Angela Ruth Strong Interview

Q: Let me start with asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself.
A. Hey there. I’m a mother of three who lives in Boise, Idaho. There are three other authors here who write for Love Inspired Suspense, and we call ourselves Team Love on the Run. Besides write, I teach group fitness classes and work for an airline so I can travel and do story research for free!

Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
A. I grew up with my mom writing stories for magazines like Women’s World and Sunday school curriculum. So at age sixteen, when I was cheering for a basketball game and a player chased a ball out of bounds, knocking me into the bleachers where I broke four ribs, I wrote about it. My mom helped me submit the story to American Cheerleader Magazine, because I just figured that’s just what you do. They bought it for $100, which was the easiest money I’d ever made, so I decided to go to college for journalism. It hasn’t ever been that easy since…

Q: Could you give us the highlights of your professional writing career including how you got your first writing break?
A: I finished my first novel in 2006 and took it to a conference. Because one publisher was interested, I was able to get an agent. While she was shopping that one, I wrote another book.

Then I heard about the Love Finds You line of books. To submit to them, all you needed was a synopsis and three chapters. I whipped the proposal out in a day, sent it to my agent, and forgot about it. When my agent called with good news, I thought it was going to be for one of the books I’d spent years finishing. Surprise! She sold the book I hadn’t yet written.
Love Finds You was a really great way to get started. I did a Costco book-signing, had a hardback edition, and even had the book optioned for film. It hasn’t ever been that easy since…

Q: Would you tell us about your current book release A Cuppa Trouble?
A: A Cuppa Trouble is book #2 in my CafFUNated Mysteries.

Plans for a Valentine’s Day grand opening of a small town coffee shop go awry when the first customer is killed. Evidence points toward the victim being mixed up in a car theft ring, but shop owners Tandy and Marissa have reason to believe he was framed. An assortment of suspects–from a pink-haired heiress to Tandy’s charming ex–all seem to know a little too much about grand theft auto.

Without approval from either their boyfriends or the gum-chewing FBI agent in charge, the shop owners go on stakeouts, plan stings, and pursue justice in a high-speed car chase. If they don’t find the killer soon, it might be more than their love lives in trouble.

Q: Where did you get your inspiration for A Cuppa Trouble?
A: I love heist stories, though they require a lot of research. The fun thing about this one is that all the crazy things that happen in this book are based on real life car theft. For example, one car owner chained their bumper to a post. When they came back, the car had been turned around and chained backwards with a note on the windshield that said, “We’ll take your car when we want it.” That fits right in with my quirky characters and their ridiculous antics. I pretty much try to pattern the feel after the television show Psych. It’s good, clean fun.

Q: What is the main thing you hope readers remember from this story?
A: With the story set at Valentine’s, I wanted to really focus the theme on relationships. My message is about communication, and the three things that are required for healthy communication. It’s simple, but so not easy.

Q: What inspires you to write?
A. I just love story. I love to see people overcome. I love the emotions that it creates inside me. And I want to offer that hope to others.

Q: Would you share with us what you are working on now?
A. I’m finishing up A Latte Difficulty, which is book #3. It’s really cool to have a character arc that continues through four books. Because, you know, even if my heroine works through her relationship difficulties to get to a marriage proposal, it’s going to take her to a whole new level when she has to trust others to do the wedding planning for her because she witnessed a crime and is sent to a safehouse…

Q: When you’re not writing what do you like to do?
A. I love to travel. I just got back from a graduation trip to Europe with my daughter. They’ve got some crown jewels over there that could make for a very exciting heist story…