About Lula Starling

The stories usually find me first.

I’ve always been drawn to what sits just beneath the surface—the history inside an old building, the memory attached to a place, the family story no one talks about anymore, or the moment when someone realizes the life they have been living no longer fits who they are becoming.

That curiosity is what drives much of my writing.

I was raised in part by my great-grandmother, and I grew up with an awareness that entire lives can exist behind the stories we are told. There are dreams people never pursue, experiences that never make it into the family history, and parts of ourselves that can become buried beneath responsibility, expectation, and time.

Writing became one way for me to explore those spaces.

Why I Write Fiction

My Haven Hollow mysteries grew from my fascination with place, memory, history, and the things people leave unsaid.

I’m especially drawn to ordinary places that feel as though they might be holding something—a hotel with a complicated past, a lake that has witnessed generations come and go, a quiet town where everyone knows one another but no one necessarily knows everything.

Sometimes the setting comes before the story.

The Whispering Lake, for example, was inspired by the lakes of Winter Haven, Florida. Looking at those quiet stretches of water made me wonder what a place like that might remember if it could tell us.

That question became a story.

That is often how Haven Hollow works for me. Something familiar catches my attention, my imagination adds a question, and eventually a mystery begins to take shape.

I’m Also Interested in the Mysteries We Carry

Not everything I write involves solving a crime.

Books such as Silhouettes in the Garden explore another kind of mystery: Who are you when you begin separating yourself from the roles, expectations, and histories that shaped you?

I return often to themes of identity, memory, generational patterns, transformation, and reclaiming parts of ourselves that may have been pushed aside.

Even my journals, puzzle books, and activity books come from that same place in a different form. Sometimes readers want a story to disappear into. Sometimes they need a page that gives them room to think, reset, create, or simply be still for a little while.

I believe there is value in both.

And That Is Probably the Thread Through All of It

I write about hidden things.

Hidden histories.
Hidden motives.
Hidden parts of ourselves.
The lives people might have lived.
The choices that change what comes next.

Some of those questions become mysteries.

Some become reflections.

Some become books I never expected to write until an idea refused to leave me alone.

That is one of my favorite things about being a writer.

You never quite know which story is going to find you next.

— Lula Starling