If you could sit on a panel with three famous authors, who would they be?
Emily Dickinson (she wouldn’t say much), Ernest Hemingway (He’d glower and clam up), and P.D. James, who would be so erudite and compelling a speaker I would sit in awe.
Which of my characters are the hardest to write?
Hmmm . . . my murderers–because I don’t like them much and wish I didn’t have to talk to them at all.
Which part of publishing makes me tear my hair out?
Probably editing. I don’t like it. I wish every word I wrote rolled out with perfect syntax and spelling—but they don’t.
What do I wish people knew about the writing business?
How truly difficult it is. Whenever someone tells me they would write books,too: “if only I had the time,” I want to ask them if they have a lifetime to study writing; a lifetime to write novels that fail; a lifetime to find good agents and good publishers; a lifetime to develop a readership -then, and only then, will I talk about writing a novel with them.
Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli moved to the shores of a little lake in northwest northern Michigan and never looked back. She lives, sometimes uncomfortably, with the crows and bears and turtles and finds her material in the villages and forests that surround her. With degrees from Macomb County Community College, Oakland University, and the University of Michigan, she now teaches creative writing at Northwestern Michigan College and at writers’ conferences around the country.
Her novels include: Gift of Evil (Bantam), Dead Dancing Women, Dead Floating Lovers, Dead Sleeping Shaman, and Dead Dogs and Englishmen (Midnight Ink).
Elizabeth is also fascinated with the craft of the short story and hers have appeared in The Creative Woman, The Driftwood Review, Passages North, The MacGuffin, Quality Women’s Fiction (Great Britain), and elsewhere. With a grant from the State of Michigan she also created short stories that have been produced onstage as well as being read on NPR. Her essays have appeared in magazines and books and newspapers, and she writes book reviews for The Northern Express, an alternative newspaper in Traverse City, Michigan.
For many years she taught in the International Women’s Guild summer program at Skidmore College and appeared as a moderator and panelist at writing conferences. Her fascination with all things murderous began with a love for puzzles of all sorts, which was handed down to her by a mother who devoured mysteries. Sometimes playful, sometimes deadly serious, her books reflect a wide interest in women’s lives and futures.