Interview with Mystery Author Rhonda Lane

Rhonda Lane — Mon, 19 May 2025 10:25:46 -0400

Lisa Haselton asked me to introduce myself and Fatal Image on her author interview blog. Some behind-the-scenes tidbits about the book and how I use my tech.

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How I Got My Mind Game On

Rhonda Lane — Mon, 19 May 2025 10:04:05 -0400

First, you have to write the book. Ideally, you're learning about publishing in the process, as well as business, especially if you self-publish. What tripped me up was mindset. Romantic Suspense author Donnell Ann Bell asked me to write about what helped me cope.

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The Horsey Set Net: A Horses-and-Culture Blog

Rhonda Lane — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:38:07 -0400

From August 2008 to the end of 2020, I had a horses-and-culture blog I named The Horsey Set Net.

My first post was about dressage at the Beijing Olympics. I covered a lot of televised horse racing, along with the stories of the racehorse's connections, stories from other equestrian sports, stories about Broadway's "War Horse" and Spielberg's "War Horse" movie.

All that remains of it are the occasional page on The Wayback Machine, aka, The Internet Archive.

I also have some posts saved as docx files on my hard drive.

The link is to an Internet Archive entry from back when I didn't know I was supposed to post teasers fragments of stories so I could fit more stories on the home page.

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Some Thoughts about Memorial Day

Rhonda Lane — Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From my Substack and newsletter Rhonda's Lanes ....

Something has been lurking in my mind about Memorial Day.

In the category of “this could be a bad idea,” I feel like talking about Memorial Day within the context of my novel Fatal Image: An Avery Sloane Mystery.

FWIW, I’m not doing this to sell books. Well, not in this post.

I want use a passage from Fatal Image as a lead-in.

Before that scene, though, you might want to know about the characters speaking …

Avery Sloane, the main character and narrator of Fatal Image, was a conflict photographer in the Middle East but now works as a reporter at a small-town, family-run newspaper owned by the moneyed Clark Kinsale.

The scene happens in the storefront newsroom at the weekly staff meeting. The owner publisher Kinsale has stopped to guide coverage as this is the first meeting after a lurid murder.

Let’s drop in as Avery narrates some of the weekly staff meeting:

Kinsale looked at his wristwatch, a fancy gold number befitting his status as a pillar of the community. “I also don’t want us to forget about the feature about our local boy who just came home from deployment. Miss Sloane, I think you could add an element our other staffers cannot. In time for Memorial Day.’”

Leave it to me to have to poke the bear while I was ahead.

“Memorial Day is about those who died in war,” I said with a furrowed brow implying ‘pardon me’ but not. “Veterans Day is about those who got to come home. The troops are aware of the difference.”

Granted I first wrote that passage a long time ago, but I think I meant to say country but there’s county, right there and forever. Something spellcheck would ignore. Typo or Freudian slip, county still fits the vibe.

Avery’s new job is based on my old job as a general assignment reporter who also happened to be a photographer with her own gear at a small family-owned suburban daily newspaper in New England.

The weekly staff meetings? Yup. The owner publisher never showed up at ours, though they would’ve had to drive about fifteen miles to us. All the bureau chief editors went to them every week.

I also covered the Memorial Day activities from the early morning ceremonial visits with the local veterans to each cemetery and park to decorate and salute the monument there to veterans. Then, I’d cover the parade, which is where I learned about the Gold Star Mothers.

One of the things I’d noticed that, even though sometimes the local veterans would invite me back to the Legion Hall for coffee before the parade, I never picked up on the distinction between Memorial Day being about those lost at war but Veteran’s Day for the troops who returned until I did my research for Fatal Image.

Many years after my reporter days, I read all sorts of troop and journalist memoirs about the Iraq war. My rule was, if one person experienced something, that was their story. If another person experienced something similar—or better yet, a third person reported it, too—I considered it fair game for me to give to Avery.

Many of those books are still in a shelf next to my desk/ Some are still in my local public library. And some are on various e-readers I own, complete with digital highlighting.

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Rhonda Lane | Updates

Interview with Mystery Author Rhonda Lane

How I Got My Mind Game On

The Horsey Set Net: A Horses-and-Culture Blog

Some Thoughts about Memorial Day