J.M. (Jean M.) Redmann grew up in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a small town on the Gulf of Mexico. At eighteen, determined to escape the South, she headed north to attend Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

The day after receiving her degree in drama, Redmann boarded a train for New York City. Determined not to become just another rich yuppie, she embarked on a career in theatrical lighting. Riches never once threatened her…

Michele ‘Micky’ Knight, a New Orleans private detective, takes on two cases, one of a newly widowed mother looking for the daughter that she and her husband were estranged from, and that of an adopted young drag queen, thrown out of his home for being gay, who wants to find his birth mother.

by J.M. Redmann

The Intersection of Law and Desire is finally back in print. In the Big Easy, nothing comes easy, not life, not love . . . not justice. Two cases, one involving an innocent young girl and the other a jaded sophisticate who thinks the rules don’t apply to her, lead Micky Knight to a tawdry bar where two streets intersect, the corner of Law and Desire. When Micky finds out what is…

No, It’s Not Okay to Email Your Four Hundred and Sixty-two Page Manuscript. Or even your fifty page first chapter. The gods of Office Depot do not give editors price breaks on printer paper, toner cartridges, etc. If you, the author, aren’t willing to tend to your brand new spanking baby book, then it’s ever less likely that an overworked editor wants to take on the task.

The first rule–really the only rule, the one you can never break or get around, is that you have to do the work. A book doesn’t get written in a burst of inspiration. A book gets written day after day, page by page by page. Sometimes it takes years and you will have to claw time out of your days when too many things already demand your time. The part of writing that’s seen, open to public scrutiny–the book signings, readings, articles in the paper or on radio or TV–is about five percent of what an author does. The other ninety-five percent is sitting alone in our rooms starting at a computer screen or page in a typewriter or a blank sheet of paper.

Having on this day, December 25, 1998, once again succeeded in making the renowned Redmann family oyster dressing, half from memory and half from scribbled down notes, I am therefore, being of reasonably sound mind, setting down in writing, to the best of my ability, the secrets of the dressing.

1. Why did you choose the mystery genre? I’ve always read and liked mysteries. Now it probably seems hard to imagine, but when I started writing my first book, Death by the Riverside, there just weren’t that many lesbian detective novels out there, (certainly none that used the name Cordelia). I just wrote the book that I wanted to read. I wish I could say that I had some grand scheme, that this was all thought out and analyzed, but I really just followed the words on the pages. I’m as surprised as anyone at what came out.

…

“Feel free to elaborate if there’s a good anecdote but please keep answers down to no more than a couple of sentences. Anything you don’t want to answer just leave. We will pick your best answers so that we have a good selection across respondents. Ok, you’ve got 20 minutes and no cheating please girls …