Sophie Littlefield's first book, A BAD DAY FOR SORRY, is out this month and already scoring solid reviews: "Littlefield puts a new spin on middle-age sleuths in this rollicking, rip-roaring debut," says Booklist. Kirkus Reviews concurs: "First-timer Littlefield creates characters with just the right quirks to charm."Big Thrill contributing editor Sandra Balzo recently caught up with Sophie:
First let's start out with A BAD DAY FOR SORRY. Can you give us an idea of what it's about?
In Stella Hardesty's first adventure, she straightens out a young woman's abusive ex with a bout of good old-fashioned violent reckoning. When the woman's baby is snatched, Stella goes looking for the ex and runs smack into some very bad guys, including the Kansas City mob.
Tell us about Stella.
Stella's a 50-year-old rural housewife who, after being the victim of spousal abuse for decades, decides one day that she's had enough. She takes out her husband with a wrench, discovers she has a taste for home-grown justice and starts helping other victims wreak vengeance on their own no-good men - all while running a sewing machine shop and trying to get laid.
What was your inspiration for Stella?
I was smack in the middle of my forties and having a bad week. Arriving at middle age in America, for a woman, is both liberating and irritating. I had a great time magnifying the everyday annoyances - failing vision, creeping waistline, parenting adult kids, youth-obsessed media - and setting them up against the bigger ones, like the expectations that mature women should keep their mouths shut and stay out of the way. Then, to give the story a hook worthy of a crime novel, I had to give Stella a reason to embrace vengeance and violence - making her an abuse victim did the trick.
Is there anything of Sophie in Stella? Dispatched any husbands with wrenches lately?Um...I know this is where I'm supposed to claim authorial distance and all, but I AM Stella. Yes, there are lots of superficial differences - location, education level, accent, occupation - and one important one, in that I've never experienced any sort of abuse. But her emotions, motivations, instincts, and longings come straight from the Sophie well without even going through a strainer.
Oh, and my husband is alive and well, thanks for asking.
A BAD DAY FOR SORRY is your first book--what was the road to publication like?
Long. Loooooooong. Seemingly endless at times. Wrote nine books before I sold. It was frequently disheartening, because my voice is definitely not standard issue, and I was often advised to reign it in and line it up with the known universe - that is to say, make it more similar to what was selling. Now, if an aspiring writer asks, I advise the opposite - seize upon what makes your voice unique and work it to its last shred.
You also write short stories and have had a number published. Which is your personal favorite?
Wow, no one's ever asked me that! It's a bit like being asked to pick a favorite child (which I do, every week, though I frequently forget and have to ask them which one is the preferred child and which we're just keeping around to do the chores).
I like stories that make me stretch, I suppose. THE MOLLOY BROTHERS GIVE THEIR ALL forced me to build from research, something I'm generally far too lazy to do. And DECISION DAY allowed me to work deep in a male voice. Both of these are available on my web site.
Will we see more of Stella? What are your working on now?
I just finished the third Stella novel. In her second and third adventures, she gets involved with prescription drug abuse and a male escort service, respectively, and ratchets up her campaign to get the sheriff in the sack.
I'm also just finishing up a young adult novel, BANISHED, that will be out from Delacorte in September 2010. This is a very different voice, a lonely sixteen-year-old who discovers she's heir to a dangerous paranormal gift. And, uh....she's me too. And there just might be a zombie or two in that one.
Contributing editor Sandra Balzo
turned to mystery writing after twenty years in corporate public
relations, event management, and publicity. Bean There, Done That, the
sequel to her Anthony and Macavity-nominated novels, Uncommon Grounds
and Grounds for Murder, received a starred review from Kirkus last year. Her latest novel is Brewed, Crude and Tattooed. 
