#ThisorThatThursday Author Interview with C. L. Tolbert
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I’d like to welcome author, C. L. Tolbert to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday.
A few of your favorite things:
My mother’s antique cloisonne apple. I store my rings in at night; family photos; my daughter’s ballet toe shoes; my son’s first poem; my wedding ring
Things you need for your writing sessions:
My computer, a desk, a chair, and relative silence
Things that hamper your writing:
Noise! I find certain noises distracting when I’m writing, especially people talking, or telephone calls. I also find loud music disturbing, so if I plan to write at a coffee shop, I visit on days when the barista in charge plays music more to my liking.
Things you love about writing:
I enjoy the process of writing. I love creating new characters and putting the old characters through the rigor of new circumstances. Plot development is always the first step, and scratches the same itch as completing a crossword or another sort of puzzle. Character development is next, then action. I write in stages and enjoy every one of them.
Hardest thing about being a writer:
The most difficult thing about being a writer is knowing when to stop editing. If it weren’t for deadlines, I’d edit forever.
Things you never want to run out of:
Books, pens, pencils, paper, watercolors
Favorite smell:
New babies, new puppies, springtime breezes
Something you wish you could do:
Snow ski
Something you like to do:
I like to write, and I enjoy reading. I also like playing tennis although I’m terrible at it. I enjoy walking when the weather is nice, and yoga, even on the worst of days.
Things you always put in your books:
Although my books are mysteries, each book has an issue of social justice at its center.
Favorite places you’ve been:
Florence, Venice, Paris, London, Istanbul, New York, Edinburgh, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Charleston
About C. L.:
In 2010, Cynthia Tolbert won the Georgia Bar Journal’s fiction contest for the short story version of OUT FROM SILENCE. Cynthia developed that story into the first full-length novel of the Thornton Mystery Series, which was published by Level Best Books in December of 2019. Her second book in this same series, entitled THE REDEMPTION, which is set in New Orleans, will be released in February of 2021.
Both books are legal procedurals, but they turn on complex characters, sympathetic suspects, and an attorney determined to find the truth. Adam, the protagonist in the first book, OUT FROM SILENCE, is deaf, and accused of killing his girlfriend. Louis, the protagonist in THE REDEMPTION, is only sixteen, and accused of killing two men. Their struggles to face their fear and to help their attorney prepare their defense is their greatest challenge.
Cynthia has a Master’s in Special Education and taught children with learning disabilities before moving on to law school. She spent most of her legal career working as defense counsel to large corporations and traveled throughout the country as regional and national counsel. She also had the unique opportunity of teaching third-year law students in a clinical program at a law school in New Orleans where she ran the Homelessness Law Clinic and learned, first hand, about poverty in that city. The experiences and impressions she has collected from the past forty years contribute to the stories she writes today.
She has four children, and three grandchildren, and lives in Atlanta with her husband and schnauzer.
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