This month, please welcome Shelley Burbank. Her fiction has appeared in the Maine Review and San Diego Woman Magazine, and she reported for the Waterboro Reporter. Recently, she contracted with Encircle Publications to publish the first novel in her Olivia Lively series, Final Draft. Award-winning author and journalist Cynthia Dagnal-Myron’s review calls Shelley’s protagonist, “Sassy, stylish Olivia Lively is a private investigator with almost as many skeletons in her closet as her clients.”

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NG: Welcome, Shelley. Tell us what inspired you to write Final Draft?

SB: Hi, Nancy, and thanks for having me here on your blog. Wattpad readers inspired me to write Final Draft. A newbie to that platform, I posted a flash fiction story about a character named Olivia Lively, a private investigator following her cheating, married lover as he met with another woman. Readers kept saying, “can’t wait to see what happens next.” I’d better write the book. Young writers on the platform seemed very concerned about others “stealing their ideas,” and that’s why I created a plagiarism crime plot rather than a murder mystery.

NG: What can you tell us about Olivia Lively and her latest adventure?

SB: In the first book in the new Olivia (Liv) Lively series, private investigator Liv helps an MFA writing student prove that his mentor, a best-selling author, stole his manuscript and sold it to a publisher. Meanwhile, Liv deals with relationship issues and a stalker ex-boyfriend.

The second in the series is an actual murder mystery that takes place at a client’s lake house in western Maine. Liv investigates there as well as back in Portland, Maine.

Click for Instagram video of Shelley’s San Diego Book Launch!

NG: You also co-wrote a full-length, nonfiction memoir, The Last Ten Days: Academia, Dementia, and the Choice to Die, with Martha Risberg Brosio. Tell us a bit about that experience.

SB: Martha wanted to write a memoir about her late-husband Richard’s struggle with primary progressive aphasia, a type of dementia that affects communication, and his decision to end his own life by voluntarily refusing to eat or drink. Martha had a great story to tell and needed a ghost-writer.

The publisher asked if I’d be interested. Martha and I met, hit it off, and it was one of the best, most moving experiences of my life. I read much of Richard Brosio’s academic work, interviewed Martha, her family, Richard’s doctor, and several colleagues. Together, she and I figured out the best structure for the book. We broke up the narrative by the last ten days of Richard’s life while using extensive flashbacks.

Richard and Martha were high school sweethearts, went their separate ways after high school, and had a second-chance romance later in life. It’s a touching love story. I think it would be a great movie, not because of my writing, but because the story is so compelling. Death with dignity is an important topic.

NG: You blog about a charitable knitting project called Cozy Butterfly Project. Tell us about it.

SB: I started The Cozy Butterfly Project because I enjoy knitting, and I was looking for a way to use that skill to help others. My sister worked for Safe Harbor House for quite a few years, and I was impressed by their commitment to helping women overcome sex trafficking, addiction, incarceration, and separation from their families. My writing group, The Advance Copies, agreed to join me in knitting comfort shawls for women at Safe Harbor House. We’ve also donated to hospice centers in Maine and Wisconsin.

I’d love to get more people involved in our effort. Knitters pray or meditate or “intend” to offer comfort as they knit. When the person receives their shawl, they are informed that beyond warmth, its creator sends along comfort, like a hug across time and space.

Learn more about Shelley’s knitting project here!

NG: You have two homes on opposite coasts. One in Maine, the other in California. What’s your favorite thing about each coast?

SB: I love different things about each of “my” coasts. Maine is home. Maine is family & oldest and dearest friends. The spirit of Maine’s towns and communities and beaches and forests have seeped into my pores, into my DNA. I love Maine’s history, art, literariness, L.L. Bean flannel shirts, the smell of snow melting in the spring, blueberries, and loons calling on lakes at dusk.

San Diego offers the big city but with a cool, laid-back vibe. It’s having a public transportation system and not having to drive a car, year-round sun, unique neighborhoods with their own individual flavors, fish tacos, avocado toast, and Spanish architecture. A diversity of people, cultures, art, food, style. Palm trees and cactus plants. Nearby deserts, mountains and beaches. I really love both coasts.

NG: What is something about yourself that few people know?

SB: One thing that people might not know about is that I don’t like jello. I think it’s gross and jiggly. When I’m ancient, please feed me soup instead. Even if I have to sip it through a straw.

NG: What books have inspired you to write?

SB: So many books have inspired me to write. As a child I loved Nancy Drew, Anne of Green Gables, and the Little House books. I found A Tree Grows in Brooklyn on my parents’ shelves in junior high, and it made a big impression. Later, I read gothic classic writers like Daphne du Maurier and Victoria Holt, as well as romance writers like Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts. I learned a lot about world-building from Tabitha King’s Nodd’s Ridge series and Caroline Chute’s Egypt, Maine books. I consider Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me the perfect romance novel, so I’ve reread it several times. There are so many more—I could fill the entire interview just by answering this question. I’ll stop there.

NG: Thanks so much for visiting, Shelley. I, for one, will never serve you jello!