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Featured author Jo A. Hiestand is our guest today in N. N. Light's Book Heaven 10th Anniversary Party #author #party #nnlbh #giveaway

  • Writer: N. N. Light
    N. N. Light
  • Mar 3
  • 4 min read


N. N. Light’s Book Heaven is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Isn’t that wonderful? I’d like to introduce prolific mystery author Jo A. Hiestand.

 

Question 1: Where were you ten years ago in relation to your author/writer career? If you weren’t writing, what were you doing?

 

The first three novels in my McLaren Mystery series were published in 2015 by my current publisher.  Cold Revenge, Last Seen, and Shadow in the Smoke had come out several years prior to this but that company went out of business. Talk about depression and panic on my part!  Was this the end of McLaren, of my writing? What could I do? Luckily, that anxiety didn’t last long.  I was fortunate that The Wild Rose Press took me on.  Now it was just a question of getting those previously published books polished a bit and printed, so there wasn’t a lot of work for me to do for that. But while that was going on that year, I also was knee-deep in writing another book in the series, An Unfolding Trap.  It was an exciting 2015!

 

Question 2: Looking back on the past ten years, how has your writing grown?

 

My writing has become more succinct both in actual words and in developing the story idea.  I’m also better at the actual plotting, I think.  Plus, I’ve branched out, in that I now write three mystery series. Two are set in Derbyshire, England (The McLaren Mysteries and The Peak District Mysteries) and the third is set in mid-Missouri (The Cookies & Kilts cozy series).  I don’t know if you would categorize this as writing, but since many of my McLaren mysteries are out as audiobooks, I now write with those voices and the narrator’s interpretation of the characters in my head.  As I write I find myself hearing the characters speak the dialogue I’ve just typed.  They’ve also become very real to me, and I can see them in the scenes I’ve given them.  I’m not sure if this helps me or not, but I am more careful with their conversations and realize they would or wouldn’t say what I’m trying to put into their mouths!

 

Question 3: What are you doing now? How many books have you published?

 

I’m still writing the McLaren series and the Cookies & Kilts series. The co-author of the Peak District series wants to do another book, but that’s on the back burner. I am just finishing Storms, the second book in my ‘Crossed Paths’ prequel series (on-going characters from the McLaren series are spotlighted in these books so the reader gets to know their back stories, and then they and McLaren meet, and the rest is history!). Then I have the fifth book in the Cookies & Kilts series to work on.  I have that titled, have the cover, have the characters, so all I need is a plot!   The twenty-first McLaren mystery is at the same stage as the C&K book, although I have a bit of the plot worked out for that—mainly, I must decide where to place it!  Makes a big difference in characters, scenery, actual villages, weather, etc.  All total, to date, I have thirty-five mystery books published, with book thirty-six (Storms) coming out in April. My four stand-alone books bring the actual total of publications to thirty-nine. By 2015 I had sixteen books out, so I’ve been busy these ensuing ten years. I hope to be busy writing for ten more years.

 

Giveaway -

 

In celebration of our 10th anniversary, the authors have each donated a prize (sixty in total) and they range from free books to swag to gift cards.


 

Open internationally but some prizes are only open to US residents only


Runs March 1 - 31, 2025


Winner will be drawn on April 1, 2025

 

Author Biography:

 

Jo A. Hiestand grew up on regular doses of music, books, and Girl Scout camping. She gravitated toward writing in her post-high school years and finally did something sensible about it, graduating from Webster University with a BA degree in English and departmental honors. She writes two British mystery series (the McLaren Mysteries and the Peak District Mysteries). She also writes a Missouri-based cozy mystery series that is grounded in places associated with her camping haunts. The camping is a thing of the past, for the most part, but the music stayed with her in the form of playing guitar and harpsichord, and singing in a folk group. Jo carves jack o’ lanterns badly and sings loudly. She loves barbecue sauce and ice cream (separately, not together), kilts (especially if men wear them), clouds and stormy skies, and the music of G.F. Handel. You can usually find her pulling mystery plots out of scenery—whether from photographs or the real thing.

 

Where can readers follow you:

 

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