IndieView with Denise Hartman, author of Killed in Kruger

In 1997, I got a job with a nature photographer doing writing and graphics. He was a college president before he retired to do photography and loved challenging me to expand my horizons. 

Denise Hartman 17 July 2012

The Back Flap

Tabitha Krans arrives to discover the veldt of South Africa’s Kruger Park seems to have swallowed up Uncle Phillip. Tabitha’s afraid her writing career has disappeared along with him and dire things lie in wait for her as her mother had predicted. Uncle Phillip’s connections are her only link to travel writing and his photos are crucial. When he turns up dead, she wants the truth. Dead men don’t speak but photos Phillip took evoke strange reactions in park authorities. Her nosing around turns up suspicions of human trafficking, poaching and covert investigations but not many answers. South Africa holds dark secrets and deep beauty but it doesn’t want to give Tabitha the truth. She keeps prying until someone believes she’s a threat in need of elimination.

About the book

What is the book about?

It’s an aspiring travel writer who manages with the help of her uncle to get some assignments for self safari travel in South Africa. When she arrives, her photographer, uncle, and mentor is missing. She sets aside trying to prove herself to find proof of what happened to Uncle Phillip, but gets tangled up in issues much darker than she could imagine.

When did you start writing the book?

The book’s been coming on and off for years since a trip to Africa in 1998, but a serious deep edit occurred last year.

How long did it take you to write it?

I wrote a rough draft initially in 2000 in about a year (an hour a day before going to work) but then I kept editing, adding, and changing. It’s a drastically different book than that first draft.

Where did you get the idea from?

In 1997, I got a job with a nature photographer doing writing and graphics. He was a college president before he retired to do photography and loved challenging me to expand my horizons. When he went to do a photo safari for 16 weeks all over the southern tip of Africa, he challenged me to come during some part of that trip. I did and we photo safari-ed Kruger National Park in South Africa and Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. It was a wonderful experience. I’d done a ton of research setting him up for the trip and out of all that came out in this book. However, both of us came back from the trip alive .

Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

My background is in journalism and so it is always a challenge to be descriptive enough. Particularly I wanted people to have a sense of the feeling of being in Kruger Park without pages and pages of description. Capturing a scene in a sentence or two of description is a big challenge.

What came easily?

I love to plot and the ending was completely in my head when I started. The evolution of how to get to that ending changed over time, but the ending was there all along.

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

I’ve already confessed to the idea coming to a trip with my photographer boss and myself as a writer so I guess loosely it’s based on those roles though neither of us is the character. The visual look of Tabitha Krans my protagonist sort of looks like someone I used to know but doesn’t act like her at all, so I guess my characters are a conglomeration of reality and fiction.

We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

I love the early Mary Higgins Clark stories, I like the early Janet Evanovich books too, Edna Buchanan stories always satisfy me. Ridley Pearson is terrific at suspense. I once sat straight up in bed, waking my husband up, because of suspenseful scene in a Ridley Pearson story.

Do you have a target reader?  

I’d say it’s people who read the authors I like to read. Most mystery readers seem to be women and I’ve spent all my life swapping the same books around with my mom, my aunt, and my grandma. I’ve added a touch of sarcasm to my main character that I think makes her widely appealing though.

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

I used to have to be alone in the house but my life has changed and I’ve had to get over that. I apply the seat of the pants to a chair (any chair) and either give myself a time frame or a word count to fulfill before I get up.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just Chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

I decided to try outlining with my current Work In Progress (Nosy Neighbors). It is a book based on a short story I did that was 40 pages long so if I see that story as an outline it is pretty extensive. I decided to try Scrivener for the novel and so I did chapter and scene sentences and brief descriptions as they occurred to me for the four arcs of the story. My hope is that the structural editing will be faster with this technique. I’ve enjoyed having a place to put thoughts for future chapters as they occur to me too. We’ll see if I stick to it or not!

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

With Killed in Kruger, I was going to a writer’s group almost every week. I would do a brief edit on the earliest parts of the book and take consecutive chapters with me. I didn’t truly dig in for my own edits until I was done.

Did you hire a professional editor?

I did. I have worked as a journalist a lot, so you’d think I wouldn’t need to, but it taught me there’s huge value in another set of eyes looking at work before it goes out. I also live in fear of releasing a “half-baked” book, so I have editors.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

I love to write to Carmina Burana. Several pieces of it you’d recognize as it’s been used in a lot of movies for climax moments.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents?

Yes.

What made you decide to go Indie? Was it a particular event or a gradual process? (here we can just point readers at your blog post)

It was a gradual process. At first I was determined to go traditional, but in the last few years I’ve watched in fascination as the industry has changed. I’ve actually had to be a one woman publishing house for another job I had, so why shouldn’t I do it for myself?

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did it you do it yourself?

Yes! For me it’s a trick question. My husband and I have both worked in graphic design. I had him do the cover because I was too nervous to land on something. It’s an important decision. In the end we had a contest to choose between 3 variations on the cover.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

I’ve been collecting advice and sites on marketing for more than a year, but in the end my day job got really busy and I’m sort of just going after what I can handle in any given day. I’m in it for the long haul though. It’s a marathon not a sprint.

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

Follow your heart. Mine said traditional for a long time, but I’ve never had as much fun with my writing career as I’ve had in the last year going indie.

About You

Where did you grow up?

Kansas City

Where do you live now?

Madrid, Spain

What are you working on now?

Nosy Neighbors, a suspense story set in Florida with a heavy dose of humor on the side.

End of Interview:

For more about Denise you can visit her website, blog, or Goodreads author page.

Get your copy of Killed in Kruger from Amazon US or Amazon UK.