SouthWest Writers Authors – Page 25

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An Interview with Author Jasmine Tritten

Posted on January 28, 2016 by

Jasmine Tritten is an author and artist whose grand adventure from her native Denmark to the Americas was decided by the flip of a coin. She now makes her home in Corrales, New Mexico with her husband, her very own Prince Charming. The memoir Journey of an Adventuresome Dane (2015) is Jasmine’s debut book. You can find her on Facebook and LinkedIn, and see examples of her oil paintings at New Mexico Artists’ Market. For a complete listing of Jasmine’s published work, go to her SWW Author Page.

What is your elevator pitch for The Journey of an Adventuresome Dane?
I left my home country Denmark at age twenty-one seeking adventure. I took chances and overcame fears and obstacles. My memoir depicts my evolution—an odyssey across time and space.

When readers turn the last page of your book, what do you hope they will take away from it?
Inspiration to write about their own lives. Maybe the courage to take the risk of changing their lives for the better.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
I had to decide how vulnerable I wanted to be and dig deep into my memory bank to find the most life-changing incidents.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing your memoir?
Getting an overview and perspective of my life, processing emotionally charged episodes by reliving them.

Tell us about your process in putting the book together.
It took me about three years to write the book. I already had most of the stories in my head. The details came from two sources: journals I had written since I was a teenager and letters I had written to my mother every two weeks since I left Denmark in 1964. She kept all the letters in an old oak trunk. Each time I visited my mother in Copenhagen during the last four years, I brought some of the letters back with me to New Mexico. For the editing cycle, I belonged to a critique group for one and a half years. Also several times I put my writing away for six months, then looked at the work again with new eyes and revised it over and over again.

What makes this book unique in the memoir market?
There are not many written immigration stories except for the obvious Roots. Also, I am the first person in my Danish family, going back hundreds of years, who immigrated.

When did you know you wanted to write your story? What prompted the final push to begin?
Just before my 70th birthday, I waited to zip-line in Angel Fire at 10,600 feet. When I looked down, I saw my life in front of my eyes and decided to sum together those highlights in a book.

What did writing your memoir teach you about yourself?
I am a strong, optimistic, creative person with a positive outlook and a zest for living life to the fullest. I am not afraid of tackling what life has to offer.

How has your artistic nature helped you in your writing journey?
Some people tell me I paint pictures with words. I am an ultra-sensitive soul. Maybe because of that it is easier for me to describe what I see and feel.

What part do beta readers or critique groups play in your writing process?
Both are extremely valuable to my writing process, and I am grateful for each person who volunteers to critique my writing. I try to help other writers in a similar way and learn a lot from each person.

What is your writing routine like?
I don’t have a schedule. Since I am both a writer and an artist, I switch between the two. Many times I wake up at four in the morning with great ideas. Quickly I put them down on paper to be typed later. In 2014, I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) as a Rebel [choosing to write other than a novel] and wrote over 50,000 words toward my memoir.

If you suffer from writer’s block, how do you break through?
By journaling.

Who are your favorite authors, and what do you admire most about their writing?
I greatly admire fellow Dane Karen Blixen (also known as Isak Dinesen) who wrote Out of Africa, for her strength and adventuresome spirit. She wrote such wonderful descriptions. I identify with her in many ways. Also, Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat-Pray-Love for her sense of humor, and Wayne Dyer for his honest, spiritual, and inspirational approach in all of his books.

What do you think draws readers to memoirs and biographies?
Personally, I am interested in other people’s lives, how they got to where they are, and how they overcame their obstacles or fulfilled their dreams.

KLWagoner150_2 KL 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 Lee Higbie

Posted on January 14, 2016 by

Lee Higbie is a past president of SouthWest Writers and co-founder/author liaison of Scribl, a new e-publishing company. A former computer engineer, he now writes fiction under the pen name BJ Creighton. His standalone novel No Sanctuary was published in 2015. You can find Lee on LinkedIn and at HigbieAuthors.com, the website he shares with his wife Betty.

What is your elevator pitch for No Sanctuary?
Paul Capodicasa, a wealthy benefactor of Rowe Sanctuary, is bludgeoned to death in one of its blinds. Detective Bobbie Lee must solve the murder while avoiding interference from the Mafia and her district attorney uncle. She must also confront the possibility that her son is the murderer.

What inspired you to write the book?
While volunteering at Nebraska’s Rowe Sanctuary, I was inspired by its photo blinds—much smaller than a jail cell. Two people are locked in these blinds from late afternoon until mid-morning the next day. One look and it was obvious the photographers could be at each other’s throats by the time they were let out.

What makes this novel unique in the murder mystery market?
The detective is forced to confront the probability that her son, given up for adoption 22 years earlier, is the perp. Much of the story revolves around rape—the detective’s rape (leading to the son) and the murderer’s rape in jail, both as teenagers.

What challenges did this work pose for you?
Writing from the point of view of a woman. Initially, Bobbie Lee behaved too much like a man. In early drafts, her behavior was not believable.

Why did you decide to use the particular setting you chose?
Rowe Sanctuary chose me, not the other way around.

What is your favorite scene in No Sanctuary?
The scene where Bobbie Lee nearly drowns trying to cross the Platte River.

Why did you decide to use a pen name?
Two reasons, the first is personal that I won’t go into. The other is that my wife Betty helped me with the novel, and I created a pseudonym that is a combination of our names. From a purely marketing perspective, there are advantages to using different names for completely different types of books.

What first inspired you to become a writer?
I’ve been writing for decades and working on fiction for more than ten years. I wrote several science fiction novels, but those were exercises that helped me learn to write fiction.

Who are your favorite authors?
My favorites vary. I’ll go through a period of reading a bunch of novels by one author, but when I start to see the patterns repeating, I often entirely stop reading their work. I have no literary aspirations, only genre fiction.

Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you started your publishing career today?
Let me quote Dorothy Parker: If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with a copy of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now while they’re happy.

Why did you decide to take the indie route to publishing?
Mostly because I am not yet good enough—I haven’t written any bestsellers—to be noticed by the legacy publishing establishment.

What part do beta readers or critique groups play in your writing process?
Critique groups were very important some years ago, but I haven’t found a group since moving to New Mexico. Now I use editors instead.

How do you break through writer’s block?
Butt In Chair, Hands on Keyboard (BICHOK).

If you had an unlimited budget, how would you spend your money for marketing and promotion of your books?
I’d hire someone else to market and promote my books because it’s something I’m not good at it.

What are your strengths as a writer?
My strengths are probably my work ethic, knowledge of grammar, and the ability to synthesize research results.

Tell us about Scribl, the e-publishing company you co-founded.
Scribl.com, formerly Scribliotech, is a new publisher of ebooks and audio/ebooks with a unique linking of audio and ebook formats and unique pricing and royalty structures. Scribl started with patented technology to set prices based on popularity. Many authors juggle the prices of their books to increase readership because they’ve found setting a low price can increase sales long after the price has returned to normal. CrowdPricing does this by adjusting the pricing depending on sales. Scribl allows readers to rate books, but we factor in the price a reader paid because readers may think a novel is great for $0.99, but not for $5.99. In addition, we distribute to hundreds of book sites (including Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo), so listing a book with us gives it the widest possible distribution. Also, because some sites sell below wholesale, our royalties can be higher than some competitors in some situations.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m just finishing two nonfiction books that I plan to publish in 2016. The first is about wine and is celebratory in tone. It has a lot of illustrations in addition to text. The second is about writing. One of the chapters in the book was published in SWW’s The Storyteller’s Anthology. Both of these projects will end up being about half the size of a novel—more like booklets. I plan to start with print-on-demand, probably through IngramSpark, and e-publish through Scribl once we broaden our list to nonfiction titles (in the very near future).

The Best Writing Advice from SWW Authors

Posted on December 31, 2015 by

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
~ Emerson

What better writing advice than that given by a published author?

In the course of interviewing SouthWest Writers’ authors for this website, one of the questions I asked was, “What advice would you give to beginning or discouraged writers?” Here are the answers compiled from ten of the interviews posted in 2015.

The publishing world is competitive, but writing shouldn’t be. No two writers will ever tell a story exactly the same way. Don’t be afraid to help those around you, or to learn from others. If you’re not improving and having fun as a writer, you may as well move on to something else. One of my characters once told me, “If you ain’t havin’ fun, you’re just wastin’ space.” That has become my motto. ~ Sarah Baker

Bumblebee physiology is inconsistent with flight, so instead of flapping their wings up and down like a bird, they wave them in a figure eight pattern. Unwilling to walk from flower to flower, they achieve their goal by working with the laws of physics to find a way to fly. It’s the same with writing: if one avenue doesn’t pan out, find another. ~ Olive Balla

Writing can be a box with rigid structures that are demanding and restrictive to one’s creative nature. On the other hand, writing can be as fluid as the ink that flows unto the paper. It can become a vehicle that opens up doors to new worlds of possibility and to dreams that have never been expressed. My hope is that every writer who feels the need for more freedom chooses the latter. ~ S.S. Bazinet

Don’t wait until it’s perfect, because it’ll never happen. Obviously, it’s necessary to do a thorough job editing, but it’s too easy to get hung up on minor things and never get the job done. ~ Susan C. Cooper

Just begin. Trust yourself and your words. Forget many of the things you learned about “rules.” As Mark David Gerson suggests in The Voice of the Muse, there are 13 rules. The first is: There are no rules. The story exists and you are the vehicle which carries it. ~ Elizabeth Ann Galligan

Discouragement is part of the writing game. So is perseverance. And perseverance will eventually win (think Thomas Edison). My advice: Keep honing your craft. Join a critique group and learn to take criticism; after all, they’re readers, and writers need readers. Realize your writing isn’t sacred and not to be changed in any way; remember, you can’t see mistakes in your own writing—you’re too close. ~ Larry Greenly

Don’t give up. Find publishers who’ve issued books similar to yours. Develop a great query to send them, one that will get their interest enough that they’ll even read your submission. Create a first page that grabs them. ~ Joyce Hertzoff

People who write are called writers. People who wait are called waiters. I’d advise you to write every day, if only for the sheer pleasure of it. Don’t worry about the Great American Novel, etc. Enjoy what you do! Or find something else to do, life is too short. ~ Robert Kidera

Learn to reject rejection. Get used to the idea that there is going to be a lot of rejection along the way. The secret is to never give up. If one person tells you no, ask someone else. Someone, somewhere, sometime will say yes. Move on to the next person. Someone is waiting to say yes. ~ Gale O’Brien

Set both weekly and monthly goals/deadlines for yourself. Write them down and work diligently toward achieving them. Buy an appointment book and schedule time for writing, rewriting and research. Your “great expectations” will be easier to achieve when you have established in writing what they are. ~ Shirley Raye Redmond

Image “Light at End of Tunnel” courtesy of lkunl / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Magazine Writing: Bagging Your First Assignment

Posted on December 29, 2015 by

by Melody Groves

And why aren’t you writing for magazines? I can list the reasons if you can’t come up with your own. No new ideas. Don’t know which magazine would take my article. No clue how to begin. And for cryin’ out loud, I’m a fiction writer!

These are excuses, not reasons. I’m here to tell you that you can and should write for magazines. With over 9,000 published annually, there is at least one that will publish your article. But wait! In addition to a plethora of magazines (both print and online), the question then is: why should I want to? I’ll tell you why.

1. Relatively short turnaround time. Generally, you get assigned a story with a deadline anywhere from a week to three months down the road. It’s published shortly after that, maybe a month or two later. It’s so much quicker than novels that have to go through editing, formatting, more editorial, layout, editorial, cover design, final editorial and then publishing. We won’t even mention distribution and marketing. No marketing involved in your magazine article. (On the plus side, your weekends are now free. On the down side, you have nothing to sign—although I did sign an article I wrote for New Mexico Magazine for my mail carrier!)

2. A little bit goes a long way. That research you did for your novel (you did do research, didn’t you?), use it for magazine articles. Take the same information, change it around, put the focus on a different aspect and voilà! Article number two. Why not write as many articles as you can for as many publications as you can using the same research? Why not, indeed?

Here’s how it’s done. Say you wrote a novel where the murderer is somewhat of a snobbish wine connoisseur who lives in New Zealand. Well, there you go. One article about the types of wine produced in New Zealand (yes, they do); another article about traveling there to tour the wineries; a third article about how the Kiwis (the native population) use wine in their celebrations. I don’t know about you, but I can think of about 30 more articles based on New Zealand wine.

And it’s a huge plus if the editor knows you have a book with this information in it. He’ll let you plug your book down in the bio section at the end of the article. Definitely an ego-boosting thing to do.

3. First North American Serial Rights. A way cool writer-friendly law that says once your article is published and the magazine is off the shelf, then the rights revert back to you and you can sell that puppy as is again—for less money, of course. A word of caution: some magazines do not accept reprints. Some love them (such as Readers Digest). Check with the website and/or editor to be sure. You’ve got to be professional. If they don’t take reprints, don’t try to fool them. If, however, it’s been 10 years, tell them, and there’s a chance they’ll say yes.

4. And the clincher (insert drum roll here): Writing for magazines pays. Okay, you probably can’t count on selling one article and then taking your long-awaited trip to Hawaii on that paycheck alone. Magazines pay anywhere from nothing up to $2 a word. That’s right. Per Word. Who wouldn’t want to earn $2 for typing the word “the”? Sign me up. The average is 30 cents a word with some regional publications offering less. The good news: the more often you write for the same editor, the more he pays. Generally. So, since they publish fairly soon after you submit the article, you don’t have to wait forever to get that check. Most times they’ll pay after acceptance. And most times they pay with a 50 percent kill fee.* Look carefully at the contract. It’ll say in there. If not, ask the editor to include it.

And usually, they pay extra for photos. Check their submission guidelines or call their office. If you can offer photo services (it’s so much cheaper to take them yourself), it’s a Bigfoot foot in the door.

Do some quick arithmetic with me: Say 750 words at 20 cents per word: $150. Not shabby. If you do that once a week, that’s…let’s see…carry the one… $600 a month. Within a year you could be sailing to Hawaii. Don’t forget sunscreen. Swimsuits are optional.

*A “kill fee” means that after you submit your article and they accept it, and for some reason totally out of your control they decide not to run it, they’ll give you half of the agreed upon rate. At this point, you can shop that article around without rewriting it at all. Kind of a win-win deal. Kind of.

Seven-time award-winner Melody Groves is the author of four historical fiction novels, three non-fiction books, and dozens of magazine articles. Past-president of SouthWest Writers, she’s also a member of Western Writers of America. And when not writing, she plays rhythm guitar in the Jammy Time Band. Visit her at MelodyGroves.net.

This article was originally published in the August 2012 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

An Interview with Author Parris Afton Bonds

Posted on December 24, 2015 by

Parris Afton Bonds is the cofounder and first vice president of Romance Writers of America, as well as a cofounder of SouthWest Writers. A New York Times best-selling author, she has published over 40 novels and volunteers to teach creative writing to grade school students and female inmates. Indian Affairs (Paradise Publishing, 2013) is one of her most recent novels. You can find Parris on LinkedIn, Facebook, and her website at ParrisAftonBonds.com.

What is your elevator pitch for Indian Affairs?
Turning conventional wisdom on its head, Washington socialite Alessandra O’Quinn and Indian shaman Manuel Mondragon, defy time and space and politics and families to come together in the sweeping canvas of the 1920’s outpost of Taos, New Mexico. But can they defy Destiny to stay together?

Tell us about your main protagonists, their flaws and strengths, and the hurdles they’re trying to overcome.
Physical hurdles, such as tuberculosis, and the emotional/psychological ones like submissiveness in the face of male/military domination actually compel Alessandra to take on the U. S. government in defense of the peaceful Taos people. And for Man, the assumption that he has only one destiny—to lead his people in the peaceful way of the heart—is challenged by his confrontation with the outside world in the form of Alessandra.

Why did you decide to use Taos, New Mexico as the setting for the book?
Since I was five or six years old, during a visit to Carlsbad Caverns, I instinctively knew that the desert Southwest was where I belong. It was like a tsunami of a metaphysical impact. Taos Puebloan history—its peaceful battle for its sacred Blue Lake—provided the perfect setting for the story I wanted to tell. In Indians Affairs (originally titled When the Heart Is Right(, I included this quote that I feel is a perfect summation for my novel: “La Querencia, that was it. The soul’s comfort, the heart’s joy. Where one was drawn by an attraction without logic, yet with an undeniable force. La Querencia. That was Man and northern New Mexico.”

Will those who know you recognize you in your main protagonist?
Yes, my characters are compelled, despite their flaws and fears, to create a meaningful life.

Is there a scene in your book that you’d love to see play out in a movie?
Naturally, I would be dancing on sunshine if the entire story of Indian Affairs was made into a movie, but if I had to pick one scene, it would be the Senate confrontation where Man presents his impassioned testimony for this people’s right to their homeland. Homeland. For me, the word says so much.

What makes this novel unique in the historical romance market?
I think Indians Affairs possesses one unique and strong element that makes it different from other novels in the historical romance market: its metaphysical approach to the combined dynamics of history and romance.

What sparked the story idea?
I actually moved from Texas to northern New Mexico and spent two years there researching. I dedicated Indian Affairs to a phenomenal person and writer, a Southwest Writers Workshop member, Hana Norton, whose beautiful spirit led the way to this story. It was she who gave me the germ of the basis for my novel.

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
Yes, that sacrifice for the sake of a large issue is always worthy of a reward.

When did you first know you were a writer?
I wrote my first story (actually typed it on an old Remington) when I was five years old. My mom saved the story, and I have it packed away somewhere. I have always written. But it wasn’t until I moved to Mexico City, that I actively began to write professionally. My first sale netted me $85 for a piece I did for Modern Secretary about a U.S. Embassy secretary. (I loved getting patted down by the handsome Marine guard). That was 43 years ago, and I am still obsessed/possessed by the writing demon/angel—a curse and a blessing.

You’ve written several series (Midsummer Madness; Kingdom Come; Blue Bayou; Janet Lomayestewa, Tracker). What are the challenges in writing a series? Who is your favorite character from one of your series?
Writing a series has its benefits in that you know the character as well as you know the lines in the palm of your hand. However, that is also its drawback—the challenge to create and explore is somewhat mitigated. I have to guard against this laziness when writing a series. Most likely, my favorite character is Janet Lomayestewa, Hopi Indian, because she is so human. She has such inner demons to fight, and she fiercely (but not fearlessly) takes them on: “All right,” she mutters, as I find myself doing sometimes, “bring it on. ”

Of all the stories you’ve written, which one did you enjoy writing the most?
I had the most fun writing Blue Moon. It just seemed to have a will of its own and wrote itself. I merely looked on, mouth open, as magic took over.

Who are your favorite authors?
I love the Old Guard authors: Edna Ferber, Frank Yerby, Rafael Sabatini, Thomas Costain, and Dale Van Every. I was weaned on them. But there are also many present-day, talented writers I enjoy as well, among them Ken Follett. Mitch Albom, and John Grisham.

What are your strengths as a writer, and what do you do to overcome your weaknesses?
My weakness is I tend to overwrite. My strength is my perseverance to create the best story of which I am capable. That means rewrite, rewrite, rewrite—and read, read, read. Everything. Every day.

What percentage of your time is spent writing, and what percent is spent on the business-side of writing?
I tend to take care of the business-side of writing the first hour or so in the morning. Doing so paves the way for the commitment to the creative aspect of my writing, which usually takes anywhere from six to twelve hours, depending if I am on a roll in my writing.

What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write?
I find the most difficult scenes to write are those that demand I dig deep into the character’s psyche. If I have to struggle to find the kernel that chafes my character, then I have to acknowledge I don’t really know my character. Deeper drilling to the core is necessary. For me, this is a real angst.

What advice do you have for beginning or discouraged writers?
I offer two pieces of advice for beginning or discouraged writers: (1) write for yourself—what others think of your soul’s outpouring is none of your business; and (2) the cliché to never give up—it is a powerful elixir (see my answer to the last interview question).

What are you working on now?
Currently, I am finishing up the 5th book (The Banshees) in The Texican series, a historical (not historical romance), which begins in 1835. Book five takes The Texican’s Paladín family through 1963. This will be the first time I have collaborated on a book, and my partner in crime is my former agent, Chuck Neighbors, another Texan.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Like some people believe in ghosts, I believe in magic. And I believe if you never, never, never give up, your magic is given its chance to work.

Embracing Writer Fatigue

Posted on December 17, 2015 by

by Olive Balla

Listen. Hear that? It’s the non-sound of laptops and word processors sitting on desks and collecting dust. It’s the white noise of writers everywhere giving up, of promising writers being sucked into the black hole of Writer Fatigue.

Webster defines fatigue as weariness or exhaustion from labor. The thesaurus offers burnout as one synonym. Fatigue. Burnout. Such innocuous words to describe the miserable state into which nearly every writer falls at some point.

I recently spoke to a woman in her sixties who has been writing since college. Throughout her school years she received kudos on her style and creativity. No one was surprised when she began to write in earnest. So, for the past twenty years she’s written romance novels. But none have been published. The woman decided to throw out all her manuscripts rather than leave them for her progeny to deal with. She wondered what happened to the promise that if one never quits writing, success will eventually come.

I don’t have a sure-fire answer for that. But I do have a couple of ideas.

Someone said the definition of “crazy” is to keep doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Other than wanting to be someone who has written rather than someone who writes, I believe many writers lose that loving feeling for the craft when their expectation of speedy publication isn’t met. Convinced that all they have to do is just more of what they’ve been doing—only harder—they grow jaded as time marches on and no agent picks them up. Some, blessed with a more entrepreneurial spirit and less vulnerability to the purist’s litany of reasons not to do so, finally opt to self-publish.

I’m not making light of the virtues of tenacity and determination. But getting ahead in today’s publishing world apparently takes more than that. It requires the ability to change with the times.

But (my inner Jane Austen retorts), the long-dead Agatha Christie is still selling like hot cakes. True. And so is the Bible. But until your name becomes a household word, you’re going to have to offer something that sets you apart from what every other writer is offering. To quote one agent I recently heard speak at a writers conference, “Please, do not send me even one more vampire novel.”

Which brings us back to the need for change. The Chinese even generated a book on the subject. The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is purported to have been written over five thousand years ago. Change, irony intended, is here to stay.

What’s a writer to do? Besides not throwing in the towel, one way to keep up is to embrace current publishing reality and make shifts in one’s own writing style.

Basics do still count. Never really good with grammar, syntax, or modifier placement? Go to owl.english.purdue.edu/owl for Purdue University’s free online writing lab. Audit a continuing education class in creative writing. Join a writing organization (such as SouthWest Writers) and connect with the published and as yet unpublished. Join a critique group. Subscribe to writing magazines or E-zines to remain current on what’s happening in publications. Enter contests.

And every How-To now sitting in my bookcase includes a section on the importance of making time to write. Some successful writers commit to writing a specific number of pages daily, while others suggest setting aside certain hours of each day to do nothing but write. Either choice is apparently not as important as is the consistency with which one practices it. Pick whatever fits your lifestyle, and stick with it.

And according to Stephen King, one of the most important things for writers to do is read. Read at the doctor’s office, read while waiting for a flight, read in the john. Mr. King says stuffing our heads with the works of others, besides giving insight into what’s selling, will feed our creativity and help shape our styles. Reading someone else’s work energizes our own.

Science tells us black holes are not the empty spaces they appear to be. They are so dense and their pull so powerful, even light cannot escape. Stephen Hawking says black holes slowly give off bits of radiation until they explode in a supernova of energy. They aren’t just sitting in the void, waiting for Godot. They’re working toward a goal, absorbing stray stars, planets, and cosmic trash. They’re changing, getting ready to become something else entirely. Revising themselves.

So, I’m off to Barnes & Noble, where I plan to gorge myself on anything that looks interesting. I’ve decided to embrace my Writer Fatigue and make it work for me. You’re welcome to come along. A latte, soft chair, and an endless supply of the hottest-selling reading material seem to be in order. Onward.

Olive Balla, author of suspense novel An Arm and a Leg, is mother of 3, grandmother to 13, great-grandmother of 4, a retired educator, and part-time professional musician. Having been everything from secretary at a used car dealership, a university student, and a high school Spanish teacher, Balla states her characters are, in part, amalgamations of people she’s met. Living with her husband Victor in the Albuquerque area, she spends her spare time in a small woodworking shop designing and building everything from breadboxes and wine racks, to a porch bench. Visit her website at omballa.com.

This article was originally published in the July 2013 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

Riding a New Roller Coaster

Posted on December 16, 2015 by

rose headshot 5 What can I say? This is my first attempt to do anything at all with a blog on a website. I’ve always wanted to, but haven’t had the time to learn. Suddenly I find I’ve accepted the challenge to learn how to make this work. My biggest fear is hitting the wrong button and screwing up entirely

Writing a blog is the easy part, just putting words down about whatever is on my mind. Whether someone wants to read it or not kind of depends on whether or not they find you amusing, droll, informative, deep, creative or just plain nuts.

This is made very difficult because I am wearing my old glasses—the ones that don’t work really well anymore. The “new” ones developed a scratch so they are back at the optical shop getting the lenses replaced. Whenever you change spectacles you go through an adjustment period where the floor looks slanted or things are not as in focus as you are accustomed to. With this old pair my left eye can see the computer screen just fine but the right eye reminds me of the aftereffects of a New Year’s eve party—fuzzy and colorful. So as I sit here I am typing with one eye closed.

But if I want to relax for a moment I close the left eye and open the right one and look at the Christmas lights…glowy balls dancing across the dark background. How fun!

I did not get glasses until I was about 12 years old—neither my parents or I realized that I was legally blind…I made do pretty well and was the bookish sort anyway. I could see really well 2 inches from my nose. Then the nun who taught 7th grade called Mom and raised hell because I told her I could not see the blackboard from the back of the room. The eye doctor confirmed I had 700/20 vision. About a week later Dad drove up in the old tan station wagon with the fake wood siding. I ran down the hill in front of our house and he handed me the glasses.

To this day thrills expand my soul outwards when I remember putting them on for the first time. I could see individual blades of grass…while standing up! I could see leaves on the trees way over in the neighbor’s yard! That night for the first time I saw that there were hundreds of stars in the sky, not just a few blurry white spots. Wow.

Of course, I had already fallen deeply in love with the written word by that time, something that has never changed even though I could now see what other people wrote about. So I write.

And now I blog.

And now I get to figure out how to make these words appear on a screen for you to see. As my old friend Bob used to say, “It’s a piss poor day when you don’t learn something new.”

The Writing Life: Basic Principles from Dear Abby

Posted on December 15, 2015 by

by Sherri Burr

In a “Dear Abby” column appearing in local newspapers on September 10, 2013, the famed advice columnist received this query:

…I’m wondering if there is a basic principle you abide by in order to help guide you when giving advice. ~ Curious Reader

She responded:

I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose it’s something like this: Show up for work ready to put forth my best effort. Be honest enough to admit that not everyone agrees with me or that I’m sometimes wrong. Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Don’t pull any punches, don’t preach and always try to be succinct.

Reading her response, it occurred to me this advice applies to the writing life.

First, writers need to work in a disciplined manner at a home office or designated area. Phil Jackson, a retired jockey who penned the memoir On a Fast Track, writes from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. during the week in his home office. Western author Melody Groves, a retired school teacher, writes Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. When Groves taught, she wrote between 4:45 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. She views writing as a job to be taken seriously, as if paid hourly.

Others who have full-time jobs may write in the mornings before the rest of their home crew awakes, or in the evening after their family sleeps. As a university professor, Kathy Kitts wrote nonfiction from 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. and fiction from 11:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Personally, I write in 90-minute blocks throughout the day. I read a New York Times article that praised the virtues of taking breaks after each 90-minute session.

Whenever you choose to write, show up, ready to put fingers to keyboard, pen to paper, or voice into a device of your choice.

Doing your best may vary from day to day. Sometimes, you arrive at your designated writing space with ideas flowing and ready to produce. Other times, your mental processes struggle. For those moments, consider playing Mozart, Vivaldi, or other music in the background or through your ear buds to stimulate your brain. In his book The Mozart Effect, Don Campbell extolled the ability of music to stimulate creativity. He subtitled his work “Tapping the power of music to heal the body, strengthen the mind, and unlock the creative spirit.”

Dear Abby’s next piece of advice admonishes to be honest enough to admit not everyone agrees with you or you’re sometimes wrong. This is important when seeking feedback from critique groups. Not everyone is going to consider that the words you put on paper proclaim you to be the next Shakespeare. It’s important for writers to be open to receiving criticism and admit editing is necessary.

When Dear Abby wrote, “Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” she was quoting the oath administered to witnesses in legal proceedings.

This oath applies whether writers pen nonfiction or fiction. With nonfiction, because the reader expects the words to be true, the author should so deliver. Memoirists who shade the truth to make their stories more dramatic have been immensely criticized, and publishers have sometimes pulled their work from the market. With fiction there must be truth in the emotions of the characters, even if the words are products of an author’s imagination.

Years ago, I took a Dramatic Writing course at the University of New Mexico with famed professor Digby Wolfe who had written for Laugh In. An important exercise called “Truth or Fiction” required each student to write and stage a short play for class. Then the audience had to guess whether it was truth or fiction. Wolfe urged his students to produce both their nonfiction and fiction with emotional richness.

Dear Abby’s final point is: don’t pull punches, don’t preach, and always try to be succinct. For writers, the first maxim relates to not softening the emotional blows of your words. Let the characters go for broke, no matter how hard the story may be for the reader to consume. If told effectively, the reader will obtain the moral without needing to be preached its ethical underpinnings. Being succinct requires not wasting words. For example, Melody Groves is fond of eliminating the word “that” from work she critiques. She finds “that” often unnecessary and once the writer thinks about it, he or she agrees.

To summarize, writers must show up to produce their best work. Be honest, be succinct, and don’t pull punches or preach.

Sherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.

This article was originally published in the December 2013 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

An Interview with Author Keith Pyeatt, Part 1

Posted on December 10, 2015 by

Keith Pyeatt is an engineer turned novelist who writes paranormal thrillers with a psychological twist that he calls “horror with heart.” Living for ten years in an isolated cabin in Vermont may have influenced his choice of genre, but his empathetic nature is what helps him create a variety of characters — “likeable, despicable, tortured, and those ‘gray’ characters you can’t quite decide whether to love or hate.” Keith has four published standalone novels including Struck, Dark Knowledge, and Above Haldis Notch, with Daeva (October, 2015) being his most recent. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook, and his website KeithPyeatt.com.

What is your elevator pitch for Daeva?
Daeva pits supernatural manipulation against human devotion when a powerful demon with a grudge against mankind stands ready to gain access to the world.

What sparked the initial story idea for the book?
My working title was Imagination, and my plan was to write a novel that showed how a strong paranormal influence would change different characters over the years. I decided a young boy would receive what appeared to be a great gift: a friendly entity who lived inside the boy’s mind and could grant him the power to make things happen. The boy accesses the power by using his imagination, which is fun and exhilarating at first, but the “gift” is actually a demon with his own agenda. The storyline expanded quickly as I wrote the first draft and developed the different characters’ motivations. The initial idea that sparked the novel is still there, but it became a launching point for a much more intricate plot.

Tell us about your main protagonist, his flaws and strengths, and the hurdles he tries to overcome.
Chris was raised to host a demon in his head, an upbringing which gave him some interesting personality defects. He’s inherently a good guy, and his sister Sharon helps pull out his best side, but he keeps many secrets and doesn’t allow anyone to get too close, partly out of need, partly out of habit. Unfortunately for Chris, even a lifelong commitment to being fair and strong can become a character flaw when a demon knows your every thought, desire, and need. And this particular demon has thousands of years of experience manipulating men, and he can dangle a mighty big carrot in front of his host to help lead him astray.

Why did you decide to use the particular setting(s) you chose?
For the macro-settings, Connecticut gave me elements I needed for a general location, and the time period seemed to take care of itself. I went into the past to set up a history for the daeva and moved forward from there. About three-quarters of the novel takes place in late 1992 and early 1993.

The micro-settings were really the key to creating atmosphere in Daeva. Minnie’s cabin in the woods gave me a combination of beauty and eeriness as well as the atmosphere of cold isolation and loneliness that I needed in Part 1. Rowena’s cluttered little house became the next important setting. It helped create the right atmosphere while characters frantically worked to piece together information and plot a course of action. A rural wooden bridge spanning a stream added an atmosphere of danger and mystery to the ending.

Of the four novels you’ve published, which one did you enjoy writing the most? Who is your favorite character?
I liked editing Daeva the most (good thing!), but I enjoyed writing the first draft of Dark Knowledge the most. It just poured out of me, and it showed me how fun it is to create complicated and engaging “gray characters,” the ones you can’t quite hate and can’t quite love. Lydia is my favorite character in that novel, and if there ever was a gray character, it’s her. She comes across as completely despicable initially, and she definitely enjoys her evil moments throughout, but there’s more to her than is shown in those early chapters. A great joy I have is when someone finishes reading the novel and tells me, almost reluctantly (as if they expect me to be disappointed) that they don’t hate Lydia. A little voice inside me yells WooHoo!

What is your writing routine like? What is your writing process like?
I write in long stretches. Ideally, I like to write every day, but sometimes reality interferes with creating fiction. My process is to start by creating some primary characters and a rough outline (with an ending). I write a first draft that’s loose and sloppy. It will wander. There will be repetition, inconsistencies, time frame problems, and gaping plot holes. There will be a huge number of typos, weak sentences, clichés, and vague notes like “fill in details” or “modify motive” or “fix time frame.” Sometimes I back up and change something to keep the first draft moving toward the ending (or revised ending) I have in my head, but I try to keep moving forward. I keep notes as I write so I’ll have an outline of what I actually wrote that’ll be more accurate than the outline of what I had planned to write.

I always edit novels start to finish, then I begin again. First edits are slow, with a lot of fresh writing and rewriting and deleting chunks of text. Successive edits tighten things up, and after several edits, they start going faster, which is important to get a good feel for the novel as a reader. I keep editing until I’m happy. Then I go away for a while, come back, and find myself shocked with the number of new things I find to fix and old problems that still need attention. When I can leave the novel alone for a while, come back, and still feel good about it, I’m getting near the end. Only a few dozen more edits to go. *smile*

If you suffer from writer’s block, how do you break through?
I’m of the mindset that you don’t wait for inspiration; you go after it…with a club. When writing a first draft, I generally muscle through a “block.” I’m not afraid to write something I’ll later delete or rewrite. It’s important to me to keep the process going, and I’ll usually stumble onto something that works if I keep hammering away. In editing, if I just can’t seem to make a paragraph or section flow and convey what I want, I’ll take a break for a few hours to workout, run, hike, play with the dogs, read, or do some project around the house.

What advice do you have for beginning or discouraged writers?
Write what you enjoy writing (which is probably what you enjoy reading), even if it’s not currently a hot-selling genre.

To learn more about Keith and his writing, including what he’s working on now, go to Part 2 of “An Interview with Author Keith Pyeatt” on klwagoner.com.

An Interview with Author Irene Blea

Posted on November 26, 2015 by

Dr. Irene Blea is a native New Mexican with a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Colorado-Boulder and is the author of three novels, seven university text books, four poetry chapbooks, and over thirty academic articles. She developed and taught Mexican American Studies for twenty-seven years before retiring in 1998. In May 2009 she was recognized by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) of New Mexico for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement. Daughters of the West Mesa (ABQ Press, 2015) is her third novel. You can find Dr. Blea on LinkedIn, Facebook and her website IreneBlea.com.

What is your elevator pitch for Daughters of the West Mesa?
Daughters of the West Mesa is a work of fiction based on a true story of the discovery of 11 female remains, and an unborn fetus, west of Albuquerque. I fictionalized a single mother of two daughters; one of them has been missing for several months.

What do you hope readers will take away from it?
My goal is to humanize the impact of this serial killing on the families and the community from which the murdered women emerged.

Tell us about your main protagonist.
Dora is a single mother of two daughters who has struggled to negotiate out of poverty, while experiencing racism, sexism, family and religious resistance, and the embarrassment of having her daughter addicted and missing.

Did this work pose any unique challenges for you?
This work took me to some dark places in the lives of the murdered women, their families, the communities, and myself. At no time was I fearful, but I frequently was out of my comfort zone when I drove the dark streets were sex workers work at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m., and when I attended biker functions in biker bars.

What was the most difficult aspect of writing this book? The most satisfying?
The most difficult aspect was the pain of the mothers, fathers, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, and community. It was widespread. The most satisfying is that these hurting people were able to vocalize their experiences to me.

What kind of research did you do for the book?
I conducted a literature review on serial killers, especially those committing matricide. I read newspapers and Internet accounts of America’s unsolved serial killer mysteries, and visited the 100-acre dumping site a few times. I also attended indigenous prayer rituals, victim’s funerals and public information sessions that became rallies and protest sessions, toured the crime laboratory and interviewed victim’s family members and talked with Spanish-speaking media persons from Univision. I’ve kept a journal since 1979 and documented my experience.

Tell us more about putting together Daughters of the West Mesa.
It took two years to complete from beginning to end. This was one of those novels that demanded to be written. I wanted to write my third Suzanna novel, but Daughters of the West Mesa kept gnawing at me. In the editing process, we struggled through which Spanish words to italicize. It is difficult to accept that no matter how many times I edit my material, how many times two or three other persons read and commented on it, there were still errors and minor inconsistencies that needed to be addressed.

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
Justice. The message in Daughters of the West Mesa is that the murdered women were not the only persons victimized. Those related to them suffered shame and disappointment, and felt victimized by legal and media representatives constantly referring to their loved one as drug addicted and prostitutes. This is a complex cultural issue that affected the community. I felt it needed a voice. In addition I did not want the case to go cold. It is important to keep it alive and find the perpetrator.

When did you know you were a writer?
I was born into a storytelling family, into a tradition that is Native American and northern New Mexico, mountain, Hispanic. At the age of seven I entered the public school system, learned to speak English, and fell in love with the magic of writing and reading. I did not like summer vacation from school. As a graduate student I wrote three different term papers for three graduate seminars. Thus, I am now aware of systematically, gradually, becoming a writer; there was no one pivotal moment.

Who are your favorite authors, and what do you admire most about their writing?
I enjoy the clarity and creativity of the magic realism of Central, South American and Spanish writers. Juan Rulfo and Pablo Neruda’s poetry is grounded and dynamic in such a forceful manner. Carlos Fuentes, Isabel Allende’s magical realism is intriguing and spiritual. Of course, what is not to love about the storytelling genius of the Nobel Prize winner, Miguel García Márquez. In addition, I admire the revolutionary nature of the highly influential work of Federico García Lorca.

How has your work as a poet influenced your fiction writing?
My love of language and code switching in ways that touch the heart and stir the soul is always there. I strive to be my most poetic self when I write about the land, the moon, the sun and the sky. I want the world to love and recognize all their relations: those that walk, crawl, swim, and fly.

What can fiction writers learn from nonfiction writers? From poets?
The truth is filtered through the storyteller’s lens, and that is their truth.

What is the greatest tool in your writer’s arsenal?
Being bilingual and tri-cultural, a Spanish-English speaking Native American that struggles to speak Italian.

Looking back to the beginning of your writing career, what do you know now that you wish you’d known then?
I wish I had known to write earlier in my life. I wish I had known to start young to write what I know as my truth with no concern about whether the work is commercial or not.

What is the best encouragement or advice you’ve received in your writing journey?
Write. Write what you know and research what you don’t.

What are you working on now?
I’m writing the third novel in the Suzanna series, untitled at this point (Suzanna was published in 2009, Poor People’s Flowers in 2014). The most difficult thing for me to write is titles. I cannot make up a title. It has to come from life; the life of my characters or my life. Thus, at this time I fail to have a title for the third Suzanna novel, but I have written five chapters.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Yes, the person next to you has a story to tell, and it is most likely unlike yours.