Official Interview: June Gillam

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Official Interview: June Gillam

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Today's Chat with Sarah features June Gillam author of House of Eire, which will be book of the month in March 2020.

To view the official review, click here.

To view the book on Amazon, click here.

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I usually start off by asking a bit about who you are as a person. What do you think is important that we should know about?

Writing is my heart and soul—can’t get away from it. I wrote poetry first and then stories and novels. I’m headed toward memoir, too. I like to focus on relationships—men, women, sisters, mothers, daugthers, sons, fathers –the good, the bad and the buried so deep. I love to write into the dark side of human nature because I was raised in a home with too much light, denying the dark. I love to imagine how my words will come across to my readers and hope readers will write to me about their experiences. [email protected]

Let's talk a bit about your book House of Eire. The main character is a ghost writer. What was it like for you writing about an author as an author?

I feel so at home writing a character who is a writer—first Hillary is a reporter. I was almost a reporter and did for college newspapers but hated the pressure of a deadline. Hillary becomes a ghost writer due to committing an ethical mistake, that of using a few lines from other writers without attribution. So she ruins her Broome byline—her father was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and would be turning over in his grave if he knew how she dishonored his reputation, but it was due to panic attacks over having to cover stories about mothers—she’d been abandoned by her mother at age ten, and carries a sort of PTSD bundle of emotional wounds that get ripped open every time she has to cover a story that includes mothers in the crime.

The book is a mystery that takes place in Ireland. How much research did you do regarding the location? Have you actually been to Ireland? Why did you pick it?

It’s a mainstream/suspense novel rather than a mystery. The readers know “who done it” but not if he will get away with it. I’ve been to Ireland three times—and in love with it since childhood when our mother sang “Galway Bay” to us and told us that our ancestors were the lord and lady of a castle there who came to America for freedom. Kind of implausible and my mother died before I could pin her down on it. I’ve never found that lord and lady but they live in my imagination.

In 1993 my hubby and I drove from Dublin to Galway and Sligo and back—he drove, I navigated and we stumbled upon the holy “city” of Knock, which Hilary does too, in Eire.

Then my sister and I went on a Paddywagon tour of Ireland in 2012 and two years later, I stayed there for two weeks alone, in Dublin and in the University of Ireland dormitories in Galway.

What led you to choose murder as your subject?

My Hubby Jerry Gillam thought he was his job as an LA Times Sacramento bureau newsman and dean of the Capitol Press Corps for 35 years. He was also a beloved mentor to so many young journalists but was forced by the big LAT corporation to take a golden handshake, and so he felt a special kind of death by losing what he thought was his identity. At the time, I was teaching a creative writing class and was free writing along with my students to a Natalie Goldberg prompt that included using an occupation. I chose butcher as an occupation and wrote a short story about a little mom and pop grocer whose shop went belly up after a superstore moved into the neighborhood. He too lost his identity when he lost his butcher shop, the work that he loved and gave his life meaning and purpose. I kept on exploring what happens to turn ordinary people into killers, to poke around in the mind of a murderer in House of Cuts, my first suspense novel, and on into the next three in the series.

My books are crime novels, more like suspense rather than mystery novels where the reader is figuring out who done it, but where the reader knows who is doing it and follows the threads inside his mental maze of justifications; the killer is a mystery to the protagonist though, Hillary Broome, who has to figure out who is the murderer and stop him from getting away with any more madness.

Could you describe your writing process? And what is your favorite part of that process?

I zero in on some kind of injustice, and create a character who suffers from that then trace what he or she does to cope with the pain. I write all over the place, a pantser with only a vague plot/plan for the whole story, so there is a lot of what turns out to be wasted writing that has to be tossed once I figure out the spine of the whole book. I do love being in the zone of writing scenes—just letting them pour out my fingers from who knows where. It’s like being in an altered state of consciousness.

Also, I like sharing the first draft pages with my friends and getting their feedback on what works and what doesn’t such as Linda and Michele’s views on works in progress.

How do you research your kind of murder?

For House of Cuts, I revisited the meat shop in Taylor’s Market in Sacramento where we shopped when I was a kid. Also, drew on my knowledge of the backstory part of grocery stores I knew from my work as an in-store Pepsi demonstrator back in the 80s! There is my knowledge of anatomy too, from cutting up chickens! Luckily there is lots of information on the internet on various other aspects and means of killing, too. For Dads, I researched allergens and poisons, for Eire visited Ireland three times. For Hoops, researching bombs.

What influenced you as you created your characters?

My husband the reporter, my nephew who is a cop, myself as a community college instructor, Toni Raymus as a home building company CEO, Donald Trump in Eire as a model for an American developer wanting to take advantage of the little people’s property as he did in Scotland. For House of Hoops, Vivek Ranadive, managing owner of the Sacramento Kings, starting out struggling again, and the STOP committee against building Golden One Center back a few years who took it to court but lost and so we now have DOCO, some love it, others hate it.

How does writing about murder and the macabre affect you?

I love going into the dark side of human nature. For me it’s a balancing act because I was raised in Christian Science, where all that is bad is not real, even conflict. So I needed to write into the dark side to balance that over full lightness, that wasn’t the whole story about life.

What are the great mystery books that you’ve read in your lives?

Love Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Joanne Harris’s Five Quarters of the Orange, a mystery set in WWI.

I mostly love thrillers such as Thomas Harris’ (author of the Hannibal Lector books) first novel, Black Sunday about bombing the Super Bowl, and horror such as Pet Semetery, and the macabre humorous thriller series Dexter, the TV show was based on, where we know who the killer is but it’s somewhat alright as it’s clearly in the service of justice—he kills only those who deserve it. My killers always think their targets are justified too.

How much of your time as an author is spent doing the business of being an author – sending emails, dealing with promotional materials, interviews, public appearances – as opposed to the actual writing?

At least half and half nowadays; not so much early on when I didn’t have so much to promote yet. Wish I could clone myself or hire an assistant.

What's next for you? House of Eire is third in a series. Are there more on the horizon or are you planning something else completely?

I’m busy working on book four: House of Hoops, centered around gentrification battles in a Northern California urban setting and basketball—Claire in Eire has grown up and is a star forward, aiming to become a professional WNBA player.

I think it's always fun to end on a few completely irrelevant questions.

Are you on social media? Which one do you prefer? Facebook? Twitter? Instagram?


I am most at home on Facebook with my personal page https://www.facebook.com/jgillam2 up to over 1000 friends and my publishing company Gorilla Girl Ink page https://www.facebook.com/GorillaGirlInk/ growing, too. I like Insta jgillam700 a lot and I’m learning Twitter @junegillam.

Cook or eat out?

Love both—love food and contstantly need to lose 10 or more pounds, just like my Hilary Broome.
A book is a dream you hold in your hands.
—Neil Gaiman
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Post by Cwaganagwa Dorothy »

Thanks Kandscreeley for the interview and June for being informative about yourself. For executing very diligently, thumbs for you June. Considering the review and all you had to do to put together a good read, I feel a
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Post by InStoree »

Thanks to the author for sharing more information about herself and her work. I'm looking forward to seeing Claire's new adventure. She was my favorite character. I just loved her innocence and courage.

Great interview! Thank you, kandscreeley!
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Post by Carolreads30 »

Thank you so much for interviewing this author. I just read "House of Eire" by her and it was the first of her books that I had read. I will say that I was impressed with the writing of the book and thought that the story was a very good read. I like learning more about the reasoning behind their writings, characters, etc.
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