The following is an exclusive Whispers of the Muse interview conducted by Deborah Riley-Magnus with humorous romantic suspense author, Ann Siracusa.

Muse: Ann, first of all, Whispers of the Muse welcomes you and All for a Dead Man’s Leg to the site. Tell us a little about yourself. What part of the world do you live in? Tell us about your background?
Siracusa:  I’m a California girl who earned her Bachelor of Architecture degree from UC Berkeley, then went immediately to Rome, Italy.  On my first day there, I met an Italian policeman at the Fountain of Love, and the rest is history.  Instead of a degree from the University of Rome, I got a husband, and we’ve been married 46 years.  In Rome, I worked for as an architect and planner for a land development company for several years until we moved to the United States.  I’m now retired from a 35+ year career in architecture and urban land use planning…which makes me older than dirt.
 
We have three grown children, seven grandchildren, and an eighth due in March.  We live in San Diego, and I write full time.  He regularly visits his money at one of the local Indian casinos.  Quilting is my hobby; writing, my passion.  I still ride quads in the desert with my family, but also find time to take care of grandchildren, participate in charity work with ChildHelp USA, and serve on the vestry of my church.  I’ve been a member of RWA since the mid-1980’s and have served in a variety of offices in several chapters.  Most recently I have been Co-President of the San Diego Chapter of RWA (2005-06, 2006-7), Pro Liaison (2007-08) and treasurer (2008-09).  I am also a member of the RWA national Bylaws Committee.

Enough with the dull stuff.  See my resume on my website.

Muse: Who are your favorite authors?
Siracusa:  I read a wide variety of authors and have many “favorites.”  Some of my more-or-less contemporary all-time favorites include: P.D.James, Janet Evanovich, Katie MacAlister, Sue Grafton, Erlene Fowler, Tony Hillerman, Ken Follet, Dick Francis, Issac Asimov, C.J.Cherryh, Andre Norton, Carl Hiaasen, Bob Mayer, Ann McCaffrey, Helen MacInnes, Linda Howard, J.D.Robb, Daphne DuMaurier, S.L.Stebel, Thomas Harris, Rosamunde Pilcher, Sharan Newman.  And, of course, let’s not forget Shakespear, Dante Aligheri, Mark Twain, and the list goes on.

Muse: Why do you write humorous romantic suspense?
Siracusa: Actually, I write in a variety genres, which has made launching a writing career difficult.  Publishers like to “brand” their authors because it takes time and investment to built up an author’s name recognition.  Readers like to know what kind of book to expect from an author.  Unfortunately, I get bored writing in the same genre all the time.

Getting into humorous romantic suspense was the result of an experiment to see if I could write “funny” and in first person.  I’d never tried either, and I’d never written anything without a tight outline.  I expected “All For A Dead Man’s Leg” to be a one shot deal.  Instead, I found I could write “funny” and that I’d fallen in love with the characters.  They took over and wrote the story themselves without me knowing where it was going.  I’d become a pantser and had found my “voice.”

Shortly after that, my annual international travel adventure was going to be a trip to Italy with twelve members of my extended Italian-American family, four of them teenagers, including two of my grandchildren.  Oh, man.  Knowing these people and the way Italians make group decisions, the trip was going to be a predictable disaster.  I figured I should at least get material for a book out of it, and once I had the idea of writing about an Italian-American family traveling in Italy, Harriet Ruby, tour guide extraordinaire, was a natural for the part.  And if Harriet was in it, I needed an evil-doer for Europol spy, Will Talbot, to chase after.  Of course, they had to make the trip together.  That’s how the second book in the series “All For A Fist Full of Ashes” came about.

The bottom line answer:  I like adventure, I like romance, I like to laugh, and I want readers to share my travel experiences and have fun going to these exotic places.  Voila!  Humorous Romantic Suspense.  Laughter is the great stress reliever and an escape from the hum-drum reality of life.

Muse: What is your writing regimen? How often do you work on a novel? Do you set daily time or word goals? What keeps you meeting your deadlines?
Siracusa: Unfortunately, my regimen is not much of a regimen.  I have to work around a lot of other activities, family demands, and interruptions.  I try to write every day, usually early in the morning (from 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. until my husband gets up), late at night (after he goes to bed), and during the days when I’m alone and don’t have to go to meetings.

I don’t set daily time and word goals (because I wouldn’t keep them), but I find a kitchen timer works well.  I keep writing because there are so many stories inside me that want to be told, and there are so many places I’ve been that I want to share.  Plus, my weekly critique group keeps the pressure on me.  I write long books and have produced one book a year for the last nine or ten years. 

Muse: Does the way you personally look at life reflect in your writing style?
Siracusa: Absolutely.  A writer’s personal experiences, how they grew up, their family and ancestors, their environment, who they’ve met in life - everything in a writer’s life comes out in their personality, values, outlook on life, and writing style and voice. 

Muse: What are the creative jumping off points for you? Are you inspired by dreams? Music? Nature? The occasional black nightmare? What triggers your imagination?
Siracusa:  Many things trigger my imagination.  Everyone has a story, and ideas are everywhere, because we write about the human condition and experience.  I read the newspapers, watch television, listen to stories friends tell about their eccentric great Aunt Amy, and observe and take notes, particularly when I’m traveling.  I ask people questions.  Maybe only a single event or incident will stick in my head as a general premise, or maybe it will be an entire plot.  I like to look around and ask myself, “What would happen if…”

For example, once when I was taking a hot air balloon flight over northern San Diego County, we were drifting silently over huge and expensive residential estates.  Very remote.  Suddenly we came over the tops of some trees and startled several people on the ground below us who never heard us coming.  You could read the expressions of surprise on their faces they were so close.  And I thought, what would happen if a person was doing their first solo hot air balloon flight and came upon someone burying a body.  That’s one I’m going to write someday.

Muse: Tell us about your All for a Dead Man’s Leg. What was your inspiration?
Siracusa:  “All for a Dead Man’s Leg” is about a young Tour director, Harriet Ruby, who is a well balanced, smart and hardworking overachiever. So far, her life has been good but predictable and ordinary.  Her biggest problem is that she doesn't have any real problems and is much too trusting.

When she graduates from MIT, she takes a job in Europe as a tour director to find out what life is all about before she settles down to career and family.  Directing her first solo tour in Spain and Morocco, she and her group get lost in the medina in Tangier.  There, one of her tourists becomes ill and needs a doctor.  Harriet can't find her way out of the old walled marketplace.  A handsome and mysterious stranger, Will Talbot, pronounces the tourist dead and offers to help her smuggle the body out of Morocco, and Harriet's once-predictable life turns upside down, never to be the same again.  And that was only the beginning.

Their fast-paced romantic romp through Spain and Morocco takes them in pursuit of murders, smugglers, international terrorists, and excellent sex.
My inspiration for this novel?  When I took a tour in Spain, Morocco, and Portugal in 1994, I asked our tour director what his worst tour guide experience had been.  He told me on one of his first tours, one of his tourists died in Morocco.  He and his driver had to smuggle the body back to Spain to keep from delaying the tour with Moroccan red-tape.  At the time I found that intriguing, and the idea rolled around in my head for nearly ten years before I found the right characters.  When I did, they took that single thought and wrote the story themselves. 

Muse: Have you written other books?
Siracusa:  I’ve completed a total of eleven books, three of which are published.

Muse: Tell us about your other books?
Siracusa: The humorous romantic suspense series includes four books, the first of which is “All for a Dead Man’s Leg,” published in March of 2009.

“All for a Fist Full of Ashes,” released in November 2009, is the second novel.  Harriet, the tour director is conducting a custom tour for fourteen members of an Italian-American family. The family matriarch is on a quest to find the unknown location of her mother=s grave so she can bury her brother=s cremated ashes, which have been smuggled into Italy wrapped inside Cuban cigars.  Will has one of the family members under surveillance as a suspect in an assassination conspiracy.

Charming the matriarch, Will coaxes an invitation from her to join the tour. The quirky family members, including four unruly teenagers and a pet green tree python named Fluffy, sweep through Italy searching for lost relatives, leaving chaos, hilarity, and danger in their wake.

While trying to keep their tourists in line, Will and Harriet, on their own personal journey, find that traveling together for twenty-four hours a day threatens their budding relationship, which is fraught with trust issues.

The third book, with the working title “Destruction of the Great Wall,” is set in China, and the fourth, “Russian Roulette,” takes place in Russia.  The fifth, outlined but unwritten, will be set in South Africa and Botswana.

“Family Secrets: A Vengeance of Tears” (2008) is a Mafia thriller/women’s fiction novel set in Sicily after WWII,  about a young Italian-American woman who leaves her California home to avoid an arranged marriage, and flees to Sicily into the arms of the man she loves through his letters but has never met.  Wooed and rushed into marriage, she learns―too late, that her husband is not the man who penned the letters.

The other books include:
“It’s All In The Game” – a Sci Fi romance
“The Last Weekend in October” - an amateur-sleuth murder mystery set in Los Angeles
“The Bargain” – a category romance set in Sicily
“Aftershocks” – a category romance set in Italy
“Ride on the Back of Lightning” – a category romance about a female motocross racer

Muse: How do you feel about the current publishing marketplace?
Siracusa: There is a lot of competition out there, with many good writers trying to get published in a soft market, and there are a lot of changes in the wind.  I see the industry moving toward e-publication because of costs and convenience.  I don’t believe e-books will replace print books, but there is definitely a market for them, both now and in the future.  Resistance is futile.