JOAN LIVINGSTON
Q: Tell us about yourself. What got you into writing?
JL: I grew up near the ocean in Massachusetts, where my grandparents arrived from the Azores and Madeira islands. My childhood was steeped in all things Portuguese — from saintly aspirations to festas down the street. My mother taught me to love reading with twice-weekly trips to the public library. My teachers inspired me to write. I longed for straight hair and popularity but settled for being smart instead. I was the first of my entire family to graduate from college.
For a very long time, I was too busy raising six kids to write much. I started with poetry but found my way to prose when I began reporting on the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts for a daily newspaper covering meetings, disasters, and small town scandals.
I worked as a journalist for 35 years, including editor-in-chief of newspapers in New Mexico and Western Massachusetts. But I have left journalism to concentrate on my own writing. I live in Shelburne Falls, a village in Western Massachusetts.
As a journalist I listened to the way people talked and observed how they behaved. It’s an experience that I believe has paid off with realistic dialogue and true-to-life characters in my novels, which I write for adult and young readers. I am into the sixth book of my Isabel Long Mystery Series, published by darkstroke books. I have self-published other novels.
Q: Tell us about the premise of Working the Beat.
JL: Isabel Long is a private investigator solving cold cases in the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts — when she’s not pouring beer at the Rooster Bar. She uses the skills she learned as a long-time journalist, plus she has the assist of her 93-year-old mystery-loving mother.
Isabel finds her fifth case at a country fair when she is approached by a woman whose grandson's body was found in a ravine behind the demolition derby four years earlier. Once again, Isabel discovers herself drawn to help a desperate person.
Q: What inspired you to write it?
JL: Working the Beat is the fifth book in my Isabel Long Mystery Series. I love the characters and setting too much to let them go just yet. I will keep writing the series as long as I feel it’s
worthwhile.
Q: Did you do any research for your book? If you did, what did it consist of?
JL: I know the setting of this series well having lived there and as a journalist covered it. But sometimes I need to do a little research. For instance, the fifth book has a demolition derby. While I went to a derby once, I did some online research for a few details so what I write will be authentic.
Q: Do you agree with the statement write what you know? Why or why not?
JL: My motto is that I take what I know and have my way with it. So in a way that’s true for me, but not for other writers.
Q: Do you think creative writing classes are beneficial? Why or why not?
JL: The only one I ever took were in fourth grade. It was an inspiring class that made me want to be a writer early in my life.
Q: Do you enjoy editing?
JL: Yes, I do. I did it for others during my career in journalism. In fiction, I want my copy to be as clean as possible before it goes to an editor. I have my methods for that, including using the read aloud function on my computer and also reading it aloud myself. I liken it to having a
daydream and making it better.
Q: How do you juggle your writing and life?
JL: Before I left journalism for good in February, I would get up at 5 a.m. to write for an hour or so. Now I get up at 6 a.m. Writing 500 words is the sweet spot for the day. Anything more is
golden. I also write a blog and have other book projects. I am happy now to have the time.
Q: Do you write in other genres? Have you ever written in different mediums? (Poetry,
screenwriting, playwrighting, song writing, journalism etc.)
JL: I started writing poetry in college because frankly, I couldn’t sustain a thought in prose. (That experience came in handy for the series’ third book in which I had to create poetry written by two characters.) My inability to write prose changed when I became a reporter, which led to a 35-year-plus career in journalism. During that time, I wrote news and feature stories, columns, and op-eds. (I was also the editor-in-chief of newspapers in New Mexico and Massachusetts.)
Q: If you could invite a fictional character for lunch (from your own book(s) or another writer’s), who would you invite and why?
JL: I would gladly have lunch with Atticus Finch from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I believe I would be charmed by his good will, intelligence and good humor.
Q: What advice would you give to an aspiring author?
JL: There’s the business of writing, which is a lot tougher.
Q: What are your future plans as an author? Are you working on another project?
JL: Currently, I am working on the sixth in the Isabel Long Mystery Series, on the last 10,000 words or so as I write this. I have other novels for adults (literary) and children that I haven’t
published. I would like to make that happen. And I am hoping to be inspired to write something completely different.
Isabel Long stumbles onto her next case at a country fair when she is approached by a woman whose grandson's body was found there four years earlier.
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Shirley Dawes took in Lucas Page after his mother had abandoned him, doing her best after failing to protect her own children from her late husband, a no-good abuser Shirley's clearly had a hard life although by what people say, she did a good job raising him.
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But on a Saturday night, Lucas Page dies in a ravine behind the fair's demolition derby, and nobody saw what happened. The official ruling was that he slipped and fell.
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Once again, Isabel discovers herself drawn to help a desperate person.
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When she's not pouring beer at the Rooster Bar, Isabel is working the beat, a term from her many years as a journalist. That means following a story to the end - talking with the reliable sources she met in her other cases, uncovering secrets, and meeting people of interest, including a few unsavory characters who quickly become suspects. Plus, she can always count on the sage advice of Maria, her 93 year old mother, 'her Watson.'
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Along the way Isabel finds compelling evidence that Lucas might have a connection to a string of break-ins in the hilltowns - yet another unsolved mystery. Was Lucas part of a ring of thieves? Or was lie trying to do the right thing but died as a result of it?
Isabel soon has her hands full with case number five.
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NO.6 IN THE SERIES - Following the Lead
An old mystery deserves a new approach…
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Isabel Long moves quickly onto the next case when a former boss entrusts her with a mystery that has haunted him since his childhood. Lin Pierce, then only eleven, was supposed to be minding his little sister while their mother gave a piano lesson inside their home. But the sleeping baby was stolen from her carriage after he’d been lured away in a well-executed kidnapping that devastated the family. Forty-nine years later, Lin is convinced he met his long-lost sister by chance. After all, the woman not only resembled his mother but she had a distinctive family trait—different colored eyes.
As Isabel works her sixth case, she believes the student who took the piano lesson that day, later a well-known musician, is key to solving it. But meeting him in person proves to be nearly impossible.
As she did when she was a journalist, Isabel uses her resources — including her mother, Maria — to follow that lead until the end.
