Interview with Author Jim Nelson

Please enjoy the latest from my author interview series from the past:

 Jim Nelson’s new novel, The Bridge Daughter, was released last month. This alternate history/science fiction tale is a bit of a departure for him genre-wise and he talked to me about that and about his writer’s journey.

Do you know what genre you are going to write in before you start, figure it out as you go, or only decide what it is after it’s finished?

For Bridge Daughter, the genre kind of came and found me. The idea of a world where bridge girls are surrogates for their mothers, carrying their mothers’ child to birth, is not subject matter I’d normally write, but I was fascinated with the concept and the character. When I put it all together and began writing chapters, I realized it would be considered science or speculative fiction. But I wasn’t thinking of that when I started.

What other genres do you write in and did you write in that genre since you began writing?

I was a huge science fiction fan in my youth, but other than a terrible short story I wrote decades ago, I never took a stab at writing in the genre. Most of my work would be considered straight-ahead fiction, although some of it veers into the absurd (Edward Teller Dreams of Barbecuing People, my short story “A Concordance of One’s Life”).

Writing Bridge Daughter has made me re-think writing science fiction, and I’m now sketching ideas for another book in the genre. Going back to science fiction feels a little like returning to my hometown as an adult an re-seeing it all through new eyes.

When did you begin writing and when did you decide to work toward publication? What has that journey been like?

I grew more serious about my writing when I was in my late 20s. I’d started a web site in 1995, what we’d today call a blog, but this was before that word existed. Writing regularly for it got me thinking of authoring stories and novels. My first serious attempt at a novel (Edward Teller Dreams) I started in 1999, although I only published it in 2014, so that gives you an idea of how rocky the journey’s been.

Do you read in the same genre(s) you write in? Are there particular authors who inspire you?

One science fiction author who inspired Bridge Daughter in an oblique way was William Gibson, a writer I admire a great deal. His early cyberpunk novels were a blast of fresh air in the 1980s. I was especially drawn to their near-future feeling, the way their world did not seem wildly alien to the world we lived in back then, just more gritty and claustrophobic. His world was the 1980s fast-forwarded instead of a new world invented from the top down. That partially inspired me to set Bridge Daughter in a world almost exactly as our own, save for the biological difference.

Tell us a bit about your most recent book. Can you share an excerpt?

Bridge Daughter regards a 13 year-old girl named Hanna who learns she is a “bridge daughter,” that she has been carrying her mother’s fetus since birth. In a few months she will grow visibly pregnant, give birth, and die, leaving her parents with their “real” child. Hanna refuses to accept her fate and is determined to find a way to live to adulthood.

Hanna had a vague idea about bridge parties. She’d heard the term many times. She knew it didn’t involve cards, that was a nervous slip on her part. She also knew a bridge party was for adults and not children. In particular, it was not for the bridge daughter, at least in the sense that the bridge daughter did not participate in it.

Family television shows often featured episodes about bridge parties. Hanna never understood the fuss. The bridge daughter would sit off to the side staring into the camera, pregnant and mute, as she always did in these TV shows. Family and neighbors arrived at the house with food, flowers, and wine. Every so often, the bridge daughter would rise from her isolated chair and go about the party gathering dirty plates and discarded wrapping paper. If the party went late, the bridge daughter would be sent to her bedroom while the revelry continued.

Often in these television shows some major dramatic moment would occur. The family doctor, Scotch-and-soda in hand, would let slip he’d diagnosed the father with cancer. Or the eldest sister would announce she’d been accepted to a prestigious university like Harvard or Stanford. The bridge daughter never spoke, of course. On television, everything important happened to other people, never the bridge daughter.

Hanna never quite understood why they were called “bridge parties.” The bridge daughter had little to do in these TV shows. She stood to one side while the rest of the family went through their weekly crises and upheavals. The bridge daughter served dinner and cleaned the house and answered the door when the bell rang. On shows set in the costumed past, she darned socks and tended the sheep pen and threw logs on the fire when the flames drew low. Even that afternoon at the bakery, a few bridge daughters were helping their mother with the day’s errands. Mute and deferential, clad in neutral-color dresses and soft-soled shoes, they were easily overlooked, but not by Hanna.

Interview with Author Ferris Robinson

I did a series of author interviews for another website long ago and I've decided to repost them now that the other site is no longer active so they'll continue to be accessible on the internet. I always found it reassuring to hear from different writers the way that there really isn't just one way to be a writer. I think that kind of reassurance is evergreen so please enjoy this one:

 

Ferris Robinson’s new novel, Making Arrangements, was released yesterday, on July 5, 2016. She’s written cookbooks and articles for years, but this is her first work of fiction. In this interview, she answers my questions about writing and publishing and talks about the book.

When did you start calling yourself a writer? Do you consider yourself trained or self-taught?

I have always written – I made little books out of cardboard and scratch paper when I was a child, and they were pathetic. The first time it occurred to me I may actually be good at it was during an entrance exam for a private high school in Chattanooga, GPS. I failed miserably at math, science, history, general reasoning… everything EXCEPT the writing portion. I had described a section of Woods Creek in Marion County where I grew up – I just pictured the tree limb hanging over the water and imagined the sound of the water and an occasional car over the old wooden bridge. Anyway, my description gave me a shot and I graduated from there.

I took a few writing classes in college, and wish I’d majored in it. After college, the lifestyle editor of our daily paper gave me freelance assignments, and eventually a column, but I still didn’t call myself a writer. Lots of ‘less than’ feelings there I suppose. I write regularly now at my job at a monthly community newspaper, The Lookout Mountain Mirror and The Signal Mountain Mirror, and although I am confident writing articles, it’s hard to say “I’m a writer.”

I suppose I am a combo of being taught and self taught, and am still learning lots and lots.

How long were you writing before publishing your first book? Did you try the traditional publishing route — sending queries to literary agents? What are your thoughts on traditional versus self-publishing?

Four years ago I sent out about 75 queries for my book, and waited on a few bites for partials and one full, which were rejected at the end. But I ended up with an agent for Making Arrangements. She was with a respected NY agency and I got her because her brother dated my niece and she agreed to read my manuscript. She ended up leaving the agency for another career with a tech company, and wasn’t able to sell it. That was in 2013. I put it away for a few years. A friend who had read it said, “Of all the things you’ve written, I like your novel the best,” and she urged me to publish it. I pulled it out of the drawer and reworked it mightily. I added/changed/deleted/deepened all different parts of it, and decided I liked it as well.

I thought about trying to find an agent again, but it’s such a long shot and I wasn’t up for the inevitable wait. I was excited about my book and wanted to get it out there. Kindle Scout was new to me, but a few folks I know online in writing communities gave me their opinions and I went for it. The campaign was nerve-wracking, but also fun in a way. And I was beside myself to be chosen!

I think the publishing industry is definitely changing.

Who are your favorite authors?

I love Lee Smith, Lolly Winston, Claire Veye Watkins, Rick Bragg, Ann Patchett and Anne Lamott among others.

What’s your latest book about?

Cancer patient Lang Eldridge spent her supposed final year of life making sure her soon-to-be widowed husband could manage without her. Ha! After he drops dead on the tennis court, Lang, alive and well, discovers a secret that could ruin her life. If she lets it.

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Making Arrangements is the story of the perfect arrangements going completely awry, and the consequences of that. The protagonist must decide whether that particular fall-out is going to change her life, or if it isn’t.It deals with themes of forgiveness and friendship, and champions women who are strong, yet don’t know it yet.

How do you plan to celebrate your book release?

I hope to go out to dinner with my husband (who thinks it’s ironic that my protagonist’s husband dropped dead of a heart attack – he had open heart surgery 23 years ago, at the age of 34, and thinks this story is Freudian on some level! He jokes that all those years of healthy cooking to keep him alive made me snap.)

To learn more about Ferris, check out her website: http://www.ferrisrobinson.com/

 

Interview with Author Jessica Knauss

 Here's another author interview from the past (2016):

“So much Talent can kill you.” So begins the blurb for Jessica Knauss’ new paranormal novel, Awash in Talent. A writer with a diverse publishing history, Knauss shared some of her insights with me.

I was looking at your Amazon author page and I see you have several books out already in various genres. Do you consider genre before you start writing or does it emerge during the process?

I only consider genre after I’ve told the story I want to tell. With my historical fiction, it’s easy to assign categories. With my fiction set in the present day, it’s always a little harder. I really found my contemporary voice when I started reading the magical realists, but that’s not a genre that necessarily attracts a lot of readers. For Awash in Talent, I went with contemporary (to distinguish it from my medieval fiction) paranormal (because some characters have supernatural powers). I’m also happy placing it in women’s fiction because of the sharp focus on female characters’ experience of this slightly strange world, and parts of it qualify as YA or New Adult because of the characters’ ages. I think I wrote about teenagers because their struggles are universal.

Do you plot it all out on note cards or does the ending come as a surprise to you, too?

To call them note cards would be an exaggeration. When I’m writing something that stays as close to the original inspiration as Awash in Talent does, I scribble scenes and character development dilemmas on whatever paper is at hand. It’s a raging mess by the time I get to the end, which, now that you mention it, is normally a mystery to me until I’m right up on it.

Often, in order to properly end a novel, I have to pause in the writing and review the entire story to consider what would be the best earned emotional experience for the reader. I ended Awash in Talent with a summary sentence that I thought might be cheating a little, but no one’s complained about it so far.

Can you talk a bit about your experiences with publishing and what got you to try Kindle Scout?

While I was shopping around my first novel, I considered submitting it to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest, but in the end, it wasn’t the right novel for that process. After an arduous journey through agent rejections and rewrites, I placed that novel with a small press. What a relief! By that time, I was ready to shop Awash in Talent, but the first novel had exhausted me. I thought Awash was the right kind of novel for the ABNA, only to find that program had been discontinued. Instead, I stumbled across Kindle Scout, which has many of the advantages of traditional publishing with a modern, almost crowdsourcing approach to the slush pile. I only had to receive two rejections of Awash in Talent to convince me that Kindle Scout was the way to go. I knew somehow that it would be able to attract the audience it couldn’t at a small press.

It was a dream come true to have Awash in Talent accepted. Perhaps the best thing about Kindle Scout is that the published books are called winners!

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What are the challenges faced by your main characters in Awash in Talent?

Three novellas make up the novel Awash in Talent, each one narrated by a different young woman who is challenged by the role of the rare Talented people in a mostly un-Talented world. This includes the firestarters and psychics being more or less reviled, and all three types being under constant surveillance.

In the first novella, Emily faces smaller challenges in her fraught dealings with her family and her pursuit of a man who doesn’t return her affection. In the second, Kelly has to make a go of a school for firestarters that is more like a lockdown facility and deal with the ups and downs of friendship and love, all while figuring out a way escape the school to save her mother’s life. In the final novella, Patricia is a psychic in hiding. She must avoid revealing her Talent and remedy her failing marriage. On top of it all, she finds her most difficult psychological therapy client ever in Emily, who told us the story from her perspective in the first novella. While focusing on young women, Awash in Talent brings up a variety of social issues I hope will resonate with readers.

What inspires you to write? If you ever get stuck, what helps you get unstuck?

I love that juicy feeling called inspiration. It can come from just about anywhere, but Awash in Talent is based on a dream. I’ve written a lot of stories based on dreams, but I never thought a single dream could carry an entire novel. And indeed it doesn’t. During the writing process, new inspirations cropped up to keep the story afloat. Many of them came from my love of Providence, Rhode Island. Imagining the characters in that unique city, it sometimes felt like the story wrote itself.

I can’t afford to get stuck with writing often because I have so little time to do it. But if I’m really having trouble with a scene, I imagine the characters fully in the setting, as if it were a movie. Positioning yourself as a spectator to the story takes away some of the pressure and helps the action to be character-motivated. Watching in this manner, it’s easy to spot if a character does something unlikely.

The release day for Awash in Talent is June 7th. How do you plan to celebrate?

I’m planning a book launch party. I’m not sure it will be on June 7. If it isn’t, I’ll be sure to commemorate the day in some small way. My first book launch is certainly not like any other day!

If you’d like more information about Jessica Knauss, check out her website

Interview with author Erik Therme

 I did a series of author interviews for another website long ago and I've decided to repost them now that the other site is no longer active so they'll continue to be accessible on the internet. Please enjoy this one from 2016:

I love hearing from different authors about their writing process and road to publication. I find it reassuring that we all have different stories; there is no singular “right” way to do it. I recently got the chance to speak with author Erik Therme. His new YA thriller was selected for publication by KindleScout. Here’s what he had to say:

Your book sounds really scary. How scary is it and what is it about?

Resthaven, at heart, is a young adult novel, so I tried not to make it too terrifying. I have two teenage daughters (one that’s obsessed with horror movies) so I wanted to write something they would enjoy. The story follows a pack of girls who venture into an abandoned retirement home for a scavenger hunt, and everything quickly goes wrong. I’ve always wanted to tell a story that unfolds in a creepy, old building, and Resthaven fit the bill nicely.

When did you start writing? Have you always written in this genre?

I began writing stories in junior high, but it wasn’t until college that I began working on novels. They were all pretty lousy, but as most writers know, you have to write a few bad books to learn how to write good books. As far as genre . . . I never consciously think about it when I start a new project, but everything I write seems to gravitate toward suspense with ‘twinges’ of horror. I clearly enjoy making readers squirm.

What are some of your literary influences- books or authors?

One of my all-time favorite books is Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. I’ve often thought about trying my hand at literary fiction, but I’m probably not talented enough to pull it off. Stephen King has always been a huge influence, and I’m a big fan of Alden Bell, who wrote the brilliant novel, The Reapers Are the Angels. It’s a tasty bit of literary fiction, set in a post-apocalyptic world of zombies. Truth be told, I’ll pretty much read anything that catches my interest.

How did you go about getting published? What brought you to KindleScout?

Like many authors, I chased literary agents for years in the hopes of bridging the gap to a traditional publisher. After a very close call with Gillian Flynn’s agency, I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands and self-publish. Shortly after the release of my first book, I received an e-mail from Thomas & Mercer publishing, who had discovered the work and wanted to acquire it. Needless to say, I was thrilled. When I finished Resthaven, I knew the story wouldn’t be a right fit for them (they don’t handle young adult) so I submitted the book to Kindle Scout. Two months later it was selected for publication, and I was off and running.

What are you working on now?

I’m knee-deep into a third mystery about a father searching for his missing daughter. I’m also tweaking a short novel (written years ago) that I hope to release next year, and I’ve been outlining a sequel to my debut mystery, Mortom.

Book Review: Tom Lake

 

I think this may be my favorite book of the year. Ann Patchett's Tom Lake is read by Meryl Streep and I can't be sure that's not at least part of why this book edges out all others.

The story takes place in spring 2020 when Lara's adult daughters have come home to help pick cherries at the family orchard. She alludes to the pandemic without getting political. It just describes the experience of uncertainty and isolation, the way their lives are on hold and they don't know what it will look like when things start back up.

The shape of the narrative is the daughters pushing their mother to tell a story about dating a famous actor before they were born. Reluctantly, she tells it, but she gives her daughters a slightly different version than she gives the reader. She ruminates on the different person she was, how her younger self navigated the power dynamics of the time. She's cognizant of the fact that her daughters are close  in age to the women she was and it makes her wonder if they've had similar experiences.

Ultimately, it's the rich characters and the way they relate as a family that draws me in, as always.

Interview with author and artist Bradley Wind

Here's one from 2016:

 I first met Bradley Wind on a now defunct writer’s website. He got a reputation there for being the guy you went to for help with your book cover. 

Bradley and I happened to go through the KindleScout process at about the same time so we were able to commiserate about the way it forced us out of our introverted comfort zones and the uncertainty of that long thirty days. We also got to celebrate together when each of our books was selected for publication.

I recently read A Whole Lot, a sort of coming of age tale for one of the most original main characters I’ve come across. Bradley was nice enough to let me pick his brain about the novel, the writing process and his experience with publishing.

Is this your first book or just your first published book? When did you start writing?

A Whole Lot is my second book but first published. I had an agent for my first too but he didn’t shop it as much as it deserved (or so I believe!) and I was busy working on my second so I didn’t push Bulb much after Luke stopped. I thought I’d see how AWL did before I approached Kindle Press to put out Bulb. I didn’t get started until my late twenties but stories were often the driving force of my paintings.

Abel is a very unique character. What were some of the challenges of capturing his perspective?

I started by reading whatever I could find (which wasn’t much at the time) on savant syndrome – as well as books on child prodigies, mathematicians/Descartes, con men, secret codes/Bible codes and autism. In the end I decided he would have autistic characteristics – be on the spectrum – but not exhibit an incapacitating form of autism. That would’ve limited the solo travel and other plans I had in mind. I was very pleased to discover Daniel Tammet after I’d written the novel – to know there are high functioning individuals with savant syndrome.

Also initially I thought I was creating something that didn’t exist, but then Dr Treffert let me know that there are cases of acquired savants. Still, I worried Abel’s skills would be unrealistic. I’d read about Kim Peeks and his astounding prodigious talents so I knew I wasn’t far off what could be. I had to purchase/send away for a few of the documentaries on savants that I found online and they helped a bit with the speech pattern.

Did you need to do a lot in terms of research or are you already pretty knowledgeable when it comes to math and philosophy and savant-ism?

I knew by the 10th grade I’d be going to art school, so took only the required math classes for entrance into college.

I received good grades but I can’t say I cared about math or know it well. That’s probably why I felt so nervous when I attended the math tea I was invited to at Princeton.

What if they ask me Anything math related?! But to some degree I’m a shy person and I spoke very little while I was there and also figured I could talk a bit about the mathematician biographies, or those books about some of the greatest unsolved theorems I’d read. I got to know certain aspects of the culture, and the outlook seemed connected to a creative process I could relate to as an artist. Neurological studies and books on philosophy have always been members of my cycling bedside stack.

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When you began writing this, did you know how it would end? Do you plot things out or does the plot emerge as you’re writing?

I remember writing the section in the very beginning with Abel climbing the tree, talking about the freedom feeling and wanting the ending to have a similar quality.

In my notes, I had the novel ending on 11/10/1983-the same day Gates unveiled Microsoft Windows for the first time…that’s a little Easter egg for anyone interested.

No, I didn’t know the ending exactly but I knew it would be treetop freedom. I did not plot my first two. I had loose directions, knowledge of specific stations I’d stop at but nothing detailed like my latest. I find outlining to be freeing and confining at the same time – not sure if I’ll abandon it or ever try it again but it’s nice to check back in and have an idea about where I’m going but there have been occasions where all the detailed notes I include snail the process.

This book stands out for me from a lot of KindleScout books because it is pretty genre-less and more literary in style. Do you think about genre while you’re writing?

That was my fear when entering the Kindle Scout program, the winners mostly seemed genre focused and I had my doubts mine would fit. I felt somewhat surprised when my first agent talked to me about my book Bulb being science fiction. Luke got it, he talked about it being speculative more than straightforward scifi but for me the writing comes from ideas or characters not a desire to create a specific genre focused work. What if light was programmable and everything light reached was recorded in a grand archive for people to reference – a world where privacy didn’t exist? What if a child with prodigious savant syndrome went largely unrecognized? Those kinds of questions (sort of) come to mind and the story fills in around them.

What can we expect to see from you next?

During my commute this morning I was listening to Douglas Harding’s book On Having No Head. It had me thinking more about adopting ideas, the way that philosophy is born from geography and culture, from food and music – and the difficulty of transplanting it – of the efficacy of migration, the way philosophy twists over generations and for whatever reason I started thinking pickles pussy papaya, pickles pussy papaya. It had a rhythm bum bum bah-bah-yah – like something from the Paul Thomas Anderson’s documentary Junun that I watched this past weekend and have been listening to the album since. It documents Jonny Greenwood (from Radiohead) recording the album (also called Junun) with musicians in India. I’ve been thinking a lot about other brain potentials, about what is mind and what proprioception extension could mean, could accomplish. Set in the 90s, an accidental death, some MDMA use, and maybe a cult or folksy Buddhist belief or both thrown in. So far it feels like it has flavors of the first two books but mainly in the way I’m interested in brain potentials. I’m also working on illustrating a children’s book based on a reworking of Thich Nhat Hanh’s short story The River.

Interview with Mystery Writer James M Jackson

 Here is my third installment of evergreen author interviews. This one originally ran in 2016.

 James M Jackson is a mystery writer and Kindle Scout winner. He’s in the  midst of writing a series of books, three of which are available on Amazon. I was recently poking around his website and became curious. He was nice enough to answer my questions.

Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

Some authors say they always knew they wanted to be a writer. I may have been called at an early age, but I have a problem listening to people who tell me what to do. So, if called, I shouted down the voices in my head. I always enjoyed reading, and in grade school I did write a short story titled “The Mystery of the Red and Green Striped Zebra.” (Spoiler alert, the paint washed off when the kids gave it a bath.)

My poetry was good enough to be published in the high school and college literary magazines, but I considered poetry more as a means to impress girls than my creative spirit clamoring for an outlet.

I was a math guy (BS Mathematics, MBA Finance) and made my living with numbers and computers and eventually by explaining difficult financial concepts in ways that allowed executives to understand the important points so they could make decisions.

 

So, when did you figure it out?

In my early fifties I had an epiphany: while my job was math-based, what made me excel was the ability to tell stories about the numbers. In 2002 I finally figured out I wanted to be a writer.

I loved reading mysteries, knew a series could sell easier than a standalone, and so I started writing, and writing, and writing until I had a finished novel. I proudly gave my work to some trusted friends. They told me they liked it a lot. But it did start too slowly. Its middle was muddled and action slogged down to a crawl. The dialogue was chunky. Descriptions minimal. They couldn’t connect with the characters. But, gee, the plot was terrific.

 

Do you consider yourself trained as a writer or self-taught?

Those friendly critiques taught me the hard reality of Justice Louis D. Brandeis’s statement that, “There is no great writing, only great rewriting.” With the help of the Cincinnati Writers Project’s Wednesday night critique group and immersing myself in writing books, classes, and conferences, I gradually learned to write.

I rewrote the first book in the series many, many times over the next three years. That book received an agent offer of representation, which I ultimately turned down because of contract provisions. I’m glad I did because in retrospect neither that book nor that agent was quite ready for the big leagues. I eventually put it away and worked hard on the second in the series.

 

The second book in the series was published first?

Yes, but that was not my first published book. My outlet while working diligently learning to write mysteries was to learn to play competitive bridge. I decided to write a bridge book for intermediate players. I wrote the book in about three months’ time, sent out a proposal to the largest English-speaking publisher of bridge books, and in a week’s time they offered me a contract. Just like that.

That book, One Trick at a Time: How to Start Winning at Bridge was published in 2012 and received excellent reviews in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Bridge World Magazine.

While I was making edits for that book, I landed a contract for the second book written in the Seamus McCree series, Bad Policy. It was published in 2013.

So, it took me ten years from deciding to become a writer for my first book publication and eleven years for the first fiction. I had had short stories and an essay published in the intervening years.

 

After your first mystery was published, then what happened?

The next Seamus McCree novel, Cabin Fever, was published in 2014 by the same small publisher as Bad Policy. Then I decided to revisit that very first novel attempt. My friends were right, the plot had been strong, but the writing no longer met my standards. I improved the plot and applied all I had learned when I totally rewrote the book for the final time.

The Kindle Scout program had just started. I figured it would be better to have Amazon, rather than a small publisher, help market my book. Ant Farm was selected for publication and Kindle Press brought it out in 2015. As it turns out, Amazon has a promotion running through March 15, 2016 on the Kindle version of Ant Farm, marking it down to $1.99.

 

What are you working on right now?

I am in the final rewrite of the fourth in the Seamus McCree series, Doubtful Relations, which will be published in 2016. I have a completed first draft of the fifth Seamus McCree novel, Empty Promises, and I have written the first 20,000 words of the sixth novel, False Bottom.

 

What is your favorite thing about being published?

I get a thrill anytime I meet someone or get an email and they tell me how much they have enjoyed my book. I write to entertain, and knowing I have done so is a great pleasure.

Interview with Carrie Crafton

Here is my second installment of evergreen author interviews. This one originally ran in 2015.

 Carrie Crafton  is an author I met during my recent KindleScout campaign. She just released her fourth novel on Amazon and was nice enough to answer some questions for me about her process. I love to pick the brains of other writers.  Here’s what she had to say:

KO: How long have you been writing and what drew you to self-publishing?

CC: I think I’ve been writing since I was twelve, turning in extra stories to my teachers in the beginning, then taking creative writing classes at the local college when I was still in high school. I knew it was what I wanted to do by sixteen. But I was in my late twenties before I became really serious about it. I read somewhere you need to be in your thirties to have enough life experience to write a novel. I don’t think that’s true for everyone, but I was annoyed to find it held some truth for me.

I had written two books and was getting better and better rejection letters when a friend of mine in Ireland, who worked at a small, mostly non-fiction, publishing company, suggested I look into self-publishing. Without her to help me navigate the process I don’t know if I would have done it. But I’m very grateful to her for pointing me in this direction.

KO: What is the most rewarding thing about self-pub and what do you find the hardest?

CC: I love the control that self-publishing gives me. It’s all on my timeline and when things are going well I get to reap the benefits. However, learning to navigate my way through self-promotion has been a struggle that I feel I’ve only recently started to get the hang of. It was when I acknowledged that being a self-published author is a business, and that I had to put as much effort into the business end of it as the writing, that I finally started to get somewhere.

KO: How many books have you written an how long does it usually take you to complete a book?

CC: I have four self-published books: Something Found, Snow Soldiers, After Home, and Holding Back Daylight. I’ll admit Something Found took a few years. I was still trying to find my voice while writing it and I had to start over more than once. The other three were written in much less actual time. However, I had my two boys during those years and finding that time wasn’t easy. Now that they are both in school I would like to get to the stage of producing one to two books a year.

KO: What kind of writer are you? Do you have a workshop group or beta readers or are you more solitary?

CC: These days I’m more of a solitary writer. I have one or two friends that are probably sick of reading my rewrites, but they are people I can trust to tell me if I’m headed down the wrong path. However, I would love to be part of a writer’s group again. I was part of one when I was eighteen and I loved the input and the emotional charge of being around people with the same passion.

KO: Who are your favorite authors and influences?

CC: I’d like to expand my reading horizons more, but two authors I always come back to are Elizabeth Berg and Pat Conroy. I love stories about the relationships between people, especially friends and family. Which is why I’ve also enjoyed discovering Katie O’Rourke’s books.

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KO: Tell me a bit about your most recent book.

CC: Holding Back Daylight is my most recent book. It takes place in Chicago, a city I love, but was waiting for the right time to write about. Claire, the protagonist, has lost both her parents and an uncle she was very close to, and in the process inherited his bar. It’s about someone who cares deeply about people, but doesn’t want to get hurt again so has taken a step back from relationships. However, when a friendship begins to form with her new neighbor, cracks start to appear in the walls she worked so hard to build.

Interview with Alison Boulton

I did a series of author interviews for another website long ago and I've decided to repost them now that the other site is no longer active so they'll continue to be accessible on the internet. I always found it reassuring to hear from different writers the way that there really isn't just one way to be a writer. I think that kind of reassurance is evergreen so please enjoy this one from 2015.

Years ago, I discovered a book called Tom’s Daughters on a writing website and it was so good that I bought a version when it was self-published. It was the first e-book I ever purchased and remains one of the best I’ve read. I still remember the characters like they were real people. So when I heard that the author, Alison Boulton, was publishing a second novel – I jumped at the chance to do an interview.

KO: What did you learn about self-publishing from your first book? How are things different this time around?

AB: An acquaintance suggested that he helped me self-publish Tom’s Daughters as an e-book to see if he could ‘make us both a fortune.’ I was happy to accept this as it hadn’t been picked up despite being sent to numerous agents. I wasn’t comfortable negotiating the formatting and the technical stuff required to put in on Amazon for Kindle. He also did the cover from a photo I provided and set up a website. I think the deal was that he got 25% of revenues. The downside was that when sales were slow he lost interest and I got frustrated nagging for information and at not having control to update accounts myself.

This time round I wanted control from the beginning, and I also wanted a book that I could hold in my hand. I’ll put it on Kindle later, of course, but having the paperback makes publication and being a writer feel much more real. I think other people’s reactions have been more positive too.

KO: Where do you get your story inspiration from?

AB: For me a story starts with an image or a couple of images that are linked in some way. With Tom’s Daughters I wanted to write about sisters, but there was also the picture of a young woman with a small child in North London. The issue of the mysterious father was hovering in the background.

With Chasing Sunflowers it was again the image of a child, this time a boy, painting sunflowers for his mother. It was clear they were in Amsterdam where I also lived for a few years, and that the mother was lonely.

I then have to sit and try and work out the bones of a plot. Sometimes I write random scenes or conversations. Chasing Sunflowers was written first as a short story, but then it slowly grew into a novel, changing and developing in the process. The actual ending was the last thing to become clear.

KO: What kind of writer are you? Do you plot everything out before writing or does it evolve throughout the process? Do you force yourself to write every day? How long does it take to write a novel?

AB: The writing definitely evolves, but there has to be a certain amount of plotting too, plus a timeline of events. It always takes me a while at the beginning to sort dates out – how old was that character when this happened, etc.? And some thought must go into how the threads of the story entwine and unfold to keep the reader interested. There should, I think, always be some sort of denouement at the end. And I don’t really like sad endings, so I haven’t written one yet!

And it takes me ages to finish a novel, maybe even two or three years, because other stuff – like teaching and running our holiday complex – get in the way. I have to earn a living, unfortunately. I’m hoping the next one, currently called The Red Balloon, will be quicker though. And I do try to at least look at it every day but I don’t always succeed.

KO: Tell us about Chasing Sunflowers. Who is your audience?

AB: Chasing Sunflowers is the story of Kate, who moves to Amsterdam with her husband and young son. Lost and lonely in a new city, she develops a passion for the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. Her decision to study them leads her to artist Rudy de Jong and following in Vincent’s footsteps, she makes a trip to Arles which transforms her life.

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So, it’s a book about a woman who steps outside her own life, and how the experience changes her. There’s quite a lot about Amsterdam, the south of France and Vincent van Gogh too.

My first audience is me, since it was me I told the story to first and I liked it. So after that people a bit like me, I suppose; usually female, maybe over 25, though my daughters who are 20 and 22 enjoyed it too.

KO: What are your favorite books?

AB: I mostly read books about ‘real’ people and characters in plausible situations. I’m not a fan of Magic Realism or Fantasy novels. I hate anything sensationalist, badly written or too soppy. I love Ian McEwan, AS Byatt, Anne Tyler, and Doris Lessing amongst many others. Some of Lessing’s writing is futuristic, but then I love the prophetic nature of her work. Also EM Forster; I always say Howards End is my favourite book. I don’t know if it’s really true but it’s definitely up there.

KO: Alison, thanks so much for sharing and best of luck with the new book.

Learning How To Be Critiqued

 

I feel like there’s a lot of advice out there for writers in critique groups on how to give the most helpful, most sensitive, most comprehensive review of someone else’s work. What seems to be lacking is an understanding of how to take and respond to a critique.

I’ve been involved in various writing groups and classes over the last twenty years or so.  I have developed a very thick skin. But I remember when it was new to me and I was easier to crush. So my first bit of advice is to ease into the process. Start with some critique exchanges on a heavily moderated site like scribophile.com. Getting feedback while remaining anonymous can help you toughen up in private.

There are some things to remember whenever someone is telling you what they think of your work. Even if your reviewer doesn’t acknowledge it, their opinion is only as valuable as one reader. You are free to disregard anything they say.  Keep in mind: they may just not be your audience.

Once you’re brave enough to join an in-person or online critique group – and I believe any writer serious about working toward publication needs to get here – the best advice I can give is to say thank you.

If you have submitted your work for review and someone has been kind enough to spend time reading and offering feedback, be grateful. No matter what they say. Even if you think they’re arrogant and wrong and mean. Say thank you. If you think their advice is bunk, disregard it. But say thank you.

If you get a reputation for arguing with reviewers and getting defensive about your work, it will get harder to find people willing to spend time giving you feedback. The harshest critique of all will have value if only to toughen you up.

Writers need to be tough if they’re going to weather the vague rejections of literary agents, the suggested changes of editors and, harshest of all, the reader reviews on Amazon.

Learning the Ropes as a Hybrid Author

 Smart people disagree on whether traditional publishing or self-publishing is the way to go, or whether it’s getting easier or harder for new writers to break into the business, but most people will agree on one thing: the game is changing.

In the last few years, I hear more and more about authors who leave their traditional publishers to branch out on their own. There are many reasons this might happen. Authors might disagree with the way the publisher markets their work. They might write a second book that doesn’t fit with the rest of the books the publisher releases. They might decide they’ve made enough of a name for themselves that the backing of a larger publishing team is no longer necessary.

Let’s define terms. There is a difference between being a hybrid author and a hybrid publisher. A hybrid publisher is something between a traditional and vanity publisher, with varying degrees of vetting and financial contributions. These are fairly new as well, and make old-school authors nervous.

While we were coming up, it was drilled into us that agents or editors who ask for money should be reported to Predators & Editors and avoided like the plague. I keep reading that this is another thing that is changing, but I will probably never be entirely comfortable with it myself.

Being a hybrid author just means that you have several published books, some traditionally published, some self-published. That’s me. I have a traditionally published novel, a self-published novel, and a novel published with KindleScout. This puts me in a position to compare each experience.

My first novel was discovered on an online writing website and I was offered a three book deal. The contract included a four figure advance that it earned back within the first year and I now earn royalties. The manuscript went through several levels of professional editing and took about a year to come out. I had little input on the cover art or the way the book was marketed, and though it sold over 10,000 copies its first year, it took many months for me to be informed.

My second novel was re-released under my own imprint after getting the rights back from the publisher when I decided they.weren’t doing enough to promote it. Since it had already been professionally edited, all I had to do was create the cover and format the text for the ebook.

I spent $60 on a premade ebook cover that I loved. (There are many low-cost cover options created by talented graphic artists that you can find online. I got mine at thecovercollection.com.) Since I am the publisher for this book, I expect to spend my own money to promote it. I experiment with Amazon promotions and get daily sales information. It is not yet selling like my other two books, but as long as it makes back what I put in, I consider it a success.

My third novel went through the crowd-sourcing KindleScout program and was chosen for publication in December. This experience has been a mix of the first two. I had complete control over choosing the cover art and the manuscript benefited from a professional copy edit.

Production moved much faster than with my first publisher; it was released about a month after being accepted. I received a four figure advance that it earned back within thirty days and I get monthly sales reports and royalty payments. Unlike my self-published book, I don’t have the ability to change the price so I can’t control promotions.

I’ve learned a lot from each experience and have a hard time deciding which is my favorite. I think a lot of the frustration I felt with my first book was about me not understanding how publishing works. After I left them, they merged with LittleBrown and they’re much better at communication. I now get monthly sales reports on that book too.

The control freak in me loves the daily updates from my self-published book and the level of control I have with it, but the trade off is that I make less money on my own (so far). Advances are nice.

KindleScout has been the best of both worlds for me. I think before you choose which way to go, you should decide what’s most important to you. Money? Control? Connecting with your audience?

I think every relationship with a publisher is different, and that’s part of why there will always be different opinions on the subject. Although I never landed an agent, I’ve had several email exchanges and phone conversations with industry professionals giving me feedback on my work. That’s invaluable and I think all writers should give it a try – even if just for the experience. I believe it has made me a better writer.

I am currently writing my fourth book and I’m still not sure which route to take. Will I query agents or go it alone or try KindleScout again? I’m not sure, but I like having options.

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Book Review: Mercy Street

 

It would be hard for Jennifer Haigh to write a more perfect book than The Condition -one of my all time favorite books about family- and she didn't, but Mercy Street is an enjoyable story about unusual, not always likeable, characters who interact in unexpected ways.

The main character is Claudia, a counselor at a women's clinic who is finding herself stuck in a rut in her increasingly solitary life. The story is told in alternating POV, which I love as a storytelling device. The diverse cast includes a pot dealer and an anti-abortion activist, and their lives collide in ways that shake Claudia out of her rut. 

There is not a cookie-cutter happy ending, but it manages to be satisfying and realistic.

Author Interview: Diane Barnes

I used to do author interviews for another website. My favorite part was how differently they would answer the same kinds of questions. I find it so reassuring to know that there's not one right way to be a writer. To that end, here's my recent interview with Diane Barnes.

Talk a bit about your most recent book. What is it about? 

My latest novel is ALL WE COULD STILL HAVE. It’s about a couple who desperately wants children and the impact on their marriage when they have trouble conceiving.  It’s a hopeful novel about learning to be happy when you can’t have what you most desire.

What kind of writer are you? 

I’m definitely a pantser. I don’t use an outline, and I sometimes don’t write in order. Instead, I write scenes as they come to me, and then I brainstorm on what had to happen to lead up to that scene.

Do you edit as you go or force out a whole first draft first?

So many people advise not to, but I edit as I go. Every book I tell myself I’ll crank out a first draft and then go back and edit, but so far, that has never happened.

At what stage of writing do you find outside feedback helpful?

For me, it’s never too early for feedback. As soon as I finish a chapter, I bring it to my writing group for critique. They are so encouraging, even when they point out things that they don’t think are working. I carefully consider all feedback, paying closer attention to things that more than one person have commented on. Then I decide if I want to revise and how. Getting feedback is really important, but it’s also tricky. You need to work with people who you know will be honest and who won’t just say it’s great. They need to point out what’s not working but do it in a gentle way that doesn’t completely discourage you.

What do you do when you get stuck in the writing process?

I’ll skip ahead to another scene that I want to write. If I’m out of scenes, I’ll go for a walk and listen to music and really focus on the lyrics. Sometimes lyrics give me great ideas. I also read a ton when I’m a stuck. Getting lost in someone else’s story takes me out of mine and makes it easier to come up with new ideas when I return to writing.

Have you always written?

I fell in love with writing in second grade. We returned from recess one afternoon and there was a trail of giant paper footsteps going from the door to the window. The footsteps were on the floor and also on top of some of the desks. We had to write a story about what happened and who could have left them. I filled a composition book writing my story and had to ask for another. I filled that one too and still hadn’t finished my story. When I left for the day, my teacher gave me a stack of those composition books to take home, and I have been writing ever since. In college, I studied print journalism and that’s really where I learned how to write. My first job after college was at a newspaper and since then I have always worked as an editor or writer.

What is the biggest challenge of being published? What's the best part?

For me, the biggest challenge as an author is the self-promotion/marketing I’m expected to do. I have a hard time promoting my novels. It doesn’t feel natural. It’s much easier for me to talk about other authors’ books. I’m really trying to be better about marketing because it’s really important.

Definitely the best part of being published is emails from readers telling me how much they enjoy my books.

What are you working on next?
My next novel is THE MULLIGAN CURSE. It’s scheduled to be published by Lake Union in February 2025. It’s my take on It’s a Wonderful Life.  The story is about a fifty-four-year-old woman whose wish to be twenty-four and do it all again comes true. My twist on this story is that she’s twenty-four in the same year she was fifty-four so she’s what the world would have been like without her for the past 30 years. It’s available for pre-order now on Amazon and you can always request it from your local bookstore.

See, I’m getting better at Marketing!

 Please follow Diane:

dianembarnes.com

Twitter: @dianebarnes777
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/diane.barnes.735