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Interview with Sally Jo Pitts

What made you want to become an author?

As a youngster I read Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Alfred Hitchcock mysteries and enjoyed writing simple little stories and plays. I took creative writing in high school and thought I might become an English teacher, but life choices took me in a different direction. I became a home economics teacher, high school guidance counselor, and a private detective in my husband’s investigations agency. When I retired from education, I took a college creative writing class and the love of writing rekindled. In 2011, I discovered a Christian writers conference and subsequently writing workshops, retreats and a local writers’ group. My first novel was published in 2018 and I continue to write and work to learn the craft. I feel like I have returned to my writing roots and inspiration of my younger years.

What did you learn while writing Sweet Deceit?

The overarching learning experience in writing this story was figuring out how to fictionalize and update a true story. Like my story’s hero Will Brice, my husband was pulled from his dream job as a state agent to help the governor’s appointee who had replaced the elected sheriff removed from office for malfeasance. But when the appointee quit, my husband was appointed interim sheriff. He had a mandate to clean up a dry county where he knew no one and the townspeople weren’t particularly cooperative. I created the plot by weaving a mixture of true events that occurred while he was interim sheriff into a web of suspense and tossed in a romance.

If someone were to look at your Google search history (all for research of course!), what types of things would we find?

Oh, my. All kinds of stuff I’ve been researching for stories. For Sweet Deceit some topics: Pigs-their diet, mannerisms, sniffing ability; car accident repair; capitol building in Tallahassee, layout and grounds; dessert names; small restaurant operation; north Florida highways; basement access design; Victorian houses, care of roses, majors and minors of study at FSU; cost of golf balls; wet, dry, and moist counties; types of rat traps, etc. Add to that WWII, ordering glasses online, YouTube how tos on rope tying, quick and easy recipes… I could go on and on!

What do you want readers to take away from Sweet Deceit?

With God’s help, our imperfections, flaws, and difficult circumstances can be used in positive ways.

If you could have coffee with an author, dead or alive, whose work you admire, who would that be? What would you ask him or her?

I’d love to sit and chat with C.J. Box, author of the Joe Pickett game warden series. I would ask him to share his character, and Western setting writing skills.

What’s your go-to drink while writing?

Water or my own hot mocha concoction of coffee with hot chocolate mix. Sometimes I add collagen and almond milk creamer.

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?

See each day as a gift and opportunity because you will never get it back.

What do you enjoy doing when you are not writing?

Reading, Bible study, watching old movies and TV sit-coms, walking the dog, and cheering for my grandkids at soccer games.

What books are on your TBR pile right now?

Escape from Timbuktu by Shirley Gould, Fatal Witness by Patricia Bradley, No Room in His Heart by Bonita McCoy, Writing Deep POV by Kathy Tyers, Tara Road by Maeve Binchy, and The Person Called You by Bill Hendricks. Plus the kindle on my phone is full of TBRs!

What can we look forward to next?

I am in the rewrite stage of the next romantic suspense in my Sweet County Secrets series, Sweet Double-Cross. The inspiration for the romance is based on the true “love at first sight” story of a good friend and the suspense is spiced up with invasive plant species research and scoundrels.




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