Interview with Rachael Richey

 

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a series of author interviews for another website long ago and I've decided to repost them now that the other site is no longer active so they'll continue to be accessible on the internet.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 2018:

 

Rachael Richey is a romance writer I met in a critique group I’ve participated in for several years. (I highly recommend joining a group like this, for many reasons.) I’ve been able to read two of her novels, pre-publication, so far. I recently got her to answer a few questions about writing, publishing, and about her new book.

Tell me about your most recent novel. Who is your audience?

My most recent novel, Practising for Christmas, is a romantic comedy set at Christmas.  Olivia and her friends are spending Christmas in a remote coastal cottage, and before the others arrive, Olivia discovers an unconscious and very handsome stranger on the beach.  She takes him home to patch him up and it’s when her friends arrive the next day that things begin to spiral out of control due to a case of mistaken identity.  It’s basically a feel good seasonal romcom.  My audience will probably be mostly female, but I do have some stalwart male fans who read all my books.

What kind of writer are you? Do you insist on daily word counts? Do you edit as you go or force out a whole first draft first? Do you write in silence or with music? In the morning or at night? What do you do when you get stuck in the writing process?

Wow.  A lot of questions!  Right.  I write when and where the mood takes me.  At the moment I’m going through a bit of a dry patch, but when I’m in the zone (for example, nearing the end of a book), I have been known to write about 20k per week.  Definitely no insistence on a daily word count – that would put me off.  Sometimes it flows, sometimes it doesn’t and you just have to go with it.  I usually read back over my previous day’s work and do a quick edit, but save most of the editing until I’ve finished.  Sometimes I like music when I’m writing, but I’m equally happy writing in silence.  I have been known to do it with the TV on in the background if all the family are in.  I have to fit my writing in around everything else (I long for the day when it is my main job), so I write anytime.  I wrote a lot of my first book at night, between midnight and 4 am, but these days I don’t seem to stay awake so well, probably because I have more early mornings now.  If I get a bit stuck on a plot, the best way to sort it out is in the shower.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

Daphne du Maurier, Kate Morton, Kate Atkinson, Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs, Linda Fairstein, Barbara Erskine, David Baldacci, Sophie Kinsella, Elizabeth George

When did you decide you wanted to be published? How did you go about making it happen? What is the biggest challenge of being published? What’s the best part?

I’ve always wanted to write, right from when I was a small child.   I used to write stories all the time and just assumed that when I was grown-up I would be a published writer.  That didn’t happen for a very long time and I kind of got caught up in other things, then one day in early 2012 I resurrected a story idea I had had a few years earlier, and once I started I couldn’t stop!  As soon as I had finished that one, in about three months, I started a sequel, at the same time editing and then submitting the first one.  By the time I finally got an offer from a publisher (actually from three in one week), in early 2014, I was part the way through the fourth book in the series.  You really do have to be prepared for a lot of rejections though.  I must have had at least twenty, if not more, for the first book.  Don’t be put off.  It’s worth all the rejections when you hold your first published book in your hand, and realise that other people will be getting to know your characters, and hopefully getting to love them.

What are you working on next?

I’m currently working on another romantic comedy, but I have ideas for several other books all fighting for my attention as well.  I’m not sure which one will win yet, but it’ll be exciting finding out.

You can find out more about Rachael Richey here.

Interview with Dave Olner

 

 

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 2018:

 

Years ago, I belonged to a now defunct writing site called Authonomy. There, I workshopped my writing, learned to critique others, and, ultimately, found my publisher. Dave Olner was one of the writers I met there and his book, The Baggage Carousel was one of my favorites. I was so glad to see he recently published it and I had a bunch of questions for him that he was nice enough to answer.

Since Authonomy closed, have you found a comparable writing group?

I haven’t frequented a writing site since Authonomy shut up shop. I feel like I found it at the right time: as a clueless fledgling taking their first crack at writing a book. Some of the feedback I received there helped shape the finished manuscript immeasurably and I’m thankful for it. It was a case of separating the wheat from the chaff, though, because some of of the feedback I received there was dogshit, from people who didn’t know what they were talking about. People just like me! I had found a virtual peer group and it was a sad day when the site closed.

 

When did you decide you wanted to pursue publication? How did you find your publisher?

After completing the book I embarked on the well-trodden road of queries, subs and rejections. I garnered some initial interest in the manuscript, but nothing that ever came to fruition. When I’d exhausted all options, when I couldn’t find anyone else who would even spare the time to dismiss my work, I set the MS to one side and started on a second book.

Years later, I was contacted by Nathan O’Hagan, one of the non-dogshit people from Authonomy. Now a big-shot published writer, he babbled excitedly about a new indie publisher, Obliterati Press, he was setting up with another author, Wayne Leeming. He told me he remembered my book fondly and asked if I’d ever managed to get it placed. The short answer to that was No. The two of them agreed to consider the MS and…well, here we are.

 

Describe your writing process. Do you keep a journal?

Much to my shame, I’m not currently writing at all. I’d like to write but after work, sleep, feeding and occasionally washing myself there doesn’t seem to be much time left. Although, sometimes I get an idea for a short story and it starts to rankle me so much that I’m eventually forced to write it down. It’s like lancing a boil and finding a homunculus within.

I don’t keep a journal in my grim everyday existence, but I have done them whilst away on backpacking trips. I’d like to say these journals contained in-depth reportage of the places I’d visited, but I found an old one recently and most of the pages were filled with doodles of robots.

 

In The Baggage Carousel, the main character’s traveling is motivated by rootlessness and restlessness. The places he travels to seem so real. How have you researched these places? Are you affected by a similar wanderlust?

All the places mentioned in The Baggage Carousel are ones I’ve visited. Some of the events featured in the book are based on actual occurrences. For the purpose of the narrative, I expunged myself from those events and transposed the central character, Dan Roberts, into them. He’s a bit more of an arsehole than I am but, hopefully, a little more entertaining. So it was like a Spacey/Plummer situation, except in reverse.

 

Is this really your first book? How long did it take to write and when can we expect another?

Yes, it’s really my first book. I would not intentionally deceive you. It’s hard to tot up how long it took to write The Baggage Carousel, because it’s something I would set aside for months on end and then return to periodically, a scab I had to keep picking at. So, maybe soup to nuts was something like five years, but it wasn’t five years of continual slog. If anything, the MS was something I would revisit when I had a little time away from the continual slog.

I wrote a second book, “Munger”, a character study based on a sex-tourist I met on a bus in Thailand. He was a hideous man, really, but his voice got stuck in my head. Even after the inherent darkness of my first novel, I somehow managed to plumb new depths of depravity with my sophomoric effort. I honestly do not know if the world will ever want or need this novel, but I do know it was something I needed to write.