“Orchids and Stone”

by Lisa Preston, Sequim

Thomas & Mercer (Amazon Publishing)

Available to read for free to Kindle subscribers .

Available online and through any bookstore.

It took her about 10 years to find herself at this point, but Sequim’s Lisa Preston is writing the next great mystery novel thanks to perseverance.

In 2000, Preston traded her blues in law enforcement for a computer screen and spacious grassland to ride horses and dream up her next story in Sequim.

She and husband Barry Johnson retired from the Anchorage Police Department in 2000, after Preston changed careers from the Anchorage Fire Department as a paramedic in 1990.

Since moving to Sequim, Preston has released a handful of non-fiction animal care books such as “Canine Scent Work Log” and “Natural Healing” and pieces for anthologies, but her first published fiction story, “Orchids and Stone,” described as a domestic noir thriller, came out April 1.

Preston says her non-fiction work didn’t necessarily pave the way for her into fiction but not giving up.

“I just kept working at the craft,” she says. “I know a lot of folks who write a novel and if they had kept at it, they would get there. You get bored with the same novel but you have you to rewrite it.”

And that’s what Preston did with “Orchids and Stone” over several years.

“I’m not sure how many times I revised it,” she says.

“The original concept stayed the same with some tweaking and rethinking things … turning the screws, basically.”

An Amazon effort

“Orchids and Stone” follows Daphne Mayfield who encounters an elderly woman in a park asking for help. The woman is desperate saying someone is trying to take all her money, home and car, Preston said.

A younger woman approaches the two saying she is the elderly woman’s daughter, which she denies, and leads Mayfield to wonder who is telling the truth.

From here Mayfield begins to push herself more into this woman’s life leading to a foot chase, car chase and physical encounters over a long weekend.

“I was interested in what it takes for a stranger to intervene,” Preston says. “Not with an obvious, you should help someone but what if there was only a hint? It could go either way. You could be blowing it as your citizen’s duty to help.”

Preston said what someone has done in their past affects situations like Mayfield’s.

“She’s got enough in her past to make her decide to help,” she says. “Her baggage is 20 years old and leads her to this. It’s not like you’re going to jump on that person. It’d be enough to give her a doubt and take a step forward.”

Thomas & Mercer or Amazon Publishing’s mystery/thrill imprint released “Orchids and Stone” on April 1.

Preston says it’s “at least my seventh finished novel and my sixth agent.”

Getting to this point, she found herself discouraged in 2011 and took a break telling herself and husband, “I have tried and tried. Sweetie, I’m not good enough. I’m going to go ride a horse for a while.”

“I got a lot of time on the trails and trained my new horse,” Preston says. “Then I took another stab at it about a year-and-a-half ago.”

Last year she was offered three contracts with two from Amazon for “Orchids and Stone” and a standalone thriller, and a nonfiction horse book “Ultimate Guide to Horse Feed, Supplements and Nutrition” from Sky Horse Publishing, which comes out this summer.

Preston’s path

Preston says she hasn’t gotten away from her desk much with the next thriller’s deadline coming up soon. But she has found some breaks for horse riding and running in the nicer weather as of late, she says.

Looking over her literary aspirations since moving to Sequim, Preston said she’s tried fiction a few times starting with a contemporary story in the early 2000s.

“I’ve always wanted to write fiction but it’s much harder to get published,” she says.

Preston followed her first novel with a mystery story that was a finalist in the Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition.

“It was almost good enough,” she says. “I wrote a follow-up to the mystery just in case it did get picked up.”

It didn’t but Preston continued on writing including more contemporary stories with “interesting people in interesting situations,” she said.

“It’s not the writing but the rewriting that gets it there,” she says of “Orchids and Stone.”

“A lot of us can turn out a decent draft but a decent draft isn’t good enough.”

Preston says she received some help workshopping the novel with friends and popular authors Caroline Leavitt and Joanne Mapson, too.

For her next novel, she’s looking to cut about 15,000 words before deadline.

“You want it tighter,” she says. “You definitely can move the plot usually with less but I’m one of the few people who have been told to linger here or there (in scenes).”

Following her next novel, Preston said she’s been asked to pursue writing a mystery series.

“Orchids and Stone” can be found and ordered from any bookstore and online including at Amazon which Kindle subscribers can read for free.

For more on Preston, visit www.lisapreston.com.