Jen here. Super excited to welcome Lori to the blog! I love the premise of Wreck Your Heart, and I appreciate Lori sharing about line dancing. I’ve done a little bit myself and enjoyed it!
For one of my launch events for Wreck Your Heart, a mystery novel set in Chicago’s country music scene, the bookstore host hired a dance instructor to come teach us how to line dance.
I had some anxiety about this part of the event. Would people stay to watch the dancing or run off at the prospect? Did I even want to dance at my own party?
Writing books is already a pretty public dance. It means pouring yourself onto paper so that strangers can accept or reject you or one-star you on Goodreads. Personally, I’ve had to consider the give and take of my pseudo-public life a lot in the last few years. Did I want to tell social media about my bout with breast cancer or just disappear for two years? Did I want to keep dyeing my hair when it grew back or give in to what nature had begun giving me at age ten (thanks, genetics), the silver hair of my mother’s side of the family?
But, actually, the thing is… I like to dance. As uncoordinated as I am, I took to step aerobics with the best of them in the 1990s and picked up Jazzercise in the early 2000s, long past the days of leg warmers. Most recently, I stumbled weekly through Zumba until the pandemic shut down my neighborhood studio.
In the way back, my rural Indiana high school made us learn square dancing in phys ed class, which might have been some weird Reagan-era plot to instill in us trad-wife, homespun values. Mostly it was just embarrassing, having to touch hands with boys. But then in 1998, dancing with a group of friends from a party, I met my husband.
Am I any good at dancing? Does it matter? I like to do it.
When I started writing Wreck Your Heart, I wasn’t writing a book. I was just whiling away some time between projects during the pandemic lockdown. I was playing, and my only goal was to spend the time with elements I enjoyed, with elements that brought me joy. Chicago, country music, dogs. After the experiment was over, I tucked those pages away. But then, after cancer treatment, I really wanted to spend my time more joyfully. The rest of my life, which I was grateful to have, joyfully. So I picked up that story I hadn’t meant to write. This was in 2023.
Back to last week’s book launch. The instructor was cute, friendly, patient. The floor was wide open. And people didn’t just stay to watch the dancing. They danced! After signing a few books, I joined in. Badly. And it was a heck of a good time.
When will I learn, once and for all, that if I do something for my own joy, I’ll never mind if anyone’s watching, or not?
Anyone want to go line-dancing at Bouchercon this year? Hit this cowgirl up!
What were the dance crazes you got into? What’s your relationship with dancing?
About Wreck Your Heart:
An instant USA Today bestseller, Wreck Your Heart is a crime novel with a big heart, about a country and midwestern singer out to catch her big break before family—or murder—wrecks everything. Ann Cleeves called the book “wisecracking and wonderful,” and Elle Cosimano called it “Phenomenal.” Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly both gave the book starred reviews.
Dahlia “Doll” Devine had the kind of hardscrabble beginning they write country songs about. As part of Chicago’s—yes, Chicago’s—country music scene, Dahlia is an up-and-coming singer in spangles and boots of classic country tunes. Up and coming, that is, until her boyfriend up and went, taking the rent money with him.
So Dahlia is back to square one, crashing in the apartment over McPhee’s Tavern where she performs and relying on the kindness of the pub’s owner—again. When the mother Dahlia hasn’t spoken to in twenty years shows up and then disappears again—really disappears, leaving a distraught half-sister Dahlia didn’t know she had—and a body is discovered outside McPhee’s, the two mysteries threaten not just the place Dahlia has made into a home, but everything she’s believed about her past, her dreams for the future, and the people she was just, maybe, beginning to let into her heart.
About Lori
Lori Rader-Day is the USA Today bestselling author of eight novels including Wreck Your Heart, The Death of Us, Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, and Under a Dark Sky. She has been nominated for crime fiction’s highest award, the Edgar Award, and has won the Mary Higgins Clark Award, the Agatha Award, three Anthony Awards, and an Indiana Author Award. She has also been nominated for Thriller, Barry, and Macavity awards. Lori is a former national president of Sisters in Crime and a former national board member of Mystery Writers of America. She lives in Chicago, where she co-chairs the crime fiction readers’ event Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. Visit her at www.LoriRaderDay.com.
Chicks on the Case 