The SinC Mystery Writer’s Workshop is taught by five published authors who will inform you on the flesh and bones of mystery writing (developing characters, setting the scene of the crime and trends in murder) and how to create a killer plot! You will be able to mingle with the following authors during the lunch hour book signing:
Dana Haynes is the author of three mysteries and has a thriller coming out in July!
April Henry knows how to kill you in two-dozen ways. Her latest book, co-written with FOX-TV’s Lis Wiehl, was on the New York Times bestseller list!
Deborah Donnelly is the creator of Carnegie Kincaid, bridal consultant and amateur sleuth who stars in the Wedding Planner Mysteries from Bantam Dell!
Carola Dunn is the author of over 50 novels and 20 mysteries!
Rob Lovell is a Journalism professor turned mystery writer who writes the Thomas Martindale series!
WHEN: September 19th, 9 am - 3:50 pm
WHERE: Portland Community College (Portland, Oregon); Campus: Sylvania Room: CT 212
WHO: Contact Sarah Hodapp for more info: 503-731-6642
COST: $29 for class; $40 for fees (fees include lunch and honorariums )
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Article by BILL KIRTON - The POV Police (aka PP)
Of course we have to have rules, codes of conduct, contracts and all those other things that make sharing a planet/society/leisure pursuit/whatever possible. But if rules are applied inflexibly, they stifle individuality and suppress progress.
There are some contributors to writers’ groups who succumb to apoplexy when they see an adverb. They’ve read Elmore Leonard’s excellent (but tongue in cheek) ten rules of writing and made them their religion. (Mind you, if you want to make a religion of any sets of rules, his are one of the best to choose.) So anyway, your prose has to be stripped of adverbs, adjectives, descriptions and what Leonard identifies as ‘writing’. Which is, of course, an absurd stance to take and light years from what he intended.
But to my mind, the worst offenders are those who’ve been schooled in Point Of View techniques. They use pejorative expressions such as ‘head-hopping’ to highlight the ‘errors’ of authors who move from one character’s POV to that of another. Whenever they spot a ‘head-hop’, they get an adrenaline rush, grab the offending sentence and become incapable of reading what’s actually happening in the text. All they see is the ‘rule’ and where it’s being broken. The implication seems to be that once you, as omniscient author, have slunk into the skull of – say – your heroine, you have to stay there. The fact that your hero is gazing at her with the flames of his passion searing his soul and the most exquisite expressions of love ever fashioned by man ricocheting around his head must be ignored.
Garbage.
Of course, if you’re so cavalier about it that the reader doesn’t know whether the thoughts she’s reading are those of the heroine or her pet salamander, the PP have a point. But using one character’s thoughts as counterpoint to another’s can create terrific effects. You can achieve such effects partly through dialogue but when you not only hear a character’s words but know the impulse that provoked them and their intended effect, they’re so much more subtle and potentially powerful.
As I said at the outset, we need rules. But when it comes to writing, we should learn them, understand them and then use or ignore them in the spirit in which they were conceived, i.e. to make the writing more palatable and enjoyable for the reader. The only POV rule worth respecting is the one that says the reader mustn’t be uncertain about whose thoughts she’s sharing.
(And now I’ll slink away and wait for the hammering on my novels at the dead of night from one of their crack hit squads of stylists and grammarians.)
There are some contributors to writers’ groups who succumb to apoplexy when they see an adverb. They’ve read Elmore Leonard’s excellent (but tongue in cheek) ten rules of writing and made them their religion. (Mind you, if you want to make a religion of any sets of rules, his are one of the best to choose.) So anyway, your prose has to be stripped of adverbs, adjectives, descriptions and what Leonard identifies as ‘writing’. Which is, of course, an absurd stance to take and light years from what he intended.
But to my mind, the worst offenders are those who’ve been schooled in Point Of View techniques. They use pejorative expressions such as ‘head-hopping’ to highlight the ‘errors’ of authors who move from one character’s POV to that of another. Whenever they spot a ‘head-hop’, they get an adrenaline rush, grab the offending sentence and become incapable of reading what’s actually happening in the text. All they see is the ‘rule’ and where it’s being broken. The implication seems to be that once you, as omniscient author, have slunk into the skull of – say – your heroine, you have to stay there. The fact that your hero is gazing at her with the flames of his passion searing his soul and the most exquisite expressions of love ever fashioned by man ricocheting around his head must be ignored.
Garbage.
Of course, if you’re so cavalier about it that the reader doesn’t know whether the thoughts she’s reading are those of the heroine or her pet salamander, the PP have a point. But using one character’s thoughts as counterpoint to another’s can create terrific effects. You can achieve such effects partly through dialogue but when you not only hear a character’s words but know the impulse that provoked them and their intended effect, they’re so much more subtle and potentially powerful.
As I said at the outset, we need rules. But when it comes to writing, we should learn them, understand them and then use or ignore them in the spirit in which they were conceived, i.e. to make the writing more palatable and enjoyable for the reader. The only POV rule worth respecting is the one that says the reader mustn’t be uncertain about whose thoughts she’s sharing.
(And now I’ll slink away and wait for the hammering on my novels at the dead of night from one of their crack hit squads of stylists and grammarians.)
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Author Interview with BILL KIRTON
Bill Kirton is not only a prolific and accomplished author, he's a very funny man. We met serendipitously online and, since he lives in Scotland and I live in Montana, USA, we've never met. He is always accessible via his terrific blog, however, and I never pass up the opportunity to "chat" with him. You'll understand why after reading his interview!
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You’ve written in a number of genres--mystery fiction, short stories, radio plays, children’s stories, and non-fiction, to name a few. What’s your favorite thing to write, and why?
Let’s get the boring bit of the answer out of the way at the start. I actually just love writing almost anything. Even the commercial stuff I do always poses some challenge which it’s fun trying to meet. But that’s sort of dodging the question, so I’ll try to sketch what I get from each and maybe then I’ll be able to answer you.
Non-fiction would come bottom of the list. I enjoy it, but there are more constraints than with fiction. Depending on what it is, you need to do lots of research and make sure you don’t distort the facts. It’s still good when you find the right expression, the right rhythms in your prose, but there’s not the freedom, the loss of self that happens with fiction.
Children’s stories are a joy because you know the readers will accept almost anything you offer them. I’m not suggesting they’re not critical or that they’ll tolerate rubbish, but they’re more willing to join you in flights of fancy, weird associations, narratives that climb way beyond ‘reality.’ So when I’m writing for them, I feel very free. Children are very sophisticated readers.
Radio plays are fascinating and even though I’ve written several, I’m still learning about the genre. My last one featured a blind woman. I wrote it partly because it occurred to me that there are lots of blind listeners for whom the radio is (for obvious reasons) the preferred medium. But it was only when I was at rehearsals at the BBC that the script posed a couple of problems. The director said to me, ‘D’you realize how difficult it is to convey blindness on radio?’ I’m ashamed to say the question had never occurred to me.
But the intensity of writing something which relies entirely on dialogue is very absorbing. You enter a world of disembodied voices. They may describe the things around them but mostly it’s the directness of their interactions that creates the drama. Difficult to imagine a medium which focuses more tightly on people. It really puts you in touch with your characters. In fact, my initial reaction to the question was that radio drama was what I enjoyed writing most but I think, on balance, that it has to be the fiction – both short stories and novels, with perhaps a slight leaning towards the short story.
Let’s get the boring bit of the answer out of the way at the start. I actually just love writing almost anything. Even the commercial stuff I do always poses some challenge which it’s fun trying to meet. But that’s sort of dodging the question, so I’ll try to sketch what I get from each and maybe then I’ll be able to answer you.
Non-fiction would come bottom of the list. I enjoy it, but there are more constraints than with fiction. Depending on what it is, you need to do lots of research and make sure you don’t distort the facts. It’s still good when you find the right expression, the right rhythms in your prose, but there’s not the freedom, the loss of self that happens with fiction.
Children’s stories are a joy because you know the readers will accept almost anything you offer them. I’m not suggesting they’re not critical or that they’ll tolerate rubbish, but they’re more willing to join you in flights of fancy, weird associations, narratives that climb way beyond ‘reality.’ So when I’m writing for them, I feel very free. Children are very sophisticated readers.
Radio plays are fascinating and even though I’ve written several, I’m still learning about the genre. My last one featured a blind woman. I wrote it partly because it occurred to me that there are lots of blind listeners for whom the radio is (for obvious reasons) the preferred medium. But it was only when I was at rehearsals at the BBC that the script posed a couple of problems. The director said to me, ‘D’you realize how difficult it is to convey blindness on radio?’ I’m ashamed to say the question had never occurred to me.
But the intensity of writing something which relies entirely on dialogue is very absorbing. You enter a world of disembodied voices. They may describe the things around them but mostly it’s the directness of their interactions that creates the drama. Difficult to imagine a medium which focuses more tightly on people. It really puts you in touch with your characters. In fact, my initial reaction to the question was that radio drama was what I enjoyed writing most but I think, on balance, that it has to be the fiction – both short stories and novels, with perhaps a slight leaning towards the short story.
With a novel, you set a coherent, self-contained ‘reality’ in motion then, every time you sit at the computer, you reopen that world and step into it amongst familiar people, whose impulses and motives you know far better than you know even your close friends and family. Some people think of it as an escape from reality. On the contrary, I think it’s a more intense experience of how people are, of the forces that mould, liberate, constrict them. My characters are constantly teaching me things.
With a series, when the same characters return in book after book, that experience extends even further. When I finish a book, even if I then go off and do other things for a while, as soon as I start the next in the series, it’s as if I’m coming home to a group of acquaintances who’ve just been waiting there for me.
But maybe in the end, the short story has it, simply because of its completeness. In a novel, you have time and space to explore themes, test opposing arguments and, as long as you don’t bore or lose the reader, more or less indulge yourself. The short story demands a tighter discipline and a lighter touch. It’s a small, self-contained world, with a coherent structure and a logical resolution, and yet it carries resonances that spread way beyond its apparent scope. It leaves the reader wanting more. When it works, it’s the perfect reading experience.
How long have you been writing? Do you have a schedule, like X number of pages or words per day?
I’ve always written. Recent clear-outs unearthed stuff I’d written as a kid: complete plays which covered maybe 3 or 4 pages, silly stories and things which I actually remember enjoying writing – parodies of famous speeches or poems (‘To smoke or not to smoke’, Masefield’s ‘Cargoes’ except my version had dogs rather than ships). So writing was just something I did. I suppose the first real attempts to write things which others might read or see were the early radio plays. I still have copies and some of them are rather embarrassing, but the BBC in those days was a great patron of writers, even nobodies such as me. They’d return scripts but always find something positive to say about them – praising the dialogue, the humor, the characterization, etc. And the effect of that was to convince you that you did have some sort of talent, so you tried again. And, eventually it paid off. And I learned new things from each play of mine that was broadcast or performed.
I don’t have a schedule. As with almost everything in life, I prefer unpredictability. The cliché is ‘the dead hand of routine.’ I have my routines, my working methods, but I don’t set targets. All I can say is that once I’m into a work and the characters have begun to form, I spend lots of time in their company. I watch them, listen to them, and write down what they do and say, and it’s often so enthralling that I’m unaware of the passage of time. My usual writing day is about 9 to 5.30ish with a very short lunch break, but some of the time’s spent answering emails, writing my blog, and generally finding more and more displacement activities. When the juices are flowing, I sometimes write until I’m just too tired to go on. But it rarely feels like work. That search for the right word or turn of phrase is always absorbing.
Who is your favorite author and why do you like his/her work?
That is such a hard question to answer. In classical terms it has to be Flaubert. He was so meticulous in his quest for ‘le mot juste’ and the more you read him, the more you find, not just in the characters and the events but also in the gaps between them. He has a way of making imagery an essential part of understanding his books. There’s so much going on, even in his simpler sentences.
In modern terms, William Boyd makes it all seem effortless, but perhaps the achievements and variations of David Mitchell make him the one I admire the most. His Cloud Atlas is an experimental novel. Yes, I know – as soon as I hear such an expression, I want to run away, but that book is an amazing succession of layers which unfold, then wrap back around one another and just keep you hooked. It’s like four or five books in one – not in terms of length but structure, themes, people. But there are others – ‘literary’ and genre writers (although I don’t subscribe to that distinction) – who keep me deep in their books. If it’s true that the present generation are losing the reading habit, I think their lives will be immeasurably poorer for it. For me, nothing compares with the intimacy and commitment you feel when you’re reading a great story. It’s just you and that reality.
You were born in England but lived most of your life in Scotland. Any comments or thoughts about how mystery/crime novels are different on opposite sides of the Atlantic?
I actually wrote a wee article about that. It’s at http://mysteriouspeople.blogspot.com/2009/02/does-atlantic-make-difference.html. It’s interesting that one of the top thriller writers in the USA now is a Brit, Lee Child. It’s extraordinary because he’s obviously researched the language and the places so well that he seems ultra-American. But usually, even though the USA and the UK share genres – police-based, private investigators, one-off thrillers, humorous mysteries – the differences are there. I don’t know of a British writer who’s mastered the killing one-liner style of Chandler but over there you have plenty who are his heirs, such as Robert B. Parker and Janet Evanovich. On the other hand, I don’t know an American who’s combined the gentility and underlying horror of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, but there are some who vie with her over here, such as Frances Fyfield and Minette Walters.
It’s obviously a cultural thing because on both sides of the Atlantic there are great examples of mysteries set in small towns with their typical claustrophobia; it’s just that the claustrophobia has different national characteristics. Scotland has a very strong mystery presence nowadays – Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Denise Mina, and many others. Sherlock Holmes was quintessentially English, but his creator was born in Edinburgh.
What is the title of your most recently published book? Briefly tell us what it’s about and let us know where we can buy it.
My latest book is The Darkness. It’s been many years in the making and has gone through several, very different drafts, with personnel changing and the emphasis shifting between the extremes of the law and justice, revenge and compassion. Usually, vigilante behavior is associated with a perhaps crazed individual. In this case, even though it’s extreme, it’s perpetrated by a good, caring doctor, whose days are spent helping patients but whose evenings are filled with very different pursuits. The problem is that the policeman investigating the various cases finds that he’s in favor of what’s happening. It’s a whodunit and a whydunnit. It’s available from the main online outlets and can be ordered from bookstores or from the publishers at youwriteonbookorders@googlemail.com.
What are you working on now and when/where do you expect it to be available?
I have two more in my police procedural series written but I intend to rewrite them to develop themes begun in The Darkness. After that, I’ll write what will be the last in my series. I know the plot and structure of it already and its conclusion will be even darker than that of The Darkness. I have a historical crime novel, The Figurehead, being published later this year and I’m just starting to research a sequel to it. It’s set in Aberdeen in 1840. And there are always short stories and little jokey parodies to be written. Oh, and I have a comic crime novel I’ve rewritten recently and it would be nice to get that in print. Only problem is, humor’s a variable concept and things I find funny may be indigestible to agents or publishers. As for their availability, The Figurehead will be out in the next couple of months, but for the rest, well, that’s in the hands of the publishers and the market.
Writers, especially new writers, are always looking for tips and helpful information. What is the single most important “tip” you can give to a new writer?
I’m always happy to discuss things with others and try to encourage people to write. But a single tip? Well, I suppose it would be ‘Trust your own voice.’ People sometimes get inhibited because they think they don’t have the posh words or the vocabulary that’s needed. But if the urge to tell a story’s there, tell it. In your own words. I have an American friend who’s had a few traumatic experiences. I encouraged her to write some of them down. She was dismissive, said she couldn’t, said she wasn’t educated enough, etc. I pushed and she’s now written several pieces which are simple, direct and very, very powerful. She doesn’t go in for fancy metaphors and such but the sincerity and the naturalness of the narrative achieves effects that professionals would have to work hard to replicate.
Do you find that writer’s groups and online networking has helped your writing career?
You have a way of asking seemingly simple questions which, in fact, call for long consideration. Networking has certainly helped. There’s no doubt that, amongst all the dross on Facebook, Twitter, and so on, there are interesting postings. I find that, if I mention a new blog, the hits go up significantly. Whether that translates into readers I don’t yet know, but it certainly makes contacts and opens up avenues I wouldn’t otherwise have known about.
Writers’ groups are helpful in a different way. I’m active in four (I think) and belong to some others, but rarely contribute to them. A lot of the exchanges take the form of ‘I’ve got a new book out,’ but even then there’s a comradeship and shared experiences that are very refreshing. I’ve actually made very good friends through them. And there’s always the fact that writing is such a strange, solitary pursuit. It helps to know that others are doing it and they seem to be perfectly normal people.
What are your thoughts about the future of eBooks?
With no real experience of reading one yet, I just have to go with what I hear. It seems that they’re really catching on in the USA. For the moment, they’re still relatively rare over here. There’s little doubt, though, that they’re a real force. I’m old-fashioned in that I like the feel of a book as an object. When I received the first copy of my first published novel, I carried it about like a newborn. I still reckon it’s the nearest a man can come to having a baby (although obviously not nearly as painful and with none of the downsides of colic, night feeding, nappies/diapers, and the rest). The non-fiction book I co-wrote, Just Write, is now apparently available in e-book form and The Figurehead will appear as e-book, e-serial, and paperback. I think when the prices of e-readers start dropping, more and more people will choose them. And I’d support any technology which kept making reading available.
Here’s your opportunity to tell us anything else you care to share.
Well first, thank you for inviting me here, and just that it’s a privilege to be doing this job. Self-promotion is part of it but the point I always try to make is that writers get their talent from some genetic accident or other and I consider myself lucky to have been dealt this particular hand.
What are the addresses of your website(s) and blog(s):
http://www.bill-kirton.co.uk/
http://livingwritingandotherstuff.blogspot.com/
Friday, September 4, 2009
Marketing: Carolina Conspiracy style
A couple dozen writers in North and South Carolina formed a group to help them market their books and earn them the attention they well deserve.Click here to be directed to my article on Examiner.com to learn about who they are, what they're doing, how it's working, and where to find them.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Author Interview with TERRY L. WHITE
Terry L. White is an author, songwriter, and former journalist. She was born in the Mohawk Valley of New York, grew up in the Appalachian Mountains, and currently lives in Maryland. Her novel, Last Priestess, was nominated for an EPPIE award.
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Who is the one person who most encouraged or influenced you to be a writer—and why?
My grandfather. I found a high school essay in his wallet when he passed. That was twenty years after I wrote the description of our pasture as part of some English test. It seemed like a message from beyond the grave. My grandfather always liked to talk about books and wrote a couple of novels while I was a teen. I can still see him with that manual typewriter, his hands all crippled up from arthritis, pecking away.
That impressed me. Who would have thought that a person one knew could write a book! I don’t think he was published, but I remember seeing him working and I read the manuscripts.
I could read when I was a little kid, maybe three years old. My grandmother set type at a book factory and she found a book club for kids back in the 50s and bought a subscription for me. I looked forward to those books in the mail, but I read all the books the adults brought into the house as well. I read all the books I could find everywhere I went. All the magic in the world was in books.
How long have you been writing? In what genres do you write?
Gosh, I have been writing a long time, probably since my first husband took my books to the dump in 1969. I about died of grief, and eventually left that relationship. I didn’t mind being poor, but that was like putting out my eyes. Writing my feelings down helped me get through that awful time.
I didn’t quite get it that the villains I read about in books were going to pop up in real life!
I have tried writing a lot of genres, but my favorite is historical fiction. I have the notion that people have always acted like people, but I find the logistics of living in other times fascinating. I have cooked over a campfire, but that was for fun. Trying to describe the process of cooking in a fireplace is a whole other thing. I earned a degree in American Studies from Skidmore College in my mid-40s and worked for an antique dealer, sometimes handling the very props that I later used in my stories. Old things talk to me, so when I pick up a Dutch oven and see it weighs over 20 pounds with the lid on, I can’t help but think how much more fit our grandmothers had to be than we are today with all the technology at our fingertips.
Women have always had to really toil to take care of their families. There have always been hard times and evil people who take advantage of others. Sometimes I think I channel the historicals I write. They come in a great rush and I have all I can do to get them down in a file--you notice I wanted to say ‘get them down on paper ‘. I’m showing my age with that one! When I read my novels later, I am often surprised at all the detail. “Who wrote this?” is my favorite question. So historical fiction is my favorite.
If I had to choose another favorite genre, the second would be poetry. I have published a book of long poetry called Runaway Hearts, also set on the Eastern Shore. The book is in three sections, one of which chronicles the life of the slave Harriet Tubman who worked the Underground Railroad, stealing as many as 300 enslaved workers and family members from plantations on the Eastern Shore. Born near Cambridge, Harriet, a contemporary of the African American statesman Frederick Douglass, is a larger than life character who surely deserves mention in the history of the area.
Runaway Hearts was recently read on Radio For the Blind. I am really excited about this particular recognition and am truly grateful for Don Banning of New Orleans for all of his efforts to see my work read on the air.
Who is your favorite author and why do you like his/her work?
Stephen King, followed closely by Robert McCammon. I know. I like to read books that deal with the deepest of human emotions at odds with quirky circumstance. Stephen King lets you look at the monster in the closet and live! McCammon writes in a similar vein, but his work came before King’s. Both craft wonderful characters. I don’t often read historicals. It is so easy to pick up another writer’s tone and turn of phrase and think it is your own. My ‘musician’s ear’ is just as active with written language as it ever was when I was a working musician. I just don’t want to be seen in the position of ‘borrowing’ something from another writer’s work.
I admire Dickens; he did a lot to bring the plight of common man into the mass consciousness. People followed his serialized stories with bated breath and wanted to see the poor kid live and prosper. His was a pure genius that influences us even today. (Have you seen the recent movie August Rush? Robin Williams made the perfect Fagin in the story of an orphan who is really a musical genius.) Dickens rocks!
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a writer?
The biggest challenge I have faced as a writer is to be noticed. One can write. I have 15 books and several others in various stages of completion, but I have not figured out how to break out of the pack. Everyone is literate these days. Everyone has a computer. Most anyone can self-publish, and some people put out truly awful stuff. There are millions of writers and wannabes in the field.
I have been writing a long time and once burned a three-inch stack of rejection letters. Those letters represented a lot of lunch money back in the day when you had to send return postage with your manuscript. I did the apprenticeship, took the classes, and paid the dues, but I feel like I am still in writer’s limbo. There are days when I feel really disappointed that I have not been noticed as a writer, and other days when I am very proud of all I have accomplished.
P.S. I am so grateful to the web hosts and sites that will post interviews or reviews of my books. Thank you, Linda!
What is the title of your most recently published book? Briefly tell us what it’s about and let us know where we can buy it.
My most recently published book was Chesapeake Legacy, second in a series of four historical set on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. (Chesapeake Destiny will soon be in print and Chesapeake Visions is finished.) The series starts with the life of an indentured servant, and all the stories in the series revolve around a mythical plantation known as Baron’s Hope here on the Eastern Shore. The series follows the women of the family through the Civil War. Each woman has a problem to solve.
In Chesapeake Legacy, the heroine is banished from the colony because she has native blood. Chesapeake Destiny follows a woman who survives a brutal husband’s vicious attacks, and Chesapeake Visions is the story of a blind woman who must learn to live without slaves at the end of the Civil War.
My Chesapeake series is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, Kindle, All Romance Ebooks, Mobipocket, Fictionwise and other online sites as print and ebooks. If you are on the Eastern Shore, try the Bay Country Shop on US 50 in Cambridge on the way to Ocean City. Our bookstore closed recently, but my books are available at a number of galleries in the area.
Of special note: all the covers for the Chesapeake Series are by Snow Hill artist Dawn M. Tarr. See more of her work at http://www.dawntarr.com/.
What are you working on now and when/where do you expect it to be available?
I am working on a novel, but don’t usually talk about those books during the construction phase.
I am just editing a book of short stories called Random Apples, and am well along in a new book of poetry called Legends and Lies. I would say I can expect these to be in e-book form in the next year or so. Sometimes I feel like the old lady in the shoe. I can’t remember all the book names, but they all represent a year or more of work. I expect to keep writing as long as I am able. It is my calling and a lifetime commitment.
Writers, especially new writers, are always looking for tips and helpful information. What is the single most important “tip” you can give to a new writer?
Do the work. Read a lot. Write a lot. Keep trying.
Honestly, this is a hard one. I had the opportunity to work at what was probably one of the last daily newspapers on the peninsula. Newspaper reporting is great to keep one focused and to get over the notion one is blocked. As a reporter, one learns the rules of writing--or else. One also learns that a deadline is fixed. You can’t fiddle with it. I think the discipline of being a reporter in any media is probably a most valuable experience a writer can get. I recommend it highly.
What writers organizations claim you as a member? How has membership helped you grow as a writer?
I am not much of a joiner, but I do belong to the International Women’s Writing Guild. I think the most valuable thing I got from the experience of attending and teaching at their summer conference was to keep trying and to believe I could go the distance.
I really think it is more about writing than joining. If your work is really good, it sells. If not, rejection letters tell the tale.
Tell us about your songwriting.
I was involved with string bands for about 20 years. Mostly I played string bass and sang harmony. For myself, it just seemed natural to play my guitar and to write songs that expressed what I was feeling at the time. Isn’t that what music is all about?
One of my friends once said that we all just write just one poem. I think that about sums it up.
Here’s your opportunity to tell us anything else you care to share.
Oh gosh. I think a real writer will write and won’t be able to stop. The publishing industry is in disarray due to the Internet and technological changes. How and what we write is going to change. The dream of being discovered will still stand, but it looks like writers will have to do more and more to publicize their work. Otherwise readers won’t even know we are out here.
However, if just being out there is the objective, there are lots of places to post one’s work. I guess it depends on the person’s priority. You are not likely to get paid for the things you post. If you are meant to do it, just don’t ever stop. So--don’t quit your day job--yet!
What are the addresses of your website(s) and blog(s):
http://terrylwhitesblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.filedby.com/author/terry_l_white/2354485/
http://www.ebooksonthe.net/
My grandfather. I found a high school essay in his wallet when he passed. That was twenty years after I wrote the description of our pasture as part of some English test. It seemed like a message from beyond the grave. My grandfather always liked to talk about books and wrote a couple of novels while I was a teen. I can still see him with that manual typewriter, his hands all crippled up from arthritis, pecking away.
That impressed me. Who would have thought that a person one knew could write a book! I don’t think he was published, but I remember seeing him working and I read the manuscripts.
I could read when I was a little kid, maybe three years old. My grandmother set type at a book factory and she found a book club for kids back in the 50s and bought a subscription for me. I looked forward to those books in the mail, but I read all the books the adults brought into the house as well. I read all the books I could find everywhere I went. All the magic in the world was in books.
How long have you been writing? In what genres do you write?
Gosh, I have been writing a long time, probably since my first husband took my books to the dump in 1969. I about died of grief, and eventually left that relationship. I didn’t mind being poor, but that was like putting out my eyes. Writing my feelings down helped me get through that awful time.
I didn’t quite get it that the villains I read about in books were going to pop up in real life!
I have tried writing a lot of genres, but my favorite is historical fiction. I have the notion that people have always acted like people, but I find the logistics of living in other times fascinating. I have cooked over a campfire, but that was for fun. Trying to describe the process of cooking in a fireplace is a whole other thing. I earned a degree in American Studies from Skidmore College in my mid-40s and worked for an antique dealer, sometimes handling the very props that I later used in my stories. Old things talk to me, so when I pick up a Dutch oven and see it weighs over 20 pounds with the lid on, I can’t help but think how much more fit our grandmothers had to be than we are today with all the technology at our fingertips.
Women have always had to really toil to take care of their families. There have always been hard times and evil people who take advantage of others. Sometimes I think I channel the historicals I write. They come in a great rush and I have all I can do to get them down in a file--you notice I wanted to say ‘get them down on paper ‘. I’m showing my age with that one! When I read my novels later, I am often surprised at all the detail. “Who wrote this?” is my favorite question. So historical fiction is my favorite.
If I had to choose another favorite genre, the second would be poetry. I have published a book of long poetry called Runaway Hearts, also set on the Eastern Shore. The book is in three sections, one of which chronicles the life of the slave Harriet Tubman who worked the Underground Railroad, stealing as many as 300 enslaved workers and family members from plantations on the Eastern Shore. Born near Cambridge, Harriet, a contemporary of the African American statesman Frederick Douglass, is a larger than life character who surely deserves mention in the history of the area.
Runaway Hearts was recently read on Radio For the Blind. I am really excited about this particular recognition and am truly grateful for Don Banning of New Orleans for all of his efforts to see my work read on the air.
Who is your favorite author and why do you like his/her work?
Stephen King, followed closely by Robert McCammon. I know. I like to read books that deal with the deepest of human emotions at odds with quirky circumstance. Stephen King lets you look at the monster in the closet and live! McCammon writes in a similar vein, but his work came before King’s. Both craft wonderful characters. I don’t often read historicals. It is so easy to pick up another writer’s tone and turn of phrase and think it is your own. My ‘musician’s ear’ is just as active with written language as it ever was when I was a working musician. I just don’t want to be seen in the position of ‘borrowing’ something from another writer’s work.
I admire Dickens; he did a lot to bring the plight of common man into the mass consciousness. People followed his serialized stories with bated breath and wanted to see the poor kid live and prosper. His was a pure genius that influences us even today. (Have you seen the recent movie August Rush? Robin Williams made the perfect Fagin in the story of an orphan who is really a musical genius.) Dickens rocks!
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a writer?
The biggest challenge I have faced as a writer is to be noticed. One can write. I have 15 books and several others in various stages of completion, but I have not figured out how to break out of the pack. Everyone is literate these days. Everyone has a computer. Most anyone can self-publish, and some people put out truly awful stuff. There are millions of writers and wannabes in the field.
I have been writing a long time and once burned a three-inch stack of rejection letters. Those letters represented a lot of lunch money back in the day when you had to send return postage with your manuscript. I did the apprenticeship, took the classes, and paid the dues, but I feel like I am still in writer’s limbo. There are days when I feel really disappointed that I have not been noticed as a writer, and other days when I am very proud of all I have accomplished.
P.S. I am so grateful to the web hosts and sites that will post interviews or reviews of my books. Thank you, Linda!
What is the title of your most recently published book? Briefly tell us what it’s about and let us know where we can buy it.
My most recently published book was Chesapeake Legacy, second in a series of four historical set on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. (Chesapeake Destiny will soon be in print and Chesapeake Visions is finished.) The series starts with the life of an indentured servant, and all the stories in the series revolve around a mythical plantation known as Baron’s Hope here on the Eastern Shore. The series follows the women of the family through the Civil War. Each woman has a problem to solve.
In Chesapeake Legacy, the heroine is banished from the colony because she has native blood. Chesapeake Destiny follows a woman who survives a brutal husband’s vicious attacks, and Chesapeake Visions is the story of a blind woman who must learn to live without slaves at the end of the Civil War.
My Chesapeake series is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, Kindle, All Romance Ebooks, Mobipocket, Fictionwise and other online sites as print and ebooks. If you are on the Eastern Shore, try the Bay Country Shop on US 50 in Cambridge on the way to Ocean City. Our bookstore closed recently, but my books are available at a number of galleries in the area.
Of special note: all the covers for the Chesapeake Series are by Snow Hill artist Dawn M. Tarr. See more of her work at http://www.dawntarr.com/.
What are you working on now and when/where do you expect it to be available?
I am working on a novel, but don’t usually talk about those books during the construction phase.
I am just editing a book of short stories called Random Apples, and am well along in a new book of poetry called Legends and Lies. I would say I can expect these to be in e-book form in the next year or so. Sometimes I feel like the old lady in the shoe. I can’t remember all the book names, but they all represent a year or more of work. I expect to keep writing as long as I am able. It is my calling and a lifetime commitment.
Writers, especially new writers, are always looking for tips and helpful information. What is the single most important “tip” you can give to a new writer?
Do the work. Read a lot. Write a lot. Keep trying.
Honestly, this is a hard one. I had the opportunity to work at what was probably one of the last daily newspapers on the peninsula. Newspaper reporting is great to keep one focused and to get over the notion one is blocked. As a reporter, one learns the rules of writing--or else. One also learns that a deadline is fixed. You can’t fiddle with it. I think the discipline of being a reporter in any media is probably a most valuable experience a writer can get. I recommend it highly.
What writers organizations claim you as a member? How has membership helped you grow as a writer?
I am not much of a joiner, but I do belong to the International Women’s Writing Guild. I think the most valuable thing I got from the experience of attending and teaching at their summer conference was to keep trying and to believe I could go the distance.
I really think it is more about writing than joining. If your work is really good, it sells. If not, rejection letters tell the tale.
Tell us about your songwriting.
I was involved with string bands for about 20 years. Mostly I played string bass and sang harmony. For myself, it just seemed natural to play my guitar and to write songs that expressed what I was feeling at the time. Isn’t that what music is all about?
One of my friends once said that we all just write just one poem. I think that about sums it up.
Here’s your opportunity to tell us anything else you care to share.
Oh gosh. I think a real writer will write and won’t be able to stop. The publishing industry is in disarray due to the Internet and technological changes. How and what we write is going to change. The dream of being discovered will still stand, but it looks like writers will have to do more and more to publicize their work. Otherwise readers won’t even know we are out here.
However, if just being out there is the objective, there are lots of places to post one’s work. I guess it depends on the person’s priority. You are not likely to get paid for the things you post. If you are meant to do it, just don’t ever stop. So--don’t quit your day job--yet!
What are the addresses of your website(s) and blog(s):
http://terrylwhitesblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.filedby.com/author/terry_l_white/2354485/
http://www.ebooksonthe.net/
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