Lynn Slaughter is...On the Writing Block!

Sherry Ickes

Feb 183 min read

Before we discuss her books, let’s find out who Lynn is…

Lynn Slaughter is addicted to the arts, chocolate, and her husband’s cooking. After a long career as a professional dancer and dance educator, Lynn earned her MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She is the author of five award-winning young adult romantic mysteries: MISSING MOM, DEADLY SETUP, LEISHA’S SONG, IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU, AND WHILE I DANCED, as well as an adult mystery, MISSED CUE. Lynn lives in Kentucky, where she’s at work on her next novel.

What is your ultimate goal as an author?

My goal is to create characters in tough situations that readers will care deeply about and root for. In Deadly Setup, for example, seventeen-year-old Sam fights to prove her innocence when she goes on trial for the murder of her mother’s fiancé. To make matters worse, her narcissistic mother seems incapable of tuning into Sam’s distress or offering her daughter any emotional support.

Do you have a writing schedule, or do you write whenever you can squeeze it in?

While life sometimes interferes, I strive to adhere to a writing schedule in which I write in the mornings and early afternoons. Those are the hours I’ve discovered that I’m most productive!

How much research do you conduct for your storylines?

It really depends on the story. For example, I didn’t do a huge amount of research for my novel, While I Danced, because I’d spent decades as a dancer and was obviously very familiar with that world. On the other hand, for Deadly Setup, I did a great deal of research on what happens when someone is arrested for murder and goes on trial. I studied things like opening and closing statements of prosecutors and defense attorneys, interrogation techniques, rules of evidence, etc. I also asked two attorneys to review the manuscript for accuracy.

How much is based on real life versus made up?

Real life often gives me an idea for a story. For example, my novel, It Should Have Been You, was inspired by one of my adult dance students sharing with me that her twin was murdered while they were in high school, and the case had never been solved. Her story stuck with me and the unsolved murder of a twin became the basic premise for the novel. Everything else, however, was made up! Similarly, for Deadly Setup, the idea of a daughter being accused of killing her mother’s lover was inspired by the sensational case of the daughter of the actress Lana Turner who was arrested for shooting her mother’s boyfriend. The similarities end there, however, and the rest of Deadly Setup is fictional.

What is Deadly Setup about?

Seventeen-year-old Sam, the daughter of a New England heiress, has tried hard to fulfill her father’s dying wish: “Take care of your mother for me.” Not an easy job. When her impulsive, romance-writing mom announces her engagement to a man whose last heiress wife died under suspicious circumstances, Sam tries to dissuade her mother. But her mom is convinced she’ll finally have the “Happily Ever After” she writes about.

And then Sam’s life implodes. Her mom’s fiancé turns up dead, and a mountain of circumstantial evidence points to Sam as the killer. On trial for murder, she fights to prove her innocence with the help of her boyfriend’s dad, an ex-homicide cop.

Just when things are looking especially bleak, Sam uncovers evidence she never expected to find. She faces a tough decision: At what point does the price of loyalty become too high?