Glenda Carroll
Author Interview - Glenda Carroll
Author of Better Off Dead
Successful Marin County, Ca financier, Andy Barlow, is training for a competitive open water swim in the cold San Francisco Bay. Unexpectedly, his support boat runs him over midstroke, killing the swimmer instantaneously. Consumed with grief and anger, Andy’s college-aged son Harrison, returns from London to probe what really happened. Although the local sheriff’s office and the Coast Guard called the death a tragic accident and closed the case, Harrison refuses to believe their findings. He reaches out to amateur sleuth Trisha Carson to hunt down the real killer.
Trisha digs into the man’s history and finds fractured relationships in his family, his business and his marriage. There’s clearly more than one person who had reason to seek a deadly revenge, but would they go as far as murder?
Author Interview - Glenda Carroll
Author I draw inspiration from:
I think there are three authors that inspire me. Sue Grafton, for one. When I began reading her alphabet series in the '80's, I felt like I met an author who spoke just to me. I wasn't writing mysteries at the time, but Grafton had a simple straightforward way of telling a story that felt like we were having a conversation. About 10-11 years ago when I started writing the Trisha Carson mystery series, readers came up to me and said, "You're writing reminds me of Sue Grafton." What a compliment. The second author is Mick Herron, the author of the Slow Horses (Slough Horses) series. These are spy novels that follow disgraced MI6 British agents who want to get back in the real action. The dialogue is funny; the characters are unique (and funny); the plots are exciting and Herron's language is beautiful. My third author is William Shakespeare. He wrote plays that can easily be transported to modern day situations. One day I was tutoring a high school student in Shakespeare's Hamlet. The Elizabethan English stumped him. He couldn't figure out what was happening. So I told him the story of the melancoly college student that sets out to revenge his father's death. Then I asked him to place the tragedy in modern days. What if Hamlet were the Hulk? That definitely perked him up. We went over the play first in modern day English, then Shakespeare's English. We talked about how Shakespeare killed people -- not that different from killing off villians in video games. He nodded and I could see that I was winning him over. When I asked him to come up with 2025 version of Hamlet for a video game or a graphic novel, he agreed. Success, I thought. That was my lightbulb moment. I realized if my student could modernize Hamlet, so could I. I went home and started Better Off Dead loosely adapting it from Hamlet. Like my student, I saw that our dilemmas today aren't too much different from the Elizabethan days.
Author Interview - Glenda Carroll | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
In my cozy bed with only one light on. That's where I'm the most focused.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
I'm not sure if I would walk into an elevator with my book character. It is Jackson Lamb, the disagreeable and remorseless cold-war spy who manages Slough House (Slow Horses by Mick Herron). He's grumpy, frumpy and smells. He berates his agents, thinks they're idiots but would go to the end of the earth to keep his 'joes' safe. Knowing what I do about Jackson Lamb from the Slow Horses series, I think I'd wait for the next elevator.
Author Interview - Glenda Carroll | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
I've been a writer/editor all my professional life, but it's been non-fiction. I was a newspaper sports columnist for nineteen years, a communications professional for a national healthcare organization and a freelance writer for local, national and international publications. Once someone pointed at my head and asked, "Is there a novel in there?" I probably huffed and puffed and said, "How can you write about something that's not true?" Well, I found out differently. I can now kill people with the best of them. I started to write the Trisha Carson mystery series when I retired from my 'real' job. There was something I wanted to write about. I'm an open water swimmer which means I swim in lakes, bays, the ocean. For eight years, I was the Pacific Masters Open Water Chair. I supervised all the OW swims in Northern California, basically to make sure the same number of swimmers that went in the water, came out. At a lake near Redding Ca, two swimmers died. In the one-mile race I witnessed a male swimmer make an abrupt turn toward shore on the last leg, stagger out and collapse. In the two-mile race, I was standing by the finish arch and a man jogged beneath the arch, leaned over, hands on knees and exclaimed that he didn’t feel well. Neither man survived. It was something I never forgot and felt compelled to write about.
A fictionalized version of that day became my first Trisha Carson mystery, Dead in the Water.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
None of my books are hardback, but I do like to read them. Paperbacks - I love it when I receive the first box of paperback books. It's so exciting to open it. I'm a 'book' reader so ebooks do nothing for me. But I had the last two books in the Trisha Carson mystery series, Dead Code and Better Off Dead, made into audiobooks. The narrator Oona Maya brought the stories to life. If I could only choose one option for my books, it would be the audiobook.
The last book I read:
Joe Country by Mick Herron, #6 in the Slow Horses series. This is what I said on Goodreads: "This time River Cartwright (protagonist) finds himself in snowy Wales looking for a co-worker who has gone dark. Why? Because bad men (read Cartwright's father and posse) are looking for a missing teenager who saw one of the Royals really misbehave at a gentlemen's party. Instead of turning it into an Instagram post, the teen calls the powers that be and says he'll forget about what he's seen if only they hand over a wad of cash.
Dead bodies, funny quips, gorgeous language. Another hit (although a little cumbersome to figure out at times)."
Author Interview - Glenda Carroll | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
Computer. I have a hum-drum routine. I'm up at 5:15. Go to the pool by 6 am. Back at 7:45 am. Walk the dogs. Eat breakfast and then sit down and write. I don't outline so whatever shows up on the page is news to me. I'm sure if I outlined my book it would go much faster, but I can't seem to do that. For the second book in the series, Drop Dead Red, I attempted to outline the plot. I sat down at the computer, outline next to me. By the end of the first chapter, the outline was on the floor and I'd gone off in another direction.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. When I was thirteen, I had a diary and wrote in it daily, like Anne. I have no idea where that diary went but Anne's take on her own little world in the hidden rooms in Amsterdam might be similar to mine. Yes, chaos was going on around her, but she had her own thoughts and concerns. I can imagine us as young teens giggling about our roommates and writing about how we saw them, then reading the passages to each other. Yes, we would be concerned about the Nazi's outside but our self-centeredness would keep us occupied.
Author Interview - Glenda Carroll | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
Librarian. As far as I'm concerned, libraries and librarians rule the world.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
The 1920's. I'd love the feeling of release after WWI, when women came into their own, cut their hair, shortened their dresses and rolled down their stockings. The would drink and smoke in public. It would be such a sense of freedom.
Place I’d most like to travel:
Pompeii The thought of a volcano preserving a town in 79AD has been something that I've always wanted to see. It's a snapshot of a different era.
My signature drink:
I'm so boring. I'm a milk drinker and I have been since I was a little girl.
Favorite artist:
Janis Joplin. I saw her in concert when she was with Big Brother and the Holding Company. I never heard such raw power come out of such a little person. She was electric on stage.
Number one on my bucket list:
Get my grandkids through college. I made a promise to myself that I'd pay for their education so they wouldn't have any debt when they graduated.
Anything else you'd like to add:
Writing is so much harder than I thought!
My website is: glendacarroll.com.
I'm published by Indies United Publishing House, LCC.
Find more from the author:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glenda.carroll
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glenda.carroll/
Bluesky: @ggcarroll.bsky.social
Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7069399.Glenda_Carroll
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glendacarroll/
About Glenda Carroll:
Author Interview with Glenda Carroll
Glenda Carroll
If you want to find Glenda, she’ll be in, on, or under water—and writing about it. She understands water sports on a very personal level since she swims, surfs and sails.
Glenda wrote a weekly sailing column for the Marin Independent Journal for 19 years. During that time, she also wrote for local, national and international sailing publications. She branched into travel writing and her features have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Travel & Leisure, Ford Times, Chevron USA, Defenders of Wildlife, and Bay & Delta Yachtsman.
She was a Communications Manager for Kaiser Permanente in the San Francisco Medical Center as well as the Northern California Region and the National office.
She writes the Trisha Carson Mystery Series. The fourth book in the series about the Marin County amateur sleuth features Better Off Dead, published in March 2025 by Indies United Publishing House, LLC. The debut book was Dead in the Water, followed by Drop Dead Red, and Dead Code. Her books are based on personal experience in open water swimming. She’s raced in more than 150 open water events in Northern California, as well as Hawaii and Perth, Australia.
She is the president of the Northern California Chapter of Sisters in Crime and she lives in San Rafael, Ca with her dog McCovey.
Better Off Dead
Product details
• ASIN : B0DXKTJRK2
• Publisher : Indies United Publishing House, LLC (February 17, 2025)
• Language : English
• Paperback : 304 pages
• ISBN-10 : 1644567954
• ISBN-13 : 978-1644567951
