Saturdays with Friends–Deborah Piccurelli

Sorry I am late posting this interview with Deborah Piccurelli, but it’s a great one, so I hope you enjoy and visit her site, too.

1. Tell us about your favorite book as a child and your favorite book as an adult. Can you see a connection between those books? I have always had more than one favorite book—then and now. But when I think back, they all had a thread of some kind of suspense and intrigue. Even when I was very young, like 6. We had a book of stories with Barbie and her friends as the characters. Out of all the stories in that book, the only one I remember is a story about Halloween night and an elderly woman whose house no one wanted to go to for trick-or-treat. There were rumors that she was a witch and her house was haunted. Somehow, these teenagers ended up at her house, found out she loved children, and was an upstanding citizen. But they helped her when some of the neighborhood boys came around knocking over her trash cans and harassing her. If that’s the only story I can recall from that book, then I know that’s where my interest in suspense began.

2. Great memory! What is your favorite Scripture? Do you also have a favorite Scripture that encourages you in your writing?I have so many favorite Scriptures, but what comes to mind, at the moment, is Jeremiah 33:3:

“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” I’m at a point in my life where I feel the need to know everything that He is willing to reveal to me.

3. If you could go to any place in the world to research/write a book, what setting would you choose? Off the top of my head, maybe Alaska. I don’t know how I’d be able to stand it, though, because I’m one that always feels cold, even when other people are comfortable. Lol!

4. Alaska is beautiful! I often wonder if I would write if I had to do it the old-fashioned way without computers and spell-checks and email. Is there anything about technology that you don’t like? Or anything about it that you feel enhances your writing? What I don’t like about technology is that it was meant to make life easier by saving lots of time. For me, that is entirely untrue. It takes more of my time than I’d like to give it. But there is no denying the fact that it does make it easier to write a book.

5. As a writer how have you had to grow and stretch out of your comfort zone? As a writer, I have had to become bolder than I’ve ever been before. Also, I’ve had to develop a thick skin (as all writers must do), because not everyone likes what I write, or my writing style.

6. What advice would you give to a beginning writer that you wish someone had given you? I think it’s probably what many beginning writers already know: Begin to build an audience before you even finish writing your book. When I started, it was at a time when the internet was just becoming popular, websites were popping up and blogs weren’t even a thought. Since I was very green, I didn’t have the foresight to understand how important that was. Especially since publishers were leaving marketing and promotion to the authors, more and more.

7. Do you want to add anything about your books such as how to order them? The simplest way for people to find various ways to purchase my book is to go to my website at www.deborahmpiccurelli.com. There are links for each book, including one to buy Hush, Little Baby directly from the publisher at a 25% discount. There is also info on how to purchase my latest release in eBook format, Love Comes Calling. But if you would like to go to Amazon and check out reviews first for either of those novels, you are certainly welcome to do that.

Thank you, Rose for hosting me on your blog today. I thoroughly enjoyed it! So glad to have you Deborah, and hope this is the first of many visits!