My guest today is an author, nature lover and plant ecologist. Her books include memoirs, beautifully illustrated travel books, nature guides, and even children’s books, but they all have strong ties with nature. Her books reveal connections with nature and life that have not been pondered or may have been overlooked in our everyday lives. Her books have won the ForeWord Book of the Year, the Colorado Book Award, and she is a five time recipient of Colorado Author’s League Award. With a background in science and plant ecology, she expertly weaves her natural environment into her writings, illustrating how all things interact and connect. Let me introduce creative nonfiction author, Susan J. Tweit.
Kaye: You are a female author who champions the natural environment. Do you identify most as a feminist, a naturalist or an environmentalist?
Susan: All of the above. I grew up in a family of naturalists and scientists; restoring everyday nature is my way of leaving the world a better place. And I work in two fields where women are still second-class citizens in so many ways: science and writing. So am a feminist just be participating in those fields as a woman.
Kaye: On your website you claim that you taught yourself to write after you realized that you enjoyed the stories told by the data more than you did doing the research. How does one teach oneself to write?
Susan: I don’t know how other people teach themselves to write creatively, but for me, as a scientist trained to eschew personal opinions and emotions, and to be extremely parsimonious with descriptive adverbs and adjectives, I found my writing voice in reading the works of writers whose works I admire. I read Ann Zwinger and Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez and Kim Stafford, Brenda Peterson and Linda Hogan, Leslie Marmon Silko and Denise Chávez, Robert Pyle and Gary Paul Nabhan, Sharman Apt Russell and Barbara Kingsolver, and so many others.
As I read, I thought about the mechanics of how each writer told their stories (whether fiction or essays), how they introduced subjects and characters, where they got personal and where they stepped back, how they described landscape and culture, how they used words and language… I tried out techniques and styles until I found my own voice, which has continued to evolve through twelve books and hundreds of essays, articles, and columns for newspapers and magazines.
Kaye: Connections are a common theme in many of your works. Can you talk a little about those?
Susan: As a plant ecologist, I am fascinated by the relationships and interrelationships that form community, whether the human community, or what I call “the community of the land,” the interwoven communities of species—from tiny microbes to gigantic redwood trees—that make life on Earth possible. Who loves who, who eats who, who sleeps with or pollinates who, who can’t stand who… All of those relationships weave the fabric of Life with a capital L. Without them we would not exist, and we have so much to learn about the connections that are vital to this planet. I just collaborated with science illustrator Samantha Peters on “Natural Partners,” a feature for WILDFLOWER Magazine on plants and the animals they rely on. It’s up on the internet here: https://www.wildflower.org/magazine/fauna/natural-partners (The print version took the cover of the magazine, and it’s really gorgeous!)
Kaye: Writing seems to be a way of life for you, and your love for nature is woven into almost everything you do. You have a background as a plant biologist and most of your books offer a perspective on nature and the environment, and you call your books love letters “to the earth and its living web of lives”. If you could convey one message to your readers, what would it be?
Susan: Get outside and get to know nature nearby. Learn even a handful of your neighbors in the world of plants and animals and you’ll never be bored. Nature is vital to our health and wellbeing—it’s the best antidote to stress I know of, the closest source of inspiration and renewal, and it doesn’t require a prescription or training. And it’s free!
Kaye: Besides writing and ecological restoration projects, what are your favorite things to do?
Susan: I’m an outdoors person, so I love taking long walks in the arroyo near my home, hiking with friends, and setting out on long road trips to see this amazing continent. At home, I tend a small garden of native wildflowers and other plants chosen to provide habitat for songbirds and pollinators, cook elaborate dinners for family and friends, and read. I’m an omnivorous reader, which leads into your next questions…
Kaye: You’ve written three memoirs about your life experiences. What makes an experience worthy to become a memoir?
Susan: Memoir is a way of distilling what our own lives and experiences have to offer others. What makes an experience worthy of memoir is partly whether we can find a way of telling the story that is compelling to others (that is, to a wider audience than our close friends and family!). It might be that we lived through a critical part of history, or our personal journey is exceptional in some way, or simply that we figure out how to relate our very ordinary story in a way that offers some universal wisdom about being human. Both of my published memoirs—Walking Nature Home; and Barren, Wild, and Worthless: Living in the Chihuahuan Desert—taught me about how to tell a story, how show the way we grow and change over time, and how to pick and choose telling detail. Each one presented different challenges, and the memoir I am working on now is challenging me in new ways. Telling my personal story may be my greatest learning experience as a writer!
Kaye: Would you tell us about your Write & Retreat Workshops?
Susan: They are an immersion in writing, in learning place and story, and in the inner work that is the source of our creativity. Each one includes hands-on writing and workshop time, as well as time to retreat and nurture our inner selves. Each one is set in some extraordinary place chosen to inspire us, with time spend exploring that place. I don’t have any W&R workshops planned this year, but next year I may offer one set near Yellowstone National Park, that place of wildness and wonders.
Kaye: You are a member of Story Circle Network, Women Writing the Westand Colorado Author’s League. How are these organizations beneficial to you as a writer?
Susan: I am also a member of Wyoming Writers. Belonging to at least one professional writing organization is critical to writing: they offer education, resources, and, most importantly. community. Writing is an inherently solitary activity: pulling words from deep within, honing them into stories, and then offering the work of our hearts to the world is perilous. Finding a community of fellow sufferers… uh, writers, is essential to maintaining our sanity, growing in the craft, and getting published.
Kaye: What is the one thing in your writing career that is the most unusual or unique thing you’ve done so far?
Susan: Besides leaving behind a paycheck, benefits, and job security to chase words and stories? Hmm… It’s hard to choose just one. Kayaking with sea turtles in the Sea of Cortez off Baja California? Learning about how to blow up dams to restore a river and its salmon run? Dancing with a Native American community to celebrate the return of those salmon? Watching a grizzly bear mom teach her twin cubs how to dig and eat spring-beauty bulbs in a meadow in Yellowstone National Park? Walking alone through some of the wildest country in the Lower 48 states, carrying all I needed on my back to listen to myself? Tending my husband and the love of my life through his death from brain cancer and then figuring out how to write how to survive loss? Seeing monarch butterflies return to a restored patch of urban nature? I’ve been fortunate to experience miracles and wonders all along the way.
Kaye: What are you working on now? What can readers expect in the future from Susan J. Tweit?
Susan: I’m working on The Climate Victory Garden, a book about how gardens can help grow The Green New Deal and slow climate change. It’s another chapter in my life-long quest to leave this world in better shape than I found it by restoring nature nearby and our connection to the green and living world.
Many thanks to Susan for sharing with us today. You can learn more about Susan J.Tweit and her work by visiting the following links:
Join us next Monday, when I’ll begin a new bi-monthly blog series, “His Name Was Michael”, which will chronicle the stages of writing a memoir as I work through them for my own memoir of the same name, telling the story of my son’s death and my own grief process. This first post will talk about the prewriting stage for memoir.
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In January, Writing to be Read is celebrating women’s fiction and female authors. You may have caught my Interview with Loretta Miles Tollefson two weeks ago, or my post about the history of female authorship last week. In continuation of this monthly theme, I’m pleased to welcome a woman who authors science fiction and women’s fiction as my first guest for this new monthly series, Chatting with the Pros. Barabara Chepaitis is a traditionally published author of both science fiction and women’s fiction, and she’s very familiar with the issues that surround being a woman author in today’s publishing industry. Let’s see what she has to say.
Kaye: What defines women’s fiction? Is it the subject matter, female protagonists, or the manner in which women are portrayed?
Barbara: In my experience, women’s fiction is defined by the publisher, who wants to have a specific place to put a book in a bookstore. For me, the difference between my science fiction and my ‘women’s fiction’ was what name they used. When I write science fiction, they want me to use my initials to hide that I’m a girl. When I write women’s fiction, they want to use my name, to prove I’m a girl.
Since I’ve never written a novel that doesn’t have a female protagonist, it’s clear to me that this isn’t the defining aspect. Other than that, I think the definition is kind of the way Dr. Who describes time – wibbly wobbly.
Kaye: What draws you to women’s fiction?
Barbara: I don’t know that I am drawn to women’s fiction. I’m a feminist, for sure, but I never set out to write any particular genre. I just get an idea for a character and story, then tell it. If they happen to be female, that’s because I’ve known some fascinating women, with very complex lives.
Kaye: Do you think it is tougher female authors today, or has digital and self-publishing evened the playing field for women in the publishing industry?
Barbara: It’s always been more difficult for women, in every field of endeavor we have in our culture. There’s so many many ways to block women. First, you can just not hire (or publish, or pay) them. Second, you can let them do the work, but not acknowledge the work they’ve done, attributing it to others. Only time will tell if digital and independent publishing will change that kind of move. Being cynical, I guess that women will have to continue to fight for their place. But that’s just me, being cynical.
Kaye: Romance usually has female protags. Why is it not considered as women’s fiction?
Barbara: The quick answer – because the narrative arc primarily follows a trajectory of romance. I know that when I’ve written material that has a strong romance (as in The Amber) but has something else as it’s narrative arc (coming of age, self-discovery, overcoming demons, etc.) then it isn’t seen as romance. For instance, there’s some pretty strong romantic properties to the whole Jaguar series, but she’s primarily dealing with criminals and crime.
Kaye: What makes a good story?
Barbara: The answer to that varies pretty wildly, depending on who you ask. For my husband, a good story is often one of a hero who makes the ultimate sacrifice for a cause. He loves Spartacus, Saving Private Ryan, and so on. For me, a story of a hero who overcomes incredible obstacles to reach a goal that serves others, or creates a new understanding of life, is always entrancing. I’m guessing that for romance readers, the tale of finding true love is what winds their clocks. So the question to ask, really, is what makes a good story for you?
Kaye: Your Fear series has a futuristic setting, an action adventure storyline and a strong female protagonist, Jaguar Addams. It’s really women’s genre fiction. What genre or genres do you put it in?
Barbara: I wrote the Fear series as a detective/mystery series. It just happened to be set in the future. When I was seeking a publisher, there was no such thing as ‘cross-genre’, and the mystery/detective market wanted nothing to do with it. Thus it landed in science fiction, which was more open, and they called it cyberpunk suspense – which made me wonder if I had to do something different with my hair, you know?
You can say Jaguar is ‘women’s fiction’ in that it has a powerful female protagonist and is written by a woman, but there’s plenty of men hanging around as well, and they all have their own obstacles to overcome, sacrifices to make, stuff to learn. Most of my work crosses literary lines in some way. I’m bitextual, and trangenre, I guess. And proud of it.
Kaye: Would you like to tell us a little about the series?
Barbara: Jaguar Addams and Alex Dzarny work on Prison Planetoid 3, which was established after a time of massive domestic violence known as The Killing Times. Now the worst criminals are sent to the Planetoid Prisons, where they’re run through programs that make them face the fears which drove their horrid crimes, based on the theory that all crime grows out of fear. Jaguar and Alex are both practitioners of the Empathic arts, and have some maxxed out psi capacities, which they use in their work.
Jaguar and Alex are alike in their dedication to the job, but they approach it differently. Jaguar runs with scissors, and colors way outside the lines. If Alex runs with scissors, he points them down. Both characters have close and complicated friendships with others who work on the Planetoids, and Jaguar has a ‘family’ in a Native American community in the Southwest. She’s an offshoot of a Mayan nation by heritage.
Each book is its own case, as in a detective series, but there is a larger arc along the way, which deals with Jaguar’s need to develop trust in intimacy, and Alex’s need to get a little more wild.
Kaye: Would you talk a little about the books that are published under Barbara Chepaitis, the ones that annnounce that you’re a girl and would probably most be classified as ‘women’s fiction’?
Barbara: I’ve got 3 under the ‘Barbara’ name:
Feeding Christine: “It was the season of Miracles in Teresa’s kitchen, and while none of the women particularly believed in miracles, neither did they think they’d be needing one. They were wrong.”
TERESA DI ROSA, owner of the thriving catering business Bread and Roses, makes the feeding of bodies and souls her life work. Now, with her niece CHRISTINE and her friends DELIA and AMBERLIN, she’s gearing up for the big event of the year – the annual Christmas open house. But as the party gets organized, her life is spinning out of control.
Her divorce is barely final, her son is spending Christmas with his father, and Christine seems to be losing her grip on sanity as she grieves the death of her mother, Teresa’s sister. The radical steps Teresa takes to rescue Christine shock everyone, but with her friends, Teresa feeds Christine a healthy dose of courage, wisdom and love.
These Dreams: Cricket Thompson’s routine life of husband, home, and family becomes a land of nightmare when an act of random violence leaves her daughter critically wounded. The crisis destroys her family, exposes her illusions and defies her belief in dreams. She seeks solace at the bird sanctuary where she volunteers, and learns that healing is a miracle of choice rather than chance.
Something Unpredictable: Just FYI – SOMETHING UNPREDICTABLE is based on a house that me and my husband actually tried to buy. There really is a circus house.
Delilah is 31, has no career to speak of, and is living at home with her hippie parents, and hanging on to a boyfriend who likes to photograph her naked in tubs of blue jello. Clearly, Delilah needs a plan.
Her sister is living the perfect life with the perfect husband, her father continues to make money off the stock market, and her mother continues to spend it on the latest social cause. Delilah would love to save the world as well if only it weren’t such an overwhelming task. She longs for inspiration. But she’s about to encounter some things she never predicted – a long-lost grandmother, Carla, who used to tame tigers with the circus; a 260 year old house with septic problems; an ex-fiancee; and a man named Jack – all of which will change her life forever.
Kaye: Food plays a central role in much of your women’s fiction. In fact, you might consider it a core theme for your books. Can you explain why this is, and why it’s important?
Barbara: Mmm. Foood. I’m a real foodie, and love to cook and play with my food. Perhaps because my mother’s family is Italian, I also understood from an early age that food is a language all its own, something we consume to learn about the land and its people and our relationship to all that. To me, cooking is similar to writing, and eating and reading are the way we enrich ourselves, body and soul.
Kaye: Why does symbolism play such a big role in your work?
Barbara: Symbolism? Actually, none of it is symbolism. It’s all experience and reflection on experience. If I write about a family violin that’s been lost and must be found, it’s because I know that music connects us across time with our ancestry. If I write about food, it’s because food speaks to us all the time.
Kaye: Children of the Land (Songs of the Mothers Book 1): This title screams women’s fantasy. I imagine a fantasy world laden with legends of yore. Would you like to tell me a little about this book?
Barbara: Children of the Land is actually the last novel in a series that I wrote which attempted to move across genres through each novel. It started with Children of the Gods, historical fiction with a contemporary twist, retelling the ancient history of the Haudonosaunee. Next was a near future novel titled Children of the World, which featured the descendants of the first novel as they approached the historical moment when biological immortality became possible. After that was Children of the Land, where the next round of descendants dealt with the political and world ramifications of that possibility in a fantasy novel.
When I talked to publishers about the series, they looked at me with something akin to terror. I swear their hair stood on end. It’s really the ultimate in transgenre, and couldn’t be handled by this market. Ultimately, I decided to go ahead with Children of the Land, which is indeed a fantasy novel, and worry about the others later. I have to say it was one of my favorite writing experiences ever. It really appealed to my love of language, and my love of the Heroine’s journey. It also allowed me to play with a lot of gods and goddesses from a variety of cultures, because part of the idea is that it’s time for them to return, and establish a closer relationship with humans, who are indeed the children of the land.
Here’s the synopsis:
Lord Aroc rules all, giving the gift of immortality only to his citizens. The balance between City and village has been preserved for a long age, but a change is at hand, signaled by the dancing of the Northern Lights. Now, a young woman’s choice to plant a small seed will determine world dominion, and the return of the gods.
That woman is Vareka, a Citizen working for Lord Aroc as Watcher for the villagers of Eryahsa. Such villagers live apart from the City, and are ultimately absorbed to feed the City’s energy. As heavy solar flares disrupt the City’s technology, the northern lights cause villagers to recall ancient stories of the Dreamers – spirit beings who would someday return. Then, an old man in Eryahsa tells Vareka she is inheritor of a task only she, daughter of a Dreamer and a Human, can complete.
She bears a locket handed down from mother to daughter for ages uncounted, and the seed it holds must be planted if the Dream is to continue.
She must choose her path, with no guarantee of success. Either she will take her friends on a perilous journey to find the place and time of planting, or she will accept Aroc’s rule, allowing him to remake the world, in his own image.
Kaye: Your fiction features strong female characters, and their strengths give them power. Where do you draw your characters from?
Barbara: For me, characters make themselves known in a very visceral way, speaking up inside me to tell me it’s time to tell their stories. Jaguar popped up when I was on the highway, and I had to pull over and make notes. I can still see her, sitting on the arm of her couch, in her apartment with its skulls and hanging herbs. She was smoking a cigarette, swinging her leg back and forth, and she said, “What you’ll do next is write me.”
Characters and their world, how they arise, where they come from, is a bit of a mystery to me, but I have noted that the best thing I can do is maintain an attitude of openness to their arrival. In fact, an attitude of openness in general. A kind of “Okay. I’m ready. Whaddya got?”
I’m sure that this attitude is assisted by the fact that I grew up with a horde of powerful and complicated women, but I can’t say that any one of them has become a particular character. Perhaps it’s just the flavor of their lives that gets put in the mix.
Kaye: So, would you say your stories are character driven?
Barbara: Yes, my stories are character driven. Characters, with all their complexities and eccentricities, create plot. They have something to say, and are blocked from saying it. Or they have something to hide and it’s revealed. Or they have something to BE, and are meeting obstacles in being that. Characters – human and animal – are at the heart of all plots, the heart of all interest, the heart of our hearts.
Kaye: They say the pen is mightier than the sword. What causes have you used your status as a writer to champion?
Barbara: I once helped a Navy SEAL and Army Ranger rescue a war-wounded eagle from Afghanistan, and that came about only because I’m a writer. I’ve also used my writing in any way I can to promote environmental causes. In fact, I’d love to do more of that.
You can get the full story on the war-wounded eagle in her book, Saving Eagle Mitch: One Good Deed in a Wicked World. Thank you for sharing with us today Barbara. You can learn more about Barbara Chepaitis and her works at the following links:
After writing an excerpt of Delilah for an assignment in grad school, I remember thinking, ‘this could be a book’. But I also remember thinking that a western by a female author probably wouldn’t sell. Women weren’t supposed to write westerns. After all, the western frontier was for rugged men. I knew there were women in the west, but I guessed that they weren’t protagonist material. Then, I wrote and published Delilah anyway. It was a story that wanted to be told. My character, Delilah spoke to me and the writing of the tale was too important for me to let the idea that it might not be a best seller stand in the way.
In the meantime, I was happy to learn that there are other female western authors out there. I’m pleased to have one as my guest today. Her books are set in the historical New Mexico landscape based on factual historical people and places. Western fiction author Loretta Miles Tollefson will share her thoughts on the matter of gender in the western genre and other aspects of writing and her books.
Please welcome Loretta Miles Tollefson.
Kaye: Would you share the story of your own publishing journey?
Loretta: When I was fifteen I won a writing contest in a Sunday School paper and that triggered a deep desire to continue to see my words in print. I published a couple more pieces in that same paper, then branched into short stories and poetry in my 20s and 30s. I had a few things published and received a co-publication offer for a novel. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the financial resources to follow up on that. I continued to write and had some poetry published in my 40s and early 50s. I self-published a couple novels in my mid-50s and then The Pain and the Sorrow was published by Sunstone Press in 2017. I was frustrated by the lack of opportunities to advertise a novel that had been traditionally published and went back to the self-pub route with Not Just Any Man.
Kaye: When did you know you wanted to be an author?
Loretta: I was 15 but, because I come from a very practical family, I chose to take the pragmatic approach of going into newspaper and magazine work instead of stepping into the uncertain waters of fiction. Eventually, I became a Special Projects Manager for a regional planning organization here in New Mexico, a job which utilized both my writing and research skills. I didn’t realize my dream of writing full time until I retired about five years ago.
Kaye: What is the most enjoyable part of writing westerns for you?
Loretta: For me, the most enjoyable part of writing is finding ways to bring the historical details, my characters’ personalities, and the storyline itself together. It’s like weaving a tapestry. And then there’s always the sudden inspiration that seems to come out of nowhere, when my characters seem to be telling me what they want to say. Although I, as the author, always have control, I’m sometimes surprised at where the story takes me.
Kaye: What is the biggest challenge of writing western fiction for you?
Loretta: I think my biggest challenge in writing historical fiction set in the West is feeling like I need to double check all the details. Even though I grew up on a small farm and we had horses and cows and chickens and hung the clothes on a line and pretty much all the rest of it, there’s a great deal I don’t remember or took for granted at the time. And, of course, I didn’t actually live in the early 1800s. I have to be careful not to assume certain ways of doing things or specific pieces of equipment were common back then. I’m always concerned that I’ll slip into an anachronism.
Kaye: You follow the old adage “write what you know”, setting your books in areas where you have lived and are familiar with, yet you must envision those settings in another time period. It seems perhaps your own setting acts as inspiration for your stories?
Loretta: It does. Very much so. I’ve lived in New Mexico almost thirty years and was fortunate enough to travel all over the state in connection with my job. Then, after I retired, we moved to Eagle Nest, New Mexico, on the northern end of the Moreno Valley. We lived there five years and that experience really brought together my love of history and my desire to write full time. There’s so much history here in New Mexico that I don’t think I will ever run out of ideas. We recently moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and that will continue to inspire me and to provide me with great resources for my research.
Kaye: Your novel, Not Just Any Man, was recently released. Would you like to tell us a little about that book?
Loretta:Not Just Any Man is about a black mountain man in 1820s New Mexico named Gerald Locke, Jr. It’s an adventure story, as Gerald traps in Northern New Mexico and then joins a fur trapping expedition across the Arizona desert and up the Colorado River. The group includes Enoch Jones, the only mountain man in the West who seems to have an issue with Gerald’s skin color. Jones has a few other issues as well, and the conflict between the two men is a crucial plot element.
But this isn’t just an adventure story. Gerald has met a young woman in Taos who seems far above his station in life and he can’t stop thinking about her. Even if he can survive the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the Mohave Indians, and the arid rim of the Grand Canyon, as well as Enoch Jones, can Gerald prove to himself and the girl he loves that he is, after all, not just any man?
Kaye: Do you think western readers are more receptive to male protagonists?
Loretta: There certainly are a lot of male protagonists in the western genre. I think this is because the traditional Western initially reflected the cultural assumption that only men played an active role in events in the West. As we broaden our understanding of the historical West, both before and after the United States was the primary actor there, we’re realizing just how often women played critical roles on the frontier. Life was harsh. Any family that was going to survive needed everyone in it to be fully engaged. Women had to take on roles they hadn’t necessarily played before. If anything, I believe their experiences on the frontier helped to begin breaking down the barriers that we’re still disassembling today. As we do that, I suspect Western readers will become more and more receptive to all kinds of protagonists.
Kaye: You have wonderful covers with beautiful landscapes that cry out ‘western’! Where do you get your covers?
Loretta: Well, thank you! I’m glad you like them. I worry about my covers. Other than The Pain in the Sorrow, I’ve designed them all myself and created most of them using a combination of Publisher and Gimp. The pundits’ advice is to have someone else do them, but I tend to have very specific ideas about what I want, and I haven’t yet discovered anyone who can quite catch my vision.
Loretta: The Pain and the Sorrow was strongly inspired by New Mexico history. Its characters actually existed and the primary incidents in the story are based on historical artifacts.
The plot of Not Just Any Man is also strongly situated in actual events. While the protagonist and villain are both fictional, most of the mountain men in the novel, are based on actual people—Old Bill Williams, Milton Sublette, Ewing Young, etc.—and much of the story line is based on their first-hand accounts.
Kaye: The Pain and the Sorrow has historical basis, as do all your books as I understand it. And it’s obvious that you strive to make your details as accurate as possible. Do you weave the history into your stories or is it the New Mexico history that inspires the stories?
Kaye: The Pain and the Sorrow is based in New Mexico history and a historical figure of legend, but the story about your female protagonist. Not all of your novels have female protagonists though. Was the female protagonist easier to write since you have a natural female perspective?
Loretta: The Pain and the Sorrow was a very difficult story to tell because of the abuse my teenage protagonist suffers at the hands (and other body parts) of her husband. I think that writing Gregoria’s story may have been more difficult for me precisely because I am female. My emotions were very raw during the entire process. I might have found it easier to tell Gregoria’s story if I didn’t have a “natural female perspective” and felt less connection with her.
Kaye: Do you think it’s more difficult for a female to make it in the western genre than it is for male authors?
Loretta: I think it’s difficult for any author to break into any genre today, regardless of their gender. However, it seems to me that more women are writing Western-style stories and getting them published than has been true in the past. For example, of the fourteen authors showcased in Five Star Publishing’s recent The Trading Post and other stories, four or five are women. In early December 2018, the twenty top-sellers in Amazon’s Western category included at least two women. There may have been more, publishing under a male pseudonym. We’ll really know that women have made it in western fiction when no one finds it necessary to use a male, or male-sounding, pen name when they do so.
Kaye: My publisher slapped Delilah into the romance category, listing it as a frontier romance. While there is a romantic element to the story, I didn’t make it the major focus of the story. I guess they thought it was more marketable as a romance, and I do think that because my protagonist is female, the book might have a stronger appeal to a female audience. Do you think western readers are more receptive to stories with a male protagonist?
Loretta: That’s hilarious. I really liked Delilah and I enjoyed the romance element in it, but classifying it as a frontier romance seems to me to diminish its marketing potential. I never search for frontier romance. As a result, I would have missed Delilah entirely if that’s the only place it could be found. I feel strongly that the current way the market is being sliced into finer and finer categories does us all — readers and writers alike — a disservice because it makes it more difficult to find the well-written, well-conceived books like Delilah that transcend easy categorization.
Kaye: Do you feel that it is harder for women authors to be taken seriously in the western genre?
Loretta: To a certain extent, this may be true. After all, as I mentioned above, some women authors of Westerns apparently feel that it’s necessary to use pseudonyms to obscure their gender. But I think that as we persist, this will become less and less of an issue.
Kaye: You are also a poet and you have out several poetry books. Would you talk a little about what inspires your poetry?
Loretta: My poetry is very personal, especially But Still My Child, which contains the poems I wrote after a miscarriage over thirty years ago. The poems I wrote during that time and afterwards helped me process that grief and I hope publishing them will support others in that same process.
My other volumes of poetry were the result of an attempt to blend my interest in poetry with my love of story. For historical stories, now that I think of it. The poems in But Then Moses Was There and Mary At The Cross try to get inside the heads of Biblical characters to express what living their experiences might have felt like.
Kaye: You’ve also written other non-western novels. What other genres do you write in?
Loretta: I’ve written an urban fiction about coming of age/homelessness in 1980s Seattle and a chick lit novel about a New Mexico couple who wins the lottery. I’m not working in either of those genres now. I’m focusing my energies exclusively on historical fiction set in Old New Mexico.
That focus on historical fiction has also resulted in two short story collections set in New Mexico: Valley of the Eagles and Old One Eye Pete. Valley is a collection of micro-fiction. The stories are all 500 words or less. Old One Eye Pete contains longer pieces, with stories featuring the mountain man Old One Eye Pete acting as the narrative thread.
Kaye: What is the working title of your next book?
Loretta: It’s called Not My Father’s House. It’s a sequel to Not Just Any Man and (spoiler alert!) focuses on Suzanna’s struggle to adapt to living high in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo mountains. I’ve just finished the second draft, so it should be out by the middle of 2019.
Kaye: Besides writing, what are your favorite things to do?
Loretta: I research material for my upcoming books — or at least I tell myself it’s for my upcoming books. Hah! And I read fiction: historical, mystery, suspense, Westerns, and pretty much anything else that looks interesting to me at the moment. I review most of everything that I read, unless it has 100 reviews or more. I would love to review more historical fiction set in 1800s New Mexico and Southern Colorado, since Southern Colorado was part of New Mexico at one time.
Kaye: Would you tell us a little about your blog? What will readers find there if they visit?
Loretta: My blog is at http://www.LorettaMilesTollefson.com. About once a week, I post a short piece about a historical event or a flash fiction story set in Old New Mexico, which I define as anything prior to statehood in 1912. The site also includes news about, and links to, my books.
Kaye: Which author or poet, dead or alive, would you love to have lunch with?
Loretta: I have so many favorites. This is a hard question to answer. I think right now, given the work I’m doing, the person I would most like to have lunch with would be Paulette Jiles. I really enjoyed her News Of The World and the way she brought actual events to life in that book.
Kaye: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
Loretta: I read and explore the region with my husband. Ultimately, it’s all research.
Kaye: Is there anything unique or unusual about your writing process?
Loretta: My writing process consists of writing the first draft, letting it sit a month, revising, letting it sit a month or so, then revising again until I feel it’s really ready. This process seems to be becoming more unusual in today’s fast-paced writing environment.
Kaye: How much non-writing work, (research, marketing & promotion, illustrations & book covers, etc…), do you do yourself for your books?
Loretta: At the moment, I’m doing all my own research, marketing, promotion, book covers, and so forth. I’m stretching myself pretty thin with all these different activities, but doing it all gives me a lot of control. I may have to start farming some of the non-writing work out as I move along in my journey.
Kaye: If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?
Loretta: To tell you the truth, I watch so little television and so few movies these days, that I’m not sure who would be the best actor to play Gerald or Susanna in a movie based on Not Just Any Man or Gregoria or Charles Kennedy in The Pain And The Sorrow. I’d love some input from your readers on this question.
Kaye: I can and will reach out to readers for input on who should play your leads were your story made film, but now you have to answer another question: Since many of my readers may not have read your books, can you tell us what characteristics these characters would have so they can better imagine who would be a good fit?
Loretta: Hmmm, Characteristics:
Gerald: square forehead, gray eyes. Half black/half Irish. Late 20s.
Suzanna: slim, tall for a woman (about Gerald’s height). long black hair, dark brown eyes. Half anglo (WASP), a quarter french, a quarter Navajo. About 16.
Alright readers. Here’s your chance be heard. Who do you think would be good for the roles of Gerald and Suzanna? Please comment with your suggestions. Loretta and I would both love to hear the possibilities.
Kaye: What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Loretta: In a nutshell: read, revise, revise again.
If you plan to write fiction, read fiction. Especially classic fiction: Hemingway, Steinbeck, Austen, Dickens, and so forth. Also, read contemporary fiction, and not just books in your genre. Some of my favorite authors right now are Louise Penny and Donna Leon. They teach me pacing and character development. I’m especially fascinated by the way their protagonists develop over the course of the series. Everything’s research, even the books you don’t like. And don’t be afraid to express your opinions and trust your instincts. It’s okay to not like a book even if everyone else is saying how wonderful it is.
Most of all, revise! As Anton Chekhov said, “rewrite everything five times.” Well, maybe not that many, but you see what I mean. I would add “but not immediately” to that advice. Take the time to let your work rest, and then go back and look at it again. When you start changing sentences back to the way you had them in a previous version, that’s when you should stop. But not until then.
Revise it, let it rest, then revise it again. There’s a popular saying that “Perfection is the enemy of done.” I am uncomfortable with that statement. While no work is going to be absolutely perfect, rushing to publication is the enemy of quality work. Try to get your story as well-written as possible. Producing quality work is what will keep your readers coming back for more.
I want to thank Loretta for joining us today and sharing a glimpse into the world of western writing from a female author’s perspective. I have admired her work since I reviewed The Pain and the Sorrow last May, and it’s a thrill to have the privelage of interviewing her. It’s a real treat to hear from another female author in the world of western fiction.
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This is the time of year when I like to take a look back over the year to see what worked and what didn’t for Writing to be Read, but there are exciting changes coming as well. So let’s move forward in the logical order and talk about the old first. Let’s take a look at the past year on Writing to be Read. For me, there were several surprises and if you are following, they may surprise you, too.
I feel like we had a really great year in 2018, featuring two rounds of Ask the Authors, with two wonderful and diverse author panels sharing writing tips and advice in many aspects of writing with almost seven thousand views. Now that may not seem like a lot to some, but when you consider that it’s over three thousand more views than in 2017, that’s not too bad.
For those who don’t know Ask the Authors is a twelve week blog series, where an author panel responds to questions on the many aspects of writing. Panel members in the original series of Ask the Authors, which ran from February through April, included author and ghostwriter DeAnna Knippling, dark fantasy author Cynthia Vespia, Y.A. author Jordan Elizabeth, literary author Margareth Stewart, action novelist Tim Baker, action and speculative fiction author Chris DiBella, women’s fiction author Janet Garbor, multi-genre author Chris Barili, and Y.A. author Carol Riggs. Round 2 ran from October through mid- December with the first four authors from the previous list as returning panel members and seven new panel members, including multi-genre author Dan Alatorre, nonfiction author Mark Shaw, pulp fiction author Tom Johnson, thiller author Ashley Fontainne, romance author Amy Cecil, multi-genre author Art Rosch, and speculative fiction author R.A. Winter. I’d like to thank them all once again for taking time out to share with us here.
We also were blessed with three new Wednesday blog series with three new team members. The team member from the 2018 Wednesday line-up with the most views was Jeff Bowles with Jeff’s Pep Talk, but Jordan Elizabeth and Art Rosch brought in their fair share with Writing for a Y.A. Audience and the Many Faces of Poetry, respectively.
To my surprise, the team member with the mosts post views over 2018 was Robin Conley, who is currently not an active team member, but readers continue to seek out her writing advice in her writing Weekly and Monthly Writing Memos from 2017; the most popular was her Weekly Writing Memo: Word Choice is verything, which had the second most views of all blog posts this past year. Right up there with that is her review of Pride and Predjudice and Zombies, with over one hundred post views.
I was also surprised to learn the most viewed interview was tied between children’s author Nancy Oswald from the 2016 series Pros and Cons of Traditional vs. Independent vs. Self-Publishing and action novelist Tim Baker from the 2017 series Book Marketing; What Works. But those interviews were focused more towards information on publishing and marketing, respectively, so I don’t really count them in the same category as author interviews, because readers may view the series posts for different reasons than they would author interviews.
My author interviews provide a focus on the author, so in this category the most post views came from my interview in 2018 with screenwriter J.S. Mayank. My interview with author Alexandra Forry was next in line, and my interview with performance poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer recieved the third most post views.
In 2018, the top book review was Dan Alatorre’s dark fiction anthology, Dark Visions. Another surprise – the second and third most post views in the review category are both from 2016, with my review of Simplified Writing 101 by Erin Brown Conroy coming in second, and Wild West Ghosts by Mark Todd and Kym O’Connell Todd coming in third.
The other review that I feel is worthy of mention is my review of Mark Shaw’s new release, Denial of Justice. I did the review in December, so it hasn’t been available long enough to acrue a great number of views to rank in the yearly statistics, but it is a tale that deserves telling and Mark did a smash-up job of telling it. I’ve no doubt this book will be as popular or more so than the original tale, The Reporter Who Knew Too Much, because we all love mystery and intrigue, and the story of Dorothy Kilgallen is a true life tale filled with both. I am privilaged to have been allowed to review both of these books.
Along the lines of other content, again my 2016 post Why is Fact Better than Fiction recieved the most viewed, and surprisingly, a post from 2011, The Process Takes Time close on it’s heels, with my 2016 post, A Writer’s Life in No Bowl of Cherriesfollowing not far behind them. Not one of my top three posts was from this past year. My post from 2018 which recieved the most views was Join Me in My Protest Against Facebook, a rant I did about Facebook and their changing policies after I got blocked from posting in groups, including my own group, for a twenty-four hour period. I think this post was my cry in the dark from the frustration I felt as a busy author who promotes her own work and limited time. It makes me laugh to think it was my most popular post published last year.
Views outnumber visitors, so I’m thinking that the increased views of all the older posts comes from new viewers who popped in to read a newer post and decided to browse the site, which is great. If I gained some new followers due to this, I certainly won’t complain.
Overall, it was a great year and my following has steadily grown, as well as post likes and comments. I have to extend thanks to my readers, my followers, my team members and my guests on Writing to be Read for helping me make it happen. I couldn’t have made such strides without all of you.
2019 promises to be an even better year for both Writing to be Read and for me, and I’m excited to share my plans with you here. To start, this site will be getting a facelift: a new theme which will coincide with my new WordCrafter website and a new logo. The WordCrafter site will be the new home of Write it Right Editing Services and WordCrafter Copywriting, now housed here, as well as WordCrafter Press and WordCrafter Online Courses in the near future. Writing to be Read, although remaining here, will operate under the WordCrafter trademark. I was hoping to launch it tonight to start the New Year off right, but time constraints have not favored me. The launch of my WordCrafter and new image and logo for Writing to be Read will happen sometime in January. That’s the revised goal.
On Writing to be Read, look forward to some great new content beginning in January. To start the year off right I already have scheduled reviews for Freedom’s Mercy, by A.K. Lawrence and Fanya in the Underworld, by Jordan Elizabeth, and an interview with western author Loretta Miles Tollefson.
Let’s not forget the new addition to the Wednesday line-up. Starting in January, children’s author Robbie Cheadle will be joining us with her blog series, Growing Bookworms. You can learn more about Robbie and her exciting and creative new series in my introduction and welcome post last Monday.
I also have an exciting new monthly blog series planned for the third Monday of each month, called Chatting with the Pros. Starting in January, I will interview a successful professional author in a different genre, who will graciously allow me to pick their brains for tips and tidbits of writing wisdom from authors who are making it work. I can’t reveal the guest line-up yet, but it shows promise of holding some well known names. And I’m thinking about doing a writing contest, with entrants recieving an invitation for inclusion in an anthology and other cool prizes.
A third round of Ask the Authors is also in the making for this coming summer and I’m planning an Ask the Authors book to follow, which will include material from all three segments. I already have a cover for the book, created by D.L. Mullen of Sonoran Dawn Studios. I hope to have it out by the end of the year.
And of course, you’ll be able to get updates on my other works in progress: The Great Primordial Battle, book one of my science fantasy series, Playground for the Gods; The Homecoming, book two of my western series, Delilah; and my memoir about losing my son to teen suicide, His Name Was Michael. I hope you will all join me in the coming year.
With that, I’ll just say see you next year.
Until then, happy writing!
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Robbie Cheadle is a very creative mother, author and fondant artist, who thinks outside the box to find inventive solutions for life’s difficulties. I first met Robbie through Sonoran Dawn’s Dead Man’s Party Halloween book event, where I did a reading of her short horror story, The Willow Tree, via audio recording for the event. During her takeover, Robbie posted images of her delectable creations to promote her Sir Chocolate book series for children, which she wrote with her son, Michael. She uses these image of her baked creations as cover art and to illustrate the book series. I thought this was incredibly innovative, and I immediately wanted to know more about this woman, and it didn’t take long to decide that I wanted to add her to the WtbR team.
Robbie is my Christmas gift this year, as I’ve been searching for a children’s author to join the Writing to be Read team. So, starting in January, Robbie will be popping in the second Wednesday of each month with her new blog series on writing for children, Growing Bookworms. I can’t wait to see what she has to share with us, so let’s learn more about her.
Kaye: Your Sir Chocolate covers are photos of your own delectable desert creations, which is very creative. Which came first – the baking or the writing?
Robbie: I started with baking and fondant art quite a long time before we wrote the books, but pairing the two was an idea that only came later. I used to write poetry and descriptive passages as a tween and teenager. Emily of New Moon by LM Montgomery was my favourite book when I was a tween. Emily is a poetess in the book and her father is a writer. The book inspired me to write down my thoughts and feelings.
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Kaye: Would you share the story of your own publishing journey? How did the published works of Robbie Cheadle come to be?
Robbie:I never planned to become a published author when I first started writing the Sir Chocolate stories. My son, Michael, aged 6 years old at the time was having difficulties with learning to read and write. He was diagnosed with an auditory processing problem which made these activities difficult for him. He had the loveliest story ideas about a little man made of chocolate who lived in a land where you could eat anything, even the sand, trees and houses. In order to encourage him to write, I made up rhyming verse stories using his ideas. Together we wrote them down in handmade books.
I have always enjoyed fondant art and sometimes Michael would come and sit with me and make his own version of what I was making. We started making illustrations for the books by taking photographs of our creations. My nieces and nephews enjoyed the Sir Chocolate stories, so I tried them out with my Sunday school class of children. One of my friends at the Church suggested I send the stories and pictures to a friend of hers who is a publisher in the UK. Anne liked the stories and gave us a contract for the Sir Chocolate series of books.
Kaye: You talk about fondant art. I, for one had never heard of this. Could you explain briefly what fondant art is?
Robbie:Fondant is also called sugar dough and is an elastic type of icing, almost like modelling clay. This is the substance that cake bakers use to make figurines, flowers and other edible artworks for cakes. The items in the picture I emailed you are all made of fondant.
Kaye: You’re the co-author, along with your son Michael of the Sir Chocolate book series for young readers. How did that partnership come about?
Robbie:Between the ages of 6 and about 9 years old, Michael and I continued to make up Sir Chocolate rhyming verse stories from time to time. We would be doing something like visiting an ice cream shop and an idea would come to us. We would then chat about the idea and develop it into a story. Michael has delightful ideas like the chocolate snow and the ice-cream rainbow fairies who feature in Sir Chocolate and the Ice-cream Rainbow Fairies’ story and cookbook which will come out in 2020.
Kaye: What’s the one thing you hope your son takes away from this venture?
Robbie:I always hoped that Michael would become a proficient reader and learn to enjoy books and reading. It is not easy for a child who struggles to learn to read to develop a love of reading. I am very happy to say that this has happened. Michael now reads on his own for about 30 minutes a day. We often read together with me reading my book of the day and him reading his current story. Lately, these are all Rick Riordan books.
Kaye: What ages are the Sir Chocolate series aimed at?
Robbie:The Sir Chocolate books are aimed at young children, aged 3 to 9 years old. They are lovely for beginner readers as they are comprised of rhyming verse.
Kaye: Each book in the Sir Chocolate series features a story and a cookbook. That’s an interesting combination. Would you like to tell us a little more about why you chose to pair the two?
Robbie: Sir Chocolate is a little man made of sweets and sugar. All the characters in the books are made of edible products as well as all the houses, trees, flowers and even the rivers and the rocks. As all the illustrations are made of cake, biscuits and sweets, it seemed natural to provide the recipes to make some of the goodies in the book and make the books into a series of first cookbooks as well as a story.
Kaye: You also write supernatural and horror for adult audiences, and you had two stories published in the recently released horror anthology, Dark Visions. (See my review of Dark Visionshere.) Another interesting combination: horror and children’s stories. Is there a story behind how you ended up writing in those two genres?
Robbie:I entered a short story for children in one of Dan Alatorre’s writing competitions and it won an Honourable Mention. I really liked the critique on my story that I received from Dan so when another competition cropped up a few months later I decided to enter. The topic for that one was horror so I thought I would give it a go. That was when I wrote The Willow Tree. Dan again provided an excellent critique in respect of the story. I entered The Haunting of William into his most recent horror competition in June 2018. That was how I came to write darker stories. I discovered that I enjoyed writing this genre and now I am writing a supernatural/horror YA book. I have just exceeded 50,000 words.
Kaye: I can think of many differences in writing horror and in writing for children, but are there also ways in which they are alike?
Robbie: The Sir Chocolate stories all have a villain ranging from the trolls in Book 1 to the candy stripped Roc in book 5. All stories generally have a heroic character and a bad character so there is a common thread between the two genres. The difference is that in the Sir Chocolate books the “baddie” is generally redeemed and becomes a contributing member of Chocolate Land. In my current book, the evil characters are not redeemed.
Kaye: What is the strangest inspiration for a horror story you’ve ever had?
Robbie:I have just written a horror story about cockroaches which infest a working microwave oven and gain unnatural powers as a result of the microwaves they are subjected to. I think that is about the most unusual story I have written to date but I have only been writing for just over two years and I only started writing horror this year.
Kaye: In addition to writing children’s stories and cookbooks, and adult horror, you write poetry. And you have a poetry collection out with Kim Blades, Open a New Door. What type of poetry can we expect to find in this collection? How did that collaboration come about?
Robbie:Kim Blades and I are both South African poets. Our collection is about life in South Africa and is divided into four sections entitled God bless Africa, God bless my family and friends, God bless me and God bless corporates and work. Each section is divided into poems about the good, the bad and the ugly of our experiences in each of these areas of our lives.
Kaye:What is the most important quality in a poem for you?
Robbie: I like poems that are simply written and have a strong message. I try to write my poems along those lines. I don’t believe a lot of “highbrow” language is necessary in a poem for it to be an emotional and evocative piece of writing.
Kaye:You have another collaboration with Elsie Haney Eaton, While the Bombs Fell. It’s about life during World War II, which is quite different from the Sir Chocolate stories. What age audience is this book aimed at? Would you like to talk a little about it?
Robbie:Elsie Hancy Eaton is my mother and While the Bombs Fell is a fictionalized account of her early years growing up during WWII in a rural town in England. It features the deprivation caused by bombing and rationing and the other hardships experienced, but it also provides a lot of insight into the small pleasures people enjoyed during the war in the way of a Christmas pudding, the ingredients for which were literally saved up for most of the year, swimming in favourite spots along the river Waverney and learning to knit. The reason this account is fictionalized and not an autobiography is my mother was aged 4 to 7 years during the war and so she can’t remember all the fine details. I supplemented her memories with a lot of my own research.
Kaye:What is the biggest challenge of writing for children?
Robbie: Marketing the books. Indie authors and writers with small publishers find it more difficult to get their books into stores and in front of the eyes of children. Children generally don’t use social Medias and, therefore, we are marketing to the parents and not to the actual child. Impulse buys are fewer as a result. I try to visit schools and Sunday Schools, but my time for these events are limited due to my work requirements.
Kaye: What other activities do you find time for when you’re not baking or writing?
Robbie: I am a qualified chartered accountant with a full time job and two sons. Any recreational time I have that isn’t spent with my family is used for writing, baking and blogging. I have two blogs, one for my children’s books, light poetry, baking and fondant art called robbiespiration.wordpress.com and one for my adult writing and darker poems called robertawrites235681907.wordpress.com.
Thank you so much Robbie for chatting with me here today. It’s been a pleasure, and I’m thrilled to have you on board. I look forward to your Growing Bookworms blog series. I have no doubt that you have some interesting things to share with us.
Welcoming Robbie to the Writing to be Read team is my Christmas present this year, and adding her blog series will be a great way to start out the New Year, too. You can learn more about Robbie and her writing and art one her blogs or click on the links below:
I hope all my readers will help me welcome this creative children’s author to the Writing to be Read team and be sure to catch the first segment of her Growing Bookworms series on January 9th.
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I have the pleasure today of interviewing romance author Alexandra Forry, whose latest novelette, Deepest Elements is scheduled for release on November 17. Alexandra is a lovely young author who writes her stories in spite of being afflicted with cerebral palsy. She’s agreed to share with us today a glimpse into her life and a little about her books. Please help me welcome Alexandra Forry.
Kaye: You have written in multiple genres and formats, but you are primarily a romance author. Why romance?
Alexandra: I’m hopelessly romantic, from way back. I loved a good romance that ends not happy with the man rides off in the sunset with his soul mate. I love forbidden romance the most. I write real-to-life romance because I think people can relate to it more than a fairytale romance. There is sometime about witting romance that fulfills my soul like I meant to be a romance author. If you get what I mean. Thank for asking this question, it really makes me think. No one has asked me this before you, Kaye.
Kaye: On October 12, 2014, you promoted your work at a ladies tea at Louisa Voisine’s Showroom in Las Vegas NV. How did you manage to get an invite for this opportunity? Do you feel it was successful? In what ways?
Alexandra: That was the best promoting event I’ve been to and it was very successful in every way. I met Ms. Senior United States of 2018, while I was there. I was purely a fairytale afternoon!!!
Louisa Voisine Millinery is a award winning famous Hat and Fashion Designer. Her designs are like a work of art. Louisa’s hat’s are Kentucky Derby Winning Design, Emmy Awards featured designer Pre-Emmy Event. I encourage you to check her website out!!! I had the honor to meet Louisa at Mob-Con back in 2014 and became good friends.
Mob-Con was a 3-day event Meet Real Mobsters and the Lawmen who put ’em away, with speakers and the authors like myself selling their books. Not to add, it’s not every day you get to see Mobsters, FBI, CIA news reporters and true crime authors in one ballroom talking about the good old days, acting like old friends.
Sorry to get off track. Louisa was there selling her hat’s at Mob-con and we got to talking a bit. After Mob-Con I got a Facebook message from her inviting me to sell all of my books at her high tea. Also, she’d give me two invites so I could bring whomever I wanted. I chose to take my dear and beloved Grandma. We always wanted to get all dressed up and go to a high tea. I shall never forget that tea because it really was truly made one of my grandma’s dreams come true.
Kaye: What writing groups are do you hold membership in? Would you recommend that other authors join similar writing organizations? Why or why not? What are the benefits for you?
Alexandra:I’ve got to tell you the truth. I need to re-join RWA. A few years I got out of the whole writing scène because of personal reasons but now I am back. A fellow author and friend told me this when I was first starting out he told me to join real writing groups to be taken seriously and make contact and friends. He was right. Now I’m apart of a top Authors Dinner Group in Washington, D. C. They help me out hugely. In the writer’s business, it’s whom you know. I got damn lucky at age 23!
Kaye: What can you tell us about your children’s books?
Alexandra: The Troop 740 books were based on my own Girl Scouts experience. In fact, I had a tycoon Girl Scout leader, let’s call him LL, when I lived in Portland Oregon. LL rented out a major radio station for us be on the radio, and once rented out a delta airlines aircraft for us to view what first class and the airplane cockpit look like. LL even flew in fresh flowers from Hawaii for us to learn about. I want to make my book’s leader a man, but in today’s age I didn’t want to take a gamble on it, so the leader is a woman. I hope to go on more adventure’s with Troop 470, someday! 😉
Kaye: In spite of many obstacles which life has placed in your path, you have overcome them and reached for your dream of being an author. The Omerta Affair was your debut novel. How did it feel when that book was published and you could finally say, “I made it! I’m a published author?
Alexandra: Oh hell YES!!!, I was jumping with over joy, tears of joy. It was a super amazing, wonderful feeling “I really did, I’m a published author.” It’s all began on my 22 birthday, I went to the newly open Mob Museum and to my shock, Frank Cuttolla was there signing his book. I meet him and told him that I want to be a Mafia-Romance and he told me that if I need help just let him know. I said okay thinking he has better things to do than helping me a young CP girl at the time. I found him on Facebook weeks later and we began to talk, he always inviting me to this and that. I base my fist book “Omerta Affair” off on Tony Spilotro’s reign as The Las Vegas Mafia Boss, in the 1970s. He had it all, running the Crime underworld. He could have any woman he wanted in Las Vegas, instead, he became romantically Geri Rosenthal. At first, it was a Casino’s FanFic to the 1995 move, that I was witting and putting online for free, but my family and friend told me it was way too good to be a FanFic. After I was done with my book Frank hooked me up with some people and that how my book came to be. Now he’s Uncle Frank to me. ❤
Kaye: One of the obstacles you’ve had to overcome is Cerebral Palsy, and you haven’t let it stop you from doing what you love. Have you given any of your characters disabilities to overcome?
Alexandra: YES! I really hope to write a romance that the leading woman has CP and falls in love. It makes me mad that there no disabilities romance books. Like we are still people with romantic feelings. People beg me to write my life story, I tried and give all my might, but I stopped writing it because I was up to a painful point in my life that I don’t care to remember. Sorry it’s the way I feel. Who knows maybe someday I will finish it.
Kaye:What challenges does cerebral palsy pose for you as a writer specifically?
Alexandra: I use up 3 to 5 times the amount of energy that people use without
Cerebral Palsy. My muscle spasms sometimes act up and slow down my typing.
Other than that, it doesn’t present any challenges to my thinking process
about my storytelling. I have CP but CP dose NOT have me! 🙂
Kaye:Timeless Omerta: With Beauty Comes Danger is the follow-up for that first book. It’s kind of a sequel, but not, and it launched you into the world of romance authors. Can you talk a little about the differences in the two books?
Alexandra:TIMELESS OMERTA Is a lighter version of Omerta Affair. After Omerta Affair came out for sale, a few months went by, I began to wonder what if I took out the harsh, colorful language making the story’s main love scene more romantic. With that idea, why not rename it something that a woman would really want to pick up to read when they saw it. I’ve re-titled it TIMELESS OMERTA. Making it more for women.
Kaye: Why did you choose to write Pit Boss: A Screenplay as a screenplay, rather than a novel? Why did you feel it was a better fit for the screenplay format? Do you have other screenwriting experience?
Alexandra:Pit Boss: A Screenplay was the very first writing piece that I’ve completed. Back in July 2011, my birth father passes away from stage 4 cancer. He didn’t catch it before it was way too late. I was very devastated by his fast death.
I bought a book and a screenwriting program on how to write a screenplay because I needed something that I never done before to take my mind off of my father’s death. I’ve locked myself in my room (in a way) for a month to learn and wrote “Pit Boss”
In 2016, I felt that I wanted to publish it, even if I didn’t make a penny for it. Just to showcase my work. Then with help with a ghostwriter, I turned the Pit book into a novel.
Kaye: Besides writing, what are your favorite things to do?
Alexandra: Every night, I love to sit down and relax in my chair (my comfort zone) watching a movie with my dad. That’s is my favorite part of the day> I love coloring, I have a lot of adult coloring books. 😉 I enjoy listing to audiobooks. walking outside, having a blast with my group of friends here in Williamsburg.
Kaye: What time of day do you prefer to do your writing? Why?
Alexandra: I don’t have a time that I prefer to write. When I start writing, I can go until I am wiped out. LOL 😉
Kaye: What is the biggest challenge of being a writer for you?
Alexandra: My spelling and grammar for sure. Being slow at typing, I can’t type 1,000 words a day, I wish. The biggest thing is that I get writers’ block or I lose interest in my writing and stop. I need to find a way to fix that.
Kaye:What is the one thing in your writing career that is the most unusual or unique thing you’ve done so far?
Alexandra:Okay, so one of my friends once dared me to write a very XXX romantic, erotic, sex scene! Let’s just say that I blew him out the water when he read it. Ha, ha, ha!
Kaye: Your book, Deepest Elements is scheduled for release on November 17. Can you tell us a little about it?
Alexandra: To my astonishment, all of the Beta and Test reads really love it! Saying that Deepest Elements is worth your time. Truth be told, I haven’t felt this way about one of my books coming out since Omerta Affair. I had this book idea tucked away in my mind since I was a teenager in high school!!! Have to tell you, that this book will be a kick off for a big series set, to be called Deepest Elements Series!
Here’s a brief synopsis:
My worst fear was those woods; my greatest fear had once been him.
She was an innocent, heading for her illustrious private boarding school in the best tradition of the grandmother who raised her, and with the blessing of the father who adored her. Forsaken by her mother soon after birth, she had made lifelong friends in a protective, privileged,Portland society.
Arriving in Radcliffe Heights, Rhode Island, freshman Peony “Poppy” Calloway admired the picturesque small town. But deep in the shadows of the woods near Blue Bell Boarding School, and along its hallowed halls, lurked illicit sex, murder, and harrowing danger.
Seduced by Jordon Dashwood, the handsome, blue-eyed, white blonde Headmaster, Poppy enters a world of love, ecstasy, heartbreak, betrayal, and death.
“Deepest Elements” is by the well-known author of “Wildflower,” Alexandra Forry.
Thank you so much for reading my in-depth interview. Also, thank you so very much, Kaye, for having me on your wonderful blog Today! Best wishes, Alexandra!
I want to thank you Alexandra, for sharing with us today. It’s been a pleasure learning abouot your books and the challenges you face in creating them.
Readers can learn more about Alexandra and her books here:
I have the pleasure of interviewing independent author Brenda Mohammed today. She is not only a multi-genre author, but a multi-award winning author, who seems to dabble in a bit of everything. She comes from a background in finance, but became an author when she wrote a memoir about her battle with ovarian cancer. Since then, she’s written several other memoirs, as well as a science fiction series, a horror novel and a crime novel, as well as a wonderful self-help book for aspiring authors. She has done so much, and made so many travels, and I’m thrilled to have her share all that with us here, on Writing to be Read. Please give a warm welcome to Brenda Mohammed.
Kaye: When did you know you wanted to be an author?
Brenda: I never planned to be an author. I was a successful Bank Manager for many years. After I retired from the Bank at an early age, I became an Insurance Professional. I loved working in Finance and helping many people achieve their financial goals. In 2005 I was stricken with ovarian cancer. My doctor in Trinidad told me that she could not help me, and no other doctor in Trinidad at that time was qualified to do so. I sought treatment in Miami and gained a new lease on life. In 2013 I wrote a book about my cancer ordeal and recovery, I am Cancer Free. That was my first book and I have never stopped writing after that. To date I have written nineteen books.
Kaye: You’ve written 6 memoirs, 2 children’s books, a science fiction series, a crime novel, and a nonfiction book on writing. What’s the secret to tackling so many different genres?
Brenda: There really is no secret to writing in multiple genres. I have always loved a challenge and constantly seek out new opportunities. I write whatever I feel passionate about.
Kaye: You have written books in multiple genres: science fiction, memoir, self-help, etc… What are some of the differences you run into in writing different genres?
Brenda: When I am writing science fiction I maintain my focus on science fiction, and similarly with the other genres. The secret is to stay focused on the plot or the subject to achieve the end result. However, the problem I faced was in promoting my books.
I discovered a way around that and made Facebook Author pages for each genre. I have seven Facebook author pages. I also joined several Facebook groups that specialise in genres in which I write, to promote my books.
Kaye: Which genre is your favorite to write in? Why?
Brenda: I really enjoyed writing my science fiction series because it took me to another world for a while. When I wrote it I found myself becoming the hero or heroine and doing impossible things.
Kaye: You won a Readers’ Favorite Award in the 2018 International Book Awards for both your YA science fiction series Zeeka Chronicles,and your memoir I Am Cancer Free. What, if anything do these two books have in common besides both being Reader’s Favorite Book Award recipients? What makes them award winning books?
Brenda: Strange. I think I just answered that question above. The books have nothing in common yet there is a common thread. One is a futuristic thriller and the other is a survival story. As I said above when writing science fiction. i.e. Zeeka Chronicles, I found myself becoming the hero or heroine. In I am Cancer Free I am the heroine.
Seriously though, I quote from Readers Favorite: “Contest entries are judged all year long and are given a rating score based on key literary elements. The judges simply read the book and score it based on its merits.”
Kaye: Those are not the only award winning books you’ve written. Two other memoirs, My Life as a Banker received a second place award in memoirs in the Metamorph Publishing’s Summer Indie Book Awards in 2016and Your Time is Now received IHIBRP 5 Star Recommended Read Award Badge. What can you tell us about those two books?
Brenda: My Life as a Banker is a memoir about my life in Banking. Banking was my first love. I always wanted to work in a bank. I love serving and helping people and seeing them prosper. Banking gave me the opportunity to do so and especially when I climbed the ranks to Commercial Area Credit Manager and was able to help business people with startups and expansion. Banking allowed me to play my part in building the economy of my native country, Trinidad.
Your Time is Now is intended to help people understand their own lives and to realize that we are all here on earth for a purpose.
The reviews for both these books speak a lot for them.
Kaye: What is it like to receive notification that your book is the recipient of a prestigious award?
Brenda: I have won many awards before in both Banking and Insurance.in my home country
However, as this was an International Award it was a most joyous feeling to tell my friends and family that I won two prestigious awards with Readers Favorite International and will be attending the Awards Ceremony in Miami. In November.
Kaye: What’s something most readers would never guess about you?
Brenda: I dabble in art, poetry, and graphics in my spare time. Some of my art work hang on the walls of my home.
Kaye: What time of day do you prefer to do your writing? Why?
Brenda: I prefer to write in the still of the night. When everyone is asleep I find peace to think and write.
Kaye: What is the biggest challenge of being a writer?
Brenda: Only a few days ago I penned this poem about writing:
Writing takes me into a fantasy world.
Sometimes I find myself in a black hole.
I edit and fight to come out of it
But not before I get into a fit.
My books have gathered great reviews
Won awards and made the news.
Is it worth it, I sometimes ask?
Writing a book is a great task.
A writer’s life is a rather lonely one.
All day behind a computer is no fun.
An author must make the time
Read others’ books and go out and lime.
Do not sit at your computer all day.
Join the family in travel and play
Love of a family is life’s greatest gift
When you need to relax they give you a lift.
Kaye: Is there anything unique or unusual about your writing process?
Brenda: Before writing a story I write an outline of the entire plot in a couple of pages. I then use that to build my story. It sounds simple, but it is not.
Kaye: Your book on writing is titled How to Write for Success: Best Writing Advice I Received. Can you briefly share what the best writing advice you ever received really was? What is the main message of this book?
Brenda: The Best Writing Advice I Received was “Keep the Reader in mind when writing. In other words write for the reader and your books will sell.”
To answer the second part of the question I will quote one of the five-star reviews. The one from Readers Favorite is too long so I will share this one from an Amazon Reviewer:
“Having read a couple of Mohammed’s books, I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed in this self-help book, and I was not. The book covers not only the gamut on the art of writing, but the formulation of an idea for a book, to proofreading, and eventual marketing of his/her book. This is an excellent book for anyone who finds him/herself contemplating becoming a writer. With Mohammed’s book in hand, there should be little, if any, room for error. I highly recommend.”
Kaye: You like to travel. Do the places you travel end up in your books?
Brenda: Yes they do and they did. I wrote Travel Memoirs with Pictures: Exploring the world. It is an illustrated picture book filled with reflections of my travels around the world.
In this pictorial travel book of my priceless memories, I describe places visited and the wonderful times I and my family had in our tourist trips. The book is great to read while on a vacation or for some travel inspiration.
I want to thank Brenda Mohammed for joining us here today and sharing a little about her lovely books. You can learn more about Brenda and her books on Amazon at: http://Author.to/BCM786. I love how she turned her own life experiences into books to be shared by all.
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I recently made the acquaintance of the energetic, sassy author, R.A. Winter. She writes in several genres, including fantasy, magical realism, dark fantasy, , time travel romance, contemporary Native American romance, and paranormal Native American western. And it seems she never rests when it comes to writing. Please help me to welcome R.A. Winter to Writing to be Read.
Kaye: Hello and welcome. Would you start by sharing the story of your own publishing journey?
R.A.: I started out writing genealogy nonfiction books under my married name. I love research and old libraries! I also love reading romances. With so many ideas flirting around my head, I thought I’d give creative writing a go.
Kaye: Is there anything unique or unusual about your writing process?
R.A.: I write the raunchiest first draft, the humor is way over the top. Then I cut it down, and my crit circle cuts it down further. My editor slices more. They say that a bit of humor goes a long way.
Kaye: You have sites on both WordPress and Wix. Can you give us the advantages and disadvantages of each? Which site do you prefer? Why?
R.A.:Wix is easier to deal with, super simple to navigate and change. WordPress is a bit of a pickle to deal with, and every time I change something, I mess up the page. I do prefer WordPress because I can easily share review and pages on a whim. Wix doesn’t give you that option.
Kaye:You’re on the review team at The Naked Reviewers, where authors can submit a book and request an honest review. Would you like to tell us a little about that site and what the review process is?
R.A.: We have a group of published author on Scribophile.com who formed the group. Right now, I think there is twelve of us. When someone submits a book, we all read the first chapter, the ‘look inside’ feature on Amazon. Then we rate the writing, the blurb, and the cover. If two of us agree, we review the book. Each Wednesday, two of us leave our review as a feature, if anyone else read it, they leave their thoughts in the ‘comment’ section. It does mean that most books that we review get a 4.0 or higher rating, usually. We wanted to show off the best books.
Kaye: You had bad experience with Amazon regarding reviews. This is something we’re hearing from many authors, although complaints vary. Many reviewers, including myself, have had book reviews pulled by Amazon, with the claim that their terms of use were violated because of an existing relationship which would bias our opinions. I even heard of an reviewer whose reviews were pulled because Amazon saw that they were Facebook friends, which they claimed indicated a prior relationship. (This doesn’t make sense to me. Many authors who I have done reviews for have become virtual online friends because of the review, not the other way around.) Your experience was a bit different because it wasn’t books that you were reviewing. Would you like to tell us a little about your experience?
R.A.:I ordered products from Amazon.com. A coffee grinder, a milk frother, and a small coffee taper, they just happened to be from the same company in China. Now, I review every product I receive, but when I went to upload my reviews, Amazon wouldn’t allow it. After contacting them, they said that I had a ‘relationship’ with the company in China and that I’d violated their terms. Apparently, I ordered too many things from them. I just don’t understand. They ask you to review, you review… then they’re like… you review too much! They banned me for LIFE for writing any reviews.
My point to them was- IF I was screwing reviews, wouldn’t my books have like 300 hundred reviews instead of each of them having less then 10? I mean seriously. THAT’S what would have benefited me!
Kaye: What is one thing that your readers would never guess about you?
R.A.: I have five children… all boys. I’ve lived in 5 different countries too. I don’t know which one was harder to live through. And all my boys look like my husband.
Kaye: What are your secrets for juggling writing with family?
R.A.: My kids are older, so they don’t need me. I like to write at night, when the house is quiet and no one interrupts. My earbuds are essential, and a song list that corresponds to my writing mood.
Kaye: You have some really great covers, some of which you’ve shared here. What do you do for cover art? DIY, or hired out, or cookie cutter prefab? Do you have a great cover designer you’d like to recommend?
R.A.: Some are creations of Kayci Morgan, from KreativeCovers.com. A few I did myself, which you can probably tell. Kayci is wonderful to work with and very reasonable. I am learning Photoshop and I’m doing my own teasers. I’m getting better but I just don’t have the finesse to do covers well.
Kaye: You have a paranormal romance fantasy novella, Twisted, which I’m excited to be reviewing here on Writing to be Read. (So watch for that review on Friday.) What can you tell us about that story?
R.A.:Twisted is a novella, and one of the hardest things I’ve
written.
It’s a Freaky-Friday, body switching piece… full of adult humor. A witch’s land is cursed. Males are no longer born to the vampires, nor are females born to the wolves. To end the curse, the witch must solve a riddle, and she has to have the cooperation of the vampires and the werewolves.
The only way to make them work together, is to make them work with themselves, so she switches their bodies. The male werewolf becomes the female vamp, and the vamp a male wolf. Then, the fun begins. It’s been called a cross between the “Underworld Series’ and ‘Once upon a Time.’
Kaye: What is the strangest inspiration for a story you’ve ever had?
R.A.: My Spirit Key series was a way to keep my cat alive in my memories. He’d just past away, and Dingle had the oddest personality for a cat. He always reminded me of an old man, you know the one. The spunky old guy in the nursing home who’s constantly bugging the pretty nurses and running behind them with his walker, never able to catch them. Occasionally, he’d pinch their behinds, but act like he didn’t do it. I taught Dingle how to wink, but usually he had this grumpy look on his face. He used to love to jump out and scare me, then give me that ugh, you’re-stupid-to-fall-for-that-again look. He’s now a ten-thousand year old spirit who has a bit of trickster in him.
Kaye: Your Spirit Key series are westerns with a bit of a different twist to them. Would you like to tell us about them?
R.A.: Contemporary Native American’s in a western setting with magical realism is the gist of the Spirit Key Series. In book 1, we follow young Sara, as the ghosts of ancestors haunt her days and try to keep her away from young RedHorse. There’s a new spirit in town, a nefarious one who has his own agenda. The Old One wants the land for the dead and he’ll do anything to have it, including taking away what Sara loves most.
Kaye:There are two books in The Spirit Key series: Painted Girl and Redhorse. What type of research did you do for these books?
R.A.:The first two book are contemporary, set in modern day Kansas on a farm. Books 3 and 4 (which are almost finished) go back to 1950, and we delve into Grandfather’s life, and that of the ten-thousand year old spirit who watches over them. My research centered on the old Indian Schools, and the horrors that the children underwent. It’s all to stop the spirits from invading this world, and to give grandfather his happy ending. The Native American research is from my family.
Kaye: You also write contemporary romance with a Native American twist. What about Little Sparrow, A Kiowa in Love or Red Dress, Two Wives?
R.A.:Those were my early books. I’ve taken the ebooks down, and now I’m writing those into the Spirit Key Series. Everyone is related, so it made sense to do that. I kept the hard copies up because a few people really liked them the way they were. My writing evolved, and I thought those two would be great as part of the Spirit Key Series with some rework.
Kaye:What is the attraction for adding a Native American element to your writing?
R.A.: Two fold. My grandmother was ‘found’. It was assumed that she was Native American. This was in the 1880’s, a time when the tribes had to travel west and were forced onto reservations. Our family farm was near one of the routes and my grandfather brought home a baby girl one day, saying that he’d found her. My cousins are Sioux. I barely remember the eldest two girls but I do remember their beauty. One day, when I was only six years old, they disappeared. Just up and gone. Our family went nuts, as you can imagine. It wasn’t until twelve years later that we learned that they had been taken west to different orphanages and divided up. (This was the early ’70’s when the government still took NA children on a whim.) Anyway, my stories revolve around finding your identity when you don’t know who you are, when you have no memories of your family. My Native American family is rooted by my life stories. You know that you’re different, but you feel the same as everyone else. You just have to find your own special, because it’s there, you don’t have to go looking for it. It just may be hiding in plain sight.
Kaye: I’m also very interested in your time travel romances, As Long As I Have You and Always With You. What can you share with us about them?
R.A.:These were part of an anthology, and part of a series inside the anthology. The rules are simple, Cupid owns a bar, and his mate has a special tattoo that glows when soul mates are touched. In book 1, Ann Paolo comes to the bar with her dog. Unbeknownst to her, the dog, Han, is the spirit of a long dead Native American, who has been cursed to follow Ann through time, always to love her, and be loved, but never to be with her. Cupid sends them back in time, so Han can erase his curse. In book 2, Ann’s back, because so many lifetimes couldn’t be rewritten. This time, Cupid calls on the fates to bring Han to life in this day and time. The fates have a bit of trouble writing him into time-line, so they turn to Netflix for ideas. Han is now, Dan Winchesty, from the TV show Super-Unnatural Killers and Revealers Suckers for short. You know, Dan Winchesty- the one with the perky nipples? It’s a spoof on Supernatural, and I think it’s hilarious, but that’s just my opinion.
Kaye: What is your favorite genre to write in so far? Why?
R.A.: I love magical realism and fantasy. Creating my own world, and rules, takes a lot of thought and design. You just can’t pop something on paper, it has to make sense, have rules, have life, and you have to bring a reader into your world and make them happy.
Kaye: How much non-writing work, (marketing & promotion, illustrations & book covers, etc…), do you do yourself for your books?
R.A.:I do all my own marketing, which isn’t much. Word of mouth is my best friend, because lets face it, my works are different. I just had a review from a guy, who said that someone at work bullied him into reading it and he loved it, even with the romance in the book. I think that was a compliment.
Kaye: If one of your books was made into a film, which book would you want it to be? And who would you like to play the lead?
R.A.:Hmm, I’d love the Spirit Key to be a series on Netflix, but for a movie, I’d chose Twisted. Sam Witwer and Meaghan Rath. They had great chemistry in Being Human. Now, however, Meaghan would be a vampire, and Sam would be a wolf.
Kaye: What’s next? What does the future look like for R.A, Winter?
R.A.: Oh, I have at least six books in various stages of completion. Twisted will be turned
into a series, readers have asked for that. I’m also writing a series about Death Takers
coming alive and finding love. It’s a dark romance series that takes the reader on a
journey to Tartarus and the bowels of hell. Book 1 is finished, book 2 is halfway. Once
book 2 is ready I’ll publish.
Kaye:If writing suddenly made you rich and famous, what would you do?
R.A.:I’ve done a lot of things on my bucket list. I’ve traveled the world, lived in five different countries and enjoyed most of my life. If I had a lot of money, I’d pay off my family’s student loans. Right now, it’s around 200k, and I’m serious. It would be life changing for them to pay off their debts. BTW, I have one family member, with 100k debt who graduated from Pitt with a bachelor’s in psychology. Anyone have any job prospects for him? E-mail me.
I want to thank R.A. Winter for joining us today and putting up with my interrogation. Seriously though, she was really a good sport about answering all of my questions with open, honest answers. You can find out more about her and her writing on her website, her Spirit Keyssite, or her Amazon Author Page.
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Today I have the privelege of interviewing a fabulous poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. As well as writing poetry, she also does performance poetry and is fondly called Word Woman. Once you see her perform, there is no question as to why. Rosemerry is vibrant and energetic and enthusiastic about her poetry, and about life, and this shines through in her work. She was Western Slope Poet Laureate here in Colorado from 2015-2017, she leads poetry and in 2016, she gave a fabulous TED Talk in Paonia, Colorado, The Art of Changing Metaphores, which is definitely worth watching if you wish to see how we can use metaphores to help shape our thinking, our lives and even the world around us. Please help me welcome this wonderful Word Woman to Writing to be Read.
Kaye: When did you know you wanted to be an poet?
Rosemerry:I have a very strong memory of sitting on the floor in my fifth grade classroom in a reading corner, and finding a poem by Walter de la Mare in a magazine. It was about a snowflake, and it began, “Before I melt, come look at me, this lovely icy filigree.” I memorized it, only 12 lines, and fell totally in love with the sounds of the poem. I had no idea what it meant, I just knew it thrilled me, the way the sounds chimed with each other. I felt it in my whole body. I don’t know that’s so much when I knew I wanted to be a poet, but it is when the love affair began.
Kaye: What is the biggest challenge of being a poet?
Rosemerry: Hmmm. Perhaps it is knowing that I have so much farther to go in my craft—that I am not yet writing the poems I feel I am here to write. Still so many layers of me to peel away, still so much to explore. And no way to get there except to write and write and practice and practice and read and read …
Kaye: Would you talk a bit about your personal poetic process?
Rosemerry: Since 2006 I have written a poem a day, and that daily practice is a huge part of my process. It makes it so that writing a poem isn’t just something that happens when I am sitting in front of a page, it’s something that is happening all day long. It completely changes the way I am in the world—how I pay attention, how I meet the moment. I’ll add that I am an avid reader of poems and read many every day—I am always trying to expand my poem horizons, see what a poem can do in other’s hands, and teach myself based on what other poets have done successfully.
Kaye: As a poet, you sculpt your words to form an image in the minds of those who are listening or reading your work. So, in a way, you are an artist and words are your medium. Are you creative in other ways, as well?
Rosemerry: It wouldn’t be painting (though I enjoy collaborating with artists!) But I do sing with a women’s acapella group, Heartbeat. We’ve been together since 1994, and I love pushing myself musically with them. And in the kitchen, I like to be creative with cooking and baking. And perhaps I am a creative parent? In fact, my son tells me he wishes I were more normal. And perhaps this is a good place to mention that I am currently finishing the first season of a podcast on creative process called “Emerging Form,” which I am doing with science writer Christie Aschwanden.
Kaye:How did you become attached to the handle of Word Woman? Is there a story behind that?
Rosemerry: About twenty years ago I was trying to come up with a business name that would accommodate all my language interests. At the time, I was an editor for a newspaper, freelancing for magazines, writing and teaching poems and performing a lot. Plus, my Master’s Degree is in English Language and Linguistics. I am obsessed with words, always have been. It just seemed to fit! It kind of cracks me up that it sounds like a super hero. The words themselves are the heroes. Poems have literally saved my life.
Kaye: Your book, Naked for Tea recently came out and was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Awards. Would you like to tell us a little about that?
Rosemerry: Such a thrill! I was sooooooo hoping to be published by Able Muse. I love their poetry books. The day that I found out that they were going to publish it, even so it wasn’t the winner, I was in the Telluride Library. When the text came through, I started jumping up and down, and was soon surrounded by a host of cheering and exuberant librarians! The library is a great place to find out about a book contract!
Kaye:Naked for Tea is an interesting title. How do you decide the titles for your books?
Rosemerry: Usually the titles come from lines in poems, and that’s the case here, too. The title poem is actually named, That’s Right. The first line is, “I showed up naked for tea.” And it’s the perfect poem to represent the book in that I feel that the whole collection is about the art of showing up as vulnerably, as authentically as possible. I joke that the poems are all about failure, and they are—about finding the beauty in our brokenness, our mistakes.
Kaye : Naked for Tea also has a very interesting cover. How did you come up with it? If you don’t mind me asking, did you serve as the model?
Rosemerry: It’s not me! The publisher, Alex Pepple, had no idea the stir it would cause, because it certainly does look as if it’s my naked spine and long brown hair. The name of the photo he used is Back Story, which tickles me—perfect for a book of poems. I am happy with the metaphorical suggestion of showing up naked.
Kaye: Would you talk a little about performance poetry and how you got into that?
Rosemerry: When I moved to Telluride in 1994, I was lucky to fall in almost immediately with Art Goodtimes, one of the finest performers of poetry in Colorado. He awed me. So physical. So playful. So powerful. Before that I had NO performance poetry skills. What luck to find myself in close proximity to a master—and one who was willing to give me honest, gentle feedback, too.
Kaye: Performance Poetry is really a physical medium, yet when you perform, your movements appear as if they were a natural part of your speech. Your movements flow smooth and graceful. Does it ever feel as if you are doing a dance with your poetry? Have you ever tried adding music to your poetry performances?
Rosemerry: I naturally talk with my hands and body, which, I think, is lucky for poetry performance, though I don’t doubt that the performance enhances it. There are small pieces in a few poems which I have intentionally choreographed, but for the most part, I just let my body do what it does. I have found, though, that it often will move the same way for the same poem, and that these repeated gestures are very helpful for memorization—it’s as if the poem gets in the body which helps it to lodge in the mind.
As for music, yes! I love adding music! Of course I sing myself sometimes—to enter a poem or within a poem—but to have someone else accompany me is one of my greatest pleasures! I perform frequently with my good friend Kyra Kopestonski, a cellist. She and I have so much fun playing around and finding ways for the music and the poem to speak to each other. It’s especially great for very short poems because those are very hard to perform successfully without musical interludes. But it’s especially great for all poems! And I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with many different musicians—guitar, flute, bass, drums, even a whole band. I would love to be like Laurie Anderson and have my own band!
Kaye: What is the strangest inspiration for a poem you’ve ever had?
Rosemerry: Ha! I’ve written some mighty weird poems. Picking up a grave digger hitchhiker, perhaps? Black widow egg sacs? Wearing a tail?
Kaye: What is the single most important quality in a poem for you?
Rosemerry:Authenticity.
Kaye: What’s the best piece of advice you were ever given?
Rosemerry: From David Lee, past poet laureate of Utah and a very fine poet and performer: Surround yourself by poets better than you are.
Kaye:What is the one thing in your writing career that is the most unusual or unique thing you’ve done so far?
Rosemerry: Tough to say … but here’s the first thing that comes to mind. Once I participated as a guest artist for the Art & Architecture Weekend in Telluride. The Ah Haa School assembled a team to support me. We used three-line poems (I have thousands) and they painted them on the walls, they made garlands with poems, I had a cream dress covered in poems, white gogo boots covered in poems … and then I stood in the middle of the decorated room at a table with a bowl full of words and the participants came in and either picked a word or gave me one of their own, and then, after a brief conversation with them about why they chose the word, I wrote them a personal three-line poem on the spot—87 in six hours. I felt so in the zone, the day whizzed by. It was absolutely magical. People wept, hugged me, kissed me, laughed. It was an incredible interaction. And then I was given the juried artist award for the whole event, icing on the cake!
Kaye: Imagine a future where you no longer write poetry. What would you do?
Rosemerry: I can’t imagine it. Really. I think if I were deserted and alone on a desert island, I might still write poems in the sand. But if I try really really hard to not be me and think of what else I would do, um, drive race cars. But I would never do that.
Kaye:It seems like poetry really is ‘in your blood’. Can you give me an example of how poetry flows out into the other areas of your life?
Rosemerry: Well, it does feel like an integral part of me. And I guess it does leak out! I have a little game with myself to see how poems might make their ways into the hands of people who think they don’t like poems. Part of that is doing readings. Part of that is leading collaborative workshops with other teachers, pairing poetry with meditation or painting or healing from grief. Part of that is writing short poems on river rocks and leaving them all over town (in stairwells, public bathrooms, on street corners, etc). Like a poetry easter bunny, any given day of the year. I’ve left many hundreds of rocks out there, and they are always picked up! But I would say that more than poetry flows out, it flows in. I feel as if I am always finding poems, other people’s poems and poems waiting to be written. That’s such a thrill!
Kaye: What’s the most fun part of writing a poem for you? What’s the least fun part?
Rosemerry: Most fun: The blank before the poem arrives. All that potential! And then the thrill of the seed of the idea showing up. That AND when the ending shows up and you know, “Yes, yes, that’s it.”
Least fun: realizing that I have already used the words blossom, sometimes, moon, shine and invitation a million times and I need to come up with another word.
Kaye: Which poet, dead or alive, would you love to have lunch with?
Rosemerry:Only one?? And I think you mean besides the poets I presently hang out with. Hmm. Gerard Manley Hopkins. I think it would be awkward, but to be that close to greatness?? I would be happy to sit there in awkward silence as we ate our boiled potatoes.
Kaye: What advice do you have for aspiring poets?
Rosemerry:Surround yourself with other poets. Though the act of writing is solitary, as Ammons would say, you “sit alone picking away at your own liver,” the art of it and the communion of it is in community. Most of my best friends are poets—they inspire me, chide me, keep me in line, offer me a life line.
And of course, read. Read. Read smart—with a pen in your hand, taking notes on what you love and why. Read for pleasure.
And last, memorize, or, better yet, learn poems, as we say, by heart.
I want to thank Rosemerry for sharing with us today on Writing to be Read. Her energy and enthusiasm seems to be contagious for me. I hope it is for all of you aspiring poets out there, too. You can learn more about Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and the amazing things that she’s done on her Word Woman website, where you’ll find calendar, book sales, writing prompts and more. Her poetry books are avaiable on Amazon and you can visit her Author Page , too. You can also find her daily poems here. Please take the time to like the post or leave a comment to show your support for Rosemerry and/or Writing to be Read.
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If you are an author, poet or screenwriter and you’d like to be interviewed on Writing to be Read, drop Kaye an email at kayebooth(at)yahoo(dot)com with “Interview Request” in the subject line.
It’s my pleasure today to be able to interview JS Mayank, who is not only a screenwriter, but also a director and producer of films in the wild and crazy world of Hollywood. Originally from England, Mayank has been in the screenwriting world for more than a decade and seems to thrive in the world of film making. He currently has four films to his credit, and his short film SOMEDAY just premiered in New York last month. Please help me welcome him as he shares some of his thoughts and screenwriting and film making experiences with us today.
Kaye: When did you know you wanted to be a screenwriter?
JS: I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was two and a half. I would draw pictures and then get my parents, grandparents, or any other grown up to write it down– dictating corresponding stories to go along with the drawings. So I’ve always been a storyteller. But for screenwriting specifically, I remember I was in highschool (in India), when I came across the screenplay for THE SIXTH SENSE. It was the first script I had ever seen, and I read it before seeing the movie. When I finally watched the film, I was astounded by how closely it mimicked what I had read on the page. That was a moment of epiphany for me, and I fell in love with the medium.
Kaye: Would you briefly share the story of your own screenwriting journey? How did you go from writing your first screenplay to becoming not only a screenwriter, but a director and producer as well?
JS:Wow. That’s quite the sprawling canvas. I suppose the short version is – I always loved movies and TV. I was obsessed with Hollywood filmmaking in particular. After my undergraduate degree in Economics, I decided to take a year to work with a not-for-profit organization in India, where my boss was making documentaries for the UN, WHO, UNESCO etc. That’s where I fell in love with the form. From there, I came to the US, did a Masters in Communication at Wake Forest University (NC) – finishing the two year course in one year, and taking the second year to just watch movies. I saw over 1500 films in one year. It was the most intense education ever. After that, I got into the MFA program for Directing and production at Loyola Marymount University (CA), and moved to LA. That’s where I trained in the actual craft of directing and producing.
Kaye: What is the working title of your next movie?
JS:The Dead Wives Club – it’s a British dramedy.
Kaye: Which screenwriter, dead or alive, would you love to have lunch with?
JS:A few years ago, I would have said Damon Lindelof (the creator of LOST/THE LEFTOVERS), but he’s now my mentor, and I can already do that. I think I’d like to go with someone who’s not alive. Probably my favorite female screenwriter – Nora Ephron!
Kaye: What is the biggest challenge of being a screenwriter?
JS: I suppose it’s the same as the challenges of trying to make a living as any other kind of writer. Self doubt. Procrastination. Crippling self doubt. Lack of certainty. No job security. Did I mention debilitating self doubt?
Kaye: What’s the most fun part of writing a screenplay? What’s the least fun part?
JS: To me, breaking the story – creating the world, characters, scenarios – that initial spark of the idea is the biggest rush ever! Pure creativity. I suppose, rewriting is the least fun – though absolutely one of the most important parts of the process.
Kaye: What is the most important quality in a screenplay for you?
JS:Voice. A writer’s unique expression. The way they see the world. Quentin Tarantino is totally different from Nancy Meyers, who’s completely separate from Diablo Cody, who’s miles apart from Donald Glover.
Kaye: As a screenwriter, what kind of research do you find yourself doing for your stories?
JS:When I’m writing a script, I immerse myself into every aspect of that world. There’s a TV project I’m developing that I’ve been researching for almost 10 years. Others, I’ll talk to experts, read books, watch documentaries… whatever it takes. I love learning, so research is actually one of my favorite aspects of the job. Sometimes I feel like I enjoy research more than writing… But that’s probably just because I’m procrastinating.
Kaye: Your movie SOMEDAY had its US premiere at the Dominican Film Festival in NY (DFFNY) on July 29th, and won best short there. Would you like to tell us a little about that movie?
JS: SOMEDAY started as a collaboration between an actress friend of mine (Katherine Castro), who said something interesting happened to her, and that it’d make a great movie. Usually when someone says that, it’s really not all that fascinating, but I’ve been a huge fan of hers, and so gave her the benefit of the doubt. When I heard the story, I absolutely knew it was a film. She had an encounter on a plane with someone who was very famous, and she had no idea. They simply conversed the entire way, and had an immense connection. I knew there was a story in there I wanted to tell. So I wrote it, sent her the script, and wished her the best with the project. A day later, she called me saying she loved it, and wanted me to direct it as well. It was a dream collaboration from start to finish.
SOMEDAY: Written & Directed by J S Mayank
Two strangers meet on a 14 hour non-stop flight from Sydney to Los Angeles. Adam is a world-famous composer, but Melody doesn’t recognize her flight companion. Along the way, they laugh, flirt and pour their hearts out… a connection made more beautiful precisely because of its fleeting nature.
Kaye: You are both a screenwriter and the director for Someday. Is there a secret to balancing the dual roles?
JS: Realizing that the script is just a blueprint. A template. A roadmap. Once I’m the director, I have to have a singular overarching vision for the movie, but also realize that I have a great team around me – cinematographer, production designer, costumer, VFX supervisor, editor, composer… and of course, my actors. Each of these collaborators bring their own expertise, ideas and opinions, and sometimes that demands alterations to the screenplay. My job as the director is to ensure each change is for the better.
Kaye: What’s it like to sit in a theater and watch the premier for a movie that you have created?
JS: Nerve-wracking, panic inducing, and absolutely one of the greatest feelings in the world. Seeing an audience reacting to your work is beyond words.
Kaye: What’s the best piece of advice you were ever given?
JS:Two pieces. First, from Bruce Cohen (producer of American Beauty, Big Fish):
“Always lead with your best foot forward. It’s good to be humble in your personal life. But for work, have a healthy sense of ego in what you do (as long as you have the goods to back it up).”
Second, from my mentor, Damon Lindelof (LOST, The Leftovers):
“Keep doing the work. It will save you every time.”
Kaye: What advice do you have for aspiring screenwriters?
JS:Write every day. Write what you’re passionate about. And don’t take no for an answer. Also, be kind (but that’s just general life advice).
Kaye: What is the one thing in your screenwriting career that is the most unusual or unique thing you’ve done so far?
JS:It’s a new project, and something that will probably take my career to the next level, but unfortunately, I can’t talk about it. I’m under an NDA. Keep a look-out for something in September, though.
Thank you JS. You’ve definitely piqued our interest. I know I can’t wait. I want to thank you for joining us here today on Writing to be Read. It’s been a pleasure to chat with you. You certainly offered some insight into the world of film making.
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Barbara: The quick answer – because the narrative arc primarily follows a trajectory of romance. I know that when I’ve written material that has a strong romance (as in The Amber) but has something else as it’s narrative arc (coming of age, self-discovery, overcoming demons, etc.) then it isn’t seen as romance. For instance, there’s some pretty strong romantic properties to the whole Jaguar series, but she’s primarily dealing with criminals and crime.
Barbara: I wrote the Fear series as a detective/mystery series. It just happened to be set in the future. When I was seeking a publisher, there was no such thing as ‘cross-genre’, and the mystery/detective market wanted nothing to do with it. Thus it landed in science fiction, which was more open, and they called it cyberpunk suspense – which made me wonder if I had to do something different with my hair, you know?
TERESA DI ROSA, owner of the thriving catering business Bread and Roses, makes the feeding of bodies and souls her life work. Now, with her niece CHRISTINE and her friends DELIA and AMBERLIN, she’s gearing up for the big event of the year – the annual Christmas open house. But as the party gets organized, her life is spinning out of control.
Delilah is 31, has no career to speak of, and is living at home with her hippie parents, and hanging on to a boyfriend who likes to photograph her naked in tubs of blue jello. Clearly, Delilah needs a plan.
Barbara: Children of the Land is actually the last novel in a series that I wrote which attempted to move across genres through each novel. It started with Children of the Gods, historical fiction with a contemporary twist, retelling the ancient history of the Haudonosaunee. Next was a near future novel titled Children of the World, which featured the descendants of the first novel as they approached the historical moment when biological immortality became possible. After that was Children of the Land, where the next round of descendants dealt with the political and world ramifications of that possibility in a fantasy novel.
Loretta: Not Just Any Man is about a black mountain man in 1820s New Mexico named Gerald Locke, Jr. It’s an adventure story, as Gerald traps in Northern New Mexico and then joins a fur trapping expedition across the Arizona desert and up the Colorado River. The group includes Enoch Jones, the only mountain man in the West who seems to have an issue with Gerald’s skin color. Jones has a few other issues as well, and the conflict between the two men is a crucial plot element.
Kaye: The Pain and the Sorrow is based in New Mexico history and a historical figure of legend, but the story about your female protagonist. Not all of your novels have female protagonists though. Was the female protagonist easier to write since you have a natural female perspective?
We also were blessed with three new Wednesday blog series with three new team members. The team member from the 2018 Wednesday line-up with the most views was Jeff Bowles with Jeff’s Pep Talk, but Jordan Elizabeth and Art Rosch brought in their fair share with Writing for a Y.A. Audience and the Many Faces of Poetry, respectively.
2019 promises to be an even better year for both Writing to be Read and for me, and I’m excited to share my plans with you here. To start, this site will be getting a facelift: a new theme which will coincide with my new WordCrafter website and a new logo. The WordCrafter site will be the new home of Write it Right Editing Services and WordCrafter Copywriting, now housed here, as well as WordCrafter Press and WordCrafter Online Courses in the near future. Writing to be Read, although remaining here, will operate under the WordCrafter trademark. I was hoping to launch it tonight to start the New Year off right, but time constraints have not favored me. The launch of my WordCrafter and new image and logo for Writing to be Read will happen sometime in January. That’s the revised goal.
Let’s not forget the new addition to the Wednesday line-up. Starting in January, children’s author Robbie Cheadle will be joining us with her blog series, Growing Bookworms. You can learn more about Robbie and her exciting and creative new series in my introduction and welcome post last Monday.
Robbie: 
Kaye:
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R.A.:
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Rosemerry:
