Featured Interview With Belle Blackburn
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I grew up in Knoxville, TN and moved to Nashville for college and stayed. Was too busy raising parents and children to do any serious writing until recent years. My husband and I had a conversation years ago about distinguishing murder vs. suicide and it percolated in the back of my mind for a long time until it had cooked itself into a book. Nashville is a city with wonderful history so I set the story there.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
For some reason my mother did not want to spend her entire day reading to me and I hated her closing a book to get on with her day. I was fortunate to have a brother two years older who would come home from school and teach me what he had been taught in school that day so we learned to read together. Getting my library card at age four was like the key to Disney World to me. I used to be frustrated that the kid mystery books featured nine-year-olds and never someone my age. I wrote a book at age ten called Irving the Ghost that involved a mystery but have no idea what became of it. So I am late getting to the first book, but here we go.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I think the authors that have influenced me have been Susan Howatch, Margaret Mitchell and Diana Gabaldon, to name just a few. Susan Howatch is a genius at telling a story through different viewpoints and you think you know a situation until you see someone else’s point of view. She always explores the complicated human condition so thoroughly in her Starbridge and St Benet series. I read Gone With the Wind when I was 14 and it was the first time history really came alive for me, more than just statistics in a book. Diana Gabaldon is good at incorporating medicine and history in her books, which I have attempted to do in mine.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
The Doctor’s Daughter: Journey to Justice is set in Civil War Nashville and involves a murder mystery. Kate is convinced her father did not commit suicide and is determined to clear his name. She takes a real journey through antebellum law and medicine to finally get the answer with a lot of laughs and some romance along the way. Nashville really played a pivotal role in the war and was the country’s first experience with military occupation so was a great setting for the book. And to answer the first question I get after people read it, yes, there is a sequel on the way! That troublesome girl just left too many things undone. The book has been #1 in historical fiction on Amazon and I am grateful for the readers that put it there.
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