by Sheila Lowe

When it comes to mystery fiction, I’ve never been a fast writer. It used to take me a year to finish a novel, and I got that down to nine months (the parallel to childbirth is not lost on me). I could use the excuse that I also have a career that pays the bills. Like my character, Claudia Rose, I work as an independent forensic document examiner. Which means that unless I’m scheduled to testify in court or at a deposition—dates that often change because court is like making a movie, lots of ‘hurry up and wait’—I can pretty much make my own schedule.

The truth is, I tend to spend (I was going to say ‘waste’) a lot of time surfing the web, starting research, and going down rabbit holes reading fascinating articles. Mid-evening comes and I haven’t done any writing. So, I open my manuscript and work until midnight or later.

Sheila Lowe

My nonfiction books about handwriting psychology are easier to write fast because I don’t have to worry about plotting, which for me, is the hardest part. When I wrote my very first book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Handwriting Analysis, the publisher gave me twelve weeks to fill 352 pages. The next year, I was asked to write Handwriting of the Famous & Infamous for Barnes & Noble. For that one, I was provided with handwriting samples of 75 celebrities, politicians, and bad guys (from Galileo to Ted Bundy, to Princess Diana), and thirty days to complete the book. I got it done.

That’s around the same time I started writing fiction. Fast forward to the end of 2022. I’d written six nonfiction books, eight books in my Forensic Handwriting psychological suspense series, and three books in the Beyond the Veil paranormal series. And then, something happened.

I’m going to make a long story short—my own. After more than twenty years of waffling about it, I decided, finally, to write a memoir, Growing From the Ashes: A forensic handwriting expert learns about the Afterlife from the murder of her daughter. I spent a month thinking about what I wanted to include in the tale of my journey from this terrible event to spiritual freedom, and learning that there is no death––just life after earth.

It was February 1, 2023 when I started chapter one. Twenty-six days later I was astonished to find myself writing “The End.” While it was clear to me that I had help and guidance from an unseen source, the experience taught me something important: I could write faster than I had ever believed was possible. And so, when I was ready to begin my next Claudia Rose book, I challenged myself to see how quickly I could do it.

I started Maximum Pressure in November, 2023 and finished six months later. Woo hoo!!! That doesn’t count the weeks of tweaking and editing it to make my publication date of July 2, but this was a fun book to write. If you’ve ever gone to a class reunion and wanted to kill someone, you might enjoy it.

It’s a case of old friendships turning deadly, and the past coming back to haunt Claudia Rose in unexpected ways. At her 25-year reunion, Claudia finds the body of someone she knew in the school swimming pool. While the police are deciding whether the death was an accident or something more sinister, an old flame asks for help with a documentary he’s making about a girl who went missing in their junior year. As Claudia gets closer to the truth, friends come under suspicion, and someone is willing to do anything to keep their secrets buried.

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Like her fictional character, Claudia Rose, Sheila Lowe is a real-life forensic handwriting examiner who testifies in court cases. The mother of a tattoo artist and a former rock star, she lives in Ventura, CA with Lexie the Very Bad Cat. Despite sharing living space with a feline, however, her Forensic Handwriting mystery series is definitely not cozy. She also teaches and lectures internationally, and writes nonfiction about handwriting psychology.

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