Kristina Stanley is the author of the bestselling Stone Mountain Mystery series, published by Imajin Books (who also happens to be the publisher of my Marketville Mystery series). The series is set in a fictional ski resort in British Columbia. Kristina is here today to talk about her days as the director at Panorama MountainVillage ski resort.

Judy: What was the funniest thing that ever happened to you at work?

Kristina: When I was a director at Panorama Mountain Village, I changed the policy to allow dogs at work. There was a selfish motive. I brought my dog, Chica, to work with me. She was under 6 months old, and I thought, fully housetrained, so I let her run free in the office.

Unbeknownst to me, a meeting was happening in the conference room.

“Okay, someone admit it. Who did that?” says one of the resort managers. “I can’t take the smell anymore.”

Giggles around the table, but no one admits to the gaseous emissions.

Chica

Then, a knock at my door. “Has Chica been in the conference room?”

“Sure,” I say.

“You’d better come with me.”

So I follow the manager down the hallway. A group of people is moving from one conference room to another.

The manager points to the rug below the table. And there it sits. One big pile of steaming…

Let’s just say everyone had a fun time laughing at me while I cleaned up.

 Judy: Have you quit your day job?

Kristina: I quit my day job at Panorama Mountain Village in 2009 and spent 5 years sailing on a catamaran with my husband, Mathew. During that time, I wrote DESCENT, BLAZE and AVALANCHE. I also discovered I loved editing. I now have a new day job as the CEO of Feedback Innovations and we are building a webapp to help writers turn a first draft into a story readers love. So now, I have the challenge of finding time to write while running a small business.

Judy: What made you decide to become a writer?

Kristina: Late one night in Unteruhldingen, Germany, I was reading MOONLIGHT BECOMES YOU by Mary Higgins Clark. The opening—a woman trapped in a grave. Darkness and silence surround her, and she doesn’t know where she is. I can still see her fingers clawing at the edges of the coffin.

Tucked in my bed, I knew a driver would arrive at 4 a.m. to carry me to the Zurich airport for a flight to London, England. The sensible thing to do was sleep. But I couldn’t. I turned pages until the car arrived. I was exhausted, bleary-eyed and excited. At that moment I knew I wanted to write something that forced a person to read and to forget about life for a while.

When I finally started my first novel, I’d been living in a ski resort for five years. Skiing is one of my passions and seemed the obvious topic.

About Kristina Stanley: Kristina is the co-founder and CEO of Feedback Innovations: a company created to help writers rewrite better fiction. She is the best-selling author of the Stone Mountain Mystery Series. Her first two novels garnered the attention of prestigious crime writing organizations in Canada and England. DESCENT, BLAZE, and AVALANCHE are published by Imajin Books. THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO SELLING BOOKS TO NON-BOOKSTORES is her first non-fiction book. Find her at www.KristinaStanley.com