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An Interview with Author and Poet Jeanne Shannon, Part 1

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Readers of Jeanne Shannon’s work find her “vitally rich and engaging” poetry to be imaginative, captivating, and meticulously crafted. Her articles, poems, memoir pieces, and short fiction have appeared in numerous publications. Summoning (Mercury HeartLink, 2015) is her newest book of collected poems. You can find Jeanne on her Amazon author page.

Summoning2How do you describe Summoning?
Summoning is a collection of poems and hybrid works—that is, pieces that blur the boundary between prose and poetry. Historically, poetry has been thought of as a rigid structure to hold the movement of the poet’s mind. At the very least it had to be broken into rather short lines and “look like a poem.” But that has changed with the acceptance of the prose poem and the lyric essay into the poetry family, and I am drawn to writing in those forms.

What do you hope readers will take away from it?
I hope readers will experience some of the poems as paintings in words, and just enjoy the language—the way the words “bounce off each other”—and the imagery. That they will be reminded to pay more attention to the natural world, particularly the plant life, that is all around them. That they will feel free to attach their own meaning or significance to the poems that may not seem particularly accessible. I hope readers who also write poetry will feel more liberated from conventional ideas about what a poem must be, and will be inspired to experiment with different ways of shaping their creative expression.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
It was difficult to decide where in the book to put certain poems that seemed to fit into more than one theme. And I had a few other poems that didn’t seem to be appropriate for any of the sections, so I put them aside for a future collection.

Do you remember what inspired you to write your first poem?
What inspired me was reading poems in two books my family owned. One was a collection of classic poems, One Hundred and One Famous Poems. The other (which I preferred) was The Lyric South, a 1924 anthology of poems by Southern poets that my mother had studied in college in Virginia where she and I grew up. The first poem I wrote was about “the people sleeping” in the graves in Bruton Parish Churchyard in Williamsburg, Virginia, where I had never been. It was inspired by a poem on the same theme in The Lyric South. I promptly copied it out on lined Blue Horse notebook paper and sent it to Grit newspaper without a self-addressed stamped envelope. Needless to say I got no reply. That was around the time of my eleventh birthday. By then I knew that writing was what I was going to do. Maybe I knew that even earlier, at age six or seven, when I wrote the life stories of the animals on our farm. When I was twelve I read Gone with the Wind and wanted to write a novel, but since I couldn’t think of a plot I decided to stick with poetry.

How important is accessibility of meaning?
Not very. At least not for me. For example, I did not major in English in college (chose music and French instead), so I never studied the “difficult” poems of T. S. Eliot such as The Waste Land and Four Quartets, but when I read them years later I was spellbound by the language, and I didn’t care what Eliot meant. In recent years I’ve taken classes on Eliot’s work and when the instructor assured us that such-and-such was what Eliot meant, I thought, “That’s plausible, but I still don’t care. It’s Eliot’s magnificent language that matters.” And I once read a remark attributed to Eliot to the effect that too much significance was being attached to what he is supposed to have intended when he wrote The Waste Land.

Who are your favorite poets, and what do you admire most about their writing?
Charles Wright is my favorite poet. He writes like nobody else. His poems have a sweet-and-sour melody, a jagged elegance. They jump-cut and loop back. His images are like no other poet’s—not only the images themselves, but also the way he juxtaposes and layers them. And I feel a kinship with him because much of his work has echoes of the upper South. He grew up in eastern Tennessee, not far from where I grew up in southwestern Virginia.

Other favorite poets include Ronald Johnson, Denise Levertov, Jane Kenyon, Robert Hass, and Mark Strand. I am also drawn to the highly individualistic poetry of C.D. Wright and I was saddened by her recent death. She was not a member of any of the postmodern schools of poetry such as the Language poets,* but her work is not easily accessible. She was from Arkansas, and had a lot of that mountain-woman “rules be damned, I’ll do what I want to do” attitude—which I certainly have as well.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Readers of Summoning will notice many references to science and to spirituality. I believe that the two are related, and that quantum physics can point toward the way that connection works. I read books about quantum physics and spirituality, as my biography on Amazon says. I probably started with Michael Talbot’s The Holographic Universe. Then I read Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics, the 1975 book that brought the mystical implications of subatomic physics to popular consciousness for the first time. More recently I have read, for example, Amit Goswami’s The Physics of the Soul and T. L. Baumann’s God at the Speed of Light: The Melding of Science and Spirituality.

*Language poetry, dismissed by some as “gibberish,” was a movement that appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It emphasized the reader’s role in bringing significance out of a work and was at pains to avoid indicating any “meaning.” It saw the poem as a construction in and of language itself. Expression of emotion, use of musical language, and letting the poem “tell a story” were not permitted. While the movement itself is somewhat passé now, it opened the door for other kinds of experiments in poetry.

For the second part of this interview, go to An Interview with Author and Poet Jeanne Shannon, Part 2.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author L. Phillips Carlson

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Being an author wasn’t L. Phillips Carlson’s first choice of profession, but once the writing bug finally hit, she published over 130 articles, short stories, and poems. Her debut novel, A Matter of Possession (Snowsnake Press, 2014), was the winner in the science fiction/fantasy category of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. You can find Ms. Carlson on her Amazon author page and her website at LPhillipsCarlson.com.

AMatterOfPossession200What is your elevator pitch for A Matter of Possession?
New P.I. Joe Shurjack investigates a rich woman’s murder and the theft of a rare butterfly collection while hampered by the ghost of his flirtatious co-worker.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
This book is a paranormal mystery, which involved planting clues throughout the story. So I tried plotting backwards from the ending to the beginning. Then I found it hard to stick to the outline, since new possibilities always crop up as one writes. I did manage to stick to the basic plot, but barely!

What is it about your main protagonist that makes readers connect with him?
Joe is an average guy who has a crappy boss and a lackluster marriage. He’s really at a crossroads in life, and has been put down enough to not have a lot of confidence in himself. Yet he’s plucky and manages to forge ahead anyway. He makes mistakes but is persistent, a quality that helps him greatly.

Why did you decide to use St. Louis as the setting for the book?
I’d visited St. Louis numerous times while my daughter was in Washington University’s medical school, and found the area to have a variety of interesting settings. Both St. Louis and Albuquerque figure prominently in my story. Joe visits Albuquerque on a shaky but profitable lead, with wife Teri in tow. Being a transplanted Midwesterner myself, I could relate his culture shock with humor and real-life experience.

Is there a scene in the book you’d love to see play out in a movie?
Besides all of them? One of my favorites is when Joe encounters the ghost in his kitchen. I also like the revealing scenes in the eclectic City Museum (actual place) and the Lotus Moon Antiques store (made-up, but partially based on a moon-themed hotel in University City).

Tell us how the book came together: where the story idea came from, how long it took to write, editing cycle, etc.
I’m not sure where some of it came from, honestly. I usually combine several ideas for my stories. It’s the way my mind works, and I blame it on my Czech heritage. I can usually find inspiration in settings, which was the case with this story. St. Louis has the fabulous Forest Park, for instance, which is twice as large as New York’s Central Park and contains museums, zoo, skating rink, paddle boats and more. I also like to deal with real issues like relationships, work, and other life problems.

I write in spurts, and then things lie fallow forever, so it’s hard to say how long it took to complete the novel. It probably only took a half-hour or an hour per page, editing included, but spread out over a couple of years. My rough drafts aren’t so rough anymore. I tend to self-edit as I go, usually in several chapter chunks to keep consistency. So the final draft only needs some clean-up and proofing. I trade critique and editing services with several people, who are both writers and editors themselves, so I end up with a polished project. I met them all at SouthWest Writers (SWW), by the way.

What makes A Matter of Possession unique in the paranormal market?
It’s a short novel—the print version is 165 pages—so it’s a quick read, popular with today’s rushed lifestyle. Several readers have told me they read it in a single sitting! I like to think A Matter of Possession is quirky, fun, and adventurous, but that’s up to the judgment of the reader.

Why did you decide to start Snowsnake Press and take the indie route to publishing?
I’ve had several short pieces published with traditional magazines, so I’ve done the submit-and-wait routine. With the tremendous flux in publishing today, writers have choices, and it only makes sense to consider both legacy (traditional) and indie publishing to determine what’s best for your particular project. I went indie because there are a lot of bad deals out there right now, and I’m trying to avoid them. You’re on your own much of the time, in either path to being published. And there’s no shortage of companies who will take your money and do nothing for you.

I found that it’s not easier to go the independent route. It may even be harder. So far, after writing and editing the best story I can, I’ve concentrated on the product: formatting ebooks and trade paperbacks, doing art and covers, comparing print services, learning about copyrights, ISBNs, and passive marketing (blurbs, website, Facebook, search terms, etc.). Next up, I’m going to study more advanced marketing. There’s so much to learn!

Why did you decide to use a pen name?
I googled myself and found several prolific writers with the same name as mine and my info was nowhere to be found. So, for SEO (search engine optimization) I combined my first initial, maiden name and married name—which usually don’t go together—and now my work pops up on the first page. I’m told that it’s useful to have different pen names if you write different genres, especially if they are not compatible (like Christian and Erotica). It makes it easier for readers to find what they like. I’m not out of my comfort zone on that yet, so I’ll keep L. Phillips Carlson for my newer work, at least for now.

What inspired you to become a writer?
My daughter started writing as a youngster and actually got published before I did. She won a contest in grade school and we went to an awards ceremony with Madge Harrah (from SWW) as speaker. Madge was wonderfully sweet and genuine, with a real affinity for kids. Maybe some of you remember her. She told the kids that if they wanted to write, they could certainly become writers. As I listened to her inspired talk, I was caught up, too.

What is your writing routine like?
Don’t copy me—I’m a bad example. My writing routine is abysmal! I need large chunks of time to write and I get distracted easily. My extended family is demanding, and I often go weeks without putting a word on paper. I also travel a lot. But you know? It’s okay. I’m living life and that all becomes fodder for stories at some point.

What is the best encouragement you’ve received in your writing journey? What advice do you have for discouraged writers?
When someone tells me that my story has touched them, made them feel better, or gave them a good laugh, then it makes me feel like I’ve really communicated! Getting an award or two is a great atta girl, as well—A Matter of Possession won top honors in the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards in the science fiction and fantasy category.

We all get discouraged. Writing is hard, or anyone could do it. Writing well takes time, like learning to play the piano. You can plunk out a tune early on, but to make it sound like music takes a lot of practice. Try to be patient with yourself while you’re learning. One thing that has kept me going is to examine my goals. Very few people become bestselling authors. Even though I’ve made a few foreign sales, and people in half a dozen countries have read my work, I don’t think of myself as having “made it.” Maybe I’ll end up selling mostly to friends and family, but I love the process of writing and that’s what counts. If it isn’t fun, don’t do it.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m writing a series of connected short stories set in the 1920s, right after King Tut’s tomb was discovered. It will, of course, involve paranormal aspects—I’ve got a ghost running amok again! My working title is The Pharaoh Rests Lightly. I also have a sequel started for A Matter of Possession, and I’m planning to resurrect a sci-fi novel I wrote years ago that has promise but needs a thorough scrubbing. In addition, I hope to do more with my website: http://lphillipscarlson.com. I’ll be getting my email sign-up in order soon and will actually get going on the blog there. I have a number of topics in mind for the blog, but I’m leaning toward some of the odd things that I’ve encountered while travelling.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author Lois Ruby

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Ex-librarian Lois Ruby is the award-winning author of 18 middle-grade and young adult books. Whether the stories are contemporary or historical fiction, reality-based or paranormal, her characters are ordinary kids in extraordinary circumstances who always have options but don’t always make the best choices. Her latest novel, The Doll Graveyard, is a “gently spooky” work published by Scholastic Paperbacks (2014). You can find Lois on her website at LoisRuby.com.

TheDollGraveyard200What is your elevator pitch for The Doll Graveyard?
What if you’re twelve-year-old Shelby, and you’ve just moved into a house populated by mysterious, mischievous, highly spooky dolls that refuse to stay buried in your backyard? And they keep changing before your eyes! 

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
I’m a person steeped in pragmatic realism. I don’t believe in supernatural hokum. But that doesn’t stop me from writing about it. The challenge for me is making it sound plausible, as if (under the right circumstances) everything in the story could happen. So, I had to avoid outrageous leaps that couldn’t, even by the wildest stretch, have realistic explanations. I also had to overcome my resistance to writing such an absurd story and cope with the truth: that I had a great time writing it.

What is it about your main protagonist that makes readers connect with her? Did your characters surprise you as you wrote their story?
My characters always surprise me. I do an extensive inventory on each of the main characters as if I were interviewing them for a biography. Just when I’m sure I know them, know what motivates them, know what stumps them or terrifies them, they turn on me and do something I never expected. What’s worse (or maybe it’s better) characters appear on the page that I never invited and sort of thumb their noses at me and say, “Hah! I’m here now, so what are you going to do about it?” My first inclination is to scold them and send them back into the hazy oblivion from which they reared their heads. Then I decide to trust them for a while and see where they lead me. Sometimes they’re pretty clever and bend themselves to just the plot turn I needed. As for my main protagonist in The Doll Graveyard, I hope what makes readers connect with her is that she’s normal, healthy, inquisitive, and secure in a loving family—but lonely and vulnerable just the same. Like the best of us in this life.

Tell us about the setting and why you chose it.
As I’ll explain later, the idea wasn’t my own. It came from a wonderful editor as just a wisp of a preposterous plot, with lots of freedom to develop it any way I wanted to. The only absolute was that there would be a girl named Shelby and a bunch of tiny dolls that refused to stay buried. I decided to set the story in a remote part of Colorado. Why Colorado? Honestly, because my only nonfiction book, which has garnered as much attention as, say, soggy coffee grounds, is entitled Mother Jones and the Colorado Coal Field War. I thought a paranormal novel also set in Colorado might cause a librarian or teacher or two to suddenly discover Mother Jones. (It didn’t work.) Anyway, Shelby’s house is one of two lone, scary old houses up on a hill in the middle of nowhere, and the graveyard behind the house is home to a bunch of small, mysterious graves. The novel has all the standard creaky floors and doors, hidden places and dark corridors savored in this sort of story, plus creepy, misbehaving dolls.

Is there a scene in the book you’d love to see play out in a movie?
Oh, yes! There’s a scene at the end of the book where all the disparate characters come together in the graveyard for a funeral for the stubborn dolls, each of whom represents something dramatic that happened in the history of the house. Now each doll merits a touching testimonial, as he or she is laid to rest. Good, satisfying ending. They’re buried for good, right? Believe me, my readers are sure they shall rise again! Do I hear sequel?

What makes this novel unique in the children’s/teen market?
I suspect it’s not unique but is rather one in a slew of gently spooky paranormals that tickle the fancy of young readers. And when I say gently spooky, that means nothing horribly violent happens. To the disappointment of children I talk to in schools, these dolls are not Chucky and Annabelle, the killer dolls. They’re just mischievous and stubborn and creepy. So, maybe I’m trying to say that what’s unique is that this book is relatively safe for readers who don’t want, or can’t handle, really intense supernatural or hyper-violent material, but still like chills to race up and down their spines.

Tell us more about the book: where the story idea came from, how long it took to write, editing cycle, etc.
As I mentioned, the idea came from an editor, generated in-house at Scholastic. But she gave me free rein to develop it any way I wanted and to complicate the story way beyond her expectations. I’ve often been chastised for including too many characters and too many complex issues in an otherwise simple story. That’s what makes it worthwhile for me. So, this was pure fun to write, and it wrote itself very quickly in about six months. I ran a fairly detailed plot proposal by the editor and got her go-ahead. Then she didn’t see it again until I’d written and revised it about six times. When next her eyes fell on it, she had some good suggestions for the logical tying up of loose ends, and for one or two more dramatic scenes, all of which I gratefully heeded. And then it took very little more work. This experience was totally different from the process of my more serious books; the books that consume me for two, three, five years; the books that touch my heart and challenge me after I’ve researched them to death, but aren’t as jaunty and fun to play with.

StealAwayHome150Steal Away Home (Aladdin Paperbacks/Simon & Schuster, 1994) is your most well-known book. Why do you think it continues to be so popular?
It’s an absolute conundrum as to why this book continues to have a vibrant life 22 years after publication, while so many of my other books have quickly vanished into the miasma. (As some famous author once said, “First you’re an unknown. Then you write one book and quickly sink into obscurity.”) I like to think it’s because Steal Away Home is a magnificent masterpiece of brilliantly universal appeal. Yeah, sure. There are a few more likely reasons. It’s set in Kansas in two periods—the present, and 1856. I wrote it while I was living in Kansas, and it caught immediate attention as a local book by a local author. But it moved beyond that designation and continued to be read in schools all over the country and in some foreign countries, as well. Right now it’s being used in a school in Kathmandu, Nepal, where I’ve been invited to speak. The main reason for its longevity, however, is that five years ago the state of Georgia adopted this novel for its fifth grade Civil War curriculum. So, this anti-slavery book has reached a much wider audience than I ever dreamed possible, and in a former slave state.

Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you started your publishing career today?
I would have found a young, hungry agent who would read my manuscripts immediately, make a few suggestions for quick revision, and submit them to a dozen editors at once. Alas, that’s not what I have, though—can I brag a little?—that’s what just occurred in my son’s life. He wrote a wonderful middle grade novel, found an aggressive agent who submitted it to eleven houses, and within a month he had three offers and just signed a contract with Random House. I, on the other hand, wait six months to two years for response. Often it’s a rejection, but after blubbering for a day or two, I ask my agent to send it out again. Sometimes she does.

What is your writing routine like? What is your writing process like? What part do beta readers or critique groups play in your writing process?
Calling it a routine is a big stretch, as each day is different, and life intervenes. What generally works is that I’m up about 5:30am, take care of a few emails that dared to come in while I slept, then get right to writing the ideas that I’d processed in those few precious minutes before I fell asleep the night before. About 8:30 I saunter into the kitchen for a cup of tea and a bowl of cereal. Then, on an ideal day, I return to the writing until noon. More likely, other pressing engagements, such as reconnecting with my sweet husband, or running errands, overtake my compulsion to write.

As for process, I do not outline a novel. I do extensive, character sketches of the principal people who populate (talk about alliteration!) the story at hand, and let them take over. I complete one scene, print, revise, print, revise, sigh, then move on to the next scene. When I think I’ve reached something approaching a cliffhanger after two or three conjoined scenes, I declare it a chapter and move on to the first scene of the next chapter. I keep revising the completed chapters maybe a dozen times more, until I discover that they’re woefully out of sequence. That calls for a detailed summary of what I’ve done so far, chapter by chapter, and then I begin shifting. Sometimes I jot a few key words of each scene on a Post-It note and tack them to the big picture window above my computer, then juggle Post-Its until something makes sense.

Now, about critique groups. I’ve been in some fabulous ones, in some humdingers, and a couple that did me little good because no one in the group understood how novels for youth were different from novels for adults. Still, any kind of critique group is better than laboring in the field alone without anyone’s help with the back-breaking (mind-bending) work.

If you suffer from writer’s block, how do you break through?
I don’t suffer from writer’s block. Just the opposite. I suffer from resistance to taking up the work in progress because I’ll be reluctant to quit and do something else that’s more necessary but less satisfying. I suffer from fear that I’ll submerge myself in my work, become a cranky hermit who never brushes her teeth and lives on cold pizza or macaroni and cheese, and neglects loved ones who deserve something better from me.

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
Message, no. But I discovered after about nine books, that a theme pervades all of them, despite their diverse subjects and eras. The theme is justice, whether I’m writing about abolition of slavery, faith healing, skinheads, the Battle of Gettysburg, Holocaust refugees in China, or even my sweetly weird paranormals. As it says in the Good Book, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” I try.

How has the teen market changed since you first started publishing?
Interesting question that stumps me, yet one I’ve puzzled about quite a lot. In terms of the emotional preoccupations of young people, nothing has changed. There are still the terrors of the emotional dark, the confusion over identity and purpose, the family entanglements, and school. Books for this readership need to deal with those unchanging issues along with the joys and optimism of youth. But there are differences. Thanks to the Janus effect of technology, it being a blessing and a curse, kids have much more limited attention spans. You’ve got to hit them right away, scene by scene, and keep it short and immediate, or they abandon you. Harry Potter and a few other long and complicated books are delightful exceptions, of course. And books for teens are definitely edgier; there are no subjects, violent events, or unsavory language off-limits.

All the above is from the standpoint of subject and style. As for marketing, that’s where I’m clueless. I can’t fathom why some books get published and widely/wildly read, while others more worthy languish, if they see print at all. The one thing I do know is this: it’s no harder now to get published than it was 35 years ago when my first books came out. It’s always been difficult and very much a crapshoot.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Yes, I’ve got to add this: no matter how things change in history or in our social milieu, books for young readers must offer hope, must assure them there are caring and responsible adults to turn to, and must remind them that the universe is not indifferent to their highest aspirations.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author Corran Harrington

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Corran Harrington is a former attorney who writes literary fiction described as radiant and revealing. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Bosque Fiction Contest finalist, and a New Millennium Writings Award semifinalist. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary publications. Corran’s first book, Follow the River Home, is an Arbor Farm Press release (2016). You can find her at CorranHarrington.com, on her SouthWest Writers’ author page, and on LinkedIn.

FollowTheRiverHome200What is your elevator pitch for Follow the River Home?
Daniel Arroyo has suffered a lifetime of guilt over the sudden death of his infant sister, who died when he was eight years old. He now lives his middle years between that guilt and worsening episodes of PTSD from a Vietnam he left thirty years ago. When a violent encounter on a dusty highway forces Daniel to face what haunts him, he finds himself pulled back to the neighborhood of his youth, where old houses hold tired secrets. What really happened on that steamy August afternoon? The answer comes spilling from the old neighborhood, and Daniel begins to find his way home.

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
On the surface, I want readers who may not be familiar with New Mexico’s middle Rio Grande region to gain an understanding of the physical setting and some of the cultural aspects present in that setting. I enjoy reading fiction that is set in places and among people I do not otherwise know. But I mostly want the reader to experience the rich emotional and psychological landscapes my characters traverse. For me, the joy in reading is when I resonate emotionally with a line or phrase, and that is what I want my readers to experience. Someone who I don’t know well wrote to me the other day, just to tell me that my book had given him the chills and caused him to tear up on more than one occasion. That he felt moved in that way was moving to me.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
Prior to this book, I had only written short fiction. So it was challenging to structure a longer piece, which became the first part of the book called “The River Reader.” The other main challenge, then, was to make consistent all the stories, which formed the second part of the book called “The River Flyway.” It was like putting together a huge puzzle, which was actually very fun for me.

Tell us about your main protagonist’s flaws and strengths and the hurdles he’s trying to overcome.
Daniel Arroyo is an ordinary man who comes from ordinary means. But he is scarred as a young boy by a family tragedy that goes unexplained for decades, and that consumes him with guilt. He is also a product of his times, and is often rendered fragile because of what he experienced in Vietnam. His guilt and his PTSD contribute to marital problems, and to identity issues. But Daniel Arroyo has a vast capacity for kindness and generosity, which is what ultimately saves him, and lets him begin to find peace for himself.

Why did you choose New Mexico as the setting for the book? How does the setting impact the story and the characters?
The setting is essential to Follow the River Home, as it forms the spine for the entire story. It is practically a character in its own. I see the setting of the Rio Grande as it courses through New Mexico as a series of detailed paintings against which the plot unfolds. As I say below, the book was originally going to be a short story collection, where the only link between the stories was the Rio Grande. As it turns out, though, the main characters’ lives had all intersected. The river, as a flyway for the migration of the sandhill cranes, becomes a metaphor for Daniel finding his own way home.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing Follow the River Home?
I was fortunate to be able to work with a wonderful editor, Ladette Randolph, who is the editor of Ploughshares, one of the most esteemed literary journals in the country. I became a better writer for it, which is what I aspire to with any writing project.

Tell us more about the book: where the story idea came from; how long it took to write; editing cycle, etc.
I’m often asked how long it took to write this book. Since this is not the book I set out to write, my answer is somewhere between 2 and 15 years! I started writing short stories in the late nineties, and the first one was published in 2000. My intent was to create a short story collection where the only link between the stories was that each story would at least reference the Rio Grande. So the stories were set in various places along the river, from the headwaters to the sea, though most were set in the middle Rio Grande valley.

A few years ago, I realized two of the stories had main characters named Daniel, but with different last names and different lives. I began to wonder, what if they were the same character? Almost immediately, all the characters and stories came together. It turned out that the main characters grew up together in the same neighborhood during the fifties and sixties, and that many of their lives intersected again in adulthood.

I then wrote the whole story as a novella, which became the first part of the book. The previously written short stories became the second part of the book, and each story casts a different light on the characters and scenes from the first part of the book. It’s almost a retelling of the whole story, but from very different points of view and in a different order. The stories informed the novella, and then I went back to each story to tweak for consistency.

Do you have other creative outlets besides writing?
When I was twenty, I announced to my grandmother that I was going to start writing novels. She very tactfully and wisely suggested that I first get a little more life experience. So I wrote songs for the next twenty years or so, just to keep the creative juices flowing (guitar and vocals). Sometimes I steal lyrics from my songs, and put them in my fiction. For example, a recurring line about the sandhill cranes in Follow the River Home comes from one of my old songs.

What first inspired you to become a writer?
I was first, of course, a reader. I had a great passion for books from the time I could read. My grandmother (who was an artist and librarian) and I came up with a plan where I would write children’s books and she would illustrate them. That never came to fruition, but it tells me I wanted to write from a very young age. My first serious attempts were in high school, with some poetry and short stories that were published in the high school creative writing magazine. At that time I submitted to a national writing competition for high school students. My work did not make the cut, but it was a valuable experience that taught me to not be afraid of submitting work, to not be afraid of rejection letters.

Who are your favorite authors, and what do you admire most about their writing?
I have to answer this with respect to two different parts of my life. My first favorite author was John Steinbeck, who I discovered in junior high school. I read everything he wrote, and found it very evocative. He could write about social and political issues through the eyes of a character’s psychological landscape, and without being pedantic. I don’t enjoy his writing so much as an adult now but was very influenced by him. And now, I have too many favorite authors to name them all. I love literary fiction—beautiful writing that aspires to be art, that is evocative, and that portrays characters’ rich, internal landscapes set against compelling plots and/or physical/cultural settings that are almost visceral. I love learning about places and people that are foreign to me. A few of my favorite authors are Andrei Makine, J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, José Saramago, Annie Proulx, Michael Ondaatje, Ian McEwan, Claire Messud, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Cunningham, David Guterson, and Graham Swift.

Share a bit of your journey to publication.
I started writing and submitting short fiction as a serious endeavor in the late nineties. I spent a lot of time learning everything I could about the process of submissions. My first story was published in a small college review in Kentucky in 2000. I wrote short stories for many years thereafter and was lucky enough to have all my stories published (amidst a wealth of rejection letters!). The thirteen stories in the second half of Follow the River Home were all previously published. Follow the River Home, published by Arbor Farm Press, is my first full-length book.

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
I like to celebrate ordinary people who are capable of extraordinary deeds. There is something redemptive about every human being, no matter how ordinary—no matter how flawed.

What are your strengths as a writer, and what do you do to overcome your weaknesses?
My prose is very lyrical, sometimes almost poetic. Writing is an auditory experience for me. I can hear my internal writer’s voice, which is the same voice that does public readings. I can also paint vivid physical settings and rich, emotional landscapes against which my characters’ lives play out. Readers often tell me my writing is very evocative. What I struggle with mostly, though, is dialogue, presumably because it cannot come from my own voice. It has to be contrived, by definition. I have overcome this weakness by being a careful listener of other people. I have also come to embrace dialogue as an effective tool to move the writing forward when I otherwise might feel stuck.

What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write?
I struggle with scenes that might be offensive to a reader, such as a racist term used by a character in a line of dialogue, or a scene that is particularly graphic. I never write scenes that contain gratuitous violence, or anything else purely for shock value. But I believe strongly that a writer must “write brave.” And sometimes that means writing a passage that makes me, as the author, cringe a little. But, if it’s true, I don’t water it down. To me, that is “writing brave.”

What advice do you have for beginning or discouraged writers?
First, be willing to write embarrassingly bad prose! No one will see it but you. Second, be brutal with your editing, and meticulous with your research. Learn all you can about the craft of writing. Read books about it, and read books by authors you admire. Third, be professional when you make submissions, and follow all the submission guidelines of the publisher. Finally, be welcoming of rejections. Every writer probably has enough to wallpaper his or her house! Rejections are rarely hurtful, and occasionally an editor will write a personal note, which can be very helpful and encouraging. Rejection letters are a sign that you take your writing career seriously.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I am almost done with a first draft of a novel based on one of the stories in Follow the River Home. It is set in the Pacific Northwest. I am also writing two short stories, one of which is almost completed; and I just found a home for a third short story in a literary review in Wisconsin.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author Amy Reece

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Amy Reece is a high school teacher who writes Young Adult novels from her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has four books in the paranormal romance series The Seeker from Limitless Publishing. Her latest release is the romantic suspense novel The Way to Her Heart (Limitless Publishing, 2016). You can find her on her websites AmyReece.com and AmyReeceAuthor.com. Also, check out her author page on SouthWestWriters.com.

TheWayToHerHeart200What is your elevator pitch for The Way to Her Heart?
Step 1: Google “elevator pitch.” I’m mostly kidding, but it has been a while! Step 2: Realize the original blurb you wrote (which your publisher ruthlessly re-wrote) is essentially your pitch:

When 18-year-old Josh Harris finds himself captivated by his new economics partner, he knows he’s in trouble. First, he already has a girlfriend. Second, his life has been completely overturned by tragedy.

Bernie Abeyta has major troubles of her own. Her dad’s in prison and her mom is a drug addict. Things get so bad at home she finds herself living out of her car.

Josh tries to ignore his feelings for this troubled girl, but finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into her life. He insists she move in with him and his mother temporarily and tries to help her find out what happened to her best friend, who has been missing for several months. Bernie refuses to believe Gabby ran away and is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. It’s part love story, part mystery, part cookbook, and all heart. Can this young couple overcome the odds stacked against them?

When readers turn the last page in the book, what do you hope they take away from it?
I hope readers are touched emotionally. Isn’t that what we want in a good book? I hope readers have laughed and cried along with Josh and Bernie. I hope they continue to think about them and wonder what else happens in their lives. What happens with Claire and Mike? What about Diego? I also hope they make a large donation to a homeless shelter here in Albuquerque. That would be nice!

What is it about your protagonists that make readers connect to them? You alternate point of view (POV) between Bernie and Josh—which one did you enjoy writing the most? Did your characters surprise you as you wrote their story?
I think readers connect to these two protagonists because there’s a little Josh and Bernie in all of us. At least there is in me. I really like to look beyond the surface appearance. Josh is so much more than the popular, handsome jock. Bernie has layers and dreams that her life in a run-down trailer park doesn’t begin to touch. As far as which I enjoyed writing the most? That’s like asking a mother to choose her favorite child! I loved creating them both and they constantly surprised me! For example, when Bernie kissed Josh for the first time—total surprise to me! That is not what I had planned! She, however, insisted I keep it in the manuscript. She can be very bossy!

Why did you decide to use New Mexico as the setting for the book?
Official answer: I simply love New Mexico. Real answer: I’m too lazy to research other places. I’m sort of kidding! I do love New Mexico and always knew I wanted to set my novels here. The Seeker Series is based in New Mexico, although they travel quite often to Ireland and France. I have vivid dreams of traveling a lot in the future to find great new settings for future novels. I have traveled a bit in France, specifically the Normandy region, which features in Seer and Oracle from The Seeker Series. I’ve never been to Ireland (insert sad face here) so I had to do quite a bit of research. I also wanted to bring attention to the problem of homeless teens right here in Albuquerque. We have such a great city, but this is a scourge that needs to be fixed.

What makes this novel unique in the Young Adult (YA) romantic/suspense market?
Looking at what’s available on amazon in the YA romantic suspense market, it seems like much of it is futuristic or dystopian. I think my book is unique, perhaps, because Josh and Bernie are such normal people. I also think the recipe section is fairly unique to YA.

How does this novel differ from your paranormal The Seeker Series?
First, there is nothing magical or other-worldly in The Way to Her Heart, with the possible exception of Josh’s dreams. The other major difference is in the POV. The Seeker Series was, with exception of a short scene in Dreamer, all first person from Ally. The Way to Her Heart is told from a third person alternating POV so readers get to know what both Josh and Bernie are thinking.

Why did you decide to make food an integral part of the story? (You’ve even included recipes at the back of the book— any plans for marketing tie-ins?)
Marketing tie-ins??? I love this idea! I think I decided to make food so integral because of the importance food has as a basic human need. Bernie is homeless and hunger is a reality for her. Josh has never known hunger, but recognizes the importance of food. Cooking has been a powerful thing in his life, especially since his dad died, and he feels a need to share it with others, especially Bernie. One of my favorite lines in the whole book is when Bernie tells him he doesn’t always have to provide dinner for her when she goes to his house. “It’s what I do, Bernie,” is how he answers her.

Tell us more about the book: where the story idea came from, how long it took to write, editing cycle, etc.
The basic idea for the story really came from seeing students (I’m a high school teacher by day) who are experiencing various levels of homelessness and being able to do so little about it. I had a student last year who had to leave home and spent most of the second semester couch-surfing among various friends and relatives. The counselor and I tried so hard to get him some help, but the bureaucratic red tape was unbelievable! When he turned 18, there was nothing else we could do. It was heartbreaking. I think I exorcised a few demons by writing this book. It took me about three months to write the first draft, which is pretty typical for me. It was another month or so to revise and get feedback from my street team. I submitted it to my publisher in late October 2015, began the official editing process in January, and the book was released March 29, 2016.

Seeker150Share a bit of your journey to publication.
When I finished Seeker, I went to a writer’s conference and started looking into the process of querying agents and publishers. I was working on Dreamer, the second book in The Seeker Series, and trying to figure out how to get the series out to the big, wide world. Several dozen rejections later I decided to self-publish. I had some great (I thought) literary titles for the books and designed my own covers. Let’s just say I should not give up my day job to become a cover designer. I self-pubbed the first two books in the series, but kept querying—apparently I am a glutton for punishment. I had quite a few responses that asked for the first 50 pages or the entire manuscript, but no firm offers. I was working on the cover for the third book when things changed. Imagine my surprise when a small press, Limitless Publishing, wrote back and said they wanted to offer me a contract for the whole series. #HappyDance! It has been lots of fun working with them to get The Seeker Series out to the public. The first thing they said was I needed to change the titles. Boo. But they had a point, and I actually went back to the original titles I’d chosen.

What are the challenges of writing for a YA market?
It’s a tough, oversaturated market with somewhat limited readership. I’m actually working on an adult contemporary romance right now, and I’m amazed at how quickly it is gaining new reads on Wattpad compared with my YA stories. I will always love YA, but market realities are swiftly convincing me to focus more time on the adult romance market. I have some fun story ideas for that, so it’s all good. I just like to write.

When did you know you were a writer?
I’ve always suspected I was a writer, and for many years had vague plans to write a novel “some day.” After raising three kids and completing two graduate degrees, it was time to see if I could actually complete a novel. Turns out that writing is something I fully enjoy, and I don’t have to “make” myself do it. I look forward to my writing time every evening and on the weekends. The summer is pure joy because I can write every day.

What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write, and what do you do to get over this hurdle?
For me the hardest scenes have proved to be the violent scenes. I get so involved and sucked in that I end up very emotional and usually with a pounding headache.

Do you have other creative outlets besides writing?
My other creative outlets are music related. I was a band director in a previous life and I still enjoy playing, particularly flute and piano. I play and sing frequently at church and recently took part in a faculty band for the school talent show. We rewrote Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” and made it “Eye of the Griffin”—we totally rocked it!!! Seriously, you should check it out on youtube: Cat and the Critical Friends.

What advice do you have for writers still striving for publication?
Just keep writing, just keep writing…. Seriously, though. DO NOT GIVE UP!!! If you love it, write it. Every writer has a different journey and you have so many options available now. Write, query, revise. Repeat.

What writing projects are you working on now?
As I said before, I’m working on an adult contemporary romantic suspense, tentatively titled So They Loved. The title comes from Shakespeare’s The Phoenix and Turtle. It’s the first book in a six-book series called The DeLucas. I’m having an absolute blast writing it. You can check it out as I write it on Wattpad.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author Paula Paul

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Paula Paul is a native Texan who began her writing career as a newspaper journalist. She now makes her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she writes “extraordinary stories that touch the heart and challenge the mind.” Her 28 books (including mysteries, historical fiction, YA, and literary novels) have been released through major publishers, as well as small presses. For Dead Men Only (Alibi, 2016) is the fifth book in her Dr. Alexandra Gladstone historical mystery series. You can find Paula on Facebook and her website at PaulPaul.net.

ForDeadMenOnly200What is the elevator pitch for your newest novel, For Dead Men Only?
I’ve never heard the term “elevator pitch” (see below*). However, the publisher used this pitch: “Hailed as ‘an intriguing mixture of mystery, romance, and history’ by Lois Duncan, the Alexandra Gladstone series from award-winning author Paula Paul continues as an ominous horseman heralds the emergence of a secret society, hidden riches—and a string of chilling murders.”

What is it about your main protagonist that makes your readers connect with her? Will those who know you recognize you in any of your characters? After writing five novels in the Dr. Alexandra Gladstone series, does your protagonist still surprise you?
I believe readers connect with Alexandra Gladstone because she is a strong woman who is dedicated to her profession. At the same time she is naïve about some aspects of human nature and often too trusting. I think readers also connect with her humanness which includes all the mistakes she makes. I have never heard anyone say, “Oh this or that character in the series reminds me of you,” although I’ve heard it about some of the characters in other books I’ve written. In truth, I think there’s a little of the writer in all the characters we create. Yes, Alexandra still surprises me sometimes when I’m writing. For one thing, I didn’t expect her past to be quite so colorful, which she revealed in Half A Mind To Murder. As for the antagonist in For Dead Men Only and in all the books I write, I work hard to not make them two-dimensional. I want to understand in the end why they act as they do and how they are as fully human as the protagonist.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
The greatest challenge in all of the Gladstone books is the relationship between Alexandra and Lord Dunsford. They are clearly attracted to each other, but their different social positions—he is an aristocrat and she is working class—makes the development of a romance difficult. I want to keep it realistic and not make it just another Cinderella story. That means there are certain lines that are usually never crossed. Also, I get annoyed at Lord Dunsford because he wants to throw all caution to the wind with no thought of the consequences.

Why did you decide to use a seaside village in 1880s England as the setting for the book?
The setting and time for the Gladstone books were established several years ago when I first started writing the series. An editor asked me to write a historical mystery series. He told me I could set it in any time period and in any place except the American West. That was like throwing me a curve ball since I’ve lived all my life in the American West. However, the editor said at that time there were too many books set in the west. I didn’t want to set a story in the eastern United States because I thought all of the editors who lived in the east would know the history better than I. Since I’d always been a bit of an Anglophile, I chose England. I chose the date arbitrarily, simply because it was the year after the birth of my grandmother. I chose a seaside village because I wanted the name of the village to be Something-Upon-Sea.

Did you discover anything unusual or surprising while doing research for this novel?
I can’t say that the research I did about Freemasons and Knights Templars revealed anything surprising, but it was certainly intriguing. I also did some research into beekeeping in Victorian England and was surprised to learn that it was not as common in the 1880s as it is now.

Tell us more about the book.
The idea for the book came from my past reading about Freemasons and Knights Templar. A secret society is always intriguing and lends itself well to a mystery novel. I wrote the book in nine months because that is the length of time the contract allowed. The editing cycle (which was included in the nine months) is always long and arduous for me because I write the first draft quickly without censoring myself, and I don’t go back to read what I’ve written. That means that uncontrolled bursts of creativity have plenty of mistakes that need correcting.

MediumDead150Your first three books in the Gladstone series were indie published, but later books in the series (Medium Dead and For Dead Men Only) were published by Alibi, Random House/Penguin’s digital-only imprint. Tell us how that change came about, from indie publishing to publishing with a big house.
The series was originally published by Berkeley. The books went out of print for a while and an indie publisher picked them up. They sold fairly well, so Random House/Alibi agreed to continue the series. In the confusing world of publishing, Berkeley is now a part of the Random House group.

When did you know you were a writer?
Like most writers, I have always been an avid reader. Reading everything I could get my hands on led me to making up stories in my head when I was quite young, and that led to writing. I can’t think of a moment when I knew I was a writer. It seems now that I always thought of myself as a writer. I have certainly had many moments when I thought of myself as a not-very-good writer!

What are the challenges in writing a series?
For me, the greatest challenge is having the characters grow and change over the course of several books. It is much easier to do that in just one book.

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
A recurring theme is the struggle of women to gain equality in modern times and throughout history.

What are your strengths as a writer, and what do you do to overcome your weaknesses?
My greatest strength is perseverance. My greatest weakness is self-doubt. I overcome that by writing almost every day and by self-critiques in order to find ways to improve.

How has your experience as a journalist helped you in your fiction writing?
A journalist writes to be understood. There is much less emphasis on style or creating a poetic phrase with metaphors and similes. While fiction writing frees a writer to wax poetic more often, I think it is of tantamount importance to be understood—to be easy to read. If you work at it, you can do both. While I did some magazine writing, I spent most of my journalism career as a newspaper reporter for daily newspapers. That certainly teaches one to write fast and to meet deadlines, and I’ve found that helpful.

What is your writing routine like? What is your writing process like?
As for routine, I usually start writing in the late morning or early afternoon and write until I have completed my quota of 1500 to 2000 words a day. I try to do that five days a week, but if I get too far behind, I work on weekends to get caught up. The process is to first work out what I’m trying to say in the book, then write a skimpy synopsis. Using the synopsis, I make a chapter-by-chapter outline, except some of the chapters are left blank or some have only one word such as “danger.” Then I start to write, filling in the blanks and shuffling things as I go along. I may change my mind about a motivation or an event as I write, but I just write myself a note to go back and change it while I just keep forging ahead, writing to the end. It’s a creative process that’s almost like being in a trance, and I don’t want to tamper with it by thinking about editing.

Sins of the Empress150Of all the books you’ve written, which one did you enjoy writing the most?
I have two books that I really enjoyed writing. The first was Sweet Ivy’s Gold (now out of print) set in 1880s Cripple Creek, Colorado. The second was Sins of the Empress, the story of Catherine the Great set in Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries. I enjoyed writing them because they required a great deal of in-depth research, which I love. In the case of Sins of the Empress, it was both challenging and satisfying to make real characters come alive. Since Catherine the Great has such a salacious reputation, it was challenging and satisfying to make her a sympathetic character.

What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write, and what do you do to break through this “block?”
I can’t say that any particular kind of scene is harder for me to write than any other. When I hit a block it is almost always because I am trying to force the story into a direction that isn’t right. When this happens, I sometimes have a “conversation” with my characters. To do this, I will start with a question such as “This story isn’t moving forward, what’s wrong?” Or “Why won’t you let me put you in that situation?” Or something similar. Then I let the character talk, and I just type whatever comes into my head. Usually the character wants to talk about himself or herself, and sometimes it takes a while to see how that relates to the story, but I just keep typing and letting him or her talk. Eventually a solution comes. It’s not always the one I expected or even wanted, but it seems to work for me.

Do you have other creative outlets besides writing? 
At the moment, my other creative outlet is playing the piano. I’m adequate at it but not particularly good at it. I think it helps my creativity because it helps me teach my brain to learn and then to act automatically. I used to enjoy sewing and cooking as creative outlets, but I would let them interfere with my writing time. The older I get, the more protective I am of my writing time and the more willing I am to let other interests go.

What is the best encouragement or advice you’ve received in your writing journey?
The best advice came in the form of a paper weight my daughter gave me. Etched into the metal weight is this sentence: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

What writing projects are you working on now?
The book I just finished—it doesn’t have a pub date yet—is Closet Murder. It’s the first in a series set in Santa Fe in modern times. The protagonist (and sleuth), Irene Seligman, is the owner of an upscale women’s clothing consignment store in Santa Fe. Irene has just returned to Santa Fe from Manhattan where she was an assistant DA. She came back to help her mother, Adelle, an aging socialite and a genuine pain in the…neck. When she finds a dead woman in the closet of her newly-opened store, the game is afoot. I’ve started work on the second book in the series, but it is as yet untitled.

*An elevator pitch is a quick, focused summary of your book that can be told to someone (a reader, agent, publisher, etc.) in the time it takes to complete a ride in an elevator. It’s the kind of thing you might find on the back cover of a book (or in a movie trailer) that hooks the listener into wanting to know more.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Corrales Writing Group: On Writing

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This is part two of an interview with Corrales Writing Group, a closed group of six members who encourage each other in their individual writing journeys. Together they produce an annual anthology of essays and short pieces of fiction and memoir. The current group is made up of authors Christina Allen, Maureen Cooke, Sandi Hoover, Thomas Neiman, Jim Tritten, and Patricia Walkow. Their third anthology, Currents, was published in 2015. You can visit Corrales Writing Group on Facebook. To read the first part of the interview, go to “On Group Structure and Indie Publishing.”

Currents Corrales Writing Group 2015 Anthology200

Chris Allen lives in Corrales, New Mexico with her husband and a menagerie of animals. She prefers to write stories that spark a smile or a laugh.
 My career involved technical writing—telling, not showing. The feedback from Corrales Writing Group pushes me to write in a way that provides the reader with imagery, not simply facts. In addition, as a procrastinator, the routine of twice monthly meetings has imposed a structure and rigor to my writing that enables me to complete stories that have rattled around in my head for years. I also learn how to improve my writing at every critique session, whether the work discussed is mine or that of another member. Ideas come to me from my life experience. In order to convert these ideas to text, however, I need deadlines as I work better under pressure. Also, as someone who has always worked with groups, I need activity around me. I have set a schedule to write twice a week at a local coffee shop where I concentrate solely on completing my stories to present to the group. I love to entertain, to tell stories, especially to provide people with a laugh or a smile. I also enjoy writing concisely and logically. I have no difficulty conveying facts and truth. However, moving past facts to creative imagery, embellishment, exaggeration, etc., has been difficult for me. I now have the benefit of the experiences of my fellow group members, and they have helped me to understand it is ok to be creative.

Maureen Cooke is originally from Bay City, Michigan. She began writing in second grade at St. Joseph’s School, under the tutelage of Sister Mary Earl.
 I write every morning. I get up really early—somewhere between 4:30 and 5:30—when the world is still dark, when the animals are still asleep, and when I’m not distracted by other responsibilities. I’d say my greatest strength as a writer is being a word stylist. Any weaknesses come from self-doubt and resistance to write, both of which I overcome by writing early in the morning when I’m more apt to enjoy it and less apt to doubt my ability to do so. I’ve actually used writing as a type of therapy in the past; consequently, first-draft writing has taught me how to deal with the stress of life. Creating the first draft is probably my favorite part of the process, although I do enjoy every aspect of a project. Scenes involving a lot of people are the hardest for me to write, because I’m not sure the level of descriptive detail to include. I’ve known I was a writer since second grade when Sister Mary Earl first inspired me to write. She shared my work with the nuns in the convent, and that was the best encouragement I could have gotten.

Corrales Writing Group 2014 Anthology150Sandi Hoover finds nature both entertaining and interesting, motivating her to write natural history essays to share her findings.
 Having a support group whose members are both honest and kind in their assessment of each other’s writing is critical to growth for a beginning writer—at least that’s true for me. Before joining Corrales Writing Group, my writing was confined to travel journals and descriptive letters about trips. I loved writing interpretive trail guides for a nature sanctuary, and having the pleasure of painting word pictures of exotic places in my travel journals. Writing for deadlines has made me approach writing with more discipline. I still find it easier to write nature essays than fiction, but that is an area I intend to work on more. I’m still hesitant to use the term “writer” about myself, but I am thoroughly enjoying working with the writing group to improve my skills and learn from their expertise. I like creating images on paper best, and then reworking to get them the way I see them. I binge write, ignoring the yearning for a day or two and then devote hours at a stretch to typing furiously. Lots of rereading, lots of messing with minor changes. Scenes of emotional conflict between people are the hardest for me to write. Getting that right is difficult and painful. Those are still in progress and unseen by the writing group. Loving words and finding the right word to express a situation or emotion is a strength I can rely on. My writing weakness is in finding a balance between dialogue and action—just writing more is a requirement to learn how to do that. Writing has taught me that I can procrastinate without guilt. Seriously, it has made me look with interest, and more compassion, at people’s emotions and the way they are expressed in times of stress.

Tom Neiman has been writing since 2012 and has published four short stories and one mystery novella.
My first experience as a writer, if it counts, was writing administrative code while employed by the federal government. When laws changed, I wrote instructions for bureaucrats. Not very creative, I know. All that changed when I was invited to join Corrales Writing Group. The group helped me convert an 800-word summary into my first completed project (“The Leather Truths”) which was published in our 2013 anthology. I’ve learned to take a kernel of an idea and develop it into a story, prepare an outline, and move to the actual complex sentence work. I love creating detailed characters and their dialog. And I spend time researching those areas I have the least experience with. I enjoy doing the research and the writing, but I’m not much of a copy editor. Writing has taught me that an old dog can learn new tricks. Since I retired eight years ago, my passions have been creative writing and arboriculture. Given enough time, I can be an asset in both. For me, the hardest things to write are the subjects I haven’t tried, but I love to experiment. Sometimes my technique drives the writing group members crazy. What is the best advice I’ve received in my writing journey? To paraphrase the late Al Davis, the former owner of the Oakland Raiders professional football team, “Just write, baby.” I’d like to encourage others to get their thoughts and ideas down on any media. Write, audio-record, dictate to a computer, complex sentences or stream of consciousness. Don’t worry about editing or revision, and find some like- minded people to discuss your project with, either in person or over the Internet.

Corrales Writing Group 2013 Anthology150Jim Tritten is a retired naval aviator living in Corrales, New Mexico with his Danish author/artist wife and five cats.
My first writing for publication was for the high school newspaper. Can’t remember what motivated me, but I suspect it was to have a venue for being funny. Or just getting attention. Or perhaps being with the good-looking girls on the newspaper staff. At work I learned I could write in an environment where very few had that skill. Writing was a way to stand out and make contributions that were frequently recognized, and I soon got paid to do what I liked to do. When I retired, more than a few people suggested I break free of non-fiction and move into other genres. Then I realized it was an excellent way to process trauma and PTSD. That is now my primary motivation to write. When I switched from academic writing to fiction I had a lot to learn. Initially I wrote memoir. I used all of my life experiences, my diagnosis of PTSD, flying, etc. and blended that knowledge with what I needed to learn about writing in new genres for different audiences. I have learned that writing about what you know does not just mean about things that you did. More importantly it means feelings that you have experienced and can describe so that someone else can experience them as well. When I worked and wrote non-fiction, I learned discipline and how to complete tasks. This was a leg up when I stopped working and shifted to totally different types of writing. Learning about emotion, and then being able to describe it, were integral steps in the PTSD recovery process taught by the VA. The next step was writing words on paper that would make the reader feel, see, etc. exactly what was going on inside an individual when faced with a variety of circumstances. When I learned I could do that, I felt good. My advice to other writers is to take every opportunity to write, even if it isn’t an article or book or something that can be published. Be a recording secretary for a volunteer organization—it will teach you good skills about summarizing what happened. Write experimental pieces that stretch your skills and abilities. My recent experiment in horror was an eye opener. And above all, don’t stop writing until someone pries the pen from your cold, dead hands.

Pat Walkow writes fiction, humor, satire, and non-fiction. Her favorite is satire, but she’ll try any genre.
 Writing is something I’ve always enjoyed. I think I was seven when I knew I wanted to write. I prefer creating to any other aspect of a writing project. Unfortunately, most of my inspiration comes at night. I often find myself awake in my pajamas writing in the wee hours. But I have learned if I have an idea, to jot it down. The kind of scenes I find most difficult to write are erotic scenes, mostly because I think it is overdone in print, and I prefer subtlety. Often it is not even necessary. The best advice I’ve received in my writing journey is not to be afraid to try different genres, to take chances. Having written in a corporate environment for a while, it is a pleasure to have a voice that is my own and not a mouthpiece for another entity. Writing has taught me that it’s okay to experiment with writing and okay to seek the opinions of others. The Corrales Writing Group has made me a better writer and exposed me to new ideas and perspectives. I’ve also learned that a blank piece of paper (or a blank computer screen) is nothing to be afraid of. It is a canvas for the writer and can become anything you imagine.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author Jonathan Miller

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Author and attorney Jonathan Miller has published 11 books since his 2004 debut novel. A graduate of both the University of Colorado School of Law and the American Film Institute, he draws on his unique experience to create the award-winning Rattlesnake Lawyer series. A Million Dead Lawyers (Casa de Snapdragon Publishing, 2015) is his ninth book in that series, the first of which earned him the distinct nickname of The Rattlesnake Lawyer. You can find him at his website RattlesnakeLaw.com.

AMillionDeadLawyers200What is your elevator pitch for A Million Dead Lawyers?
Saul of Better Call Saul in The Hunger Games. In 2112, there are no attorneys, and all verdicts are rendered by computer. Albuquerque lawyer Sam Marlow is dragged from the past to handle the first actual jury trial in nearly a hundred years. The governor’s son is accused of killing his wife, and the whole system lies in the balance. Nothing is what it seems, and yet some people seem strangely familiar. Is the Albuquerque of the future ready for a rattlesnake lawyer?

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
Trying to imagine Albuquerque in the future. Also I wanted to write a science fiction/legal thriller that worked in both genres.

You normally write legal thrillers set in present day. What made you add the science fiction element to this novel?
I wanted to explore a genre that I grew up with. I actually wrote a science fiction manuscript in long hand when I was in 8th grade. I still have it. Deep down, I also wanted to explore my own mortality. By definition, science fiction lets you think about your impact in the world after you die.

Tell us about your main protagonist. Will your friends and family recognize you in your main character? What about your antagonist?
Sam Marlow is a darker version of me. He is a far better lawyer than I will ever be, but he also has far more issues. The antagonist is the daughter I’ve never had.

Why did you decide to use New Mexico as the setting for the book?
I try to write what I know. It was also fun to imagine Albuquerque in the year 2112. In my vision, it’s about 50 percent the same, but the elite have access to more technology like flying cars and genetic engineering.

What makes this novel unique in the mystery/thriller/sci fi market?
I am a trial lawyer who has done more jury trials in the past year than just about anyone else in New Mexico. The trial in the book is a fairly accurate depiction of a real trial that’s spiced up with some scientific elements. The book explores the nature of humanity—what is a jury of one’s peers if you are genetically engineered?

Is there a scene in A Million Dead Lawyers you’d like to see play out in a movie?
The scene where Marlow confronts his daughter and has to take responsibility for creating a monster.

RattlesnakeLawyer150When did you first consider yourself a writer?
On the day I graduated from film school at American Film Institute (AFI), after my first novel Rattlesnake Lawyer was published, I gave a copy of the book to the professor who had suggested I drop out.

What did you learn at AFI that you now apply to your fiction writing?
At AFI I learned about the three-act structure—the beginning, the middle and the end. I was able to take the Rattlesnake Lawyer manuscript and turn it into a three-act novel that had a great middle. I also learned how to “pitch” at AFI. (And I recently used a technique I learned in my screenwriting class in Los Angeles to successfully pitch my theory of a burglary case to a jury in Clovis, New Mexico.)

You’ve written nine books in your Rattlesnake Lawyer series. Which characters from the series have you enjoyed writing the most?
 Dan Shepard is the only character where I use the first person when I write. I also liked writing the young girl Dew. As I’ve said, she is the daughter I’ve never had.

Share a bit of your journey to publication.
 I started Rattlesnake Lawyer as a public defender in Roswell. I had an agent within my first month! My boss wasn’t happy that I was writing about my work. I was told that if I wrote about anyone at the office, I would be fired. If I wrote about any client confidence, I would be disbarred. I was just fired. The manuscript was optioned as a potential TV series within the first year without being published. It almost became a show on several occasions. Still, all the publishing houses said the manuscript was “not compelling” and passed. I moved out to LA and attended the American Film Institute to learn compulsion. While interviewing for potential jobs, I met a lawyer who was also a publisher. He published the book.

Looking back to the beginning of your writing/publishing career, what do you know now that you wish you’d known then?
To have my books professionally edited more than once before I submit them.

What are your strengths as a writer, and what do you do to overcome your weaknesses?
My strength is the ability to see interesting scenes in everyday life. My weakness is that I am probably dyslexic, and my books have numerous errors which I can’t always see. I have to use a good editor.

What has writing taught you about yourself?
There is a story everywhere you look.

VolcanoVerdict150Of the 11 books you’ve written (fiction and nonfiction), which one did you enjoy writing the most?
Volcano Verdict. Page 220 is my favorite page of writing. It’s where I have my first abrupt genre shift. Up to that point, the reader assumes Luna Cruz will inevitably be handling a jury trial like Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men. Suddenly, the book shifts into a mob story, and Luna is Johnny Depp in Donnie Brasco. I also like the “Tet Offensive” scene in La Bajada Lawyer because it’s so theatrical. I even had two actors do a staged reading for YouTube.

If you had an unlimited budget, how would you spend your money for marketing and promotion of your books? What marketing techniques have been most helpful to you?
I would do more internet marketing. Direct sales at book stores or after lectures are still the best way to sell a book to someone who will read it.

What are the rumors of “Rattlesnake karma” all about?
Some of the characters in my novels are based on actual people, and the universe seems to reward people associated with the series. The cover model for Navajo Repo is a Native American named Cheyenne Gordon who grew up on the Hualapai reservation in Arizona. Since she appeared on the cover, she has become an international model. We probably couldn’t afford her now. The character of “Gollum” that has appeared in several of my books is based on Louis, a man who works out at my gym. Gollum also appears in A Million Dead Lawyers in the year 2112, and hopefully that will bring the real Louis a good helping of Rattlesnake karma.

Has your experience as a lawyer helped or hindered you in your writing life?
Both. Law is a full-time job and it pays the bills. I have to devote my utmost energy to my law practice.

Who are your favorite authors, and what do you admire most about their writing?
I loved John Nichols because he taught me how to write about New Mexico. I like half of John Grisham’s work. When’s he’s good, he’s very good, but he’s poorly edited. I learned about writing surprise endings from Isaac Asimov. I learned about writing humor from Douglas Adams.

What advice do you have for writers who are still striving for publication?
Keep writing. Don’t give up. Write from the heart, but edit from your head. When I listen to books on tape, it’s like having a companion riding with me across the desert. That companion has to be someone who makes the ride more pleasant, even if the destination is not a happy one.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m currently working on Rattlesnake Honeymoon. It’s a Dan Shepard book with elements of a conspiracy thriller.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author Robin Perini

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RITA® finalist, international bestselling and award-winning author Robin Perini is devoted to giving her readers fast-paced, high-stakes adventures with a love story sure to melt their hearts. She sold fourteen titles to publishers in less than two years after winning the prestigious Romance Writers of America® Golden Heart® award in 2011. An analyst for an advanced technology corporation, she is also a nationally acclaimed writing instructor and enjoys competitive small-bore rifle silhouette shooting. She makes her home in the American Southwest and loves to hear from readers. Game of Fear is the third novel in her Montgomery Justice series. Visit her website at RobinPerini.com.

GameofFear_FrontCover_web200What is your elevator pitch for Game of Fear?
“Brilliant kids from all over the country are disappearing—but no one knows why. Until now.” You can watch the book trailer here.

What sparked the story idea for the book?
Two separate elements came together. One, after reading the story of a female Army Helicopter pilot and her heroism, I knew I had to tell her story. I also knew that she needed a reason to quit a job she loved, so I gave her a mission that was doomed from the start and a sister who needed her. When this pilot leaves the military, she not only leaves her military family, but a distance is created between herself and her father and brothers who are deployed. When the heroine meets the hero—and his family—it’s a reminder of what she has lost. I was able to meet with several military pilots and get some fantastic insights in flying helicopters in combat situations. Amazing bravery, and they don’t get the credit they should. Though, of course, they would never ask for any.

And two, with the help of my literary agent and some amazing critique partners, we came up with a crazy premise: Brilliant kids who master the hottest new video game on the market vanish …and no one really notices. Why? Because those who disappear are the kids who hang in the basement, who no one understands, who seem to fade into the woodwork unless they have a controller in their hands. The farewell notes left behind seem to make sense. These kids run away, want to make it on their own. The kids are misunderstood—and forgotten. Except for one girl. One brilliant girl with a sister who doesn’t buy the smokescreen. Deb Lansing’s little sister has been in trouble before now. She hacked into the National Security Agency’s computer system. She got caught.

Here is where I must digress. I plotted my book, and as I was writing the story, within a few months Edward Snowden happened. Weird, huh. I kept writing. My plot started down an interesting path that used the internet and webcams and such to spy. Within a few months, the cell phone spying story broke. A little weirder. I kept writing…with trepidation. A member of Congress was spied upon in my novel. Gulp. It happened in the real world. The web of deceit made its way across the globe. To Russia. To Afghanistan. Sound familiar, newsworthy even? I finished the book. Thank goodness. It’s enough to make a writer pause. But then again, sometimes fiction is the means by which the truth can be heard. I spent several months writing about events that made headlines just weeks later. Gave me chills.

Tell us about your main protagonists, their flaws and strengths, and what they’re facing in the story. Will those who know you recognize you in your characters?
Gabe Montgomery is the youngest of the Montgomery brothers, but he’s been featured in the other two novels in the series, In Her Sights and Behind the Lies. Deb Lansing was briefly featured in Behind the Lies as well.

As for Game of Fear … Former SWAT Team Member, Gabe Montgomery, was almost killed in the line of duty through the betrayal of his best friend. Determined to rebuild his life, ferret out the corruption in the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office, and protect his family, Gabe now runs a cop bar as a cover for a dangerous game of less-than-legal investigations into those who abuse their power. His faith in others shaken to its core, the last thing he can afford is to become distracted or involved with someone else’s problems…he could get them both killed.

Named after Deborah Samson—the first known woman to impersonate a man in order to join the Revolutionary army and take part in combat—Deb Lansing grew up believing in heroism, honor and truth. Her family has served in the military since the Civil War. As one of the few female military helicopter pilots, she took pride in her heritage. Until she failed on a critical mission. To redeem herself, she flaunts death on Search and Rescue Operations. She will NEVER leave anyone behind. Not again. So when her sister vanishes, Deb will move heaven and earth to find her. No matter what it takes.

One way in which these characters are like me is how much they love their family and would do practically anything for them.

Which point of view did you enjoy writing the most?
In this book I actually dipped into several points of view, but the one I most enjoyed was the POV of the kidnap victim, the heroine’s sixteen-year-old sister. She has her own journey of discovery and her challenges complement the main story in a way I hadn’t expected. I also found it interesting to give this section of the book a bit of a young-adult feel. She was an amazing character to get to know.

Deborah Samson

Deborah Samson

Did you discover anything that surprised you while doing research for this book?
To prepare to write Game of Fear I researched women in the military. My heroine didn’t have a name until I came across Deborah Samson. You may not have heard of her. Not surprising. Her story isn’t well known.

Taller than average, rigorous farm work broadened Deborah Samson’s shoulders and strengthened her muscles. From Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1781 Deborah enlisted in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment under the name of her deceased brother, Robert Shurtliff. She became a seasoned combat veteran and served for seventeen months during the Revolutionary War where she was wounded twice in raids along the Hudson. She even cut a musket ball out of her own thigh so no one would discover her deceit. Finally, a doctor discovered her true identity after she came down with a severe fever. Despite her deception, she received an honorable discharge and later became America’s “first woman lecturer.”

What first inspired you to become a writer?
I’ve been writing forever, but it’s storytelling that grabbed my interest first. I lost my heart to storytelling when I was a child, sitting at the knee of my great-aunt. She mesmerized me with her tales of “The Little Match Girl” and “How the Tiger Got its Tail.” She wrenched my heart, made me laugh and cry. She fed my love of reading and learning. Perhaps it was inevitable that I followed in her footsteps. My love of writing was her gift as well. When I was eight, I attended a Camp Fire Girls’ camp for a week—it seemed like a month. I wrote tear-stained letters to my great-aunt, and after I returned home she told me I had a gift for writing. That my letters evoked pictures in her mind. My great-aunt has long since passed away, but I look up and smile sometimes. My inner fire for storytelling and writing was her gift to me. I pray I do her justice.

What is your writing routine like?
I’m actually one of those irritating morning people. I write from 5:30 am-7:00 am weekdays before the day job. Mostly to get the adrenaline pumping because I thrive on deadlines—and being panicked! If you only have an hour and a half, you have to make the most of every second. Also, I write in sprints. Twenty minutes of writing and a 10-minute break. This idea was introduced to me by my fellow writer Angi Morgan, and it really works for me. If nothing else, my body doesn’t go numb from sitting in the chair. In fact, every twenty minutes we meet in a free chat room and report how many words we’ve written (you can get chat rooms at chatzy.com). For ten minutes we brainstorm, discuss, whine, stretch, whatever. It’s a great way to keep pushing through. On Saturdays, I write for about five hours in the morning, and on Sundays I write for three hours. I’m a secondary caregiver for my mother, who has Alzheimer’s, so this time has to be agile. I try to write 16-20 hours per week if at all possible.

What is your writing process like?
I call myself a planner…not quite a plotter, not quite a pantster. Before I start writing I develop my stories from the characters out, using a method called Discovering Story Magic which I developed with author Laura Baker.

I might start with a basic plot idea, a location, a news story or a character. Whatever I start with, however, I first identify a character that will work with that idea. I then explore my character’s strengths, weaknesses and deep character. From those emotional elements, I create the plot. I start with turning points, then fill in the rest of the scenes. I try very hard to ensure that the plot of my story forces my character to face his or her greatest fear and flaw, and that each character has the strength to help the other. I’ve learned over time that I MUST clearly understand the emotional arc of my characters before I start my story. I’ve spent a lot of time studying human behavior and what makes people behave the way they do, so hopefully this authenticity comes across in my stories.

After I work through the plot, I write the synopsis. This allows me to test the logic and drama of the story. It’s also easier to write the synopsis when I don’t know everything that’s going to happen. Finally, I write the book, which is always surprising. Secondary characters and scenes and even subplots come out of nowhere. Just because I plan a book, doesn’t mean I don’t relish in the discovery. I write in fast-draft form which usually includes basic dialogue, blocking and some emotion. It takes between 5-7 weeks for me to complete the draft, which is about 75% of the final word count. I then revise. It takes somewhere between 5-10 hours per chapter to revise the book. I go through a few more rounds of edits before I turn the story into my editor (hopefully).

I should add that everyone’s process is different. There are as many ways to write as there are writers, so whatever works for you, stick to it, but don’t be afraid to try something new either. Play to your strengths and use tools to diminish or overcome your craft weaknesses. Learning is a life-long process that doesn’t end. And that makes writing so much fun. Okay, that’s not quite true. I prefer having writ to actually writing. And I prefer both to revising.

InHerSights150Who are your favorite authors and what do you admire most about their writing?
I have so many authors who have brought me incredible joy since I was a child. In fact, on my website I have included pages listing many of my all-time favorite books and authors. Those books typically evoke deep emotions within me. They are my window into pain, joy, insight, and wisdom. One of my favorite authors is Sharon Sala. This New York Times Bestselling Author has written novels that twist my heart through a painful journey, but end in hope. Her ability to touch my soul makes me go back to her stories again and again. Even more than that, Sharon Sala is a mentor to me. She read my first published novel, In Her Sights, several years ago. She believed in me and my book at a time when it was hard to believe in myself. I’m not sure I would be here today without her encouragement. She is an amazing writer, of course, but an even more amazing person. I’d like to be her when I grow up.

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
In general I have two basic themes that recur in my writing. They include the concept of wearing masks—hiding your true self beneath a mask. The other theme is the idea that it’s not your past or your family that determines your future or your value, but your actions in the here and now. Both of these themes resonate with me emotionally and give authenticity to the emotions in my writing.

What are your strengths as a writer? After completing ten novels, is there anything you still struggle with in your writing?
I believe I have a good sense of drama and the ability to create characters that people connect with. I also really enjoy creating interesting villains. If I believe my reviews, I write page-turning romantic suspense that readers can’t put down (I can live with that!). What do I struggle with? Oh, where should I begin… in short, revision. Hands down. Because once I complete my fast-draft and have the bare bones of the story, then I go through an agonizingly iterative process where I hope to tease out the heart and soul of the story, activate the scenes, develop deep point of view and so much more. I probably add another 25% to the word count after my fast-draft is completed over at least three to six iterations. I think it was Jack Bickham, the noted writing instructor, who said, “Good novels aren’t written. They’re rewritten and revised.” That may not be true for everyone, but it’s definitely true for me!

What advice do you have for beginning or discouraged writers?
1. Study the craft…always. This may seem obvious, but life can interfere with writing and learning, as I’m sure many of you know. Over the last decade I’ve worked full time, gone to school at night for my Master’s degree, survived a serious illness, and am a secondary caregiver to my mother. The most important thing I’ve done for my writing, however, is study the craft of writing and storytelling. I was lucky enough to teach an amazing online class with author Laura Baker called Discovering Story Magic. The class required me to analyze other writers’ stories. One of the best ways to learn is to teach. I highly recommend developing workshops that require you to understand the craft. It’s been a blessing to me. This advice goes hand-in-hand with a second bit of advice. Never stop learning and growing as a writer.

2. Trust yourself. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder how I’ve fooled everyone for so long. Don’t do the same thing! Trust your instincts. Believe in yourself. Listen to your gut. I had to learn this lesson the hard way. I had to really decide who I wanted to be as a writer. I tried writing numerous books in numerous subgenres. But I finally discovered the kind of stories I really want to tell. I love optimistic stories of suspense. I love heroes and heroines who grow and change and win. I love poignant love stories. That’s what I do. My readers step into the crossfire with heart-stopping suspense and heart-wrenching romance. That’s a Robin Perini book. Know who you are as a writer. It will help when you doubt yourself.

3. Persistence. Get a motto: Mine is: “Never give up, never surrender.” My theme song could be Tubthumping – “I get knocked down, and I get up again.” Don’t get me wrong, there are times I almost quit, but for better or worse, I am a writer. If you want something badly enough, don’t let the setbacks stop you. Learn more, grow more, find your path, find yourself. You’ll be glad you stuck with it. I know I am.

logo_alz250What writing projects are you working on now?
I’ve just completed the edits for my July 19, 2016 release, Forgotten Secrets, which is book one of my new Singing River Legacy series. Forgotten Secrets is a very special project for me. I mentioned earlier that my mother suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. I will be donating 10% of the royalties I receive from this book to the Alzheimer’s Association, an organization that has helped my family in more ways than I can count. Here’s a brief blurb of the new story.

For Riley Lambert, being an FBI profiler isn’t just a job, it’s a calling. At the age of ten, she witnessed her twelve-year-old sister’s abduction from her bedroom. Fifteen years later and still searching for her sister, Riley has been called to another kidnapping, this time in the small Wyoming town of Singing River, to save a doctor snatched in the light of day. To complicate matters, her only witness, the woman’s grandmother, is afflicted with Alzheimer’s.

Battling against few leads and little time, Riley delves into a small town’s secrets with help from the missing woman’s brother, Navy SEAL and Acting Deputy Sheriff Thayne Blackwood. Can Riley decipher enough evidence to save Thayne’s sister, even as her past and his present collide in a shocking revelation no one could expect?

My current work in progress is called Rodeo Justice, and is the 8th Carder Texas Connections novel. I will be completing this story on April 1.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
First off, I want to thank you for taking a chance on a new writer, for taking a chance each time you open a book in the hopes that the story will mean something to you. If I could give any advice, it would be to keep reading and share your love of reading with others so that the world of stories and books expands and grows and remains strong.

Secondly, in today’s world, reviews help other readers find books they might enjoy. If you enjoyed a book (or even if you didn’t), consider leaving a review on the retail site(s) of your choice and/or Goodreads.

Finally, there’s nothing more I love than connecting with readers. You can read excerpts, read reviews, sign up for my quarterly newsletter or mailing list, check out my book trailers and even request trading cards or an Authorgraph on my website. I’m also on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads and Pinterest. And, if you enjoy my stories, you may want to consider being part of the Rockin’ Robins, my street team. There are lots of special giveaways and more. In fact, you might get a sneak peek at Forgotten Secrets if you join in the next few weeks!

RobinPerini_32_crop150This has been so much fun. I really enjoyed sharing a few factoids about me and my writing. So… you learned something about me today, I’d love to learn about you. In the comments, I’d love to know one unusual fact about you, or what type of stories you like to read, who your favorite author and/or book is… pick your poison. Comment and you will be entered in a random GIVEAWAY of an e-book of your choice from my backlist.

Still wondering if you should enter? Below is an excerpt from Game of Fear.

EXCERPT FROM Game of Fear

The whirr of the circling Bell 212 helicopter rotors echoed through the cockpit. New Mexico’s Wheeler Peak, barely visible in the dusk, loomed just east, its thirteen-thousand-foot summit laden with snow. Deborah Lansing leaned forward, the seat belt straps pulling at her shoulders.

Far, far to the west, the sun was just a sliver in the sky.

“It’s almost dark, Deb. We have to land,” Gene Russo, her local Search and Rescue contact, insisted.

“The moon is bright enough right now that I can still see a little, and we have the spotlight. Those kids have got to be here somewhere!”

Deb squinted against the setting sun; her eyes burned with fatigue. They’d been at it for hours, but she couldn’t give up. Not yet.

“All the other choppers have landed, Deb. This is too dangerous. Besides, do you really think your spotlight’s going to find a snow-covered bus on the side of the mountain with all these trees?”

“Five more minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”

A metallic glint pierced through a thick carpet of snowpacked spruce.

“There! I saw something.” Deb’s adrenaline raced as she shoved the steering bar to the right and down, using the foot pedals to maintain control.

“Holy crap, Lansing. What are you doing?” Gene shouted, holding on to his seat harness. “You trying to get us killed?”

He didn’t understand. The bird knew exactly what Deb wanted, and she didn’t leave people behind to die. Not after Afghanistan. She had enough ghosts on her conscience. She tilted the chopper forward and came around again, sidling near the road toward Taos Ski Valley where the church bus had been headed before it had vanished….

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author C. Joseph Greaves

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Twenty-five years of experience as a trial lawyer has given C. Joseph Greaves an edge in creating gritty true crime/historical fiction. Tom & Lucky (and George & Cokey Flo), his second standalone novel from Bloomsbury Publishing, was named one of the best books of 2015 by The Wall Street Journal. Writing under the pen name of Chuck Greaves, he’s also authored the Jack MacTaggart detective series (Minotaur Books). You can find him on Facebook and LinkedIn, and at his website ChuckGreaves.com.

Tom & Lucky200What is your elevator pitch for Tom & Lucky?
My short pitch is: Boardwalk Empire meets House of Cards. My longer pitch, from the book flap, is: The year is 1936. Lucky Luciano is the most powerful mobster in America. Thomas E. Dewey is an ambitious young prosecutor determined to bring him down, and Cokey Flo Brown—grifter, heroin addict, and sometimes prostitute—is the witness who claims she can do it. Only a courtly Long Island defense attorney named George Morton Levy stands between Lucky and a life behind bars; between Dewey and the New York governor’s mansion. This is their story.

What inspired you to write the book? What made you choose to focus on the trial of gangster Lucky Luciano and expand on the lives of those involved?
In 1999, I was having lunch with a friend whose father, George Morton Levy, had been one of the most successful New York trial lawyers of the Depression era. My friend casually mentioned that after her father died in 1977, her family packed up all of his office files and stored them in a barn in upstate New York. Intrigued, I flew to New York, rented a car, and drove to that barn where, as advertised, I found fifteen or so rusting file drawers under a moldering tarp. I spent the better part of a day rummaging the drawers until I found what I was looking for—Levy’s file entitled “People v. Charles Luciano.”

I didn’t retire from law practice until 2006, but I knew if the writing thing ever clicked, I’d someday tackle the Luciano vice case, which was one of the more colorful and controversial criminal trials in American history. I finally did so with my fifth novel, Tom & Lucky (and George & Cokey Flo). Bloomsbury agreed it would make for great historical/true crime fiction, and I hope that its recent selection as one of The Wall Street Journal’s “Best Books of 2015” repaid that faith.

Tell us about your main characters, including which point of view you enjoyed writing the most.
The four main characters are based on real people. Two of them—Dewey and Luciano—are household names, while the other two—Levy and Cokey Flo—are not. What Dewey and Luciano had in common, I believe, was the naked ambition to succeed at their chosen careers, whatever the costs might be. Because volumes had already been written about both of them, I was somewhat constricted in my fictionalization of their lives. The relative obscurity of Levy and Cokey Flo, on the other hand, left ample room for creativity, but always with the self-imposed limitation that the actual details of their lives, where known, must be respected.

It’s appropriate you mention point of view, because it plays a major role in the novel. In an effort to impose structure on the material, I decided to give voice to each of the four main characters in alternating chapters starting in 1914 and continuing through the trial in 1936. In order to make their voices unique, I wrote all the Luciano chapters in the present tense (the rest are past tense), and all the Cokey Flo chapters in the first person (the rest are third person). My favorite character to write, hands down, was Cokey Flo, and so I was pleased when several reviewers singled her out as their favorite.

Is there a scene in the book you’d love to see play out in a movie?
Structurally speaking, the book is naturally cinematic because it’s written in such a way that each chapter reads as a stand-alone scene. In his review, Tom Nolan of The Wall Street Journal noted that the book has “the wild energy of a 1930s Warner Bros. crime-movie,” and that is no accident. Because the cast of characters, both major and minor, is straight out of Damon Runyon—over forty madams and prostitutes testified for the prosecution—any chapter would hold its own on screen. But if forced to do so, I guess I would choose the chapter in which Lucky Luciano, in 1931, engineers the execution of Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria during a card game in a Coney Island restaurant. Each man had come to the restaurant expecting to witness the other’s murder, but Lucky outsmarts and outmaneuvers his rival, whose elimination paves the way for Lucky to gain control of the New York underworld.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
Writing the novel involved a ton of research, not just into the underlying events and characters, but also into the clothes, language, customs, settings, and attitudes of the era. The biggest challenge in writing Tom & Lucky was finding a new and compelling way to tell a story that had already been told in at least a dozen previous works of nonfiction. Also, to do so in a way that cut through the myth that’s grown up around Lucky Luciano and expose the man behind the legend. There’s a line in the book’s afterword to the effect that “Luciano’s was a life lived mostly in secret, and chronicled mostly in hindsight.” I knew part of the book’s audience would be organized-crime aficionados and, believe me, they will not suffer even the smallest of inaccuracies. If you think gun experts are tough on crime writers, you haven’t lived.

HardTwisted-US150Tell us more about Tom & Lucky and how it came together.
I knew Levy’s files contained historical documents and information that had never been made public. (Some of those documents can be viewed on my website: ChuckGreaves.com.) I almost felt a moral responsibility to use those documents to explode the accepted narrative of Tom Dewey as the incorruptible special prosecutor and Lucky Luciano as the sinister whoremonger. (Remember, it was the Luciano prosecution that launched a political career that nearly carried Dewey to the White House.) The truth, you see, was a lot more nuanced, and if my readers come away with that understanding, then I will have succeeded in my mission.

I started researching the book in earnest in mid-2013, after finishing The Last Heir, my third Jack MacTaggart mystery for Minotaur. I spent six months or so doing pure research, then another year writing the book, which came in at around 120,000 words, making it my longest to date. The editing required was minimal—just copyediting, really. I also wrote a couple of feature-length articles in advance of the book’s publication; one for the ABA Journal, the monthly magazine of the American Bar Association, and one for Informer, the preeminent magazine for organized-crime buffs. After that, it was up to Bloomsbury.

Why did you decide to use a pen name for your true crime novels?
It wasn’t my idea, believe me. By the time I finally landed an agent (after winning the SWW Storyteller Award in 2010), I had written both a mystery novel (Hush Money) and a literary/historical/true-crime novel (Hard Twisted). We sold the mystery to Minotaur, which generally doesn’t publish literary fiction, and then the historical to Bloomsbury, which generally doesn’t publish mystery. To avoid reader confusion, Bloomsbury wanted me to use a pen name, since Hush Money was such a different novel than Hard Twisted, was ahead of Hard Twisted in the pipeline, and would appear under the name Chuck Greaves. I, however, didn’t want to spend the rest of my life writing as Mildred Pfefferman if, in fact, the mystery novels failed and the historical novels succeeded. We finally settled on variants of my real name, which is Charles Joseph Greaves.

What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write?
This is a great question, and one that every writer should confront at some point in his or her career. I’ve concluded, after five published novels, that my greatest weakness as a writer is a reluctance to drill down into my characters’ inner emotions. When I read authors who can do that credibly and seemingly without effort, I am in awe. It’s something I’m always working on.

Being an experienced trial lawyer has allowed you to write realistic courtroom scenes. What other ways has your former profession affected your writing or your journey to publication?
I’ve observed that there are three professions which are overrepresented in the universe of successful authors: journalism, law, and advertising. The reason, I believe, is that all three involve a reductive writing process—the art of making the complex simpler, whether it’s a news story, a fact pattern, or a product. The twenty-five years I spent as a lawyer, and the innumerable briefs and motions that I wrote along the way, were of enormous benefit in teaching me to tell a succinct story in a compelling way.

The Last Heir150You have three novels in your Jack MacTaggart series published by Minotaur Books (Hush Money, Green-Eyed Lady, and The Last Heir). What are the challenges in writing a series? Would those who know you recognize you in the main character?
Jack MacTaggart is handsome, funny, smart, and fearless, so there’s no chance in hell anybody would ever recognize me. As for writing a series, I think it’s wonderful for as long as you, the author, still enjoy your characters’ company. One piece of advice I give to new authors is: be sure to choose as your subject matter a story you’re prepared to live with, every waking hour, for a year or longer. Or, in the case of a series, for many years to come.

Have you considered indie publishing for future projects?
Funny you should ask. I’m currently working on two projects, one of which may end up as my first indie venture, in that we’re writing purely on spec. I say “we” because my dear friend Deborah Coonts and I decided, after a few too many glasses of wine, that it was high time our respective series characters (her Lucky O’Toole and my Jack MacTaggart) finally met. We’re in the midst of writing a madcap caper novel involving baseball, Las Vegas, and hit men. God knows where it will end up, but I can assure you we’re having a blast getting there.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
It was Dorothy Parker who said, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” These are words to live by.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



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