Maris Soule - Country Girl

Maris Soule is a writer with small-town roots.  Born and raised in Walnut Creek, California, she spent her childhood exploring the fields and creeks and sitting in her “thinking tree” creating stories.  After her marriage, she moved to a rural town in Michigan where she raised two children and began her career as a novelist. Since 2010, she’s been a winter resident of Florida where she continues to write stories set in places reminiscent of the small towns that she loves.

 

“I’ve always been a reader,” Soule says. “My mom used to come into my bedroom to see if I was asleep, and she’d find me reading with a flashlight. I made up stories all the time. They were just there, waiting to come out.”  In spite of her interest in writing, Soule went on to graduate from the University of California/Davis with a major in art and a minor in math. After spending 8 years teaching, she left to spend more time with her two children. Once they were in school, Soule decided to try writing. 

“I finished reading a mystery romance and thought I could do better,” she recalls. “I discovered it wasn’t that easy.  I spent 3 ½ years learning the craft before I came up with something sellable. And I’m still learning.”  In 1983, she received a contract for “First Impressions,” a romance novel that was the introductory giveaway book for the then new Harlequin’s “Temptations” line. This was followed by an impressive string of 24 category romances published by Harlequin, Silhouette and Bantam.

In 2007, Soule decided to write a mystery. The result was The Crows, the first in what was to become the PJ Benson Mysteries. The Crows introduced PJ Benson, a woman who is thrown into situations where she must save herself. In this instance, PJ is walking her dog in the woods when she hears shots. She runs home to find a dying man in her dining room.  Then even stranger things start happening. The story is set in a small Michigan town modeled after Climax, the town where Soule lived for 27 years. According to Library Journal, “Romantic suspense just doesn’t get any better.”

The Crows was followed by As the Crow Flies (2012) where PJ is given a briefcase by a mysterious old woman who asks for her help. This sets off a series of misfortunes that turn PJ’s life upside-down. Book three in the series, Eat Crow and Die (2015), has PJ trying to help the man she’s dating when he becomes the prime suspect in the death of his ex-wife and her new husband.

In addition to the Crow books, one day after watching an episode of “Nikita,” (the 2010-2013 TV series about a woman who escapes from a secret government-funded organization and is trying to take it down), Soule wondered what a woman like Nikita would be like in her seventies.  That question led to A Killer Past (2015) where 74-year-old widow Mary Harrington, who lives in a small Michigan town, reverts to old habits and puts the two teenage punks who try to steal her purse in the hospital.  When the local police detective can’t discover anything about Mary’s past before she moved to the town 44 years earlier, he becomes suspicious.

Soule’s latest release, Echoes of Terror, is a stand-alone mystery set in the town of Skagway, Alaska. After visiting friends who volunteered for the national park in Skagway, she decided to set a book there.  In 2008, she sent the book to agents, but they didn’t like the ending, so Soule set the manuscript aside and wrote two more mysteries. Then, she went back, did some editing, and submitted the story to Five Star/Cengage who published it in March 2017.  Inspired by the Elizabeth Smart case, Echoes of Terror has Katherine Ward, an officer on the small town’s police force, investigating the disappearance of a billionaire’s teenage daughter. Katherine soon learns the girl is being held captive by The Beekeeper, a psychopath who kidnapped and raped Katherine when she was young. Kirkus Review calls the book “…a hair-raising thriller.”  In October 2017, Echoes of Terror won the Florida Writers’ Associations Royal Palm Literary Award for mystery and suspense.

Soule is currently working on a fourth book in the P.J. Benson Mystery series.  In this book, P.J. is nine months pregnant and in no shape to be trying to solve why a former co-worker was run down and killed minutes after talking to P.J..  However, the killer thinks P.J. has incriminating evidence and is determined to get it, one way or another.  So far the book doesn’t have a title, and Soule plans on having a contest to name the book and also name P.J.’s baby.

While Soule’s novels have tranquil settings, her stories are anything but. “My books aren’t cozies or sweet romances,” she says. “I want readers to get caught up in the journey of the main character at a pace where they don’t want to stop.” 

For more information, visit the author’s website at www.marissoule.com