Heidi Glick writes romantic suspense and is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Faith, Hope, and Love Christian Writers. She has an eye for detail and includes law enforcement particulars in her stories, grounding the reader in scenes. She’s attended Writers’ Police Academy and the Hancock County (Ohio) Sheriff Citizen’s Academy to ensure accuracy of story details. Though she grew up in Southern California, Heidi now considers rural Northwest Ohio her home.
You can subscribe to Heidi’s newsletter on her website.
Connect with her: X | Facebook | Instagram
Gazing into Darkness opens your Queen City Heroes series in Cincinnati. What inspired you to root this story—and its heroes—in that particular city?
I lived in a Cincinnati suburb for ten years, plus I worked onsite at the Cincinnati EPA for several years. While there, I learned about EPA CID agents and wanted a story with a different branch of law enforcement. The story premise came from a conversation with my coworkers.
Even though I have moved to the northern part of the state, I still visit Cincinnati about once a year. Though not born in Ohio, I have lived here for twenty years, and all my stories thus far, except for Dog Tags, are set in the Buckeye State.
Queen City Heroes hints at future installments. Without spoilers, what theme or issue do you see carrying through the series?
All my books, including the Queen City Heroes series, include a redemptive thread. Also, forgiveness is another major theme. In many romantic suspense series, a different couple is featured in each story. In Queen City Heroes, the same couple is featured throughout. Castle and Bones fans watch the characters’ relationship evolve throughout the various episodes, and this story is similar—the same couple solving crimes.
You serve as a line editor for Scrivenings Press. How does editing other authors sharpen your own writing process?
That’s a great question. The more I edit other manuscripts, the more mistakes I find in my own work and can see where something might not work. It’s one thing to read a book on writing where it says don’t include too much backstory. It’s another to read too much backstory in another author’s work and see why it pulls the reader from the story. It’s easier to spot that sort of mistake in someone else’s work. As a line editor, I’ve learned to cut more words from my stories and tighten my writing. At the same time, I’m always going to need an editor. Every author does.
You contributed to A Walk in the Valley, a devotional on infertility. Has that experience influenced the emotional journeys you craft for your fictional couples?
In my second book, Hold for Release, instead of singles, the book features a couple with a marriage on the rocks, who are experiencing infertility. Yes, my infertility experience influenced the emotional journey for Carlotta and Jake.
Carlotta is frustrated. She wants to be a mom, and sometimes others don’t understand how she feels. She wonders if maybe God doesn’t think she should be a mother. And her husband Jake isn’t always on the same page and is somewhat frustrated with the way that infertility treatments have taken over their life and Carlotta’s thoughts.
For readers new to Christian romantic suspense, what do you hope they’ll discover about the genre through Gazing into Darkness?
Yesterday, someone asked me what I write, and when I responded, they said, “Wow, that’s a very specific niche.” Both secular and Christian romantic suspense are fast-paced and are about subverting reader expectations. With secular romantic suspense, you have a suspense arc and a romance arc, but with Christian romantic suspense, you also have a faith arc. But the difference between the two is more than just that. The Christian romance arc is God honoring and a closed-door romance—no explicit sex. Violence is present, but not gratuitous. I’m a biology major, and so I’ve been around cadavers and dissections and can perhaps tolerate more gore than the average person.
And while I understand suspense stories might contain dead bodies, body parts, and blood, in Christian suspense, the mention is usually brief and not continuing throughout. All that to say, I’ve read a secular romantic suspense I did not finish because it contained continual, gratuitous, over-the-top gory descriptions of sexual assault. In a Christian fiction novel, hope comes in the form of Jesus Christ, which is why my novels contain themes like forgiveness, trust, and redemption. While not all of my stories contain the Gospel, several do. Also, I tend to include humor during lighter moments.
Instead of moving closer to his girlfriend, Chance McPherson gets dumped and relocated to Cincinnati—farther from his dreams and closer to his shameful past. Stacey Sanderson is excited to finally secure a role in law enforcement, like the rest of her family, especially as an EPA CID agent, where she can protect God’s creation.
On the job, Stacey’s perfectionism and faith rub Chance the wrong way, while his antics and wisecracks irritate Stacey. When federal employees who worked an old case with Stacey start dying, Chance becomes concerned, and not just because Stacey is his partner. Stacey senses a closeness between them but has vowed not to get involved with men in law enforcement and especially not someone who doesn’t share her faith.
The anniversary of the case is creeping closer. Time is running out. Can Chance and Stacey stop the person who is out to kill her before it’s too late?
