Meet Author Patricia McAlexander
Fellow Rose, Patricia McAlexander writes thrillers with romantic cores and psychological twists. She is here to tell us about her writing inspirations and her new book releasing May 23rd.
Welcome, Patricia
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I’m from upstate New York, but I’ve also lived and taught in Colorado, Wisconsin, and Texas. I have a bachelor’s degree from the University of New York at Albany, a master’s from Columbia University, and a doctorate from The University of Wisconsin, Madison, all in English. I’m now living in Athens, Georgia, with my Southerner husband, whom I met as a graduate student in Wisconsin. As a teenager, I wrote fiction for my friends, but turned to academic writing with my career. Now retired from the University of Georgia, I’ve renewed my interests in photography, travel, and history—and in writing fiction.
Will you have a new book coming out soon? Do you know the release date?
My new book, published by the Wild Rose Press, is The Student in Classroom 6, a novel in the romantic-suspense genre. It will be released on May 23. I’m really excited about this book. I was able to incorporate in it a number of elements—family relations, academic life, finding one’s calling—along with romance and a murder mystery.
Is anything in your book based on real life experiences or purely all imagination?
Many elements in The Student in Classroom 6 are based on real life experiences. Katherine Holiday, my main character, teaches college composition courses. Much of what I describe of her work is based on my own experience as an instructor and professor. The house she lives in is like my house here in Athens, Georgia, and a major event in the novel—the dramatic cutting down of a giant, diseased magnolia on her street, really happened on ours. The descriptions of Athens and The University of Georgia, though real places, have fictionalized elements. The campus murder is purely imagination.
How much research do you do for each book you write?
I had to do research for my academic publications, but I’ve been surprised at how much research I also have to do in writing romantic suspense. I’ve looked up information on legal matters, guns and police work, suicide, death and dying, physical and mental conditions—and even details like what cell phones were like in 2009, the year The Student in Classroom 6 takes place. Some internet sites I visit in doing this research ask me to say I am over eighteen years old before I am allowed to visit them!
Have you written a book you love that you have not been able to get published?
Oh, yes—a novel inspired by my ancestors who emigrated from Baden to New York in 1850. There was a mystery about them: church records suggested that my great-great-grandfather, his wife, and seven children left their town in 1848, but the manifest of the ship they sailed on in 1850 listed him, the seven children, and a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Rosa—but not his wife. In checking censuses in New York State, I found him married to Rosa. So I wondered what had happened. I solved the mystery in my novel by portraying Rosa as his wife’s widowed sister; the wife dies on the way to the port of Rotterdam and he marries the sister—a noit uin common occurrence in the nineteenth century. Only last year did the actual story emerge: a descendant travelled to their town in Baden, had old documents translated, and discovered that our ancestor and his children did not leave Baden in 1848 but in 1850, that 1848 was the year his wife died (church records must have gotten that confused), and that Rosa was a servant. Although my novel is thus more fictional than I’d realized, I still think it is a good story and I love it. But so far it has not been published.
The Student in Classroom 6
by Patricia McAlexander
Although a faculty member has been killed on campus and the murderer is still at large, English instructor Katherine Holiday never suspects the criminal might be one of her students. In fact, there’s a man in her adult evening class she wishes she could know better.
Seeing no need for a college degree, Tyler McHenry, a partner in his father’s successful tree service, writes fiction for his own pleasure. No one at the University needs to know his personal reasons for enrolling in a first-year composition course. Still, he finds himself fascinated by the pretty teacher, who believes his writing should be published.
What an interesting interview. The story about Patricia’s ancestors is certainly intriguing. Thank you for sharing, Zara, and best wishes to Patricia!