Cheryl Hollon – Shards of Murder

Today, it’s my pleasure to welcome back author, Cheryl Hollon.

Cheryl Hollon writes full time after she left an engineering career of designing and building military flight simulators in amazing countries such as England, Wales, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan and India. Fulfilling the dream of a lifetime, she combines her love of writing with a passion for creating glass art. In the small glass studio behind her house, Cheryl and her husband design, create, and produce fused glass, stained glass and painted glass artworks. Learn more at www.cherylhollon.com.

She is a member of Sisters in Crime, the Florida Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and the Tampa Chapter of the Romance Writers of America. A mystery conference addict, she regularly attends SleuthFest in Florida, Malice Domestic in Washington, D.C., and New England Crime Bake in Dedham, MA. Cheryl and her husband live in St. Petersburg, FL in a 1920’s Craftsman Bungalow.

When did you decide to become a writer?

There were two separate moments when I began to think I might want to be a writer.

The first was when I had just started working in the flight simulation industry as a computer systems engineer. A large part of the business of staying in business for a military subcontractor is to write proposals for future work. This entails a lot of writing to very restrictive parameters regarding length and subject matter. The deadlines were quick and the mountain of requirements to be addressed was higher than Mt. Everest.

The method for getting the proposals in on time was to split the work into pieces so that multiple engineers could each write a segment and then our boss compiled it into a single submission. On my first proposal, the boss called a meeting to critique the different entries and, as you can image, the quality was all over the map.

When she came to my part of the proposal, there was a long silence. I began to panic thinking that my entry was so horrible she was shocked speechless. Then she looked up and said, “You can really write. Are you sure you’re an engineer?”

The second moment was when I was deep in my black & white photography phase. I had an old Haselblad medium format camera and hand developed the film along with making my own prints.

It was a lot of work and required care and finesse to create a fine art print. After working for days in the darkroom, I finally had a set of three images to submit for a show to be displayed in our local theater lobby. But, part of the entry form required a written synopsis describing each photograph and its meaning to the photographer.

My favorite print is a haunting image of a homeless woman dressed head-to-toe in unrelieved white moving slowly through the spring flower market in Boston. I wrote a tiny abstract and titled it “Wishing for Daffodils.”

At the exhibit opening, my husband and I found my photographs and he read the text beside the woman in white. He looked at the print and looked back at me. “You should be a writer.”

There you have it – when my husband and my boss both suggested that I should be a writer – I believed them.

About Shards of Murder:

When a glass-making competition turns deadly, glass shop owner Savannah Webb must search for a window into a criminal’s mind…

As the new proprietor of Webb’s Glass Shop, Savannah has been appointed to fill her late father’s shoes as a judge for the Spinnaker Arts Festival, held in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. With her innovative glass works, the clear winner is Megan Loyola, a student of Savannah’s former mentor.

But when Megan doesn’t show up to accept her $50,000 award, rumors start flying. And when Savannah discovers the woman’s dead body on festival grounds, the police immediately suspect her of murder. To keep from appearing before a judge herself, Savannah sorts through the broken pieces of glass scattered around the victim for clues as to who took this killer competition too far. . .

“Cheryl Hollon clearly knows her glass craft, but better still, she also knows how to craft a good mystery.” –Sheila Connolly, New York Times bestselling author

“A fresh and original new series!” –Krista Davis, New York Times bestselling author

You can visit Cheryl and her books at: http://www.cherylhollon.com

Other books by Cheryl Hollon:

Pane and Suffering (Webb’s Glass Shop mystery 1)

Facebook URL:     https://www.facebook.com/cheryl.hollon (profile)

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cheryl-Hollon-Writer/357992230995844  (fan)

Tweets by CherylHollon

Buy links:

Pane & Suffering http://www.amazon.com/Pane-Suffering-Webbs-Glass-Mystery/dp/1617737607/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439334392&sr=8-1&keywords=pane+and+suffering

Shards of Murder  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shards-of-murder-cheryl-hollon/1121998620?ean=9781617737633

Cheryl and I would love to hear from you, so please fell free to leave a comment.