Meet Cue Interview with Author Shannon Symonds

Tara: So Shannon, I would love to hear your Meet Cue for Get a Life, Sandi! This is the third book in the Balefire Bay Mysteries, but for this particular volume: When, where, and how did inspiration first strike?

Shannon: Sandi, like many of my characters, had been following me around for a while. As a child, I was taught that if I did everything right, everything would be okay. As an adult, I’ve wrestled with the fact that bad things happen to practically perfect people. 

When Sandi’s mother passed away, she was placed with several foster families. As an adult, she creates what she thinks is the perfect life in a perfect home. A life that will protect her and her daughter from experiencing the things she did. And then things happen anyway, just like they do for many of us.

Sandi is the embodiment of my lifetime wrestle with the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Sandi learns that life is unpredictable, but joy can be found or made even on the worst days. Making new friends or opening your heart to new experiences can feel risky, terrifying even. But a life full of friends and family can bring you beautiful chaos. And out of bad things can come beauty for ashes (Isaiah 6:13). My favorite saying is: “Come what may and love it.” (Joseph B. Wirthlin)

Tara: I was really curious about the title, which is so different from the “murdery” titles of the previous two books. But I didn’t have to wonder long once I started reading. And being a newly “empty nest” mom, I immediately connected with Sandi and her sudden sense of emptiness when her daughter Wendi, leaves for college and it seems like she doesn’t have a life outside her daughter. The details you share are so vivid, they point to personal experience. How much of Sandi’s character is drawn from your own lived experience?

Shannon: My newsletter family usually suggests and votes on titles. They picked “Murder by the Bay.” However, as we were close to launch and making covers, I searched that name and there were a lot of books by the same name, written by famous authors.

Get A Life, Sandi was the title I used for my work in progress from the day I began plotting the story. I talked to all my writer friends and changed the title back to my original idea.

Chapter 2 is based completely on my personal experience. I raised six children, close in age, including twins. They were all heavily involved in sports, the arts, music, and other areas of life in our small town. Every day was spent watching 5 different teams, plays, musicals, concerts, driving to church functions for youth, and then all the sudden it was over.

I will never forget driving sixth child, the baby of the family, nine-hundred miles away to a large university. Her roommates were church friends from our small town. She didn’t need me for anything other than one last Walmart run.

The weather on the drive home was horrific. But not as frightening as the silence when I walked back into our old beach house. I couldn’t stop weeping and grieving. That first night, I swear I heard the ghost of our dog walking in the quiet.

I knew I had to get on with life, so I lit a fire in the fireplace and did something I’d always wanted to do. I wrote my first novel, a mystery, suspense, and thriller, which was published traditionally. 

Texts between my daughter and me inspired the conversations Sandi and Wendi have. 

Did I eat cookie dough with a spoon? I still eat cookie dough with a spoon, using bananas and applesauce as egg substitutes.

Tara: I love to bake, and I’m excited to try out Sandi’s cookie recipe! Maybe I’ll eat the dough, too! Now, as a mystery author, I’m curious who some of your favorite fictional detectives are (whether literary or television.) Both are valid!  

Shannon: I read my first Agatha Christie mystery while I was still in elementary school. I love all things, Agatha. I adore Miss Marple, although I wouldn’t want to be her maid. It’s a dangerous occupation. Katherine Rutherford played Miss Marple. She is my favorite version of the sweet knitter, Jane Marple, who listens and solves murders. I love cozy mystery authors: London Lovette, Catherine Coles, Jessica Thompson, Josi Kilpack, and Ellery Adams. My biggest challenge is opening a book and getting lost in it. I haven’t figured out how to read a chapter or two and put it down! Audiobooks are required for cleaning and gardening.

My favorite television sleuth changed last year. The show is different, but I love “Ludwig.” It’s a series about a puzzle setter or creator, John ‘Ludwig.’ He likes his routine and orderly life. When his identical twin disappears, his sister-in-law manipulates and pushes him to assume the identity of his brother as a detective in the Cambridge Police. She needs him to find out what happened to his twin. He surprises himself when he discovers solving a murder is like solving a puzzle. It is well written! My husband doesn’t like television, and yet, we binged the whole thing together!

Tara: Oh, I loved Ludwig! I hear season 2 is coming to Britbox in October. Yay! Ludwig is such a great character. And speaking of great characters, I had quite a few favorites in Get a Life, Sandi! It’s hard to choose, but those who stood out to me the most were Flynn (Sandi’s late husband’s colleague who is extra attentive) and Hazel, (the spunky mysterious older woman who moves in across the street with her equally mysterious husband). Oh, and I can’t forget Percy, (the terrifying King Charles Spaniel puppy guard dog). Do you have a favorite character in the story? And why?

Shannon: I love Conner Flynn Bates. He has deserved love from the beginning, in Booked for Murder, or book #1. Get A Life, Sandi isn’t a romance. Many people hate romance in their mysteries. I personally like a little romance in every book I read. Agatha Christie had Tommy and Tuppence and Miss Marple’s nephew, so why not Flynn. The thing I love best about Flynn? His boat, he fishes, his caring and protective nature, and that he carries a handkerchief like my husband.

I also adore Hazel. She is named after one of my great aunts. They bought our family beach house and had an adventurous life while loving and caring for me and my cousins during summers by the sea.

I love Percy. My daughter has a black and white Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Judy. She has long been my favorite granddog.

Tara: I love all these personal connections to your story. I can tell it’s very important to you. One of the big themes I took away from the story was that every person has an identity outside of their spouse or children, and we should not be afraid to explore it. What do you hope your readers will take away from the experience?

Shannon: Become who you already know you are. Take intentional risks. Write a book or learn to play an instrument. Find that thing that has been secreted in your heart and bring it out into the light. Even when things don’t work the way you want them to, find joy in the journey and never apologize for being you. Just announce, “Nailed it!” and move on.

Don’t blame yourself for things that are out of your control. You can drive yourself crazy trying to be what the world tells you is perfect. Perfect isn’t a protection. Perfect isn’t a clean house or getting all your laundry done. Perfect is sitting side by side with someone you love reading on the beach, making a complete mess of your kitchen with a friend as you learn a new recipe, leaving dirty dishes in the sink to listen to your child, or spend time with an elderly parent. Perfect is seeing someone in the mirror that you like. 

Letting go of perfect opens the door for people like Hazel, Flynn, and Paully.

Tara: That’s wonderful. Finally, what are you most proud of in this story?

Shannon: I am most proud of the characters and the way they change. Sandi gets a life and solves a murder, Paully becomes authentically Paully, Flynn gains a fishing buddy, and Wendi has a great year at school. 

Tara: Congratulations again, and thank you so much for sharing the story behind your story. It was a delightful read, and I hope that others will in enjoy it as much as I have.