Alarmed, she peered into the darkness, nothing but blackness at the end of the headlights. Just a single dot of light before them, off in the distance, never coming closer no matter how long they drove toward it. Meredith looked over at Brian, wondering at this strange joke.They were nowhere. Why was he taking his family to the middle of nowhere, in the snow, at night? A shiver of apprehension went through her.
“You’re going to love it here.” The words raced out of Brian. “No worries about the kids. No traffic or smog. People are real in Idaho. They don’t put on a show, you know? It’s paradise on earth out here. Paradise on earth.”
Meredith stared at the dot of light, terrified now that the lonely outpost was their home. I won’t do this. She sat up straighter in her seat, ready to confront Brian, no matter the consequences. He can’t make me do this.
Julie Howard, Crime and Paradise
Julie Howard moved to Boise 17 years ago, after a spending a career in Central California as a journalist. She has written several short fiction stories over the last few years. When the bug for writing a fiction novel came, Julie turned to her adopted state for inspiration. She sat down with the Boise Beat to talk about her new book series, Wild Crime; and the first book in that series, Crime and Paradise, which will be released on August 30th. She also talked about herself and how she came to love living in Boise.
Q: Julie, what is there about Idaho that makes it such a great setting for Crime and Paradise?
A: There are so many different communities that each have their own unique personalities. There’s a lot of Idaho in this book. I’m a native Californian and when we first moved here to Idaho I was used to cities and noise and crowds and city after city. I loved California and that’s pretty much what I knew. When we moved out here we started to explore the state a little bit, the state that we had moved to. So we were out driving around way out from the city far from anywhere—and you can get lost pretty quick in Idaho—and we were driving along, nothing around us but mountains and fields, no houses, just to me at the moment a lot of nothing; and I looked over to my husband and I facetiously thought “I could just kill him for bringing me out here.”and then my next thought was ‘that’s a great idea for a book!’. I kept that plot idea in the back of my mind about a woman who had been brought out and didn’t want to be there and it was kind of the last straw in their marriage and that she wanted to kill him.
Over a few years the idea just grew in my mind about the plot and how being in Idaho entered that feeling of being very remote and isolated grew into this story. The story really grew, it evolved and changed and became a story about an abused woman who was brought out to this very remote location in Idaho with her two young children and feels very vulnerable to the point where she’s afraid for her life and decides that the only way out is that she’s going to have to kill her husband. So that’s how all of that evolved and brought in through that feeling that you get from moving from a very urban environment out to one of these remote places like in Idaho.
Q: What made you go from being a journalist to a fiction author?
A: Well I sort of feel that I went from being a fiction author to being a jornalist, to be honest with you. I’ve been writing fiction since I was a kid in the fourth grade. I just loved making up stories and getting lost in these fantasy worlds of my mind. When I got into college I had this rude awakening that I wasn’t going to be able to support myself as a fiction author. You just don’t go out and make a living doing that. Some people can, but it’s very rare. So I got the idea that I could write for a living, but it was probably going to be journalism. So journalism was my second choice, but I really had a long career as a journalist and it really enabled me to write every day. I learned a lot about writing and being able to put a story together in a logical order, obviously all the things that go along with knowing how to write and getting to know people, interviewing different types of people on different career paths and with different motivations. It was, to me, a great training ground for becoming a fiction author, which I am, finally. I got to the point where I can write fiction.
Q: Is Meredith in Crime and Paradise a strong woman?
A: She is a young woman, she’s 24; and she’s had a very rough childhood. She grew up with an alcoholic mother and she didn’t even know who her father is. She’s been dragged around by this nomadic mother, so she’s a little confused, actually, to who she is. She doesn’t know if she’s strong or weak or anything, she doesn’t really know who she is. At a very young age, she went into this marriage with a man who she thinks is going to be her savior, that he’s bringing her finally to a place of stability in her life. Where the story starts, she is 24 and has two young kids, they move to Idaho to this remote place and she sort of starts to wake up and look at where she is in life; and that’s where the journey begins for her. There’s that external journey that deals with her husband getting killed and she becomes the prime suspect, so she has to become strong through the story. Over the course of the series—there’s going to be three books—so over the course of the three books, it is a story of growth for her and becoming strong.
Q: Did you travel around Idaho to find the locale for Crime and Paradise?
A: I didn’t travel Idaho specifically for that. I traveled Idaho quite a bit because I like to travel around and see. I’m very curious about the places that are here. There are some wonderful locations, some wonderful really remote locations that I think find their way into this book just by chance. I’m just amazed at the remote locations that people will live in. And I’m curious about their motivations for living there; and so my imagination is just creating all these stories in my head. I’m always looking at the homes out in these very remote spots and I’m starting to create stories in my mind about why people would choose these places to live. I didn’t go out looking specifically for a location, but I pictured it very easily in my mind once I started writing. Here, I knew what the place looked like, I knew what the house looked like and I knew the mountains that were going to be looming over her. I just saw it, I know in my mind it’s a fictional town, but I know exactly what it looks like. Hay City is a compilation of various places in Idaho. It’s not one specific place, but it could be almost a number of small towns in Idaho.
Q: Is there a common thread to the characters in your writing?
A: I think I like to write about women gathering strength. I think if anything, that probably would be it. I have a number of short stories that I’ve written and probably through most of those that is a theme that keeps occurring to me. I probably don’t have an answer as to why, it’s just a theme that appeals to me. I grew up with women’s lib and that whole era and I think women still have a long ways to go. It’s not a journey that’s finished yet. I think there’s a theme that I’m trying to—-there’s something I’m trying to accomplish through this theme. Hopefully, if people read the stories they’ll get to know women and maybe draw strength from them also.
Q: So you’ve always enjoyed mysteries and always wanted to write one?
A: Strangely enough, I enjoy reading historical fiction, going to other places and setting my characters in real places among real events. This was a very different book for me and it just popped out, it was just there lurking there from that time I moved to Idaho. That idea was just waiting and there was just a moment I thought, ‘I need to write this story’. It’s just been preying on my brain now, it’s no longer in the background, its come right to the forefront and I had to just sit down and start writing this story. It came out of me immediately, there was no—-people would say they have a story written in their heads. The story was pretty much written an my head and it came out very fast. I spent for years writing a historical fiction book which I haven’t published yet and it still needs more work, but sitting down and writing this book, it came very quickly. And then I realized it is more then just one book, it’s three books that will tell the journey of my characters. So there will be more of them,; I’m almost done with the second book. Its called Crime Times Two and there’s more then one death in the second book, thus the title. I don’t know, maybe I’m a mystery writer, maybe I’m a failed historical fiction writer and successful mystery writer! I don’t know…….it’s a fun genre to write.
Q: How was the Wild Crime series born?
A: Going back to the days when I initially moved to Idaho and feeling like a fish out of water, that was really the feeling I wanted to bring to this mystery, of somebody having to cope with a completely different environment, something that is just so foreign; the weather, the culture, the place, the mountains, just everything about it. He just kicks the feet out from underneath her and makes her feel very vulnerable. I think that was the starting place for the story. It’s kind of a good place for a lot of books, a good start for them. You kind of throw your heroine off guard and then the story goes from there.
Q: Thank you, Julie. We’ll be looking forward to reading Crime and Paradise!
The second book in Julie Howard’s Wild Crime series, Crime Times Two, will be released in 2018. Julie also has several short stories available also such as Three Ghosts, available online to read.
Crime and Paradise is available for pre-order through the Wild Rose Press here with a release date of August 30 for both digital and print copies.
Crime and Paradise
