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Melissa Lenhardt’s Sawbones trilogy is a continuous adventure – one critic advised “consider the series like reading one as a 1200 page epic “ with a difference – it’s the historic Western frontier told from a woman’s viewpoint. That’s unusual in a genre once described to Melissa as “romance for men.”
Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and Melissa talks about the three book saga that traces the life of a woman doctor in New York who is wrongfully accused of murder by powerful interests. She’sgot no choice but to run or to face the very real threat of execution.
We’ve got three E-books of the first book in the series – called Sawbones – to giveaway in our Mysteries Alive draw.
You’ll find a full transcript of our chat and links to Melissa book on our website, the joys of binge reading.com
Binge Reading on Patreon launched now!
It’s been a long build up but we’re going live with our Patreon launch with this episode! You can now get access to extra bonus content by supporting the show on Patreon for as little as a cup of coffee a month. Details on our BingeReading on patreon page, patreon.com/thejoysofbinge reading.
Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:
- How Melissa was inspired by a precious bond with her Father
- Her ‘unfinished’ mystery series – #3 still coming
- Delving into sensitive cultural history
- Why she writes Westerns from a women’s perspective
- The writers Melissa admires most
- Melissa Lenhardt’s next big project
Where to find Melisaa Lenhardt
Website: https://www.melissalenhardt.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mellenhardtauthor/
Twitter: @melenhardt
What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.
Introducing Author Melissa Lenhardt and her feminist Westerns
Jenny Wheeler: And now here’s Melissa. Hello there, Melissa. And welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.
Melissa Lenhardt: Hi, Jenny. Thanks so much for inviting me. It’s really exciting. I feel like I’m getting out into the world again with the events and podcasts. I’m thrilled to be with you today.
Jenny Wheeler: Particularly in your part of the world. It’s been a little bit shut down for a while. Hasn’t it?
Melissa Lenhardt: It has. Right. But I’m in Texas and so we’re completely open, which is good and bad, I guess. It has this false sense of security that everything’s back to normal here, but I know that it’s not back to normal here even, but in the world especially. It’s like we’re living in a little bubble.
Jenny Wheeler: Has it restricted your promotion work of some of your books? You’ve got a stand alone novel recently published, haven’t you?
Melissa Lenhardt:Yes, I did. That was last August. it did restrict us quite a lot. I had a couple of podcasts. and I did a video book launch, but there wasn’t a whole lot of promotion with it. Some online, but it was sad. I usually try to go to the bookstores here in Texas and around, and I wasn’t able to do that. So it wasn’t nearly as exciting as other launches for sure.
Jenny Wheeler: We’re going to be talking about your Sawbones trilogy today, because this is part of a wider promotion for our current Mysteries/Westerns Alive Giveaway.
We’re calling it because this is a historical Western, but it’s very alive. It’s the Sawbones trilogy. You’ve got the three books, Sawbones, Blood Oath, and Badlands.
Sawbones’ protagonist – a woman doctor on the run
Sawbones is the story of a New York physician called Catherine Bennett. who goes on the run when she’s wrongly accused of murder. It’s been described as “Outlander meets Post-Civil War.”
And I questioned that a weeny bit, because Outlander makes you think it might be a dual timeline, which it isn’t, but of course it has got this wonderful love story at the center of it. And I guess that’s the parallel.
Did you think that was a fair description when you saw it on the reviews that came up?
Melissa Lenhardt: That was how I pitched it a little bit. Some people get really mad. I was seeing some reviews, that said things like “This is nothing like Outlander.” And, “This is not time travel.” Right? But you take the time travel out of the first book of Outlander, and it’s basically a stranger in a strange land story. A woman is thrust into this world, into this culture, that she knows nothing about.
Right? And she’s got to learn to survive on her wits and she’s thrown into in the middle of this war basically. And Catherine or Laura – I really think of her as Laura, (because she has to change her name to survive)- but Laura is thrown into the beginning of what’s called the Red River War.
A stranger in a strange land – similarities to The Outlanders trope
There’s a lot in that, and there’s the love story in the middle of it. In general plot, there are a lot of similarities, but a lot of people can’t see past that one particular one. The time travel.
I guess it depends. When you think of Outlander is the first thing you think of time travel, or is the first thing you think of Scotland and all of that conflict. Because when I think of Outlander, I don’t really think of time travel.
It affects the things that she thinks about and her character – in what her character does and everything like that. Yes. When I think of Outlander, I think of Scotland and France, and then going to the islands in America. I don’t think of the time travel aspect of it.
To me it’s this all-encompassing historical fiction., with this woman who is highly intelligent and she’s thrown into this situation that’s completely foreign to her.
She has to figure out how to survive and how to get out of the situation she finds herself thrust into. I feel like there’s a lot of similarities. Some people don’t agree, and if you pick it up and you’re expecting time travel you will be disappointed.
Jenny Wheeler: The stranger in a strange land aspect of it certainly does resonate. And it is a wonderful story. I mean, I got completely caught up in the love story. And, without any giving away anything I was really hoping it was going to continue right through the whole series. You’d have to read the books to see what happens, but it is a wonderful love story.
Fighting the stereotypes about women doctors in 19th century
Catherine as you say, has to change her identity, she becomes Laura for a lot of the books. She’s a woman doctor. And even in that period, she faces extreme prejudice against female doctors.
I looked it up actually. And the first woman doctor in the U S graduated in 1849, and this book is set in the early 1870s. 20 years later, but they’re still not accepted. When she gets accused of something very serious, she’s at a huge disadvantage at being able to stand her ground and defend herself. It’s natural that she might feel she’s got no choice, but to just get out of town
Melissa Lenhardt: Absolutely. And I try to put into the paradynamics just as far as the corruption of big cities and the corruption of New York. This was a very wealthy family that was accusing her and they had judges in their family. To stand trial and get convicted, they would do something to her.
They didn’t have a habit of hanging women back then, but she would have been sent to an asylum or something possibly, who knows. She really did feel like she did not have a choice. Standing and fighting against such powerful people was going to be pointless, when you can start over in the West, which is what everyone did.
After the Civil War so many southerners went west and started over. They lost their houses, they lost their plantations, and so they went west and started over.
There was that opportunity to do that. She knew that she would be able to find a place, even being a woman. Towns wouldn’t be too picky, because they didn’t have doctors. They would have used her for sure. They would have gotten desperate enough to use her.
Melissa Lenhardt – watching Westerns with her Dad the hook for her
It was either that, or have a dentist or a barber or an undertaker take care of them. She felt like her opportunities were more out there.
Jenny Wheeler: Sure. So tell us what made you decide on a Western as your genre for starters. Have you always been a fan of westerns or is it because of the Texas aspect that you’re very much more aware of that genre?
Melissa Lenhardt: I will be honest, I did not grow up reading westerns, like Zane Grey or Louis d’Amour. I had a boyfriend in high school. He loved Louis d’Amour. I think he read every single one of them, but I didn’t ever read those. I wasn’t interested, but I did watch Westerns. My dad loved to watch Westerns on TV.
So I would watch Westerns, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart and Randolph Scott. All of those. My dad, he just absolutely loved that. And my dad’s absolute favorite was Lonesome Dove. Right? He loved the miniseries.
He was not a reader, so he didn’t read the book. The biggest compliment that my dad could give you, if we were all sitting around, like people coming over for a barbecue or something, he’d say “you want to watch a little Lonesome Dove?”
That was like, he wanted you to stick around for a little. He wanted to share what he loved with you. So, I mean, he really liked you.
Westerns are ‘Romances for men’ . . . Melissa Lenhardt told
Well, my dad died really suddenly in 2008 and it was difficult. It was really tough. One of the ways that helped me grieve was watching westerns because I used to watch them with him.
I spent that summer watching westerns, every Western that came on to Turner Classic Movies (TCM) or AMC Networks, I was watching it and I watched Lonesome Dove.
I thought ‘I’ve never read this book. It’s Larry McMurtry. I need to read this book.’ I read it and I loved it. From there I thought I want to read something that’s similar to this, but more female focused, right?
This is 2008, and I was searching on Amazon and their algorithms were not that good. Maybe they just didn’t have a good selection of books or whatever, but everything that was coming up was Zane Grey.
I thought – ‘I’ll try Zane Grey.’ And I mean, two pages in and I’m like, this is not for me. Because they were just your typical Western myth.
You’ve got the guy who rides into town, there’s some sort of big problem that he gets involved in. He gets the girl, he solves the problem and he rides away.
I was just not interested in that. I was on a panel with a Western writer, quite a few years ago. He said “ Westerns are really romance novels for men.” He used that example. ‘He’s this loner. All by himself. He comes into town, he gets involved in a problem. He sleeps with the woman, he solves the problem. And then he leaves. I mean? It’s every guy’s ideal, right? Problem solved. And they’re done.’
Melissa Lenhardt – she wrote the book she wanted to read herself
It was really funny when he told me that. I love that. I wish I could remember his name. I feel so bad.
Anyway, I was having a hard time finding something I wanted to read, and I just decided to write something that I wanted to read.
It was a way to honor my dad and that he would have loved the idea of me writing a Western, a genre that he loved so much and cared so much about. So, that’s when I started researching.
It was just a huge rabbit hole that I fell down into. I just loved it. That’s why I wrote Sawbones. It was intended to be a standalone, right? Just a one and done. And we were pitching it to publishers and this one editor loved it and they’re like, can it be a trilogy?
And I’m like, absolutely.
But then I had no idea what, or how. Because once somebody says, “can this be a three book thing?” And you say Yes.
As an author, you say, oh course. And then you have to worry about, well, what happens next? Because to me, the story was over in – I can’t tell the ending of it, but anyway, the next two books, I plotted them really quickly and I ended up writing those two books in like 15 months altogether. So, Yeah. Anyway, that’s how that started.
Jenny Wheeler: It’s very interesting because, even now the Western sub-genre is dominated by male authors. Isn’t it? Do you think that women write different westerns from men or are the men catching up a bit now?
The Son by Philipp Meyer – and a TV series with Pierce Brosnan
Melissa Lenhardt: Honestly, I don’t read a lot of male writers in general anymore. I don’t read a lot of. male written westerns. I think the last one I read was The Son by Philipp Meyer.
I think that’s just normal. I think that men write thrillers differently than women write thrillers.
I think that there’s just a different sensibility. That’s not to say that men can’t write women really well in the westerns. Or the women can’t write men really well but I think too, just because of the gender, I think that there’s usually a different focus on it.
Like for instance, with mine, with Sawbones and Blood Oath and Badlands one thing I was not interested in was talking about guns and horses and all those details. Because to me, a guns is a gun, and the great thing about writing it from Laura’s point of view is Lauren doesn’t care about the guns unless it was important to her story.
She was given a gun, I think by her dad. That was important. So she knew that gun, but everything else – it’s a rifle, it’s a gun, it’s a whatever. And so that way I didn’t have to describe any of that stuff because it was all from her point of view and she’s not going to stop down and discuss the aspects and the history of this gun.
The hero’s journey in fiction – male and female stories differ
Right. I think that when you’re looking at stuff like that it’s probably subtle stuff, but I also think that there is just a difference in writing a heroine’s journey versus a hero’s journey in historical fiction, because you have to have those restrictions that the women had then. You have to work within that for her to have her journey.
Men don’t have as many restrictions because men can do anything. I think it is really different. And I think it’s going to be different inherently, whether you’re writing from a man’s point of view or a woman’s point of view.
Jenny Wheeler: Sure. Now you’ve mentioned that a lot of Southerners did migrate west after the Civil War. One of the key points that happens in Sawbones right at the beginning, the thing that taught topples Laura’s Western experience into a whole new realm is that she is caught up in what was called the Salt Creek Massacre, quite a famous fight that took place.
General Sherman, that the chap who had actually led the Union during the war, was on hand because he had taken oversight of the so-called Indian Wars at that time. And so this became a pivotal point in Western history. Tell us about the significance of the Salt Creek Massacre and the impact that it had on the West.
Salt Creek Massacre a pivotal story in the history of the West
Melissa Lenhardt: The Salt Creek Massacre or the Warren Wagon Train Massacre as was another name it was called, it was really pivotal in the American government’s behavior towards how they handled the Native Americans. What happened was Texas was telling the government we need more army, more soldiers.
We need more money for these Western forts because the native Americans are our raiding and they’re killing settlers and we need to take care of this. And the government didn’t believe them. They just thought that Texas wanted more money. This was during Reconstruction and the Yankees did not trust the Southerners, the old Confederates, the Confederacy. (Ed Note: Post The Civil War)
General Sherman decided – he was in charge of the army. He decided to go and tour the forts. He started in the south, south of Texas and toured the forts on the line of the frontier. One night, towards the end of his tour, he’s near Fort Richardson and his retinue camps with the Warren Wagon Train.
The next morning, Sherman gets up and they leave and they make it to Fort Richardson fine.
Then the Warren Wagon Train goes and they get attacked by the Kiowa. Only one guy survives. He makes it to Fort Richardson and he tells him what s happened. It just infuriated Sherman because he went through this ambush and they ignored him and attacked the second one.
The reason they did was because they were doing this ambush because is a medicine man, a Kiowa spiritual man, had seen a vision of this massacre.
General Sherman was spared but others were not . . .
When Sherman’s retinue went through, the man said ‘this isn’t it. This isn’t the right one. We need to wait.’ When the Warren Wagon Train came through, that’s the one that they attacked. This episode really changed Sherman.
Maybe he realized how close to death he was or he was insulted that he didn’t get a chance to fight. I don’t know, but his whole attitude towards the frontier and dealing with the Native American ‘problem’ changed.
They had been using the Quakers to liaise with the Native Americans.
The Quakers are peaceful, so it was a very peaceful process, a peaceful interaction and diplomacy was key in how they treated the Indians.
Sherman’s attitude changed. He started believing ‘we’re done with that, it’s war. We need to eradicate them. We need to kill them all, or we need to get them on the reservation.’
And so that’s why it is so pivotal because of Sherman’s involvement. What ended up happening is he put Ranald S Mackenzie in charge of pushing the Comanche onto a reservation, the Comanche where the last holdouts.
They got their power, the Comanche did, from riding their horses. They were the skilled horseman in the south Plains. That’s why they were the most powerful on there.
Comanche trapped in Palo Duro Canyon – another seminal fight
The fear was of the army chasing the Comanche and never being able to catch them, because the Comanche had been on this land for hundreds of years and knew it like the back of their hand. And, so finally what happened is the army found them in Palo Duro Canyon in 1874.
Their hideout was in Palo Duro canyon. They found them there. And what they did was they drove off all their horses and they killed all of their horses.
That is what forced the Comanche to finally go onto the reservation in Oklahoma or Indian territory at that time.
That’s how they did it. I mean, it’s a terrible thing that we did to do that. But Randall S Mackenzie preferred killing their horses instead of killing the people, which I guess is better. Still. It’s horrible. It should have never happened. I mean, the way we treated the Native Americans, obviously, but that’s how it ended.
Jenny Wheeler: For sure. In the books, you don’t dodge the brutality of the period on both sides, the Indians towards the settlers. And the military, towards the Indians. But it’s very much objective, I think what seems to me to be a fair sided view that you also appreciate that the end, the native people were pretty much betrayed by the government’s actions – they were made promises that weren’t ever kept.
Melissa Lenhardt: Absolutely. I don’t think the United States. held to any treaty they made with the native Americans. I mean, it’s, horrible. It’s awful. If slavery is our original sin, the way we treated the native Americans is right up there.
Balancing cultural sensitivities when writing historical fiction
One A and One B you can’t hardly separate it. The native Americans were treated awfully. That’s one of the things that’s been so skewed in our history. It’s talked about how the natives were savages. The white settlers did just as many horrible things to the native Americans and that’s never been taught in schools.
It possibly is being taught maybe now, or though maybe not. That was one thing. I was very nervous about writing Blood Oath which really is the book that deals mostly with this.
And I was nervous when Sawbones was going to come out. I thought Oh my gosh, I don’t want people to read this and think that I am anti native American because I had to put ideas and those thoughts into these character’s heads, because that’s what people thought then.
I was really determined in the second book to show the other side to really show the native American side and what we did to them and how it affected them and their lives and their culture as much as I possibly could.
And, you know, I used some great books from the University of Oklahoma, about the Cheyenne Indians. The author interviewed a lot of Cheyenne Indians who lived through it at the turn of the 20th century. These were contemporary people who lived through it. That’s a very favorable historical record. Using that helped me to show what they went through.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. You did some tremendous research, both on that side of things and on the medical history, because Catherine’s a doctor and she has lots of doctoring to do along the way. From all of your research, what was perhaps the thing that surprised you the most?
Melissa Lenhardt: Mostly for my research for that I used this book called Gangrene and Glory, and it was about medicine in the Civil War. The thing that struck me the most, this is the little tidbit and I put it in the book because I thought it was so interesting; the South, they didn’t have money.
Horse hair sutures – a medical discovery made by necessity in war
They didn’t have medical supplies. They were desperate. And so what they did, they would use horse hair for medicine. They would boil horse hair to soften it up, and use that for sutures. What they found when they did that is that the horse hair that had been boiled and the wounds that have been sutured with that were less likely to have infection because of the boiling and the sterilization.
So it’s kinda like, needs must, and then have a small medical breakthrough. It’s like Hey, maybe there’s something there.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes
Melissa Lenhardt: I thought that was one of the interesting things.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, that was fascinating. Catherine slash Laura is also very much up with keeping wound sterile. She she’s a pioneer, she’s more open to new ideas. Perhaps we’ll put it that way, than some of the other male doctors at the time.
Melissa Lenhardt: She is in the book. I think I mentioned that she feels like she has to do that. It’s one thing that separates her, from other doctors is that, being on the cutting edge Having fewer people die is is going to be good for her business. Right. She just believes in the science of the sterilization and Lister’s theories. It was important to her.
Melissa Lenhardt’s life experience before she became a writer
Jenny Wheeler: Great. Look, moving away from talking about the specific books to your wider career. Tell us something about your background, your life before you got into being a full-time writer. And how has that perhaps helped you with your writing?
Melissa Lenhardt: Well, I was a stay-at-home mom. Before I was a stay at home mom. I was in human resources. I was a recruiter. I was a restaurant manager. but then I became a stay at home mom. I was bored, I guess.
I got a idea for a fan fiction story and I started writing it and posting it and getting good feedback and I kept writing and posting and getting good feedback.
I haven’t looked back at those stories in a long time. I’m sure they’re terrible. I sent my fanfiction to my cousin who is a writer and asked his opinion.
He said ‘you’re really talented. You need to stop writing fanfiction and start writing your original stuff.’ And I’m like, Okay. That was probably around 2007.
I started writing original stuff. I don’t really have a background in writing though I have always been an avid reader.
Yes, I’ve gone to classes and I’ve read the books about writing. But I don’t find that those helped me a lot.
I find if I think too much about what I’m doing, saying to myself oh, I have to hit this plot point and what’s this character arc . . . if I think too much about all that, it stops me. It shuts me down and I’m just like, oh my God, I don’t know what’s going on.
Being a voracious reader good training for becoming a writer
So a lot of it comes naturally, you know? I think that’s just from reading hundreds and hundreds of books over my life and watching TV shows too.
I mean, you can understand about character arcs and story arcs and stuff like that.
It doesn’t really make a lot of sense that I’ve got seven books published and I’m going to have an eighth one coming out next year, but I must be doing something right.
Jenny Wheeler: For sure. And you’ve not modestly mentioned that some of them have been award winners as well. You’ve definitely got the recognition from your peers as well.
Melissa Lenhardt: Yes. Stillwater did win an award for Would Be Writers Alumni, which was really exciting, that happened early on. So that was exciting. And then Heresy got a favorable review in, the New York Times. That was awesome. I feel I’ve been very lucky.
Jenny Wheeler: One of the perennial questions I like to ask us, is there one particular thing that has enabled you to keep going to keep targeting and keep working on it?
Melissa Lenhardt: I think what, what keeps me going is definitely the readers. People emailing me and saying, I love this book, and this is why. Or reading people on Instagram who will post about it. When a book really resonates with a reader, when I make them feel good, or when I help them see things from another point of view and other perspective, or think of history in a different way than what we were necessarily taught.
Giving readers pleasure the biggest motivator for Melissa Lenhardt
I mean to me, that’s like the most exciting thing possible. I want to keep giving to people happiness and joy. To Keep making people feel. That’s really why I do it. I love that part of it. A friend of mine started reading Heresy a couple of weeks ago and she texted me. The first thing she says is ‘I’m so sorry it’s taken me this long to start reading it. I just started, and, oh my gosh, I love it. You are so good.’
And then she starts fawning over me. It’s humbling. It’s gratifying. It makes me feel so good. It’s so motivating that people really enjoy my writing. That’s what I’m doing it for really, is for the readers.
Jenny Wheeler: Heresy is another, it’s a full length standalone novel that’s also regarded as a Western.
Melissa Lenhardt: Yes.
Jenny Wheeler: Turning to Melissa as reader, because this is the Joys of Binge reading. We like to give people some thoughts about other books they might also like to pick up and find it hard to put down. You mentioned you are a very keen reader. What do you like to binge read? Are you a binge reader as well as a passionate reader?
Melissa Lenhardt: I guess I can be a binge reader. Right now, I’m binge listening to Jane Austen. Audible has like all the Jane Austen’s novels in one big package. I’ve been bingeing those. I’ve listened to Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. And now I’m on Mansfield Park.
Melissa Lenhardt as reader – what she’s reading now
I’m bingeing that on Audible and in the last couple of years – because, my latest book, Secret of You and Me is lesbian women’s fiction. I’ve been reading a lot of lesbian fiction and I’ve been binge-eating Clare Lydon. She’s a British writer and I love her stuff . And then there’s Georgia Beers. She’s an American writer.
I really love Deanna Raybourn’s books
The Perilous Undertaking, (Book # 2 in the Veronica Speedwell series)
Hear Deanna on The Joys of Binge Reading
I love the Lady Julia books too. I’ve read those for sure, but anything by her. Right. Let me see who else I’m trying to think.
When I first got my very first Kindle, which was probably 2007 or 2008, it was a while ago when the first Kindles came out. Right. I discovered that you could just keep downloading stuff and I downloaded a Georgette Heyer novel.
Girl, let me tell you. I probably spent $50 in three weeks on twelve Georgette Heyer novels because they were all pretty cheap. It’s like, oh, that’s just $3 99 by now would finish it in like a day and then I’d buy the next one.
Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series another popular binge read
Probably the last thing that I like binge read as a series was the Bridgerton Series by Julia Quinn.
Jenny Wheeler: Have you watched that on Netflix as well?
Melissa Lenhardt: Oh girl. Yes. I have I’ve watched Outlander. I’ve watched that. I’m all for these romantic historicals being made into television series. I keep hoping and praying and crossing fingers,, that’ll happen with one of mine, so yeah.
Jenny Wheeler: I can see Sawbones definitely as one of those series, although actually mounting, it might be quite a challenge.
Melissa Lenhardt: Yes it might, but that’s okay. It can be done. I mean,if they do Outlander and they’re doing Bridgerton. They can do Sawbones.
Jenny Wheeler: Okay. We are starting to run out of our time together. So circling around, looking back down the tunnel of time at the stage of your career, if you were doing it all over again, is there anything you would change?
Melissa Lenhardt: Well, I would definitely finish my mystery.
I would write the third book in my mystery series. I’ve written two and the third has been languishing in my head for five years. I’m not being paid to write that, I’m being paid to write other things. So it’s not getting done. I definitely would have finished that right after I wrote the last one.
Melissa Lenhardt’s ‘unfinished’ mystery series – #3 in processing
Jenny Wheeler: What’s the name of those just so that people can pick them up.
Melissa Lenhardt: The name of the first mystery is Stillwater, and the second mystery is The Fisher King. I would have definitely written that and gotten that done because I still get readers will find Stillwater and The Fisher King, and they’re asking when’s the next one?
And I’m like, I don’t know. I’m not sure, what else would I do different? Hmm, I haven’t liked to just write in one genre just because I want to keep my writing fresh.
I don’t want to get in the rut of writing the same book over and over and over. And when you get slotted into you being a mystery writer or a women’s fiction writer or a historical writer. you get slotted into that. I’ve never wanted that. That’s why I’m writing in three genres right now.
As far as monetary success, that’s probably not the smartest thing to do because I could be eight books into a mystery series right now and building up that mystery thing.
I might be making a little bit more money, and while it’s a consideration, I don’t know if I would do that even now. I feel like writing in each of these genres makes me a better writer in every genre.
For instance, you’ve got to be a good plotter to write a mystery. Historicals, you’ve got to be good at worldview and research. Then, with women’s fiction or romance novels, you’ve got to be good with emotion and with characters and motivations. You can use all of those things. I mean, you still have to know how to plot all these other things, right?
Being a multi genre author has its benefits – Melissa Lenhardt
You still have to world build in a mystery and in a women’s fiction. All books are better if there’s a romantic subplot, I don’t care what you’re writing.
If you’re writing literary fiction, if you’re writing sci fi. Everything is better with romance in it. That’s a soap box I can get on later on
I think that it makes me a better, a more well-rounded writer. Readers like to read good books. If you write a good book, no matter what the genre is, and a reader likes your stuff, they’re going to give something else to try., if they liked your stuff, like if somebody likes my historical fiction, they see, I wrote a mystery, I think they’re going to give it a try. So that’s the theory anyway.
Jenny Wheeler: Sawbones is a mystery as well, because at the end we do discover that, the plot that started the whole thing that launched the whole thing, we do get to discover what was really going on New York and why she was wrongfully accused. So that’s very satisfying, the way that it ties up at the end.
Melissa Lenhardt: Yes. Some people were really not happy about that, either that the mystery wasn’t tied up at the end of the first book. I’m like, this book is not about that mystery. That mystery was just to get her out of New York City. But as I was writing, I realized that would be a good full circle for her as a character, which was what it was more about than solving that mystery.
The development of character over a three book series….
It was about her starting here as this person and coming back as a new person, it’s a different person. One of my reviewers, he said that really these books, it’s like a 1200 page epic. You can put all of these books together into one book and it would read like it’s all one big novel.
I think that’s true. I didn’t really intend that to happen, but that’s what happened,
Jenny Wheeler: I thought that was true too. So what are you working on now? What are your next 12 months look like?
Melissa Lenhardt: Well, I am working on an Audible, original, a romance. It’s a lesbian romance and it’s a short novel. It’s only 25,000 words and it’ll come out just as an audio book. So that’s exciting.
I’m working on edits on that today. Right now, as a matter of fact, I’m also working on a synopsis for a historical novel set in Berlin in 1932, 1933. Right before Hitler comes into power.
Those are the two things I’ve got going on. I’m waiting on edits for my second women’s fiction novel. That’s supposed to come out next year and I had an idea for a novel, that would be well I I shouldn’t probably say what the idea is, because who knows if I’ll even get to write it. Who knows if I’ll work on that, or the next, the third Stillwater, I’m not really sure, but, that’s what I have going on. Right.
Where to find Melissa Lenhardt online
Jenny Wheeler: Great, where can readers find you online. It’s obvious that you love to hear from your readers.
Melissa Lenhardt: I do. I love it. You can email me through my website@melissalinhart.com of course I’m on Twitter at,
Mel Linhart, M E L L E N H a R d T. I’m on facebook at melissa lenhardt. You can find me on Instagram as well. So it’s, pretty easy to find me once you Google me, it should all pop up.
Jenny Wheeler: Great. And we’ll have those, links to all of them. social media outlets, plus your books in the show notes for this episode that gets posted with the podcast. So there’ll be there forever more online for people to find.
Melissa Lenhardt: okay, great.
Jenny Wheeler: Well, look, it’s been great talking, thank you so much and all the very best with the next step. The third installment of the mystery.
Melissa Lenhardt: Thank you. Yes, I need all the help I can get on that. Thank you so much. It’s been wondeful.
Jenny Wheeler: Okay, Melissa,
If you enjoyed Melissa you might also enjoy Julie McElwain’s Time Travel Mysteries about an FBI agent who travels back to 1816 England. OK Melissa said her story was ot a time travel – but both have the same underlyig “Stranger in a Strange Land” theme.
Thanks To Our Technical Support:
The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at dcaudioservices@gmail.com or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with.
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