Suspense novelist Kathy Herman has more than twenty published novels, including the Sophie Trace trilogy, and Secrets of Roux River Bayou series. Her latest novel is A Treacherous Mix (David C. Cook), the finale in her Ozark Mountain Trilogy: Ashamed and confused, Hawk realizes that someone else in town knows what happened to his lover. He begins to fear for her life—and his own. In this interview, Kathy explains why location is so important to her suspense, the necessity of trusting God, and how being a Christian author has impacted her own spiritual walk…
Kathy, what inspired the plot in your latest novel, A Treacherous Mix?
I was seeking the Lord to help me choose a theme for this finale in the series, and a Scripture verse jumped out at me one morning. Here’s what I John 1: 5,6 says: This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.
I got to thinking about how today’s culture has watered down the gospel. Behaviors that are accepted today used to be called sin. I wanted to take one character from this series and show how easy it is, even for a believer, to fall into that trap.
What’s the theme or through-line for your Ozark Mountain Trilogy?
Each of the three stories has its own theme, but the overriding theme that runs through the series is trusting God. First Abby. Then Jesse. And finally, Hawk. Of course, Kate’s trust in God went from zero to overflowing as she endured endless hours of helplessness, her children’s lives in the balance.
More than one of your suspense series has been named for or built around a location. How important is a sense of space to your fiction?
I know my readers enjoy it, but I REQUIRE it! I need to mentally set my fictional town in a specific location that I’m familiar with. I need to picture it vividly so that I can describe it with clarity and merge my fictional town into my chosen region of the country.
Something many people don’t realize is that I am mentally and emotionally immersed in that location for as long as it takes me to finish a series. That’s why I choose scenic regions.
Don’t get me wrong, I do come back to reality at the end of a writing day. But much like I imagine an actor is immersed in a role during the shooting of a movie, I am immersed with the characters in the setting of my books while I’m writing and sometimes, even in my down time when I’m still in the “flow” and my creativity is working overtime.
My late husband and I used to laugh about the fact that we never ate alone. My characters were real to both of us, and we often discussed the storyline, especially after I read a new chapter to him and it ended abruptly with someone’s life in peril. He would look at me with a knowing grin. “Come on, you can’t leave me hanging. What happens next?”
But he already knew that I didn’t know yet. I am what’s known as a “seat-of-the-pants” writer (or “pantser”). I don’t outline the story because it does me no good. My characters often take a sharp turn without any forethought on my part.
That’s when writing really gets fun. I have a general idea of where I want the story to go, and my characters get me there, but the unexpected can happen multiple times in the process.
Are these real places? Do you scout them out, or are they inspired by where you’ve been?
All my series books are set in areas of the country where I’ve visited, often several times. My towns are fictional, but the region is real. The key is keeping the details authentic.
On your website, you wrote about how reading Christian fiction has impacted your spiritual walk. How has writing Christian fiction impacted you spiritually?
It’s increased my faith immensely because each book is a walk of faith for me. As I mentioned before, I’m a “seat-of-the-pants” writer who finds it useless to outline.
It can get really intense when I encounter writer’s block, or when I still don’t know how I’m going to end the story, and the deadline is a week away! It always comes together, but every time, it has required trusting the Lord to get me there.
Also, the spiritual elements in my stories I have learned through having been tested myself. Not necessarily in the same way as my characters, but in a way that left an impression and a deeper understanding of the Word.
Visit Kathy Herman’s author page:
https://www.familyfiction.com/authors/kathy-herman
A Treacherous Mix
Ozark Mountain Trilogy #3
David C. Cook