I’m delighted to welcome psychological suspense author, Linda Huber, onto the blog today.

Linda grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, but went to work in Switzerland for a year aged twenty-two, and has lived there ever since. Her day jobs have included working as a physiotherapist in hospitals and in schools for handicapped children, and teaching English in a medieval castle – which sounds very exciting. Currently she teaches one day a week, and writes psychological suspense novels and feel-good novellas with (a lot of) the rest of her time.

Her writing career began in the nineties, when she had over fifty short stories published in women’s magazines. Several years later, she turned to psychological suspense fiction, and her seventh novel, Death Wish, was published by Bloodhound Books in August 2017.

Linda’s latest project is a series of feel-good novellas, set on the banks of Lake Constance and just minutes from her home in north-east Switzerland. She says she really appreciates having the views enjoyed by her characters right on her own doorstep!

So, Linda, how did you go from teaching to psychological suspense? Were the kids that awful!?

Shortly after my third suspense novel came out, I met up with author and blogger Barb Taub in a Glasgow café.
‘I really like the mother-daughter theme you have going on in your books,’ she said, as we demolished large-sized scones and jam.
I nearly choked. Mother and daughter theme?? I genuinely hadn’t realised, but yes – in The Paradise Trees, I had Alicia and Jenny, who’re being stalked by a stranger in the woods; in The Cold Cold Sea there was Maggie, and Olivia who vanished on the beach, not to mention Jennifer and Hayley, who, well, they were having problems too; and in The Attic Room, Nina discovers a terrible family secret, one that puts daughter Naomi into grave danger. I could go on from there. With books four to seven, at least I knew I had a mother-daughter theme going.
I think that’s the appeal of the genre. Families. Normal people going about their daily lives. We all have mothers, some of us are mothers (or fathers), we all know the need to be loved and safe. To read about a family where this primeval desire is in some way destroyed or endangered touches us in a deep place, and it’s exactly the same when you’re writing about it.

You have a new book out this week? Is that also psychological suspense? And what’s it about?

Yes. It’s called The Paradise Trees. The challenge when writing is to know how your characters should behave – how would a mother react when she discovers that her daughter has a stalker? Not only that, but said daughter, an eight-year-old, has inexplicably vanished into thin air – imagine the terror, the frantic phone calls, the search. I well remember losing sight of my toddler in a crowded outdoor swimming pool complex, years ago now. My stomach hit the ground and I could hardly breathe. It was the longest two minutes imaginable; how much worse was it for Alicia in The Paradise Trees? How would I have reacted if my ordeal back then had been hours long? I have no idea, but I needed to make Alicia react, so I had to imagine my own fear that day multiplied by a million, and then blunted, because no one can stay that terrified for hours. Poor Alicia.
In a macabre way, it’s really interesting, putting your characters into horrendous situations and working out what they would do, and why. Not just the good guys, either – why was the stalker stalking? What had happened to make him like this? How did he respond to the reactions of his victims?
I usually have at least two characters with ‘points of view’ in my books – we get right inside these people’s heads and we know what they’re thinking. So even when it’s the bad guy, my readers can – sometimes – feel sympathy with the character. No one is all bad…
In the end, I think readers and writers have much the same motivation. We read – and write – because it’s fun, and because just maybe, we find little pieces of ourselves within the pages of a book.

Thanks very much for coming along to the blog today, Linda. The Paradise Trees sounds a great read. Wishing you the best of luck with the launch this week.

Find out more about Linda and her books

Linda’s Amazon Author Page: http://viewAuthor.at/LindaHuber

The Paradise Trees on Amazon: getbook.at/TPT2

Follow her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorlindahuber

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LindaHuber19

website: http://lindahuber.net/

Read more about The Paradise Trees

He had found exactly the right spot in the woods. A little clearing, green and dim, encircled by tall trees. He would bring his lovely Helen here… This time, it was going to be perfect.

When Alicia Bryson returns to her childhood home in a tiny Yorkshire village, she finds her estranged father frail and unable to care for himself. Her daughter Jenny is delighted at the prospect of a whole summer playing in the woods at the bottom of the garden, but as soon as Alicia sets foot in Lower Banford, strange and disturbing memories begin to plague her. What happened in her father’s house, all those years ago?

But coping with the uncertainty and arranging Bob’s care plan aren’t Alicia’s only problems. Unknown to her, she has a stalker. Someone is watching, waiting, making plans of his own. To him, Alicia and Jenny are his beautiful Helens… and they should be in Paradise.