The MYSTERIOUS Judith Arnold?

What's this?  USA Today Bestselling, award-winning Judith Arnold doesn't write mysteries.  She writes books about friendship, loss, and the healing power of love. 

She's sold more than ninety novels with more than ten million copies in print worldwide. She's been a multiple finalist for Romance Writers of America's RITA ® Award and the winner of four Reviewer's Choice Awards from RT Book Reviews and the Bean Pot Award from the New England Chapter of Romance Writers of America. Publishers Weekly named her novel LOVE IN BLOOM'S one of the best books of the year, and her novel BAREFOOT IN THE GRASS has appeared on recommended reading lists at hospitals and breast cancer support centers.

Before she turned to fiction writing, Judith was a playwright. Her plays have been staged in California, Connecticut, Washington, D.C. and off-Broadway in New York City, as well as in Calgary, Canada.

But mysteries? 

 Au contraire, GLIAS readers, you heard it hear ... well, pretty darn close to first ... that Judith Arnold writes mysteries.  Introducing Judith Arnold's Still-kicking mystery series, and you get to read all about it!  Please welcome the prolific and talented Judith Arnold.

 

About Dead Ball:

She's got to solve this murder. The soccer team's schedule depends on it.

So, who pulled the trigger of the nail gun that killed construction tycoon Arthur Cavanagh? His widow, who'd sworn to kill him if he ever cheated on her? His hostile teenage son, who felt neglected by his father? His foreman, who'd regularly fought with his boss? The angry environmentalists, protesting his latest development? Or the blond mystery woman who'd been seen with him the night of his death?

Lainie Lovett needs to find the culprit before the bumbling local police charge her with the murder. They're determined to pin it on her after she was caught snooping around the crime scene. All she wanted was information on behalf of the victim's wife, her friend Patty. After all, getting Patty off the suspect list was a friend's duty-not to mention that if Patty were charged, the Colonielles might lose her for an entire season.

Lainie has three passions in life: her nearly-adult children, her job as a fourth grade teacher in the very rich and very historic Massachusetts town of Rockford, and the Colonielles, her team in the Under-Fifty Women's Soccer League.

Before she can call, "Penalty!" Lainie is up to her shin guards in trouble. Charged as an accessory to murder, Lainie is suspended from her job. She needs to clear her name, reclaim her classroom, and figure out whether she's ready to start dating again, especially when the object of her affection-sexy foreman, Bill Slavik-may have set her up to take the fall for Cavanagh's murder.

DONNELL:  Yay!  Judith, welcome back!  Whenever I see how many books you’ve written, I’m tempted to grab the smelling salts and lie down.  You’re obviously disciplined, you run every day, and now you’re writing a mystery series?  Is this a first, have you written mysteries?

JUDITH: Donnell, thanks so much for inviting me back to “Get Lost in a Story!”

 My first mystery was a story I wrote when I was eight years old, called Mystery in Pennsylvania. (Growing up in New York, I considered Pennsylvania quite mysterious.) Mystery in Pennsylvania deals with a woman whose diamond ring goes missing. Her children fly to Pennsylvania to find it. (Airplanes seemed as mysterious to me as Pennsylvania, so I included a long, fanciful chapter about their flight. Not long after writing this masterpiece, I experienced my first plane trip and discovered that airplanes were not mysterious at all, and were in fact rather boring.) Thanks to a few remarkably convenient clues left in their path, the children find their mother’s ring and fly home in triumph.

 As far as books I am actually not embarrassed for people to read, however, Dead Ball is my first official mystery. I’ve written a few romances which include mystery or suspense elements, but they’re still essentially romances. Dead Ball is a mystery with a romantic element.

DONNELL:  I’m a huge fan of soccer.  Do you play?  What sparked the idea for this story?

JUDITH: As an athlete whose enthusiasm and team spirit fail to compensate for my pathetic lack of talent, I didn’t play much soccer growing up. However, I raised two sons who played soccer, and I spent many afternoons of my life standing on the sidelines and cheering. I loved the idea of Lainie Lovett, Dead Ball’s heroine, playing soccer. It helps her stay fit and offers her—a middle-aged widow—a healthy social outlet. Soccer also provides her with some physical skills that wind up keeping her alive when she finds herself on the wrong end of a loaded gun.

 DONNELL:  Naturally, DEAD BALL is set on the East Coast.  Would you say this is your favorite part of the country?  What other areas do you love?

JUDITH: I do love New England, and I’m grateful to have been able to live here for more than thirty years. Rockford, Massachusetts, the setting of Dead Ball, is based on my small, Colonial-era-obsessed town. I’ve traveled around the country, and I can’t say there’s a region I’ve ever visited—East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, Southwest, Hawaii—that I haven’t loved. But I don’t know that I’d want to live anywhere else. New England has everything: ocean beaches, lakes, mountains (folks in Colorado might call them hills, but we call them mountains!), rolling farms and orchards, old-growth forests, cities teeming with vibrant history and cultural riches, and four glorious seasons (although this year, we had perhaps a bit too much winter.)

DONNELL:  I see Lainie has “nearly adult” children.  Now, yours are grown right?  What would you say is the most important thing your children have taught you?  Then turn this.  What’s the most important thing that you’ve taught them?

JUDITH:  The most important thing my sons have taught me is love. Not romantic love but the kind of love so strong and fierce that I would lay down my life for them. The kind of love so solid and all-encompassing that nothing they did could ever diminish my love for them. Before my boys were born, I had never experienced that kind of love. But I have now, thanks to them.

I’d like to think I’ve taught them many things: I’ve taught them to think for themselves, to seek knowledge, to treat respectfully even those with whom they disagree, and to help those less fortunate. I’ve taught them to love music; they are both talented musicians. I’ve taught them to read. I didn’t teach them soccer, though. My husband oversaw all the sports instruction. As I noted above, I’m really good at standing on the sidelines and cheering.

 

DONNELL:   What would you say is the most interesting/unusual thing you’ve ever learned while doing research?

JUDITH: While writing Dead Ball, I had to do a bit of research on nail guns, since a nail gun is the murder weapon in the book. I found some grisly photos of nail gun injuries, and read stories about construction workers accidentally fastening their hands to boards with nail guns. <Shudder!> I viewed X-rays of nail gun injuries—nails shot through people’s feet, legs, arms, and skulls. I learned more than I needed to know about nail guns, but once you start wandering down a research path, it’s hard to stop. As gruesome as my nail gun research was, it was also fascinating. That said, I would be very apprehensive about using a nail gun. Fortunately, writing books doesn’t require anything more dangerous than a computer and an imagination.

DONNELL:  Answer this question.  I’m most comfortable when . . .

JUDITH:  I’m seated in a beach chair under an umbrella with my loved ones nearby and a good book or my e-reader in my hands. My husband and I take a beach vacation every summer, and our sons usually join us for part of it. We all enjoy lounging on the beach in the shade of our umbrella and reading. Utter bliss!

 Judith, now it’s your turn.  Time to ask the reader a question.   

JUDITH ARNOLD WANTS TO KNOW:  Readers, do you like your mysteries dark or light? I enjoy dark, cynical mysteries on occasion, but in general, I prefer mysteries that have humor in them. Somehow, laughter makes it easier for me to tolerate the blood and gore, and I’ve always believed that humor is the best defense against despair. Which do you prefer? Funny mysteries or dark, moody mysteries?

COMMENTERS WLL BE ENTERED TO WIN a digital copy of Dead Ball.

 

 CONTACT LINKS:

http://www.juditharnold.com/

Twitter:  @juditharnold

https://www.facebook.com/JudithArnoldAuthor

 

Get Lost with Bestselling Author Judith Arnold

To get Judith Arnold’s bio, I went to her web page.  Get Lost in a Story Readers, we don’t have a blog long enough to give credit to all this talented author has written.  MIRA, HCI, Harlequin (American, Superromance, Single Title, Temptation).  Let’s just say if Harlequin had a line for it, Ms. Arnold wrote for it (although now that I think about it, I think I’ve got her.  I didn’t see LUNA on the list).  Several of Ms. Arnold’s books have also been reissued as limited editions. 

And, today, I’m particularly excited because she’s teamed with Bell Bridge Books http://bellebooks.com/ with a new release called, GOODBYE TO ALL THAT.   Please welcome the extraordinarily prolific and talented Judith Arnold.

ABOUT GOODBYE TO ALL THAT

What do women want? Belgian chocolates? A trip to Paris? A bed strewn with rose petals and occupied by Johnny Depp? Lovely fantasies, but what women of a certain age really want is to put themselves first. They want a life in which they can hold the remote control, a life in which they can eat whatever they want, whenever they want. A life in which they take care of no one but themselves.

            At least, that’s what Ruth Bendel wants. For forty-two years, she’s been a wife, mother, homemaker and volunteer. Now she wants a room of her own, a place where she can blast the classical music her husband loathes and not have to scrub his beard shavings out of the sink every morning. She finds an apartment, lands a job as a convenience store clerk and announces her departure to her family.

            But how will her loved ones cope without her?  Husband Richard doesn’t know how the steam iron works, let alone how to ask a woman on a date.  If Ruth and Richard are no longer together, who will take care of son Doug’s children when he and his wife fly off for a romantic week in Nevis?  Should daughter Melissa heed her biological clock and have a baby now that she’s discovered, at age thirty-one, that she’s the child of a broken home?  And how can Jill, the overwhelmed middle child trying to hold the family together, host a Thanksgiving dinner and her own daughter Abbie’s bat mitzvah when the entire Bendel clan is falling apart?

~~  AND NOW GET LOST IN A STORY'S FUN QUESTIONS FOR JUDITH ARNOLD ~~

DONNELL:  Judith, welcome:  Your blurb references Paris.  So here’s our first question.  Have you ever been there?  If so, would you go back?  If not, where’s your favorite place to visit?

JUDITH: No, I’ve never been to Paris.  (Isn’t that a line from a song?)  But I’ll get there someday.  My most recent trip abroad was to Barcelona, which I adored.  And there’s a trip to Hawaii waiting for me a few months from now—I’m counting the days.  I’ve been there before and loved it.  Love the Caribbean.  Love Nova Scotia.  Love Italy.  Love Walt Disney World.  Love Cape Cod.   Honestly, I’m thinking about all the places I’ve visited in my life, and I can’t think of any I didn’t like.

DONNELL:  If you’re not writing, where will we find you?

JUDITH:  On the streets of my town, jogging.  I’m pretty compulsive about it.  I run between 7 and 8 miles every morning, even in rain and snow.  Since I wind up spending the rest of the day sitting at my computer, I crave the exercise and the fresh air I get while jogging.  It helps me clear my head and plan the day’s writing.  And it enables me to indulge my sweet tooth without feeling too guilty.

DONNELL:  What’s in your refrigerator right now?

JUDITH:  Stuff to indulge my sweet tooth. <g>  I’m a serious ice-cream junkie.  Fortunately, I also love fruits and vegetables.  And wine.  There’s usually a bottle chilling in there.

DONNELL:   In your new book, GOODBYE TO ALL THAT, your heroine runs away.  Have you ever ran away in your life?

JUDITH: I’ve lit out for the territories a couple of times, as Huck Finn might put it.  When I was nineteen, I lived on a commune in Nova Scotia for a few months.  No electricity, no indoor plumbing (although there was a clear, painfully cold stream nearby for bathing.)  I had a tent, a cooking pit, a typewriter and a lot of paper.  I wrote my first (not very good) novel there.  When I was twenty-three, I moved to rural Northern California for a couple of years.  I was a native New Yorker; my family was all on the East Coast, as was my then-boyfriend/now-husband.  But I had an interesting job offer, so I stuffed everything I owned into my car and drove across the country.  Two years later, I stuffed everything back into the car and drove home again. 

DONNELL:   Do you bowl? 

JUDITH: Very poorly.  In New England, where I live now, candlepin bowling is popular.  This involves short, squat pins and a ball not much bigger than a softball.  I’m as bad at candlepin bowling as at regular bowling, but at least my thumb doesn’t hurt at the end of the evening.

DONNELL:  What was your favorite subject in school?

JUDITH:  I loved English (all those wonderful books to read, all those writing assignments!)  Also music.  Like the heroine of GOODBYE TO ALL THAT, I majored in music in college, and like her, I fell in love with the music of Arcangelo Corelli.

DONNELL:   You’re in a boat in the middle of the ocean.  It’s sprung a leak.  Fortunately your cell phone is operational.  Who do you call for help?

JUDITH: My husband.  He can fix pretty much anything—and he also was a varsity swimmer and a Red-Cross certified lifeguard, so I imagine he could rescue me if he had to.

DONNELL:  How many hats do you own?

JUDITH: Lots, and I hardly ever wear them.  I have a few favorites in my collection: a big, floppy “hippie” hat, a fedora that was used as a prop in a play I wrote in graduate school, a straw sunhat for the beach, a blue-and-white striped engineer hat that we always haul out of the closet when my husband sets up his electric train set.  (If the question is how many metaphorical hats I wear...the answer is also lots.  Mother, wife, daughter, novelist, friend, cook, crossword puzzle addict...)

DONNELL:    Do you listen to music when you’re writing?

JUDITH:  Never.  Too distracting.  I often listen to music before I start writing, to get me in the mood.  But once I’m writing, I need silence.

DONNELL:  Do you read your reviews?

JUDITH:  I try to read only the good ones.  The bad ones are obviously written by crazy people. <g>  Seriously, I’ve developed a pretty thick skin, so I can read bad reviews if I have to.  But I much prefer reading good reviews.  If anyone wants to write a good review of GOODBYE TO ALL THAT, let me know.  I’ll read it, I promise!

DONNELL:  If you could visit with anyone, alive or dead, who would it be, and what might you chat about?

JUDITH:  I would visit my sister.  She died fourteen years ago, and I miss her every day.  Sometimes I talk to her in my mind, but it would be so much nicer if we could actually hug each other.  Whenever I think about her, I picture her in a peaceful, verdant garden, sitting comfortably, smiling her gorgeous smile.  If I could visit her, I’d sit beside her and we’d talk about all the stuff we always talked about when she was alive—our kids, our husbands, our friends, our work, books, recipes, laundry, faith, memories...all the things, big and small, that defined our lives.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN.  THIS IS A QUESTION YOU ASK FOR YOUR FAN AND READERS.

JUDITH:  How about the old desert island question?  If you were stranded on a desert island, what five books would you want to have with you?

Readers, there you have it.  What a challenge.  Can't wait to hear your answers.  Answer the question and/or comment to be entered in a digital giveaway.

Note: Offer void where prohibited. Prizes will be mailed to North America addresses only unless specifically mentioned in the post. Odds of winning vary due to the number of entrants. Winners of drawings are responsible for checking this site in a timely manner. If prizes are not claimed in a timely manner, the author may not have a prize available. Get Lost In A Story cannot be responsible for an author's failure to mail the listed prize. GLIAS does not automatically pass email addresses to guest authors unless the commenter publicly posts their email address.

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