How did you become a writer?

I used to be a lawyer, I became ill and needed something to do other than lie in bed and worry about what was wrong with me, so I started writing. And then I just stuck with it after I got better. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

I don't have any writing influences. I learned I wrote well when I was in college and never thought of it as being a career. I just happened upon it (or perhaps it happened upon me).

When and where do you write?

My favorite spot to write is at a desk, and probably on a desktop. My favorite and most productive time to write is mornings. But I do write anywhere and anytime and on anything. Laptops, the back of envelopes and receipts, in notebooks. I'm not picky.

What are you working on now?

I am writing a cozy, editing a women's fiction and plotting out a domestic mystery.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I don't believe in writer's block, so no. There are times I get stuck on how my story should go. As creatives, I think writers always have a story in their heads, so how could we be stuck?

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

You can't edit your own work!

What’s your advice to new writers?

Finish your WIP (and don't take seven years to do it!)

Abby L. Vandiver, also writing as Abby Collette, is a hybrid author who has penned more than twenty-five books and short stories. She has hit both the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller lists. As Abby Collette she is the author of the Ice Cream Parlor mystery series, about a millennial MBA-holding granddaughter running a family-owned ice cream shop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and the Books & Biscuits mystery series. The first book, starring a set of fraternal twins who reunite and open a bookstore and soul food café, is called Body and Soul Food. Writing as Abby L. Vandiver, she is the author of the Logan Dickerson Mysteries, featuring a second-generation archaeologist and a nonagenarian, as well as the Romaine Wilder Mysteries, pairing an East Texas medical examiner and her feisty, funeral-home-owning auntie as sleuths. Abby spends her time writing, facilitating writing workshops at local libraries and hanging out with her grandchildren, each of whom are her favorite.