband's pickup truck for the first time in her life and stays hot on the trail. Gertie bends the rules, tells outrageous fibs to get her way, and creates havoc in what was once a quiet backwoods community.
IC
Do you have any words of advice?
Deb
If you want something bad enough, you have to be willing to pay the price to get it. To continue to write, you need to have the willingness to change what isn't working, skin as thick as a snapping turtle's shell, and the tenacity to never let go of the dream. The only one who can stop you from realizing that dream, is you.
It's so easy to fall into the trap of measuring your success by the goals you haven't reached yet. If I'm unpublished, success is publication. If I'm published, success is selling enough books to hit the N.Y. Times Best Sellers List, etc. etc. I've learned to find success in tiny places. Success, for me, is in daily accomplishments - a tough scene worked through, a query letter sent, a "good" rejection, the indescribable feeling I have when I turn the computer off and am several pages deeper into my story.
IC
Thank you Deb for allowing us to get to know you better.
This interview was conducted during the month of May 2002 for SinC-IC
by Ellen Westphal.
E-mail Deb Baker
E-mail Ellen Westphal
Read an earlier Spotlight Profile
