1--What is the title of your latest release?
BLOOD SISTERS
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Blood Sisters is about a Cherokee archeologist who has left her rural Oklahoma hometown but is called back when a woman’s remains are found near a crime scene she barely escaped as a girl, and soon after, her sister goes missing.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
Blood Sisters is set in Miami, Oklahoma, in the Northeast corner of the state, which is where I grew up and my parents still live. My main character returns to her hometown of Picher, Oklahoma, which is now a ghost town that once belonged to the Quapaw tribe. The story is set in 2008, but the issues impacting the story go all the way to when minerals were discovered there in 1913. The land and mineral rights were stolen by the government and big mining companies from tribal members. For thirty years, billions were made, in fact half the lead and zinc used in World War I came from those mines. Once the industry went bust, the Quapaw tribe and people who’d moved to Picher were stuck in what many in the media dubbed “the most toxic town in America.”
I wanted to turn my writer lens to this place where there was injustice against the land and people. Even though I’d grown up with there, I still had a lot to learn and explore.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely. I like Syd’s sense of humor and being from the same area, we’d have a lot to talk about.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Haunted, dedicated, and relentless.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
Even though I’m from where the book is set, there’s such a difference viewing a place as a writer trying to tell a fictional story rooted in truth. I did extensive research on many injustices in the area from land stolen from tribes to environmental consequences of mining.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I try to edit after it’s written because the first draft is one of the toughest parts for me. I really enjoy revision, even if it’s extensive, which it usually is! But to have my arms around the story, to see what’s working and what’s not, is much easier for me. When it’s just an outline and a blank page, I am much more uncomfortable.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I love scallops, Bomster scallops in particular, which are pulled right out of the ocean and flash frozen before they land in my searing hot pan. That’s definitely something I discovered after moving to New England, not in Oklahoma.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
I’m a restless writer. I almost never write the same way two days in a row. I don’t really have a desk right now because it’s covered in swag and promotional giveaways for Blood Sisters, but that suits me fine because I hardly use it anyway. I bounce around from my bed to the couch to the porch to a coffee shop.
10--Who is an author you admire?
I think any author who gives back to other writers and their author community. We need as much kindness, support, and comradery as possible in this business. I find there’s always something happening to someone else I can cheer about, which means daily celebrations, which is good for the soul.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
The Anne of Green Gables series has meant so much to me at different times in my life. As a girl, I felt seen in the character of Anne with her wild imagination, love of reading and writing, and often being an odd duck. It taught me how much a book could mean to someone, since it meant so much to me.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was lucky enough that Blood Sisters went to auction, which means there were several publishers interested. There’s a window of when publishers can submit their offers, and it just so happened that all the offers came in at the end of the timeframe set in advance. So needless to say, I was sweating it before that moment. But it felt fantastic because I’d found a perfect publishing partner for this book and the series to follow.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I do write what I read (thrillers and suspense) but I also love romance, especially historical and queer contemporary romance.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Steel Magnolias, especially as I learned the story behind the story, about the writer using his own hometown and people he loved in the original, which was a Broadway play.
15--What is your favorite season?
Fall, pumpkin spice forever.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
The past few years, I take a weekend trip with my husband and kiddo (and now dog). I also do a year ahead tarot reading.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I’m finishing the last season of Reservation Dogs, which is set in a fictional reservation in Oklahoma. It’s heartfelt, funny and exactly what we need more of on TV.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I truly love everything.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I enjoy tarot and astrology, so probably something spiritual.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
I’m working on the sequel to Blood Sisters now, which is set on Narragansett land, near where I live now. I’m also a coauthor of an Audible Original series, Young Rich Widows, which is coming to print in April, and the audiobook sequel will be out in April, too.
A visceral and compelling mystery about a Cherokee archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who is summoned to rural Oklahoma to investigate the disappearance of two women…one of them her sister.
There are secrets in the land.
As an archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Syd Walker spends her days in Rhode Island trying to protect the land's indigenous past, even as she’s escaping her own.
While Syd is dedicated to her job, she’s haunted by a night of violence she barely escaped in her Oklahoma hometown fifteen years ago. Though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling.
When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home. She refuses to let her sister's disappearance, or the remains, go ignored—as so often happens in cases of missing Native women.
But not everyone is glad to have Syd home, and she can feel the crosshairs on her. Still, the deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing indigenous women cases going back decades. To save her sister, she must expose a darkness in the town that no one wants to face—not even Syd.
The truth will be unearthed.
Mystery [Berkley, On Sale: September 12, 2023, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593550113 / eISBN: 9780593550120]
Vanessa Lillie is originally from Miami, Oklahoma, where she spent a lot of her childhood investigating local ghost stories at the public library. After college, she worked in Washington, DC, and later moved to Providence, Rhode Island, which she, her husband, and her dinosaur-aficionado son call home. Smitten with the smallest state, she enjoys organizing book events and literary happenings around town.
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