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Author Up Close: Alexia Gordon—Medicine, Murder, and Classical Music

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Image Credit: Unsplash Julio Rionaldo 

In my final 2020 installment of the Author Up Close series, I’m interviewing Alexia Gordon. Alexia is repped by Paula Munier of Talcott Notch Literary Services and published by Henery Press.  She’s been nominated for an Agatha Award, was a finalist for a Silver Falchion Award, and was chosen as one of Suspense Magazine’s best debuts of 2016. She’s also the host of the Cozy Corner podcast. As if all that weren’t enough, Alexia is also a medical doctor.

I first met Alexia in 2019 at the Killer Nashville Conference. Despite its name, the annual conference isn’t some weird meetup of aspiring murderers; it’s an event held by and for very friendly, welcoming, and non-killy mystery, crime, and thriller writers. It was there that I learned that Alexia is the author behind the Gethsemane Brown Mysteries, paranormal cozies featuring an African American classical musician living in southwestern Ireland. I recently had the opportunity to ask her about the series, the challenges of balancing two demanding careers, and why she advises writers never to miss an opportunity to pitch their work.

GW: I’ve been starting my author Q&As by asking about writer origin stories. The term is usually only used to describe superheroes, but I think creatives all have origin stories. What’s yours?

AG: I write mysteries with ghosts because I grew up reading mysteries and reading (and watching) horror and ghost stories. Write what you love, right? The thing missing from what I read growing up were characters who looked like me. I wondered why a Black woman couldn’t catch a murderer or vanquish a demon or survive the night in a haunted house. One day, I realized a Black woman could do those things. So, I decided to write about a Black woman catching murderers while living in a haunted house.

GW: What was your path to getting published? If you pitched and queried, what was it about your manuscript and query that stood out? What advice can you give to writers who are currently querying?

AG: I didn’t have much (any) luck with querying. I got my contract by pitching. I went to DFWCon, the Dallas Fort Worth Writers Conference, and signed up for pitch sessions. I attended the practice pitch sessions beforehand. The feedback I got proved invaluable in helping me hone my pitch. I can’t give any advice about querying, I’m afraid. As for pitching, I recommend not passing up any chance to pitch and I recommend practicing so you sound your best in the short time you have to impress an agent or editor.

GW: In this industry, it can be difficult for authors to get additional books published in a planned series. You’ve got five in your Gethsemane Brown Mysteries series, which is amazing. Can you tell us a little about the series: how you got started with it and share some insight into how to try to obtain longevity in this business?

AG: The Gethsemane Brown Mysteries feature an African American classical musician who, through misadventure, ends up accepting a job teaching music at an Irish boys’ school and a caretaking gig at a cottage haunted by a murder victim. Gethsemane solves the ghost’s murder. After that, the murders and the ghosts keep finding her. Cozy mysteries are almost always series. My publisher specialized in cozy mysteries so they were only interested in a series. I don’t think there’s any secret to longevity other than not giving up. Keep working. Keep writing.

GW: What advice would you give a newbie writer who someday wants to be doing what you’re doing? [Read more…]

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Hook and Inciting Incident: The Power Couple of the “Must Read Now”

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When I set out to write a “body of work,” I didn’t intend a “string of failed proposals” to define its completion. I had hoped to leave a legacy of, well, you know. Actual written novels. Yet it was time to try again. From a fresh page, my cursor blinked at me; I cursed and blinked right back. Where to go from here? My attention strayed to my bookcases—in particular, the way I’d organized them. The one on the left holds a couple hundred new and used novels that piqued my interest. I plan to … [Read more...]

Four Ways to Answer a Blurb Request

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Yesterday, I spent most of the day working. In the end, I wrote 40 words. And it was a successful working day, not a failed one; those 40 words will make someone very happy. A poet, I suppose, might be able to make the same statement, but I haven't written poetry in years; what I'm talking about here is writing a blurb for a less-established novelist. A lot of time goes into reading an entire book and thinking through how to phrase your praise. Though it's time-consuming, it's also one of my … [Read more...]

The Guy Who Wrote Fight Club Just Kicked My Ass

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At the beginning of 2020 (which must be about 40 or 50 months ago, right?), I stumbled onto a book that literally changed how I think about writing. During an email exchange with my dear friend and fellow writer Jocosa Wade, she recommended an early novel by Chuck Palahniuk, whom I only knew as the guy who had written Fight Club. I loved the movie by the same name, but had never read any of his novels. To be honest, I’d always been a little afraid to read him, figuring he would be way too … [Read more...]

Spoilers Won’t Spoil Your Book Promotion. How to Use Them to Pull Readers In.

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Spoiler alert: this post is not going to talk about COVID-19 or the state of our world and the ways in which we’ve all needed to adjust.  But it is going to look at the pandemic as an example of something I’m asked about all the time.  You guessed it: spoilers. Rarely does a week go by when an author does not ask me whether posting a particular snippet with plot information to Facebook, or sharing a description of their main character’s conflicts or fate with a reporter will “give away too … [Read more...]

What I’ve Learned About Presenting Online Writing Workshops

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Like most professional writers, I’ve always supplemented my writing income with speaking gigs—workshops, talks, presentations of all sorts, both for adults and for children. Although over the years I’ve presented the odd Skype or other remotely-delivered live presentation, the vast majority of my speaking gigs have been face-to-face and in person. They've often involved travel of some sort or the other—usually long distance, sometimes close to home. Since late March, when the shutdown began … [Read more...]

Publishing in a Pandemic: An Insider Interview with a Book Publicist

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The first half of this year has been a monumental test in flexibility and resilience for authors and everyone in publishing. My debut novel, The Kindest Lie, will release on February 9, and that publishing date has changed several times as the William Morrow team attempted to position my book and others in their catalog for optimal success during these uncertain times. Recently, I joined the team of A Mighty Blaze, a new organization that formed to help authors and books find their readers … [Read more...]

Communications in 2020: What Do Authors Value?

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I think constantly about value. What will bring value to my client’s book—the write-up in People, the outreach to book clubs, the branded swag for influencers, a radio satellite tour to bring a specific message to a large audience. What is the marketing communications mix for my client? How will I generate conversation, drive influence and sales, gain the implied endorsement from a reputable source, build an online buzz. I recently spoke with bestselling historical fiction author (a Get Red … [Read more...]

Blurbing and Being Blurbed

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A note to my friends at Writer Unboxed:  As a Type-A to-the-max sort of person, I prepared this essay weeks ago, when the world was different.  Now, an essay about how to solicit praise for one’s book seems frivolous, irrelevant, and downright offensive—and yet I do want to offer it to you.  Rather than retracting the essay, I’ve decided to offer it in the hope that you will save it for when it may be useful.   Is there any writer who actually likes asking for blurbs?  I suppose there … [Read more...]

Writing as Collaboration

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You know the drill : writing requires you to put your ass in the chair and write… alone. We’ve got our characters, sure, but they aren’t colleagues. The conversations we have with them are really conversations with ourselves. I think this is one of the reasons that writers flock to social media – finally, other people to talk to all day! Writing can be lonely. I did a (unscientific) survey recently of many writers I know who write full time and that is one of the touchstones they didn’t … [Read more...]

9 Authors on Hope

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I was on the phone with author Barbara Taylor Bradford on Tuesday morning. We were just having a check-in to see how things were going in quarantine. I complained about my mornings of remote learning with my five and eight-year-old children. We both agreed that as women who have worked from home for years—she 40 and me 15—not much had changed for us in that respect. But having lived through WWII, she wanted me to know that it would be OK, that things would get better, that I had to have hope. … [Read more...]

Money to Write By (Part 2): Writing a Killer Proposal

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I promised to follow up my last blog post on searching for relevant grants with a post on how to write a killer proposal. Well, here we are, at my next blog post, but also in another world. One with far more questions than answers--not just about writing, but about basic life and the shape of the future. I have had too much time during shelter in place to think how useless, or even callous it would be for me to carry on as planned. Will there even be grants for writers in the future? Shouldn't I … [Read more...]

The Sunny(er) Side of Launch Event Cancellations

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It's so good to be back here on Writer Unboxed after a year’s sabbatical hunkering down and focusing solely on my work helping authors build buzz and visibility at BookSavvy PR. I’ve missed being an active part of this wonderful community (though I’ve still been stalking), and have been bursting with thoughts to share from the frontlines of promotion. Many of those thoughts suddenly feel less relevant, though, as we all stand paralyzed with shock before the Coronavirus crisis.  People across … [Read more...]

All the Light, All the Love

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I intended to write about new marketing communications strategies I’ve seen in the book world these days, but given the current pandemic and it’s impact on our industry, I’m going to pivot slightly and go back to a topic I’ve written about before: community. I write now having just come from picking up books from my children’s public school, a school of 1,300 in the borough of Queens, NY.  The parents lingered a little longer to see a friend, to stand in the sunlight, to just be around a … [Read more...]