Haven Township author Pam Leonard didn’t start writing until she was 50 years old. 

 

“I couldn’t have started earlier, I had to wait until I was an empty-nester,” she explained to a group at the Clearwater Library April 20. 

 

The reason is two-fold. First, Leonard needs peace and quiet when she writes, often sitting down and writing for six hours at a time. Second, her books are gritty, full of sex and violence, and she wanted to wait until her kids were older and better able to process them.

 

Today her children, daughter Katie and son, David, are her biggest supporters.

 

Writing a book was actually on her mom’s bucket list, not Leonard’s. While her mom eventually let the idea go, the seed was planted in Leonard’s mind. 

 

 “My books are very character-driven,” Leonard said. “I spent the year before I wrote my first book working out each of them. They became so alive in my mind I had to write them down.”

 

While her characters aren’t autobiographical, she uses personal experience to develop them. One of her characters, a 15-year-old girl named Lucy, is a ‘puzzle put together with a lot of pieces,’ much like Leonard herself was at that age.

 

One of the experiences Leonard draws a lot from when she writes happened when she was 15. She was living in the inner city and her dad had passed away. A German shepherd showed up at their house one day after that and wouldn’t leave. He became her own personal “Lassie,” always with her and protecting her.

 

Because of her dog, Leonard never worried about going out on the streets, but one night he wasn’t with her and she was grabbed by a man. Unlike most people, however, she wasn’t afraid.

 

“I felt a white-hot anger,” Leonard explained. “I yelled, screamed, cursed, and ended up getting away from him. It wasn’t until I was running home that I began to feel afraid. These used to be my streets, and if I told anyone what had happened I wouldn’t have my freedom any longer.”

 

When she got home she grabbed a knife and her dog and went looking for her attacker. She didn’t find him, but she went back to the spot where she’d been grabbed and “reclaimed” it. She didn’t tell anyone what had happened that night until many years later.

 

“I think all of us who lose a parent at a young age have to grow up fast and don’t trust happiness,” she said. “A lot of my characters have that cynical view.”

 

Leonard loves the big twists at the end of all of her books, saying they even surprise her. Although unintentional, her books also tend to have themes.

 

“One of the themes in my books that arises a lot is that we tend to underestimate people and ourselves.” Leonard said. “Another is the idea of self-deception. Either we think we’re really better than we are, or we’re really better than we think.”

 

For many years Leonard had a career in internal medicine and public health, which she’s able to draw from for her books. Everything else she needs to research, which she says is one of the fun parts of writing.

 

For example, when writing her second book, she knew nothing about guns, so she attended a permit to carry class where she not only learned about guns, she was able to practice shooting one. She also traveled to North Caroline to attend a police procedures and forensics conference for mystery writers. 

 

After North Star Press published her first book in 2009, Leonard thought her writing days were over. But she really liked the characters she’d created and wanted to learn more about them. Today those characters star in three published books and she’s at work on a fourth. She has also started another book with an entirely different set of characters. 

 

“I’m still blown away that I wrote a book,” Leonard shared, “Let alone three.”

 

You can purchase Leonard’s books, Death’s Imperfect Witness, Where Echoes Die, and Shadowland, on Amazon or through North Star Press.