Here’s a message Carolyn Haines posted on
A Good Blog Is Hard to Find:

May 18, 2008 – Over the years, I’ve received thoughtful and thought-provoking letters from people who view the Zinnia gang as I do, as friends. While the experience of Sarah Booth, Tinkie, Jitty, Cece, Millie, Chablis and Sweetie Pie lasts for a few hours or days or weeks for the reader, I spend a good part of each year in the town of Zinnia, following along behind Sarah Booth and her cohorts. In many ways, I’m like the personal secretary taking down the events of Sarah Booth’s life. I am her Watson.

At first this was very strange. I’m always involved with the characters of my stories, but I’ve never gone "undercover" as deeply as I have with this cast. As the eighth book is coming into print, I’m hard at work on the ninth, tentatively called Bones of Contention.

I don’t know how other writers relate to their characters. I suppose it’s a bit different with each book, as it is with me. But series characters give writers a unique opportunity to "grow" each character slowly and with careful thought. In a stand-alone book, the character arc is generally clearly defined. The protagonist changes greatly over the course of the book—or perhaps it’s the reader who changes. But the events covered in the single-title book have a clear beginning, middle and end.

In a series, the writer has to figure out the character arc for each book, while remembering there’s a totally different arc for the entire series. This is complicated for someone who has two functioning brain cells and a bossy ghost who keeps interfering with the process of writing.

The act of reading and writing involves real magic. The reader is an equal part of the equation. To make it happen, the connection between the reader and the page must click.

Every time I pick up a book by a wonderful writer and I’m drawn into his/her world, I find myself amazed at this conjuring act. I’m always saddened by people who tell me they don’t read. To miss out on this intimate, exciting, and miraculous experience is too bad. To be able to write a book that gives this experience to a reader is remarkable.
 

A lot of people ask me how I started writing about the Mississippi Delta. My hometown, Lucedale, is way down in the Southeast corner of the state. That section is called the pine barrens, and it lives up to its name. Pine trees are a cash crop, and thousands of acres were once owned by the big paper companies. It’s a world very different from the Mississippi Delta.

My first visit to the Delta was as a photojournalist. I went to Parchman State Prison to do a newspaper story. Parchman was notorious at that time, and I can still remember the terrible desolation I felt when I looked out and saw mile after mile of heat and cotton. But the Delta also has fabulous wealth. And it has the blues. I knew then, at the age of 21, that I would one day write about that land of stark contrasts and strange beauty.

Before I wrote fiction I worked for nearly a decade as a journalist. That experience has been invaluable as a writer. It was a fabulous life for a young woman, and I had some terrific adventures. I once covered an armed robbery on horseback and on another occasion had to climb a tree to cover a hostage situation in a graveyard. It’s a good thing I was a tomboy growing up.

Along with riding my bicycle, building forts in the woods with my brothers, playing baseball and touch football, and getting into mischief, I also spent a lot of time with my grandmother. She lived with us when I was a child, and she was a wonderful storyteller. She’d emigrated from Sweden when she was six, and she had a host of stories that kept me riveted for hours.

Many of the stories my grandmother told were ghost stories. When she really wanted us kids to be good, she’d recite that James Whitcomb Riley poem, "Little Orphan Annie." We’d be terrified to even let a hand dangle off the bed, so we were very, very good! During spend-the-night parties, I often repeated Grandma’s stories to my friends, usually ending in a squealing, writhing heap of girls trying to find an adult to protect us. But my true love was mysteries. I devoured them as a reader. As early as high school I started trying to write short mysteries.

Prior to the Bones series, I wrote Redeemers (1994) and Touched (1996). Though they were published as general fiction, they both contain strong mystery elements. But it wasn’t until Sarah Booth stole that dog that I realized I had hold of a real mystery.

Sarah Booth and Jitty came to me in tandem, arguing just as they do in the books. When such fully developed characters visit a writer, it’s truly a gift. I didn’t know Sarah Booth was a private investigator--in fact she didn’t either--until I’d started writing the book (Them Bones). Now, it’s become my challenge to give her interesting cases to solve. I’ve spent the last ten years in the company of the Zinnia crowd, and I have to say I’ve had a great time.  -Carolyn
 

Miss Scrapiron  (the dark Thoroughbred)  and Mirage (white half-Arabian)

Carolyn's oldest horse, Miss Scrapiron was 31 in May 2008. Carolyn says, " We share the same birthday, and I’ve had her since I saw her, starved and forlorn, in a field. She was three and unbroken, and I  pawned my Epiphone guitar to buy her." Four of her eight horses are rescues.