And our Sue's Clues Mystery Author is:

Shirl Henke published her first book in 1986. To date, she has written 24 novels and has contributed to 4 anthologies.

While many romance writers may be known for the particular time periods of their books, Shirl's one of those who can't be labeled. She's written a little bit of everything - historical, contemporary, westerns, regencies, and so on. For example, her newest trilogy, American Lords, will cover three different time periods in England: Regency, Victorian, and Edwardian.

Her versatility in writing is reflective of her life before becoming a writer. Like the variety of time periods in which she sets her stories, Shirl has worked in a variety of positions that have exposed her to many different people and life situations.

"During and after receiving my B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of Missouri, I worked at many different jobs: cashiering for a loan company, doing public welfare casework, running the circulation desk for a small daily newspaper, administering a federal information program for the elderly and finally spending fifteen years as a university instructor."

Shirl's husband, Jim, is equally versatile. At her website, Shirl mentions that he has been a cabdriver, bartender, sailor and judo instructor, is now a retired English professor. He is also hugely supportive of her writing. Jim even does his part on her website by writing the newsletter. He brings a glimpse of their everyday lives with a bit of humor. You can't help but smile and chuckle as he relates stories about leaky roofs, kitchen fires,chigger bites and even purple horses. Below, Shirl tells us a little about herself, her family and her writing.

Thank you, Shirl!

1. How did you get started in writing? Did you sort of fall into writing or was there something more specific that led to it?

I always had ideas for stories floating around in my head, ever since I was a little girl, but never dreamed that one day I'd actually become a fiction writer. I began my college career as a journalism major and then switched to history, which, of course, gave me the ability to do research, not to mention lots of fascinating characters and plot ideas to build more fantasies upon. When I completed my M.A., I embarked on a wide variety of jobs (my college advisors fibbed about "all the things you can do with history degrees").

After teaching history, social work and English composition for around fifteen years at the large urban university where my husband was a tenured professor, I finally bottomed out grading freshman themes. I'd spent four years teaching remedial composition and summers reading historical romances. Rosemary Rogers and Lisa Gregory had long ago hooked me on the genre. As I sat that summer with a far less stellar book than theirs (the author is no longer published and rightly so!), it hit me like a bolt out of the blue. Why not make an outline for a story about a poor farm girl who dreams of being a lady and ends up marrying a Mexican aristocrat without confessing her traumatic background? Quickly I sketched about eleven pages of longhand notes while baking in the sun. Thus the seed of my first novel, GOLDEN LADY, was sewn.

Before I could lose my nerve, I phoned my best friend Carol Reynard with whom I had traded romance novels for years and told her what I wanted to do. Since this was pre computer and she knew I used more white-out than paper when I typed, she volunteered to type the manuscript for me! Once I began research on the California Gold Rush during the 1850's and wrote the first chapter of Amanda and Esteban's story, I was hooked on writing. It took over three more years and another two completed books before we sold GOLDEN LADY, but from there on I knew I was a writer and would never be able to stop telling my stories.

2. You've written both contemporary and historical romance. Do you find one easier than the other? Do you have a favorite time period or setting?

Contemporary and historical romances are equally challenging to write. They merely require different types of research. When I first began work on BOUQUET, my California wine country romantic suspense, I found that libraries (my staple while researching historicals) would not be of as much help.

Over the course of centuries, places change physically. A writer has to know what the setting looked like during the era she tells her story. But in a contemporary, people live in the actual setting and if you make a mistake, it will be immediately apparent to many people. Also I needed to know about the wine industry, how to sabotage a crop dusting plane, what an exclusive country club in Napa looked like, etc. In other words, things that I could only learn by visiting the place and talking with experts. In researching historicals, I often visit the sites, but only to get a feel for the basic lay of the land and to use local libraries for specific resources I can't get elsewhere. Most of my historical research has been done through the excellent facilities of the university library where I used to teach and the wonderful collections of the St. Louis Public Library's Main Branch.

Neither kind of book is easier, nor do I prefer one to the other. In fact, I like to switch back and forth between historical and contemporary settings to keep my writing fresh. As to favorite time periods or places, I love anything Hispanic, from Medieval Spain to Mexico during their turbulent civil war in the late 1860's. Most of my books have been set in the 19th Century but a pair spanned the late 15th--early 16th Centuries (Discovery Duet) and several were set during the 18th (NIGHT WIND'S WOMAN, LOVE A REBEL…LOVE A ROGUE). I love to read and write about any era if there is adventure and romance in the story.

3. You've worked in a variety of fields. Everything from being a public welfare caseworker to University Instructor; loan officer and newspaper circulation to working for a federal program with the elderly. All of these jobs involve dealing with people on a personal basis; people from all walks of life and situations. Do you think these experiences have influenced your writing at all? I guess what I'm wondering is has it helped with developing character traits or realistic situations or any other aspect of your writing?

Yes, I certainly believe my varied employment history has helped me become a better writer. It takes a good imagination to write fiction, but I believe it also takes life experience. To know what characters think and feel, believe in and act upon, requires having viewed humanity in many aspects.

4. You have a son, Matt. What does he think about Mom being a romance novelist? Have his thoughts on it changed over the years?

When I first began writing my son Matt was in junior high and thought his mom's writing romance was "icky." Now that he's a grown man, he is proud of my work, although he still teases me about how I used to be a good mother when I baked homemade bread (before I started writing)!

5. I see that your husband takes care of the newsletter at your site. Is he involved with your writing in other ways? Does he read your books?

My husband Jim has always been tremendously supportive of my career, sharing household tasks, etc. He served as "fight master" for my first two books, reading and correcting my action sequences (he boxed and played judo while in the Navy). After my third book, CAPTURE THE SUN, was published, he read it and really liked it, then confessed that he'd been afraid to read GOLDEN LADY and LOVE UNWILLING for fear he'd find them as icky as did our teen-age son! Once his interest was piqued, he started helping with research and editing in his spare time. He even decided to teach a class at the university on the romance novel! Of course, I gave him a reading list of several dozen of what I considered the seminal books of the genre. Many of them he enjoyed and used in the course, which became one of the most popular offered in the English Department. After taking an early retirement from university teaching, he became even more active, brainstorming with me over plot ideas, editing and helping with promotions and the thousand small details that come with a writing career, such as writing a quarterly newsletter for my website about the goings on at the Henke household.

6. You mention that when you are not writing you love to cook and work in your garden and greenhouse. What do you grow? Do you grow your own ingredients for your cooking? Any specialties?


I'm a member of the Missouri Botanical Gardens here in St. Louis and an avid gardener with a large elaborately landscaped yard, as well as a glass-ceilinged room off of our deck which is filled with plants during the winter. In addition to all kinds of flowering plants and ferns, I do grow a wide variety of herbs which I use in cooking, such as tarragon (fried chicken), sweet basil and oregano (homemade salad dressings), rosemary (rack of lamb) and lemon thyme (brandy cream stuffed chicken breasts). In spite of what my son says, I still find time on rare occasions to bake bread for the family and use the basil to make pesto for one variety.

7. Do you have a routine when it comes to writing?


My routine is pretty set but not inflexible. I write weekdays, usually beginning around 9:30 or so, after rising early and reading the newspaper, doing my exercises and eating a light breakfast. I take brief breaks during the day to keep my back and arms from aching (no carpal tunnel for me!) and around 6:30 or seven, Jim comes in with a glass of wine for me and gently reminds me that it's time to stop for the day. When I'm researching, the time frame is usually the same except I spend the hours at the library or traveling on site. I also allow time through the year for writer's conferences (I'm attending the ROMANTIC TIMES convention in October and Novelists Inc next March) and even more importantly, I take time off for family holidays. I'm the designated cook for our extended family during Christmas, at Easter and Thanksgiving.

8. Where do you get ideas for your books?


Ideas come from everywhere. As I mentioned above, I have two degrees in history, and truth is truly more amazing than fiction. I've found obscure events and characters to weave into my plots, taken from the pages of musty old volumes. Music, especially sensual, enchanting lyrics such as those of Neil Diamond, have inspired me. Sometimes an idea will come like a bolt out of the blue and I have no idea where it originated. Or, conversely, I will read a book or see a movie and think to myself, "I really disliked the way that was done. I'd do it this way…" Such was the motivation behind what I call my "Somersby rip-off book," BRIDE OF FORTUNE. The film had an appalling ending which the whole audience hated and was based on an earlier film entitled "The Return of Martin Guerre" which also had that same downer ending. One was set after the Civil War, the other after the First World War. I set BRIDE during the French Intervention in Mexico and my hero did not die in the end!


9. Many of your books are trilogies or duets. Is this something you plan to do when you write the first book of a set? Or does it just evolve that another book needs to follow that first one?


Almost all of my books are linked in one way or another. I suppose you could call it my "Faulkner complex." I just can't seem to keep from at least mentioning, often bringing in, characters from past books when I'm writing a new one. The Torres family from PARADISE & MORE and RETURN TO PARADISE, have descendants ranging from a merchant in LOVE A REBEL…LOVE A ROGUE to physicians in WICKED ANGEL and McCRORY'S LADY. The Kanes from LOVE UNWILLING are the great, great grand parents of the hero in the romantic suspense, BOUQUET and the Creole aristocrats from MOON FLOWER were the heroine's ancestors . Alert readers often pick up on a minor character or the discussion of a protagonist's ancestry and realize it relates to another book. I've always found it fun and natural to do this, but my first deliberate attempt to link books in a series was my Texas Trilogy, CACTUS FLOWER, MOON FLOWER and NIGHT FLOWER. I enjoyed it so much (once I got the hang of keeping track of a cast of thousands!) that I wrote NIGHT WIND'S WOMAN and WHITE APACHE'S WOMAN, then DEEP AS THE RIVERS, but in the meanwhile my Leisure editor asked for a pair of books about the era of Columbus and thus was born the Torres family now spanning the globe. One Colorado book led immediately to the second in the TERMS OF LOVE, TERMS OF SURRENDER duo. When I moved to Regency England, my hero was an American neer-do-well banished to learn how to behave. What more natural than for Alex from WICKED ANGEL to be the son of the roguish Devon Blackthorne from LOVE A REBEL? Then in WANTON ANGEL I chose the daughter of REBEL's other hero, Quint, as my adventurous American heroine who falls for an English spy. As you can see, the Blackthorn Family trilogy just sort of grew. Not so when I began working on the American Lords. I wrote a concept piece for my editor about three American men who inherit English titles, moving from the Regency to the Victorian, then Edwardian eras. Readers seem to like these connections in plot, theme and most especially the continuity of protagonists and their families.

10. Are you originally from Missouri?


Yes, I was born and raised in Missouri. You have to "show me." Although I've traveled extensively and lived on the west coast and in the northeast, at heart I'll always love the lower midwest best. When my husband took early retirement from the university where he taught English, we came home to old friends, family and St. Louis, one of the neatest cities in the country.

11. Can you tell us a little about your friend and collaborator, Carol Reynard? Is she also a writer? I'll bet a lot of authors would love to have somebody like her around?


Carol Reynard has been my best friend since we went to grade school together. Although we're still best friends, she no longer collaborates with me. Golf, grandchildren, travel and a retired husband take up what time she doesn't devote to her first love, being a floral designer.

Although she never wrote books, she helped me brainstorm plots, did specialized research on flora, fauna (she's a florist and horse person) and furnishings (she's also an antique collector). She answered reader mail and typed my handwritten mss on the computer. Since, at her urging, I finally mastered email and writing on a computer, I'm now flying solo. Sometimes it's pretty scary.

Visit with Shirl and Jim at her website: http://www.shirlhenke.com/index.html