Meet Deborah Piccurelli - Interview & Book Giveaway

A big welcome to Deborah Piccurelli, author of the novel In the Midst of Deceit. Let’s meet Deborah!

THE BIO

Deborah M. Piccurelli is passionate about the Lord, family and creating powerful prose. After the publication of her first novel, she has turned to writing suspense stories woven around dark and obscure issues. She hopes to see those efforts in print soon. Deborah likes reading, movies, family time and friendly get-togethers. She lives with her family in New Jersey.

THE INTERVIEW

JA: Tell us about your book, In the Midst of Deceit.
DP: It’s an inspirational romantic suspense. Following a near-fatal sky diving incident, a driven financial advisor enlists the aid of a spiritually grounded woman to help him determine which of his business partners wants him out of the way.

JA: How did you come up with the idea for this novel?
DP: I don’t have any special techniques for generating ideas, as some authors do. I came up with the characters first. I like to use unlikely heroes, so I thought having someone in a wheelchair suffering from head trauma would be interesting. I also sometimes like to have the hero and heroine be polar opposites, which is why the heroine, Stasi Courtland, is the conservative, upstanding Christian. She still sometimes backslides. As for Slade, he’s the bad boy; the womanizer and adventure-seeker. The story itself took some thinking about. My own working experiences came into play and I ended up using the world of financial planning as Slade’s occupation. And because I needed Stasi to be at home a lot and available to be a help to Slade, I researched what type of home businesses were out there. Back when I wrote the book, information technology was a little-known service, but it fit well with the plot. And of course, being a suspense novel, there had to be at least an attempted murder.

JA: Your hero, Slade, loses everything after a devastating accident. Was it hard to take him to such a dark place?
DP: A little. This probably sounds weird, but I suffered right along with him. He needed to reach that point of brokenness, though, in order to see that material possessions aren’t everything.

JA: What do you hope people take away when they finish reading In the Midst of Deceit?
DP: That you can have everything, but really have nothing without the Lord; that you can have nothing, but live abundantly if you have the Lord.

JA: What’s next for you in the writing arena?
DP: Since In the Midst of Deceit was published, I’ve decided to write about dark, obscure, social/moral topics. I’ve just finished the first manuscript of that type, which involves fetal harvesting. I’m preparing to seek representation for it.

JA: You wrote a very interesting piece on your web site about “Wedded Bliss.” You’ve been married for about thirty years. How do you keep the romance alive?
DP: One way is making an effort to do things that please your spouse, just like when you were dating.

JA: What would people be surprised to learn about you?
DP: That I’m a Bruce Lee fan. I am fascinated by the martial arts talent he possessed. I’m not crazy about the gory parts of his movies, but they had good stories beyond the violence.

JA: What’s your favorite thing to read for fun?
DP: The daily comic strips.

JA: Last but not least, how can people keep up with your latest publishing news?
DP: Visit my Web site and sign up for my news bulletins. They’re not a regular weekly or monthly newsletter, just whenever I have news of some interest, like an interview and book drawing. Right now, there aren’t any publishing announcements, because, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve only just finished my next manuscript.

Thank you, Deborah, and continued blessings on your writing journey!

WIN THE BOOK

You can win a copy of In the Midst of Deceit here. Just leave a reply to this blog. I’ll combine the responses of my Blogger and ShoutLife blogs to pick a winner at random on March 18th. Please leave an email address so I can contact you if you're the winner. (To prevent spammers from trolling for your email, please use this format with the brackets--you [at] yourmail [dot] com--or something similar.) ShoutLifers will be contacted via ShoutMail. Good luck!