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An Interview with Author Lucy St. Clair

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Author Lucy St. Clair is a healthcare professional whose long-time dream of becoming a writer began with an early passion for reading. Her love of the science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal genres was sparked by the discovery of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn. Lucy’s debut novel, Scattered Years: A Paranormal Adventure Across Time (2016), is the first in the Time Passages trilogy. You can find her on her website at LucyStClair.com.

scattered-years200What is your elevator pitch for Scattered Years?
Scattered Years is a paranormal time-travel adventure based on Tibetan Buddhist practice. Alice is a latent psychic whose abilities she explains away to herself. She lives a normal life until tragedy strikes and she sinks into a deep depression. A chance encounter with Buddhism soothes her spirit, but also awakens her psychic abilities, culminating in a deep meditative state that takes her back twelve years. She re-emerges in an energy vortex near Sedona, Arizona with a chance to avert the death of a loved one.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
This is my first full-length novel, so it was also my training ground for learning the ins-and-outs of both writing and publishing. It was my first experience with a writers critique group, which was invaluable. Now it’s my impetus for learning about websites and book signings. When you are new to the craft of writing, every step of the process is a learning challenge.

How did the book come together?
The death of a child in my family really brought home to me how soul-searing and traumatic that experience can be. Anyone who has lost someone so young understands the desire to undo time and reclaim that young life at any cost. The story itself took about two years to write (I have a day job, too!). Editing took a lot longer, mainly because of a combination of work, health issues, and learning how to use editing programs. Unlike many younger authors, I am not computer literate.

Tell us about your main characters. Did they surprise you as you wrote their story?
The protagonist of the story is Alice. The growing awareness of her psychic abilities takes her by storm, and she often feels like she’s just keeping her head above water. Her inner strength and moral compass keep her going as she deals with the unbelievable. Naomi is very down-to-earth and no-nonsense. She takes Alice in and gently nudges her along on her quest. In this first novel, Naomi remains a mystery. Book 2 of the trilogy will reveal more about her and why she elects to support Alice. Martin is Alice’s love interest. While he plays a smaller role, he is important to this first book and the trilogy as a whole. He’s a solid stand-up guy, a former marine turned cop. He’s also very sexy, and he has his own dark past.

As for the second part of the question, I was often surprised by the characters and the unfolding of events. I know it sounds crazy, but they drove the story. Sometimes I felt like I was just the recorder of events.

Do you have a favorite quote from the book?
It’s hard to choose just one, but this is one of my favorites: “We all work within the confines of our nature until we evolve beyond them.” (You’ll find it on page 306.)

Any surprising discoveries while doing research for Scattered Years?
A few minor ones. I didn’t know there was actually a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery near Sedona, Arizona until I started researching the Sedona area. My critique group buddies (two of them are lawyers) helped me with legal details that I wasn’t familiar with.

What first inspired you to become a writer?
I can clearly remember sitting in front of the huge glass-front bookcase at my grandmother’s house when I was around 4 years old. I looked at all those books and realized that every story, every world, every exotic place and time, could be mine if only I knew how to read. It was the most exciting idea my 4-year-old brain could conceive of. As I became a more and more avid reader, I began to consider writing. It’s taken me many decades to realize that dream.

Who are your favorite authors, and what do you admire most about their writing?
I love Peter Beagle’s blend of fantastic and mundane, as well as his humor. Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman always have me in stitches. Katherine Kurtz has great characters and a seamless consistency to her worlds. I also love Stephen Donaldson’s tortured anti-hero (Thomas Covenant) and his versatile multitude of styles. And of course, Stephen King is a master storyteller whose characters are unbelievably well developed.

Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you started your publishing career today?
I would have started sooner, for one thing! I would also have found a critique group, and figured out the whole networking thing, a lot earlier in my process.

Why do you write in the particular genre you’ve chosen?
I love paranormal/fantasy/science fiction for the freedom to construct any world you can envision and the discipline to remain consistent in how you maintain that world. It allows me to communicate the essence of my story in ways that can have a deeper impact due to the richness of their environs.

What’s your writing routine like?
Not nearly as disciplined as I’d like it to be. I recently made sweeping changes to how my “day job” and lifestyle are structured, and I’m still sorting out how that is going to work. I’d like to settle into a solid routine, because I feel it is such an invaluable tool for accomplishing anything. It’s a work in progress right now.

If you suffer from writer’s block, how do you break through?
Sometimes I have to just write any old thing that pops into my head. Sometimes I walk away from the computer and tend my little garden. Other times, clearing my head with meditation really shifts my perspective, and I suddenly stumble over a missing piece that moves the story along.

What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write?
Love scenes, without a doubt. I’ve read so many poorly written love scenes that are either so graphic that they sound clinical, or so laden with flowery euphemisms that they sound silly and sophomoric. In Scattered Years I tried hard to strike a balance and let the emotion of the encounter shine through the physical connection. Also, my writers’ group at the time was composed of me and three men, all young enough to be my sons. I cringed every time I handed them those scenes to critique. They, however, assured me they didn’t mind at all!

What advice do you have for writers still striving for publication?
The best thing I did for my book was to get a competent editor. Trust me, you won’t see your mistakes after you’ve read through it a dozen times. I know I sound like a broken record (does anyone even know what that means anymore?), but a critique group of honest, working writers is unbelievably precious. Writers associations like SouthWest Writers are a wealth of encouragement and information. It’s also very important to write every day: writer Vicky Petterssen nailed it when she told me, “Butt in the chair, rinse and repeat!”

Do you have other creative outlets besides writing?
I love growing things (I grew up on a farm) so my tiny garden gives me the joy of watching that happen. I love music and take voice lessons, which is a great expressive outlet, and I try to take every opportunity to put my camera to good use.

What are you working on now?
My second book in the Time Passages trilogy is in the rewrite and edit process, and the third is in the planning stages. I have a short story I’m shopping around, and I’m working with a virtual assistant to get my website up and running. I’m also hoping that Scattered Years will be available in electronic format soon.

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 Joyce Trainor

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Author Joyce Trainor writes and weaves, and loves on her grandchildren and 92-year-old mother, from her home in northern New Mexico. Joyce didn’t start out to be an author, but an encounter with a homeless man sparked the story idea that became her first book, No Handbook for the Homeless: A Novel (Sunstone Press, 2015).

nohandbookforthehomeless200What is your elevator pitch for No Handbook for the Homeless: A Novel?
A middle-class woman, overcome by debt caused by a drunk-driving accident, loses everything and everyone except her deceased son’s Belgian Shepard. The two must learn to survive among the homeless as she slowly rebuilds her life.

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
I want readers to gain a new perspective when they see a homeless person, one filled with empathy—there but for the grace of God go I. I also want those who read the book to think it was time well spent.

Tell us a little about your main characters. Did they surprise you as you wrote their story?
Aileen, the narrator, is an ordinary person who finds herself in extraordinary circumstances. She is both mystified and terrified by what is happening. The other major characters, Wizard, Cesar, Father Rico, and Billy Dean all developed as I wrote the story. Occasionally, I wrote a scene, read it back, and decided it was something that would never have happened with that character—and it was back to the keyboard. Wizard especially was looking over my shoulder to make sure I got it right, and believe me he is opinionated. Billy Dean was pure fun. Everything about him still makes me laugh. And then there is Peanuts. His picture is on the cover. A lot of my readers became emotionally attached to him. They expressed more concern for the dog than Aileen.

How did No Handbook for the Homeless: A Novel come together?
I have to begin by saying the book is not autobiographical. I am blessed with a wonderful home, family, good friends, and neighbors. But it’s based on things I’ve observed in the world around me. The story began as one of those “I wonder” moments. My husband and I were stopped at an intersection and a homeless man was panhandling. He held up a sign to about every third car, but he was agitated, walking in circles, talking to himself and trying to cope. For the next few weeks he stayed in my mind. I wondered who he was and how his circumstances led him to that street corner. I wondered what my life would be like if I found myself without a home. It took a few more months before I wrote my first chapter, which I later moved to the middle of the book. From there the book took off. I wrote a chapter at a time, not always in chronological order. It took two years to write and rewrite the book and another year to find a publisher. I received dozens of rejections before Sunstone Press picked it up. I’m inexperienced when it comes to the business end of books and publishing. I was lucky to have a mentor, Santa Fe author Robert Mayer. He was generous with his advice.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
I needed to make the situations believable but also respect the reader. That is, I wanted the reader to feel an emotional connection with Aileen without betraying her thoughts. Some of the chapters were incredibly hard to write and rewrite. For example, the Christmas Eve and Christmas morning scene at the motel, I wanted to engage the reader without being overly sentimental. I paid a lot of attention to the details that set the scene, the little things, like spirals of snow in the stairwell.

Why did you choose New Mexico as the setting for the novel?
It’s a New Mexico story, but it could easily have been set in another state except for the weather. The weather is a key element in the story and helps drive the plot. You have to remember the impact weather has on the homeless. If it rains or snows or winds are thirty miles an hour, the person on the corner has no place of refuge. Most shelters are only open part of the year, and only at night. The people who stay there have to be up and outside early in the morning no matter what.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing the book?
Once the book was published and people started to read it, I got a tremendous amount of feedback from readers who told me it changed their way of thinking. They do things they never would have before, like buy an extra hamburger and give it to the man or woman standing on the corner.

What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write?
There are a number of deaths in the book. They were emotionally draining for me. I cried with my characters. I knew what was about to happen but couldn’t bring myself to write it down. I would write around it until I was in a mindset that allowed me to finish the chapter.

Who are your favorite authors, and what do you admire most about their writing?
I love good storytelling. Tony Hillerman, Barbara Kingsolver, James Lee Burke, John Grisham come to mind immediately. I appreciate the way they use setting to drive the plot and characters and the way they engage all five senses.

Do you have other creative outlets besides writing?
I weave. I have two Rio Grande walking looms at home, and I love the feel of the wool as I weave. It’s gratifying to see the design develop from tiny threads set in just the right place. I find it very meditative. I do some of my best writing while weaving a rug.

What are you working on now?
I’m in the rewrite stage for another novel, Code Name Simpson. It’s a spy story set during World War II. It’s loosely based on my mother’s experience as a WAC assigned to a secretarial pool in Germany during the waning days of the war. Times being what they were, she was called upon to serve in a classified capacity. I may decide to self-publish this one because Mom is about to turn ninety-two, and I want her to be able to read it. If I wait to find a publisher, and then get it into print, that may never happen. I can’t wait to apply what I learn from SWW’s Self-Publishing Conference in October.

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 Joseph Badal

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Author Joseph Badal’s passion for writing was seeded in the tales his father told in which Joe and his siblings were the heroes. In addition to ten novels, Joe has published dozens of articles and short stories, and writes a column for his blog focusing on an Everyday Hero each month. His newest book, The Motive (Suspense Publishing, 2016), is the first in a trilogy that deals with human trafficking. You can find him on his website at JosephBadalBooks.com, his Amazon author page, and his SouthWest Writers’ author page.

themotive200What is your elevator pitch for The Motive?
When Doctor Matt Curtis flies from Albuquerque to Honolulu to bury his sister—a supposed suicide—he unearths reasons to question the coroner’s findings into his sister’s death. His search for the truth leads him into the dark and dangerous world of police corruption, human trafficking, and drug smuggling.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
The Motive is based upon actual events that happened to a friend of mine and to his sister. I wanted to keep the storyline true to those events but, at the same time, inject enough fiction into the story to make it more attractive to the reader. Also, because the book includes a great deal of activity that revolves around human trafficking and drug smuggling, I needed to do significant amounts of research into both those topics.

What sparked the initial story idea for the book?
Friends often approach me with ideas for a book, but 99% of the time the ideas are less than stimulating. In this case, when a friend told me what happened to his sister in Hawaii, I was immediately enthused about the topic. In fact, when he mentioned the actual events to me while at a dinner party, it was all I could do not to get up and leave the party. I couldn’t wait to get home to begin writing.

Tell us a little about your main character. Did he surprise you as you wrote the story?
Matthew Curtis is an Albuquerque orthopedic surgeon in his early fifties. He is a hard-working, everyday kind of guy who lost his wife to cancer and is estranged from his two adopted sons. Although he served in Special Forces as a young man, there is nothing dramatic or heroic about his current existence. When he learns his sister’s death has been ruled a suicide, he initially accepts the ruling and is anxious to settle her affairs and return to New Mexico. But as he begins to suspect that his sister might have been murdered, he slowly changes. How Matt changed throughout the book was a surprise to me. He goes from being reluctant about digging up the real cause of his sister’s death to being an active and heroic participant in dealing with vicious criminals and corrupt officials.

Why did you decide to use the particular setting you chose?
As I mentioned already, the idea for this story came from a real-life story told to me by a friend. Actual events occurred in Hawaii, so it was a natural step in writing the book to place it in the Hawaiian Islands. I did extensive research into the demographics of Hawaii and into crime in Honolulu. I patterned my characters after people I’ve known and after actual Hawaiian criminals.

Was there anything surprising you discovered while doing research for this book?
I would have to say the biggest surprise for me was how angry I became while researching and writing The Motive. The more I dug into the topic of human trafficking, the angrier and more disgusted I became. I was shocked at how pervasive the crime of trafficking has become, and how commonly it occurs in the United States. I had always thought this was a crime committed by foreigners against foreigners, in foreign lands. I was mistaken. As a result of my research, I vowed to write more about this subject and have now converted The Motive from a stand-alone thriller to the first book in a three-book series titled Cycle of Violence. The subsequent two books in the series are tentatively titled Obsessed and Final Justice.

Evil DeedsYou’ve written five thrillers in the Danforth Saga and two mysteries in the Lassiter/Martinez Case Files (one to be released in November 2016). What are the challenges of writing a series?
The biggest challenges in writing a series are keeping your main characters fresh for the reader and allowing your characters to continue to grow with each subsequent book in the series.

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 early on that writing isn’t just about putting a good story on paper. A story must follow certain rules and must be “mechanically” well-structured.

What is your writing routine like?
I write every day, except during the 2-3 week periods before and after a book is released. I find myself so immersed in marketing and promotion around a new release that finding time to write is difficult. Although I have worked on two books at a time in the past, I try to avoid doing that today. I usually focus on one project at a time so that I can give that project my full attention.

BorderlineDo you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
I try to avoid proselytizing and topics such as religion and partisan politics, although I do tend to denigrate politicians, in general. But the one item that comes through in all of my books is that my main characters are everyday people. They are never superheroes who leap tall buildings in a single bound. I want my readers to see themselves in my characters.

What are you working on now?
I am currently writing the 6th book in the Danforth Saga. It is tentatively titled Sins of the Fathers. I am also finishing the final edit of Dark Angel, the second book in the Lassiter/Martinez Case Files series, which will be released in November.

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 Juana Chavez

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Juana Chavez believes “every tale should have some shared experience so the reader can leave the book…contented and well fed.” A copywriter and former teacher, Juana lives in New Mexico with her husband in the quiet of an empty nest and posts a weekly Bible study on her blog. Her debut novel, Thirty-Seven: Four, was published by WestBow Press (2015). You can find her on Facebook, JuanarChavez.blogspot.com, and her Amazon author page.

ThirtySeven_Four200What is your elevator pitch for Thirty-Seven: Four?
Facing the terminal diagnosis of one of their own, four friends decide to take the Psalms 37:4 challenge and go after their hearts’ desires. In the process, God uncovers their hearts, leads them over obstacles, and reveals what they truly delight themselves in.

When readers turn the last page, what do you hope they take away from it?
Ultimately, it is God we should be delighting in, and then we will find what the desire of our heart is really all about. Also, that what we all desire is to be loved and appreciated, and God does love and appreciate us and shows us how much by the unique giftings He has given each of us to use for His Kingdom.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
I wrote this book almost a decade ago when my best friend was battling breast cancer. She was the inspiration for one of the characters. I set the book aside and put it with my other unpublished works. A couple of years back my daughter told me it was time to get one published, so I decided, “Why not?” I looked through them, and this one really touched me. It was so hard to relive the loss of my best friend, and yet I felt it was time to take this novel that she had been such a part of and really make it happen—for my friend and for me, to walk the talk I’d written about. I had to go back and rewrite, which was hard to do because I cried a lot! Memories of talking it through with her were so vivid. It was tough to do it without her.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing it?
Finishing it! To actually be able to say I wrote a book was a great feeling. I’m glad I did it, but it was like giving birth. It’s a painful process, but when it’s out it’s out, and I’m so glad the book is in the world.

How did the book come about?
I sought to be a writer for many years. I attended writers’ conferences, subscribed to writers’ magazines, bought all the books, read all the journals, and graduated Summa cum Laude with my degree in creative writing. I wrote numerous novels…all unpublished. Alas, what inspired me to write this book? My kid said, “Mom, just do it yourself! Go pick one and self-publish. Make it happen!” So I picked a novel close to my heart that I felt was marketable, would touch other people’s hearts, and told a good story. I had written it eight years earlier, took about seven months to rewrite it and get it through the publication process and, voila, Thirty-Seven: Four was born.

Tell us about your main characters.
I tell my friends this is a chick book. It’s about five women in a Bible study. My main character is named Raquel Duran, called Raqui. Her heart’s desire is to be the great American novelist. Sound familiar? She is this biker chick type, who also went to college for writing. Her mother, Laura, has always wanted to be a worship leader, but at 50 years old she fears she has waited too long. Then there is Jenna who longs for the bright lights of the stage, or is it the adoration of men she is really searching for? Sydney, the leader of the study, inspires everyone in the group (through her battle with cancer) to go in search of their heart’s desire. Her own desire is to be lovely one last time, and perhaps be the belle of the ball. Last to join the group is Stephanie, an ex-con who dreams of becoming a part of society like everyone else, and regaining what she’s lost. These are regular women most women can relate to from everyday lives.

Why did you decide to use the settings you chose?
I wanted to make it as real to life as possible so my readers would want to employ the lessons learned to their own lives. I made the settings every day, relatable settings. The main character is a housewife, her husband is a mechanic. These are blue-collar people living middle-class lives in a neighborhood that could be anywhere in America. I wanted people to see themselves in the book and to feel like they know these people.

Is there a scene in your book you’d love to see play out in a movie?
There is a scene in which Jenna is performing in A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream that would be very entertaining and comical to see in a movie. There is also a store scene that would be fun to watch in a theater. There are also scenes some readers have told me touched their hearts and would be perfect for the big screen. Sometimes people say they can see who the characters are, like my daughter telling me Jack is Tim McGraw, and one of my former students saying, “No, Jeremy Renner, definitely Jeremy Renner.” All along I picture composite people, not actual people for my characters.

Do you prefer the creating or editing aspect of writing?
I like every aspect of the writing process. I love writing on the creative side. When I first started I was arrogant enough to think that was all there was to it. I was like, “voila, masterpiece!” Now I realize I have to step away from things and say, “Okay, already, enough!” I can actually overwrite things. I’m my own worse critic and a great editor. Just looking at this interview answer, I could rewrite it a million times—really. My grammar alone is enough to drive me nuts. I have worked that out by becoming a copywriter, so I can go mad on someone else’s dime.

What is your writing routine like? What is your writing process like?
I write every day, as often as I can, which is hours a day. I write blogs. I write for work. I write emails to find work. I write bids for work. I write job applications. I write stories because I want to escape looking for work. I write! My process is to think, and then write it down, and then go back, read over it, edit it, and then read over it again, and then repeat as many times as is applicable.

If you had an unlimited budget, how would you spend your money for marketing and promotion of your books?
If I had an unlimited budget for marketing, I would put together a team of professionals who would do the work for me that I don’t know how to do. First I’d hire someone to build the platform for me before I wrote a word of the book. Then I’d hire a social media guru to get the word out about the book so everyone was all a “Twitter” about it (pun intended). I’d hire bloggers to be blogging about it, talkers to be talking about it, and pinners to be pinning it! Then I’d write my book, have it edited, release it, and then—like the latest in the Marvel series—there’d be people lining up to get my book! Amazon would actually be sold out! Waiting lists would actually exist! In other words, I’d do it by hiring the professionals, not scammers, and not a publishing team that has 200 other clients to promote as well.

What are you working on now?
My focus has shifted to my blogging for the time being. I write a women’s Bible study blog that is doing amazingly well. I’ve been really blessed to see the response to it. It’s on Facebook on my book page (or you can go directly to it at JuanarChavez.blogspot.com). It’s called The Study. I’m the one who does the investing in it, but it’s cheaper than self-publishing a book. The blog site is free, but the boosting for the site is anywhere from $3 to $20. I get around 1500 likes per week on the post. I know it’s probably not the blog post itself. It’s probably the verse and the picture I put up, but it’s still the Word of God going forth and that’s worth it. And people are reading my blog because my stats have been over 3000 hits on the actual posts themselves in the last few months. It’s been worth the investment to get God’s word out. I’ve thought about putting out a Bible study book, but I don’t want to charge for the study. God’s word should be free for all who want to hear it. So I keep putting it out there, cranking away, and praying that my stories, my novels, will someday be blessed—but more importantly, that my work for Him will matter more in the light of eternity.

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 Betsy James

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Betsy James is the author and/or illustrator of over a dozen books and stories for adults, young adults, and children. Her latest book, Roadsouls (Aqueduct, 2016), “explores the power of art and creativity for transforming not only one’s own life but also the world one lives in.” You can find Betsy on her websites at ListeningAtTheGate.com and BetsyJames.com, as well as her Amazon author page.

RoadsoulsWhat is your elevator pitch for Roadsouls?
We’ve all had moments when our lives felt so intolerable that we wanted to scream, “Get me out of here!” What if that silent cry were answered? (Be careful what you wish for.)

When readers turn the last page of the book, what do you hope they will take away from it?
I am sometimes asked this about short stories, but those have a more limited focus. In the case of a multilayered novel, I really can’t predict readers’ reactions. Different readers will identify with different characters, for different reasons; that’s part of what makes longer writing interesting.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
The biggest was that the main characters, Raím and Duuni, hated each other at first. They were like those black and white Scotty-dog magnets: pushed together, they leapt apart instantly and as far as they could. It’s hard to further the plot when the protagonists are snarling in opposite corners!

Tell us about your main characters, Raím and Duuni.
Raím: I have no clue where he came from, but a tall, red-haired, blind weaver has been banging around in my subconscious since I was a teenager. He is a secondary character in an earlier novel, Dark Heart, and wouldn’t shut up until he got his own book. Duuni came stepping out of the shadows to stand as immovable object to his irresistible force. She is up to the task.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing the book?
Writing the book. That isn’t a smart aleck answer. No one would stick it out through the monster process of a long, difficult book unless getting it done right, or at least as well as one knows how to, were not at least marginally more rewarding than not doing it.

What societies/cultures/history influenced the building of your world in Roadsouls?
Three, basically: the European folklore I grew up with; Zuni Pueblo, where I have taught, off and on, for many years; and European gypsy culture in the Thirties, as recounted in Jan Yoors’ book, The Gypsies. Perhaps also my time in Mexico, and hiking the deserts of New Mexico.

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 Melody Groves

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Author and ex-gunfighter Melody Groves weaves her passion for the Old West into her writing. Her articles have been published in numerous magazines including American Cowboy, Wild West, True West, and New Mexico Magazine. She’s also the author of three nonfiction books and four novels in the Colton Brothers Saga series. Her newest historical western novel, She Was Sheriff (Five Star Publishing, 2016), introduces a set of likeable characters her readers will love to cheer on. You can find Melody on her website at MelodyGroves.net and her Amazon author page.

What is your elevator pitch for She was Sheriff?
All she ever wanted was a gold band. Instead, all she got was a tin star.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
Not being from northern California, writing the terrain was tough. In 2014, I toured the area. I also did that when I researched Kansas for Kansas Bleeds (the fourth book in the Colton Brothers Saga).

Tell us about your main character and why readers will connect with her.
Maud is the lead character who is challenged to do (1) things she’s never done before and (2) things 1872 society frowned upon—especially for a woman. I hope readers connect because she’s breaking societal barriers as well as her own perceived limits.

What makes this novel unique in the historical western market?
At a recent Western Writers of American convention, my novel was held up as an example of the up and coming “strong female protagonist” Western! My publisher has a new line of novels called “Women Frontier Fiction” and I’m proud to be one of the first. Westerns are no longer typical “shoot ‘em ups”—although that’s my favorite kind.

Did you discover anything interesting while doing research for this book?
I do tons of research for all my novels and that era was fascinating in that the world was changing so quickly. We think of our 21st century as spinning—well, the West had the train, telegraph, East coast fashions, and thousands of immigrants from all over the world that spun their lives. People moved from place to place trying to make a living, trying to find the proverbial pot of gold. It was a relatively transient society full of various characters and in many instances, very little law.

Tell us more about She Was Sheriff: what sparked the initial story idea, how long it took to write, etc.
 I have no idea where the story came from other than I have a t-shirt with a woman on a horse and the title is She Was Sheriff (there are no copyright laws on titles). My imagination kept spinning a story that, piece by piece, came together. The book itself took most of a year to write, then a couple of months of editing and rewriting. After a tad bit of final rewriting, selling it to my publisher wasn’t hard.

What is it about the Old West that keeps you writing in that world?
I love the Old West. It was a time of lawlessness, but also a time where people re-established themselves. They became someone they wanted to be. That still goes on today. The West is a magical, open, awe-inspiring place. I was born here and have always loved it.

How did your gunfighting re-enactment affect your writing?
 For ten years I walked the streets of Old Town and other places, shooting good guys, bad guys, and sheriffs. I’m quite comfortable using my .22 Ruger, being shot, and shooting as a group. We performed in the O.K. Corral (a true Mecca for re-enactors), and I swear I was back in 1881. I use the experiences (and remembered bruises) in my writing. In re-enacting, the bullets may be fake, but the adrenalin is real.

BorderAmbush150You’ve written four novels in the Colton Brothers Saga. What are the challenges to writing a series? Do your protagonists still surprise you as you write their stories?
Series are hard to keep fresh. Thankfully, turns out there are four Colton brothers, so they’re always getting in trouble or making bad decisions—singularly or together. Hopefully, they stay fresh that way. My protagonists surprise me all the time. It’s truly fun to let them “do their thing” by not putting restrictions on their character. As their creator, I may have one thing in mind, then they turn around and do the opposite. Just like your own children!

What are your strengths as a writer, and what do you do to overcome your weaknesses?
I do pretty good dialogue, but then again, it’s my characters talking. I just write down what they say. I’m fairly good at reversals—when the reader thinks one thing will happen then it changes. As for weaknesses, women’s roles are hard for me to write, but I’m hoping I learned from She Was Sheriff. I’m not crazy about women in traditional Westerns, so I don’t give them big parts.

You have a knack for writing distinct characters, both heroes we love and villains we love to hate. What process do you use to develop your characters?
Developing characters is an ongoing writing exercise. When coming up with new characters, I find ones who have flaws, which make them interesting. I spend a lot of time thinking about people I know, then choose something from them. Or at times, I simply sit and watch strangers. I see terrific body types and then add characteristics—kind of like Frankenstein.

What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write, and what do you do to get over this hurdle?
The hardest scenes to write are fights or cattle stampedes. There are so many moving parts (literally), I find keeping them all in my mind’s eye difficult. So, I do two things—use pieces of “stuff” to place my characters on my desk. I’ll use a pencil eraser, a marble or whatever is handy and march them around like kids do with little tin soldiers. It looks silly, but logistically, it works well. The other thing I do is watch movies/TV shows with fights or stampedes. Those always inspire me.

Looking back to the beginning of your writing career, what do you know now that you wish you’d known then?
Isn’t that the million dollar question? If I could go back, I’d become a journalist instead of an educator. The most successful writers I know started in newspapers. I wouldn’t spend my time in the classroom, I’d be out hunting stories and writing my own. I recommend to younger writers to take as many journalism classes as possible and get a job in that field. I guarantee they’ll be great writers sooner than those of us who started later in life.

SonoranRage150What’s the best encouragement or advice you’ve received on your writing journey?
Best advice—“trust your reader.” At first I didn’t understand, but it means your reader is smarter than you think. Give them the information once, and they’ve got it. No need to remind them time and time again. In my band, the keyboard player one day said “trust your bandmate,” meaning assume he’s doing what he’s supposed to do—to the best of his ability. Readers are the same way. Just trust them.

Best other advice—choose what’s the most interesting. At the end of my book Sonoran Rage, it was a toss-up if James’ (the main character) fiancé would be waiting for him when he returned from being captured by Cochise. What everyone wanted, including me, was to have her there and fall into his bruised arms. But that’s what was expected. So, the more interesting choice was—no, she’d moved on (in all fairness, she thought he was dead). That opened up the future plotline that developed into several novels.

What are you working on now? Will we see Maud, Seth, and Pokey from She Was Sheriff again?
I’ll be starting book 7 of the Colton Brothers Saga as well as intense research for a book based on my Irish ancestors who immigrated to New Orleans during the potato famine. It’s a true Western, too, as they came to an unknown land to re-invent themselves. Maud, Seth, and Pokey are trying to find a story I’d like to write. While I’m working on the other two books, I’ll let these three characters play.

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 and Poet Jeanne Shannon, Part 2

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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.

Summoning2

What inspired you to create Summoning?
I wanted to publish a “collected poems.” The poems in this book have been published in journals and in my chapbooks over the course of decades, and I wanted to gather them into one volume. But it turns out that this is just “Volume One” of my collected works, for I have enough poems for another book the size of Summoning that I hope to publish in a year or two.

How did you choose the poems/prose to include in this book?
I divided the book into sections organized around themes that I most often write about, such as the natural world (“Honey Locust”) and memories of childhood and meditations on mortality (“Summoning”), and chose poems that would fit into those themes. I tried to include only the poems that I consider to be my best work. No pieces were written specifically for this book. I wrote a first draft of one of the poems as long ago as 1955, and the rest of the poems date from the early 1980’s to around 2010.

What was the most rewarding aspect of putting Summoning together?
Knowing that I had complete control over the content of the book—it would be exactly what I wanted to give to the world. Because it was self-published, there would be no editor or other person trying to put their imprint on my work by telling me what to include or what to leave out or what to change. I take full responsibility for whatever shortcomings the collection may have.

Should a reader have to work to understand a poem?
No. Reading poetry should be a pleasure, not a classroom exercise in which a hard-and-fast meaning has to be identified. I think the idea of having to figure out what a poem means has caused many people to avoid reading poetry. Poetry can have its own logic, which doesn’t always match ordinary, “logical” logic. Archibald MacLeish said it best, “A poem should not mean, but be.” Learning to read differently—to listen for the music of the language, for example, as I did in the case of T.S. Eliot (see part one of the interview)—will free the reader from the notion that we always have to know exactly what the poet had in mind in writing the poem. As Eliot himself said, “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”

What do poorly written poems have in common?
That’s a big subject, but I think that too much focus on the ego of the poet is a common failing. Too many first-person pronouns. That is, instead of focusing on the subject of the poem (the view from the top of a mountain, for instance) the focus is often on the “I” of the poem. The spotlight is on the poet—“Look at me, how perceptive I am to see what I’m seeing down below”—rather than on the scene itself.

Another common failing is what Steve Kowit calls “sentimentality and emotional slither.” That is, vague and generic declarations of emotions without providing scenes and concrete images that convey those emotions that let the reader experience the emotions rather than simply hearing a boring recitation of what the emotions are.

Then there’s the dull prose that’s broken into lines to look like poetry. Dull prose is still dull prose, no matter what it looks like on the page. And there are gimmicks to make the poem look more interesting than it is; centering every line is one example. Occasionally that can be effective, but it can easily be overdone and call too much attention to itself.

What do well-written poems have in common?
♦ Charged, compressed language: words selected for conciseness and clarity and for their emotive quality.
♦ Musical elements such as rhyme (if it is used well and not just cobbled together for the sake of rhyming), meter and repetition.
♦ Intensity of detail (concrete rather than abstract).
♦ Simile, metaphor, and sometimes symbolism.
♦ Vivid and fresh imagery (images that appeal to the senses—all or most of the senses, not just the visual).
♦ Euphony—a pleasing combination of words. Poets must think about how they want something to sound as well as the thought they want to convey.
♦ Effective use of line breaks and stanza breaks.
♦ If it is a narrative poem, attention to the narrative arc and the scenes just as in fiction.

Poetry may well be the art of the unsayable. Poet Marie Howe defines poetry as “a cup of language to hold what can’t be said.” The best poetry is “the language beneath the language.” Any poem that can be completely paraphrased is not a poem, but simply versified or emotive prose.

Readers who want to learn more about what makes a poem work or fail to work can find few better sources of information than Steve Kowit’s In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop (Tilbury House Publishers, 1995).

In part one of the interview you told us about your favorite poets. Who are your favorite fiction authors, and what do you admire most about their writing?
Paula McLain (The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun) comes to mind, because her prose is often vivid and lyrical and she tells compelling stories. Lydia Davis for, among other things, her flash fiction that is like nobody else’s. (She has been characterized as “one of the most original minds in American fiction today.”) Carole Maso for her unique novels and her willingness to “break every rule.” Kate Braverman, especially for her novel Palm Latitudes that seems like a long poem in prose. Ron Hansen for Mariette in Ecstasy. James Salter for A Sport and a Pastime and everything else by him that I’ve read. Truman Capote for Other Voices, Other Rooms and some of his short stories. F. Scott Fitzgerald for The Great Gatsby. Lee Smith, especially for her novel Fair and Tender Ladies. She writes about the South where she and I grew up (about fifty miles from each other), and is the author I most want to emulate when writing fiction set in the Appalachian South. And always, always, Eudora Welty, especially for The Golden Apples. What all these authors have in common is language that burns with intensity and is perfect for its purpose.

What are you working on now?
Short fiction (I recently finished one short story and am working on another one) and a novel that is a blend of memoir and fiction.

For the first part of this interview, go to An Interview with Author and Poet Jeanne Shannon, Part 1.

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 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.



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