Hello

Hi, I’m Leann Harris. I am so excited to join this site with all these wonderful authors. I’ve a boring teacher by day. I teach high school and by night I write danger and suspense. I’ve often wondered about my desire to write murder. It worried me. What did it say about me? What was wrong with me that I couldn’t write a story without a dead body? I wanted to write romance, but falling in love is so boring, but throw in a dead body, and now you have excitement.

So what about me?
How I got my first name is when my mother was in nurses’ training, she had a good friend with my name. Years later, when I was born, I was named after her friend.
My writing name is my middle name. I’ve just sold my 11th book. It will be the second for LIS.
How do I pick my hero/heroine’s name? That is probably what takes as much time as anything I do in a book. I have to know their names. I go through the phone book and try out the names. I also have a baby name book I used for my children’s names. It has old names in it, but those names are rock solid. I also like to see the meaning of the names. I had one character that was named Matthew Hawkins. He’d been a book before. As I continued writing his story, there was something wrong. When I started referring to him as “Hawk” I knew that was the right handle for him.

Interesting tidbit…
1) I am a master composter. When I took the class, I thought what a wonderful way to get rid of a body. One of the people working with the city composting education said that is how they dispose of farm animals in Indiana. Who knew?

2) I sign. I taught deaf students most of my teaching career. Now I teach ASL to hearing students. Today is voiceless Thursday. It takes twice as much work for me to make my students understand--but the only way they will learn ASL is without voice.

3) I survived a brain aneurysm. I bled into my brain one Saturday at my writers’ meeting. I remember clutching the commode throwing up blueberry pancakes (it was a while before I could eat blueberries again) when the paramedics pulled me out of the bathroom and took me to the hospital. Three months later, I started to remember. There are a lot of lessons I and my family learned. I hope to share some of those lessons in future posts

About my Books:
1. How I stumbled into writing suspense...Again, I find my brain just puts dead bodies in the plot. Reading the newspaper, you see about a murder and my mind starts spinning ‘what if’. What I love is a good ticking clock in the plot where the hero/heroine have to solve a mystery.
2. My favorite suspense book I wrote and why...This is like asking me which child do I love the most. In each book you write, there is something that you love.
3. My favorite suspense book I read and why... There are so many good suspense books. The fun thing is to find an author you like and then gobble up every other book they have written. Try any of the ladies on this site. You'll be in for a good read.

Leann