A Letter Exchange with Elizabeth Heider

After reading May the Wolf Die I wrote to the author, Elizabeth Heider. She kindly replied. I appreciate her candour. Our exchange of letters is below. I look forward to her next book.

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Dear Elizabeth

Occasionally I write to an author about a book I have enjoyed and am reviewing in my blog, Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan.

I purchased May the Wolf Die late last year after seeing the New York Times recommendation. Whether through some form of divine guidance or merely coincidence I began reading May the Wolf Die the day after returning to Saskatchewan from a 37 day cruise which went from Rome to Cape Town.

Our first stop was in Naples where Sharon and I went on a tour to a pasta factory in Gragnano. As noted in my review we experienced the continuous drama of driving in Naples.

After leaving Europe the cruise went down the west coast of Africa, an area of the world with which you are very familiar through your work with the U.S. Navy.

I find being on a cruise ship for weeks to be an escape from the world. I lose track of the date and day of the week. Having no military experience I have wondered whether it is the same being on a warship. Was orientation to time different for you when deployed with the U.S. Navy on lengthy voyages?

I prefer reading a book by a new author to me before learning about the writer lest my thoughts on the book be influenced by their life. With May the Wolf Die I did not quite reach the end of the book before going online to read about you. The depth of knowledge about Naples and the U.S. Navy in the book prompted me to find about your life.

I was surprised when I read of your work history in physics and the U.S. Navy and the European Space Agency and Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence Science Research Laboratory and the commercial spaceflight industry. It is rare in my crime fiction reading experience to read an author who is both an accomplished scientist and a writer of mysteries.

Nothing I learned about your life affected my thoughts on the book. There is a link at the end of this letter to my review. I consider it a great book.

You stated in your website bio that:

I’ve always processed my experiences through writing. Fiction is particularly helpful because it helps me identify and tell the emotional truth of a situation while keeping my analytical proclivities at bay. My attempts at nonfiction become very academic - replete with facts and analyses, but absent the emotional and spiritual elements that are often the most essential parts of narrative truthtelling.

That passage prompted me to think about my own writing. I have not written fiction. As a lawyer for almost 50 years I have written letters, briefs, arguments, memos and opinions. As a sports columnist for 46 years I have written columns focused on the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League. As a blogger I have written over 1,500 posts, mostly about books and authors. As a member of the Roman Catholic parish in Melfort I write and deliver reflections once or twice a year when the parish priest is absent and we have a lay presided service.

Reflecting on my writing made me realize it is analytical. There are few “emotional and spiritual elements” in my writing. There are personal reactions in my sports columns and blog posts but they are limited. The reflections for church are spiritual but also analytical in examining the readings from the Bible for the service.

I would be interested in knowing how you keep your “analytical proclivities at bay” in your fiction. I did not find May the Wolf Die analytical. I have read fiction that was essentially non-fiction with dialogue added. Your characters have developed personalities.

I would be equally interested in knowing your approach to learning about a new author to you.

Lastly I would be interested in knowing where you find the time to write crime fiction.

I will be posting this letter in my blog in a few days. If you are able to reply and are willing I would post your response with this letter or in a separate later post if I have already posted this letter. A reply can be sent to me at mysteriesandmore@gmail.com.

I look forward to reading more of your crime fiction. I think I will forgo looking up your scientific non-fiction.

All the best.

Bill Selnes

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Dear Bill,

Thank you so much for reaching out and for your thoughtful review of May the Wolf Die! I truly appreciate the time and care you put into reading and reflecting on my book. It’s wonderful to hear that it resonated with you. I'm glad to tell you that the next book in the series will come out in 2026 (I'm working on the edits right now).

Your cruise sounds like an incredible journey. Rome to Cape Town is an ambitious and fascinating route, especially with that stop in Naples. You’re absolutely right about the drama of driving there! It’s something that both fascinates and terrifies me in equal measure. I'm proud of my ability to maneuver in traffic there, and I have the traffic tickets to prove it. I also loved much of West Africa - I'm so glad you had those experiences and can treasure them for the rest of your life!

To answer your question about orientation to time on a Navy ship: yes, it is absolutely different. Long deployments, especially at sea, create an insular world where time takes on a strange elasticity. Without the usual markers of daily life, days blend together in a way that’s both disorienting and oddly liberating. There’s a rhythm to shipboard life - but it’s separate from the way time moves on land. Your description of losing track of the date on a cruise actually resonates a lot with my deployed experiences. The Navy culture on the ship was also a new experience for me (and a complete culture shock). The living conditions could be quite harsh, and this created an interesting dynamic with my shipmates. As a civilian, I struggled to earn my place and, at the end of a long deployment, felt intense gratitude and love for some people, and utter loathing for others. 

As for keeping my analytical tendencies at bay when writing fiction, that’s something I’ve had to learn over time. My background in science and analysis trained me to prioritize facts, logic, and clarity, but storytelling requires something different - an ability to sit with ambiguity, to allow characters to make imperfect decisions, and to prioritize emotional truth telling.

For me, writing about emotional and spiritual truths comes from two places. First, a personal need to understand and describe my own emotional landscape and also to sit in the discomfort of those emotions. It’s a process of discovery - one that fiction allows me to explore. I've tried to do this with non-fiction stories about my life, but I think that there's an instinctive shying-away from the vulnerability that's required. I'm somehow able to short-circuit this when I imagine fictional scenarios and people. Second, I love people, in all their messiness and beauty. Fiction gives me a way to inhabit different perspectives, to understand characters from the inside out, and to explore the contradictions that make them human. I think that’s why I gravitate toward crime fiction in particular. It’s a genre that naturally pushes into the most extreme moments of human experience.

Regarding how I approach a new author, I love the way you describe reading a book before learning about its writer. I often do the same. I prefer to enter a story without preconceived notions, allowing the writing itself to shape my perception. Only after finishing a book do I typically look into the author’s background, sometimes as a way of better understanding what shaped their perspective.

As for finding the time to write crime fiction. Well, that’s the constant challenge! I often think of writing as something I'm always looking to make time for, rather than something I find time for. Even during demanding periods of my career, I’ve always written in the margins of my life- early mornings, late nights, stolen moments in between responsibilities. It’s not always easy, but storytelling is something I feel compelled to do, so I make room for it however I can.

Thank you again for your kind words, for reading my book, and for reaching out with such thoughtful questions. I’d be happy for you to share my response on your blog if you’d like. Wishing you all the best, and I hope you enjoy my future books!

Warmly,
Elizabeth Heider

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https://mysteriesandmore.blogspot.com/2025/02/may-wolf-die-by-elizabeth-heider.html