Raised in Europe and the U.S., Ursula Steck spent most of her adult life in Cologne, Germany, until she met her partner, a resident of San Francisco, in 2001. For a few years she traveled between the continents and finally moved to Northern California in 2005. Ursula has published three mystery novels in German and numerous short stories in German and English. Following The Next World, her second American novel Laura’s War will come out in June 2007. The Next World was a finalist for the 2005 Goldie Debut Award, and Ursula is a contributor to the Lambda Award nominated anthology Women of Mystery, edited by Katherine V. Forrest.

You’ve written three German mysteries before the publication of your first English novel, The Next World. Tell us a bit about your German fan base.
As a writer it’s not always easy to really know who your fans are. Some write you a letter—that’s always wonderful—and otherwise you have to see who comes to readings. From those observations I would say that my German fans ar probably a bit more mixed when it comes to gender and sexual orientation than my American ones. And I’m pretty sure that has to do with the fact that my German publisher is not specialized in lesbian literature such as my American one, Bella Books. Grafit Verlag, my German publishing house, publishes only mysteries, so my books there reach an audience that are mystery fans first. But I was actually astonished to see, after my first book had come out, how quickly the lesbian audience found the novel. It was never specifically marketed as a lesbian mystery, but I know being an avid reader myself how greedy I am for good lesbian fiction, and how wonderfully fast word of mouth spreads within the community.

Are your German books available in English?
Not yet. There has been some talk with my publisher about me translating them, but I have to admit I probably haven’t put enough effort into it so far. I always seem to be so much more consumed by the book I’m currently working on, so that the already existing novels don’t get as much attention anymore. Also, once a book is written, and edited, and on the market, I feel very ready to start a new project, and going back to a completed one feels to a certain degree like stagnation. But maybe somebody out there would be interested in translating them.

What were your reasons for moving to the States?
My partner is American. After we met in 2001, it quickly became clear that we wanted to live together in San Francisco. There were a number of reasons for that. An important one being that we are both wheelchair users, and San Francisco is just so extremely more wheelchair accessible than Cologne in Germany where I used to live.

Did you get much feedback from your German fan base on The Next World?
I haven’t been back to Germany since The Next World has been on the market, so I haven’t really spoken to anybody there about it apart from friends. But it has sold quite well on Amazon Germany, and I have received a number of positive e-mails and reviews of the book.

The follow-up, Laura’s War, is due for release in the near future from Bella Books. Can you give us a sneak preview?
Anna Spring, the protagonist from The Next World is again the sleuth. In Laura’s War she has opened a detective agency with her obnoxious but also fun neighbour Martha. Their first big case takes Anna into a very twisted story around a dead woman who was supposedly killed by her partner. The book tells the adventurous story of Laura Cunningham’s life as Anna slowly finds out where she was and what she did in the years before her death when she was running away from her family. For me it was particularly interesting to try to reconstruct the life of somebody who is already dead, and whom nobody seemed to have really known. In many ways Laura was a person nobody paid much attention to, somebody who lived practically undocumented, who worked odd jobs, always on the run. But then she was complex, and extraordinary, and wonderful, and brave. While Anna tries to find out more about Laura, she becomes rather obsessed with her, to the degree that she almost falls in love with her, although for her she is basically a fictional character. This is a phenomenon I could really relate to—as a writer I can become pretty obsessed with my characters too, and I have to remind myself that they are pure products of my imagination.

Is writing something you’ve always wanted to do?
Yes! Ever since I had learned how to read as a little girl and immediately began to devour every book I could get my hands on, I thought it would be the most wonderful thing to be able to do: to write books that could get readers really involved in the stories of the characters. I guess I’ve always been a story-teller, and human beings and their stories are my biggest passion.

Who are some of your favourite authors?
Jane Rule, Katherine V. Forrest, Gerri Hill, Peter Hoeg, Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell, Margaret Laurence, Dick Francis, Sara Paretsky, Astrid Lindgren, Majgull Axelsson, Kerstin Ekman, Paul Auster, and so many more…

What's the most demanding thing for you personally about writing?
To make the story really round and believable, with enough twists to create suspense, but not so many that it becomes contrived. And then I feel it’s very demanding to find exactly the right balance between giving enough information and description without becoming too longwinded or detailed.

What do you consider to be your best and worst attributes?
Good attributes: I’m creative, passionate, curious, fun, and am usually rather laid back and friendly. I can get really angry when somebody pisses me off, though, which can be a good as well as a terrible attribute depending on the situation.

Bad attributes: I can get very angry when somebody pisses me off. I’m sometimes overly anxious which seems to come with the passion for the projects I take on.

If you were a book, what would its title be?
This is a really hard question—how should I know? Here come two suggestions of Yvette, my partner: Dorkmeister: A Revenge Story, and You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet ;-)

What's the one thing you always have in your fridge?
Cheese

Is writing stories a curious way to spend all your free time?
Hm, I don’t really spend all my free time doing it. I write more in bouts. For a few weeks or months before a deadline I get very busy and write a few hours every day and advance pretty quickly. I need this focus to make a long story like a novel work. And then I need time without actively writing when I let my mind wander and come up with new ideas. And for me all this feels much more like a professional undertaking than a hobby. I have always worked as a writer, editor, teacher, and translator. And even though of these occupations the creative writing may not be the most lucrative, it’s definitely the most involved and demanding, and it gives me the basis and credibility for many of my other undertakings.

What have been some of the highlights of your writing career thus far?
Of course when I completed my first book, and when it got accepted for publication. But it is always a highlight when any piece of writing—be it a short poem or a full fleshed novel—is nearing completion and begins to feel round and right. And having my very first poem published when I was 22 was also a great feeling.

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?
No, fortunately not. There are times when I don’t feel like writing, and if I don’t have a deadline I don’t try to do it then. But the desire to write a new story always comes back. And if there is a deadline I can push through. My experience is also that once I’ve managed to write the first few paragraphs, writing becomes fun and easy again. So I try not to worry much about the first sentences I write on any given day. I often have to completely rewrite the beginning of a story or a chapter, but that’s usually fun when the rest is already written and works well.

You also write short stories; is there a specific genre that is a favourite when it comes to shorter pieces?
I’m afraid I’m pretty boring here. The same as with my novels, I also like to write mystery short stories the most. But I’ve also written erotica and romantic stories, and that was fun as well. But I just love the suspense genre, and nothing makes me happier than to scare the hell out of my readers.

What would you consider the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aspects of the lesbian publishing industry?
So far I’ve had only good experiences. As already mentioned my German publisher is not a lesbian one—but they are great, too. Here in the U.S. I was so lucky as to find Bella Books with Linda Hill as a publisher and she has always been more than supportive. I guess the biggest problem of the lesbian publishing industry is the financial pressure and the difficulties of keeping a company up and running. I really admire everybody who puts her heart and soul and sweat and time into an enterprise like that.

Tell us something about Ursula Steck no-one knows…
In my next life I want to be a country singer and breed horses.

What were some of your favourite reads from 2006?
Hunter’s Way, by Gerri Hill, An Emergence of Green, by Katherine V. Forrest, In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult, Bait and Switch, by Barbara Ehrenreich.

Do you ever experience any doubt about your talents as an author, despite all your numerous publications?
Oh yes! With every book I’ve written I have always come to the point where I believed it would never work, and I should start all over again. Those are the moments when I wonder why anybody would ever want to read what I’m writing. But fortunately those moments pass. And my partner often puts my head into the right place, reads what I’ve written, gives me feedback, points out what works and what doesn’t, so that I can go back to my computer and get things right. I also try to remind myself of the advice my father gave me after I had finished my first book and felt that it wasn't bad but just not good enough for my own expectations. My dad said that I should always remember that I have my own unique voice and that comparing my writing to other people’s work would never work anyway.

A happy writer is…
…hanging out with her sweetie, having sushi . . . oh yes, and has inspiration, time to write, great readers, and supportive editors and publishers.