Today we’d like to introduce you to Constance Gillam.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m a writer. Suspense and mysteries are my primary genres; although I have one romantic comedy book out in bookstores.
I’ve been a storyteller since I was in elementary school. A childhood friend and I would make up a story on the way to school. We’d leave it on a cliffhanger once we reached the building and pick the story up again on the way home.
It wasn’t until my youngest child was in school that I seriously started writing.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
With three children and a mortgage, I couldn’t write 24/7. I sometimes worked fifty to sixty hours a week and wrote whenever I could.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I write fiction. It’s a career that’s developed late in my life but it’s a passion.
I’m most proud of my Lakota suspense series which is located on a fictitious Native American reservation in South Dakota. My main protagonists are a tribal police officer and his love interest, an African American fashion editor that found her way onto the reservation, searching for information about a murdered ancestor. It’s an unusual pairing of lovers.
The first book, Lakota Dreaming, was never meant to be the start of a series, but I fell in love with the characters. Because the storyline wasn’t set up to be a series, developing a unique plot for each book presents its own set of problems.
The third book in the series, Under Cover of Night, just won the 2022 Daphne du Maurier prize for Mainstream Mystery and Suspense.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was a nerd. I read religiously, and I was an introvert.
When I was an adolescent, I was in charge of my four younger brothers and sisters during the summers. As soon as my mother came home from work, I made a beeline for the library. I’d check out as many books as I could carry home then I’d hide from my siblings and read until dinner.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.constancegillam.com
- Instagram: authorlady514
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorconstancegillam
- Twitter: @conniegillam
Image Credits
Damon Kappell/Studio 16 Kim Killion
