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Interview with Taffy Cannon, author of Guns and Roses
Q: What's the story behind Guns and Roses?
A: The hook is that ex-policewoman Roxanne Prescott has left the force due to personal tragedy and goes to work for her aunt's travel agency, which specializes in educational tours for the wealthy. On Roxanne's first tour, however, some very strange things start happening.
Q: Have you been to the places the group visits in the book?
A: My family took our own version of the Guns and Roses tour, visiting all the locations the Irish Eyes group explores, along with many others. My daughter and I traveled with our own Colonial costumes and her Felicity doll, and on our last visit took the first of the official Felicity tours. Over the course of several visits to Williamsburg, staying at the Market Square Tavern in the restored area, my mind naturally gravitated to murder.
Q: What's your writing background?
A: My previous books include three in the Nan Robinson mystery series, a young adult mystery, and a mainstream book, Convictions: A Novel of the Sixties. I've also worked as a freelance journalist for the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Savvy, Cinegram, and covering the offbeat and bizarre for Texas Monthly and the Dallas newspapers.
Q: You wrote an Academy Award-nominated comedy short subject, Doubletalk. Did you attend the Oscars?
A: Nope. The producer-director took the cinematographer. I watched the show on a thirteen-inch black-and-white TV with aluminum foil on the antenna, in my one-room apartment in the Charlie Chaplin castle in Hollywood.
Q: Any other honors in your background?
A: I was nominated for North County Times Ten Women of Merit three times recently. And in my dim and distant past, I was Beverly's Junior Miss in the Illinois Junior Miss contest. Since I had no performing talent, my presentation was an original comedy monologue wherein I showcased my hand-knitted sweaters. Honest.
Q: Your current project is completing the manuscript of The Tumbleweed Murders by Rebecca Rothenberg, a friend and colleague who died two years ago (to be published in fall 2001 by Perseverance Press/John Daniel & Company). Would you comment on that?
A: Becky was a very special person and a very talented writer. It's tricky to step into someone else's style--you really have to think like that person. It's a total immersion process. The project is an honor and a challenge.
Visit Taffy Cannon's website! |
