Frame Change
by T’Gracie and Joe Reese
The characters are strong and the story is so good. I could see each scene played out and really loved that.
~Shelley’s Book Case
~Shelley’s Book Case
I was happy about how it all came together and surprised me. The suspense was good. I enjoyed the plot.
~Readalot
~Readalot
Frame Change:A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5)
Cozy Mystery
Publisher: Cozy Cat Press
File Size: 528 KB
Print Length: 233 pages
ASIN: B00NDAAWIO
Synopsis:
Nina Bannister loves to paint, and she thinks her hobby is painless enough. But she is wrong. Her love of doing seascapes leads to a friendship with a young ex docent from The Chicago Art Museum–and to their entry into the murky and dangerous world of international art smuggling.
Can she save her young friend, who has been kidnapped to the mountains of southern Austria? Can she determine the identity and motives of the mysterious Red Claw? Can she see the real painting that is hidden beneath the false one?
Her success in these matters–indeed her very survival–depend on her ability to perform a last ditch Frame Change!
About These Authors
Pam (T’Gracie) Britton Reese is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department at Indiana-Purdue University at Fort Wayne. She has published books about autism with LinguiSystems. She enjoys teaching and research, but is never happier than when plotting (with her husband) a new murder, or coming up with ways that Nina Bannister can solve it.
Joe Reese is a novelist, playwright, storyteller, and college teacher. He has published seven novels, several plays, and a number of stories and articles. He and his wife, Pam have three children: Kate, Matthew and Sam.
Interview
Where are you from?
T’Gracie: I grew
up moving around so much that many people over my life have asked if we were a
military family. We weren’t. I was the eldest and my father, with a Ph.D. in
pharmaceutical chemistry changed jobs from academia to corporate chemical
companies to buying a small town drug store in Arkansas when I was in high
school. I had moved from Kansas (where I was born) to New York to Arkansas to
West Virginia to New York to Louisiana and then to Arkansas. I’ve never known
how to answer, “Where are you from?”
Joe: My situation
is exactly the opposite of T’Gracie’s. I
was born and raised on a farm about thirty miles south of Dallas, Texas,
nestled midway between the towns of Midlothian and Waxahachie. I never left
home until I was 18.
Tell us your latest
news?
T’Gracie: We’ve
been in Fort Wayne Indiana for just over a year. We moved here after I finished
my Ph.D. in Applied Language and Speech Science at the University of
Louisiana-Lafayette, and took a job at Indiana University-Purdue University Ft.
Wayne.
Our book news is that our sixth book in the Nina Bannister
series, Sex Change, (it’s not what you think) will be coming out in a
few weeks. We just saw the cover design today!
When and why did you
begin writing?
Joe: I was a
freshman at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. I was extremely
fortunate to have as my professor Dr. Pascal Covici, Jr. Dr. Covici’s father
had been one of the New York editors who discovered and worked with John
Steibeck. He assigned us a short story to write and I spent most of the night
trying to do it. (It was my first attempt at such a thing). Some days later Dr.
Covici announced to the class that he had taken my story to the Southwest
Review, and that they were accepting it. It was the first undergraduate story
they had ever published.
T’Gracie: My
first experience came with publishing therapy materials with a speech pathology
publisher, LinguiSystems. A colleague and I published six sets of therapy books
and I was the lone author for a book they published about Alzheimer’s and
dementia therapy.
I’m delighted that Joe and I have been able to co-author the
Nina Bannister series.
When did you first
consider yourself a writer?
Joe: While the
Covici publication certainly changed me, I was a reader, and so was T’Gracie and
I don’t think there was ever a time that one of us wasn’t scribbling one thing
or another.
What inspired you to
write your first book?
T’Gracie: I have
always been an inveterate reader of mystery series almost my entire life. I’ve
often asked Joe to write a mystery for me. He tried, and we had a couple of
rejections. One day, we were driving from Hattiesburg, Mississippi to
Lafayette, Louisiana and decided to take the Gulf Coast highway. We stumbled
upon Bay St. Louis: a quaint artists’ retreat. We stopped and visited a bakery,
were directed to an artist festival and as we continued on our way, began
talking about using Bay St. Louis as the perfect setting for a cozy mystery—Bay
St. Lucy was born.
Do you have a
specific writing style?
Joe: My style is
somewhere between Ernest Hemingway, William Shakespeare and Rush Limbaugh.
T’Gracie: (Groan)
I think Joe’s style is that he is a funny writer. In the first book, he wrote
it and I added description. Now, he is good at both description and humorous
dialogue and I contribute plot ideas and plan murders. He doesn’t really like
to kill anybody.
How did you come up
with the title?
Joe: Our first
book title, Sea Change, came from imagining Nina sitting on her deck
looking out over the ocean and I thought of the lines from Shakespeare’s The
Tempest, and it begins, “Full fathom five thy father lies…” and contains
the lines “nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into
something rich and strange.” We hoped that the Nina Bannister series would grow
into something rich and strange.
T’Gracie: Trying
to stay with “Change” in our book titles has been rather fun. Set Change
popped into our heads with the community theater setting; Game Change
from the high school basketball plot; Oil Change had to be the title of
the mystery involving an off-shore oil rig; and Frame Change fits because
of the art smuggling. People had jokingly been suggesting “Sex Change” for a
title, and that one is coming out in a few weeks (and it’s not what you are
thinking!)
Is there a message in
your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Joe and T’Gracie: (laughing)
Joe: (laughs)
T’Gracie and I adhere to the adage shared by a number of writers and yet
claimed as the personal property of none: “If you have a message, use Western
Union.”
What would you like
my readers to know?
Joe: That we
appreciate their time and hope they enjoy the books. We want all of them to
remember: “If you love the books, tell your friends; if you hate the books,
tell your enemies.”
Author Links
- reeseswrite.com
- Twitter: Nina Bannister@NinaBFurl
- Facebook: Nina Bannister
Other Books In This Series
Having 2 people write the book seems like it would be difficult. Did you have many disagreements?
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