Valerie Hansen Interview

Q: Let me start with asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself.
A. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve been writing since humans were drawing pictures on the walls of caves! I may have started halfway through my life but I’ve made up for it since. At last count, I have over 70 books in print, not counting reissues. I am obsessed. Once I get an editorial okay I can’t stay away from the computer. It’s actually easier to find the time since my kids are grown. Now my only real interruptions occur when my dogs think I need to stop and eat or play. ?

Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
A. I have always read. Everything. One day I realized that not everybody made up different endings to stories to make them come out happily. I did. From as far back as I can remember. By writing the whole book I was in control. My biggest problem is when I have to make my characters struggle to grow and improve.

Q: Could you give us the highlights of your professional writing career including how you got your first writing break?
A. It was in the mid 1980s. My married daughter lived on a college campus in Riverside, CA. I learned of an extension class for writers and decided to take it so I could visit her every weekend for a few months. It turned out to be more about marketing and I took it as a challenge, reading boxes of the kind of books I wanted to write. In 9 mo. I had my first sale. If I had known how rare that was I would have been terrified!

Q: Would you tell us about your current book release MARKED FOR REVENGE?
A: I was playing leapfrog with 2 books for a while. Marked for Revenge had been approved to be written according to my synopsis and I was about to start on that when I got a call from NY asking me to participate in another K-9 continuity series and write TRAIL OF DANGER which was due at the same time. Here’s where I made my mistake. I asked for more time to finish Marked for Revenge without specifying a new due date. OOPS! This was my fault for not being precise and for assuming that the editors and I were on the same wavelength. Nope. Not even close! I set aside Marked for Revenge to concentrate on the series book because those dates are not flexible. If I’m late with my manuscript, everybody suffers because the whole series then falls behind schedule. Are you with me so far? Good. I made the deadline for Trail of Danger with a few weeks to spare. Yay, me! As I usually do between books, I gave myself a few days off. And then…an editor emailed to ask when Marked for Revenge would be done because it had already been scheduled for release! Ack!!! What happened to my time extension? Um, that was it. Uh-oh. Not good. So, I did something I thought was impossible. I got up at 4AM for almost a month straight (Sundays off) and wrote that book. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. Know why? Because I didn’t take the time to ponder and fiddle and try to out-think myself. I just wrote it as if I were reading it and having a wonderful time. And my editor for that line loved it. She really did. So did I. The work schedule was grueling and nothing I’d care to repeat, but in this case it produced a book and a heroine who is all me, right down to her odd sense of humor.

Q: Where did you get your inspiration for MARKED FOR REVENGE?
A: In this case, I’ve been an EMT, my husband was an EMT, my son was an EMT and my grandson is now a paramedic. His mother, my daughter, has been a nurse for over 20 years. It’s in the genes, I guess. I love the folks who lay it on the line to save lives. And I understand how they can lose faith and burn out from seeing and dealing with tragedy daily. That’s why that book is dedicated to them.
TRAIL OF DANGER came to me as part of the “True Blue K-9 Unit” series plot. I was given the names and occupations of hero, heroine and K-9 as well as those in the other books in this series. All the authors then work together to make the stories mesh without giving away too many clues too early. It really is hard. Trust me on that. We sweat over our own plot as well as those of the others while following guidelines that make sense – most of the time. If we run into problems, we then have to rework the plots so that a change to one of the books still lets the others shine.

Q: What is the main thing you hope readers remember from this story?
A: This is the same for all my writing for Love Inspired. I want to convey hope in the face of despair, trust in God when nothing seems to make sense, and the power of faith over troubles. Things may not work out the way we think they should but God loves us and His ways are infinitely better, even if we don’t understand them.

Q: What inspires you to write?
A. I just write. I have to. It’s more than a compulsion it’s as necessary as breathing. I can take breaks to recharge my mental batteries but sooner or later I’m writing something. It used to be long letters to friends and jotting in my notebook at work when I was stuck in a faculty/staff meeting. I actually forgot to remove one of those short essays on how it hurt my back to have to sit so long! The secretary who checked those rule books in and out for new school years said she’d enjoyed reading it! ?

Q: Would you share with us what you are working on now?
A. Would you believe it’s another leapfrog project? Well, it is, but this time I insisted I was not going to get out of bed in the middle of the night to complete two books. So, I’m writing another K-9 series book, this time “True Blue Brooklyn K-9 Unit” and doing a novella set in Grand Canyon National Park, featuring a Park Ranger and a young woman he met when she volunteered one summer. She’s now an FBI Agent who needs his help. I can work on this shorter story while waiting for approval of the synopsis and early chapters of the K-9 book. Yes, one is due in Sept. and the other in Oct. I know, I know, call the doctor, this author is self-destructive!

Q: When you’re not writing what do you like to do?
A. Eat. Well, not exclusively. I love to garden, too. Living in the south where we get a lot of rain I’m able to raise lovely flowers and veggies. I never had that talent when I was in Southern California where the Santa Ana winds dried everything out so fast.