Natalia Sylvester · Finding Truth Through Fiction

The Necessity of Silence

December 7, 2011 in feelings, honesty, journals, writing, writing spaces | 99429 commentsThe+Necessity+of+Silence2011-12-07+17%3A16%3A17Natalia

Today’s a special day for me reasons I won’t mention here. I thought about blogging about it, then realized I’m still working through it in my mind, figuring how (or if) I feel about it. Most likely I’ll work through it by writing it down.

When I do figure this out, it’s probably something I’ll never share. I say this not to be vague or cryptic, or purposefully mysterious, but just to remind us that there are parts of us it’s okay not to share.

Writing is always described as such a solitary act. But writers dream of being published and having their voices heard. We have blogs and Twitter accounts, which allow every thought to be broadcast for public consumption (or public indifference).

And while there’s something very beautiful in that because it helps us build a community, I can’t imagine sharing every last piece of me. I need something that remains my own, a quiet place I can go to at the end of the day and be completely alone.

I was looking through old journals a few days ago and it occurred to me that I have years and years of writing that no one will ever read. It made me sad not because it’s a waste, but because for the most part I stopped writing in those journals over the last few years. In the last few years, my life and my writing shifted. I started working as a full-time freelance writer, I started my first novel, I started focusing on establishing an online presence. Everything I wrote became something others would read. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s not like my writing’s suffered because it suddenly had an audience.

But I will say that yesterday, as I was driving around and thinking about what today marked, I realized I wanted to write about it in a journal. I realized I needed to write about it not so that someone might read it, but simply because I had to get it out for myself. It was the oddest sensation. It was like remembering I had a safe place I’d totally neglected, and now that I knew it was still there I ached for it.

I wondered how many of us forget this the deeper we delve into our online existences. How many of us obsess over what the next blog post will be about, what word count we’re at in our WIP so we can share it with our buddies, but then forget to nurture the part of us that made us writers in the first place, back when we scribbled thoughts (any thought) just for the sake of discovering them.

This isn’t a post about how, to do our best writing, we need to write for ourselves and without an audience in mind. It’s just a post about me realizing that I need to write for myself again, period. Not so that the writing will be better. Not so that one day it’ll be read by others. This isn’t about craft or what a story needs.

It’s simply about what I need. I need to write things that I keep to myself. And I suspect a lot of us need that, too.

 photo credit: redcargurl

Take it Like a Writer: No Disclaimers, No Excuses

December 1, 2011 in writing | 97528 comments2011-12-01+15%3A04%3A33Natalia

Tell me you haven’t been tempted to put a huge WARNING sticker on a work-in-progress.

It is, after all, in progress. So let’s say you just finished a rough draft and you’re sending it to your writer friends because you want to get their initial feedback*. Your book right now is like the skeleton of a building. You have the blueprints, and you’ve laid some bricks and cement and erected a lot of wooden boards.

But before you add the finishing touches, before you start putting up dry wall and picking paint colors (clearly, I’m not an architect, so bear with me with this metaphor) you want to do a walk-through with a new set of eyes. Eyes you trust to catch any structural errors you might have missed. Eyes that are seeing this all for the first time, making it easier for them to see any fatal details that could make the whole building crumble if ignored.

Obviously, the work’s not done yet. Obviously, you’re not expecting someone to walk in and say, “I love it! When can I move in?”

But you’re still tempted to disclaim a few things.

This is a very, very rough draft.

I’m still planning on developing so-and-so’s character.

I’m going to be researching this event a little more to add in the details in revision.

You feel the need to defend the work because it’s not yet at its best.

But here’s the thing: You know that bit about writers needing thick skins? It starts right now. Before the first round of feedback ever comes your way, you need to tell the world you’re open to it. No warning signs. No disclaimers. No excuses.

Because the last thing you want to do is scare people away from walking in in the first place, or from being honest with you. When we start off making excuses for our work, it sends a message that we won’t be able to take the truth, or worse, we won’t be able to use it to keep improving.

Leave the door wide open (to your most trusted readers, of course). Let them take it all in like future readers would, with the writer’s voice only showing up on the page. Take the criticism like a writer. Hear it out, gather it all in your toolbox, and keep building till you’re proud of it: No warning signs here.

*by you, of course I mean I.

 photo credit: Lee Cannon

Fresh Ink: An Interview with Debut Novelist Rebecca Rasmussen

November 22, 2011 in books, debut novelists, fiction, Fresh Ink, interviews, Rebecca Rasmussen, writing | 96611 comments2011-11-22+14%3A59%3A09Natalia

Fresh Ink is a monthly series of interviews with debut novelists that focuses on the journey to publication. Rebecca Rasmussen, author of The Bird Sisters, is celebrating the release of her paperback today (the hardcover launched in April). It’s the beautiful story of two elderly sisters who live together and spend their days nursing injured birds back to health, and the summer from their youth that bound them together when their hopes for the future were changed forever. The Bird Sisters was selected as a Target Emerging Author’s Pick and the Ladies’ Home Journal Book Club Pick for November/December.

I’m really excited to have Rebecca here as the first Fresh Ink interview to be featured after the original launch, so I’m interested to get her insights on what happens during this time. Thanks so much to Rebecca for being here!

In what ways did launching your debut novel live up to your expectations, and in what ways (if any) did it take you by surprise?

Launching a book is an extremely emotional experience, and for authors I think it’s made more so by the fact that it is your project and in the end you have very little control over it. Unless you are personally wealthy, you can’t create an advertising budget if your publishers don’t create one for you. You can’t sit in on the pitch meetings and try to convince everyone at Random House that yours is a book worth spending time and money on. You can’t do so many things you want to do.

Most authors I talk to are in some way disappointed by their launches—the world didn’t shift, maybe at all, the day their books came out. I knew all of this beforehand, and of course I couldn’t help but hope my experience would be different. It was and it wasn’t. The best part of my launch was that I met so many lovely people who really moved the earth for my book. These people included bloggers, other writers, reviewers, radio personalities, editors, etc. I owe them everything because eventually, if you are in any way normal, you strain your voice talking about your book and you need someone to take over for you. I was simply amazed by my generous friends. What a joy to meet so many of them when I drove all around the country on my crazy, three-generations-of-Rasmussens-book-tour (Wow! That’s another story altogether!).

In the months after your launch, what are some of the ways you kept momentum and the excitement going for your book?

I put a lot of miles on the car! All in all, I think I visited (and read at) over twenty bookstores!

I read in an article that some of the initial feedback you got for The Bird Sisters was that it was “quiet.” So my question is really two questions:

How did you interpret this, and what does “quiet” mean to you when describing a book?

To be honest, I knew those editors were the wrong readers for my book, and I knew I wasn’t going to change my book into something it wasn’t meant to be for the sake of someone else. I was happy to work on the book to make the writing stronger, the scenes tighter, etc., but I wasn’t about to turn a funeral scene into a parade if you know what I mean…

How did you work with this feedback ?

Luckily, my editor didn’t try to make the book a loud one. She tried to make it better, which I know she did. My editor is no longer with Crown, and I miss her and her brilliant editing every day.

With The Bird Sisters coming out in paperback, did you have to approach promoting this any differently than your initial launch? In what ways?

I’m happy to say that for the paperback launch, my publisher is the one doing most of the work for me. This time around, Crown/Broadway is putting a lot into the book, which basically means I am feeling relieved and somewhat like a normal person again, tweeting here and there, blogging here and there. That’s one of the risks of having to market yourself almost exclusively; you can easily lose sight of what’s important. Now I have time to teach and grade papers, to play with my daughter and make supper, to have a conversation with my husband, etc. It’s a big blessing. I’m very grateful.

What are you working on next? What is the most important thing you learned from writing The Bird Sisters that you think will help you with future writing?

I am actually working on my third novel. I wrote my second when I was waiting for The Bird Sisters to come out – from the day I signed my contract to the hardcover publication about 18 months passed, so I had plenty of time to work on a new project. My novel is about an old country doctor whose life gets turned upside down when a woman accuses him of malpractice in Oneida, Wisconsin.

About The Bird Sisters:

When a bird flies into a window in Spring Green, Wisconsin, sisters Milly and Twiss get a visit. Twiss listens to the birds’ heartbeats, assessing what she can fix and what she can’t, while Milly listens to the heartaches of the people who’ve brought them. The two sisters have spent their lives nursing people and birds back to health.

But back in the summer of 1947, they knew nothing about trying to mend what had been accidentally broken. Milly was known as a great beauty with emerald eyes and Twiss was a brazen wild child who never wore a dress or did what she was told. That was the summer their golf pro father got into an accident that cost him both his swing and his charm, and their mother, the daughter of a wealthy jeweler, finally admitted their hardscrabble lives wouldn’t change. It was the summer their priest, Father Rice, announced that God didn’t exist and ran off to Mexico, and a boy named Asa finally caught Milly’s eye. And, most unforgettably, it was the summer their cousin Bett came down from a town called Deadwater and changed the course of their lives forever.

Thanks, Rebecca, and congratulations on a great launch year!

The Thin Line Between Writing Style & Writing Habits

November 10, 2011 in craft, fiction, honesty, language, style, voice, writing | 94121 comments2011-11-10+18%3A31%3A40Natalia

I don’t exactly consider myself an expert on fashion style. I try my best, but sometimes an outfit works and sometimes it feels uninspired. When I can’t figure out what to wear I fall back on the ever-reliable jeans, white t-shirt, and cute accessories combo. But lately I’ve been thinking a lot about style, not just in fashion but in writing.

I have a friend who, no matter what she wears, makes it look like the most chic ensemble ever. She mixes and matches items I would never dream of combining and pulls them off flawlessly. It’s a beautiful thing. Okay, yeah…sometimes I find myself envying her and wondering why I can’t make a parka seem glamorous. But for the most part I admire her vision, creativity, and the fearlessness that comes with pairing a $200 skirt with a $4 top found at a thrift store. Her style is hers alone. It can’t be cloned (trust me, I’ve tried).

It’s the same way with writers. The best writers have so much style you could probably pick up on it just by reading their grocery lists. Sometimes it’s in the form of a metaphor so surprisingly true, you wonder why you never thought of it. Other times it’s just the rhythm of the language, a cadence so unique to them it’s like recognizing their footsteps from down the hall. You start picking up on a writer’s voice, their underlying cynism or wit, maybe their continuous exploration of a theme that, even when they’re writing about completely different situations, creeps into their words.

True style is difficult to pinpoint. You don’t know exactly why you recognize it. You just know it’s there because it’s powerful and awe-inspiring.

On the flip side of that, we have habits. Like style, habits can be unique to a person. They can become someone’s trademark. They can even be endearing for a while (someone who always answers a question with a question when they’re nervous, or a writer who makes the second person POV sing, stripping it of all its awkwardness) until they become overused and flat-out annoying. Habits are easily cloned and repeated; they’re clutches we can’t help but fall back on when we’re challenged. What’s worse is we hardly ever recognize them, or when we do, we mistake them for style.

Me wearing a white t-shirt with jeans and a funky purse anytime I want to look casual but put-together? That’s not style. If I wore that outfit every single day I can assure you the novelty would wear off. That’s why writers have to be aware of their habits. Make sure that that one thing you do really, really well doesn’t become the only thing you do, or the thing you do too much of, or the thing that eventually becomes so predictable it’s distracting to the reader. Don’t expect to catch all these habits yourself, either. Have your writing group read your work. Have an editor take a look (waves hello!).

And once they’ve pointed out your recurring ticks, don’t just eliminate them; think about why they’re there in the first place. Challenge yourself to come up with new ways to achieve the effect you’re going for. Go crazy and experiment. Read a ton and write a ton. Eventually you’ll find something other than habits creeping into your writing— something you can’t put your finger on but your readers recognize as your style. Then (and this is so important) don’t be satisfied that you’ve found it. Embrace it, keep writing and let it evolve over time.

Be honest, now: Do you know what your style is? Do you know what your habits are?

 photo credit: mayrodrigo

Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings…

November 4, 2011 in feelings, just for fun | 93714 comments2011-11-04+14%3A22%3A56Natalia

Growing up, I was the “sensitive” one in a family that included one doctor (my dad) and one eventual doctor (my sister), who understandably looked at the world more scientifically than I did. While my sister conducted dissections in our kitchen after a snake tried to bite my mother in the backyard and my cousin shot it with a BB gun, I was off in my room choreographing dances or writing poems. Family legend has it that once, when my sister explained how a piece of roadkill expanded after death, I replied, “Yes, but what about its soul?”

I was nicknamed “Soulgirl” for several years to come.

Writers are often typecast as tortured, sensitive souls. I’ll admit I can be overly sentimental at times, but I’m not above catching myself and laughing about it. This commercial that E showed me really spoke to me for that exact reason. (Watch it till the very end!)

What do you think? Are you one of the “crazy” ones the commercial refers to?

3 Years Ago Today…

November 1, 2011 in just for fun | 91122 comments3+Years+Ago+Today...2011-11-01+07%3A01%3A34Natalia

E and I are celebrating our three-year wedding anniversary today, so to help me resist the urge to get too mushy on the blog, I thought I’d share a quick wedding-related tidbit with you all. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that our wedding was book-themed, or that we insisted on writing our own vows. And like any bride, I wanted every last detail to be perfect, but one of my favorite memories from The Big Day was far from it.

We had our ceremony at a historic home with a beautiful palm tree-lined garden facing the ocean. From the day we decided on the location I knew I wanted the ceremony to be right around sunset, when the Miami sky becomes a gorgeous swirl of pinks and purples and oranges. The timing would have to be perfect for us to get the perfect pictures. It was all about when the ceremony started, how long it took everyone to arrive, and how long it lasted. Despite a couple of delays, it actually all worked out.

We celebrated our first moments as husband and wife with a tropical colored sky as our backdrop. The sunset lasted just long enough for us to get our portraits with it, too. Which means we got to take fun pictures like this one: Read the rest of this entry »

Getting Through a Plateau When the Writing Falls Flat

October 25, 2011 in persistence, writer's block, writing, writing advice, writing journeys | 90329 comments2011-10-25+17%3A46%3A00Natalia

Remember how several months ago I started going to boot camp?

I’m happy to say I’m still going. Not so happy to say I think I’ve hit a plateau. I’m trying not to obsess about it too much since my goal was to get healthy, lose a few pounds, and have fun in the process. Lately the numbers on the scale aren’t dropping much, but you know what? I did 42 push ups in two minutes last week, (before I started this class, I couldn’t even do one) I’ve met some amazing people, and fall weather is slowly approaching, making this class one of the best parts of my day. That’s still a huge win for me.

Last week I was thinking about this plateau and simultaneously worrying about where I am in my new WIP. I’ve felt stuck lately. I got about 50k in, practically at a sprint, and then started to feel directionless. I had an outline for this part of the story but something’s nagging at me to go another way. I just haven’t figured out where that is yet.

It’s frustrating, to say the least. I had all this momentum, I was making progress, and now everything’s just slowed down. I was really, really tempted to stop for a while. Step away from the WIP. Take a break and come back when I’m feeling reenergized.

But here’s the great thing about having these two plateaus going at once. In fitness, when you reach a plateau, no trainer in their right mind would say, “Well, it’s time to stop exercising.” They’d suggest you break through it by mixing up your workouts, maybe intensifying them, and taking a closer look at the kinds of fuel you’re putting into your body. Even I wouldn’t want to stop coming to class. I’ve worked hard for this, dammit! I’m not about to stop just because things have gotten a little harder.

And yet, we do this a lot as writers. Things get really, really difficult and instead of finding our way through that wall (as Jolina Petershiem so eloquently put it) we hang up our Writer’s Block sign and go out to lunch…indefinitely. And I get it. We all need to rest, but there’s a difference between taking a day or two to recover and taking so much time off that every day it gets harder to come back. At that point you’re not even on the plateau anymore; you’re going back down that hill you worked so hard to climb in the first place.

So in thinking about ways to get through my fitness plateau, I’ve figured out a strategy to get off this writing one. The answer is never: stop writing. But I am mixing things up. I’m stepping away from the WIP but not from the story. I’ve started journaling again, writing letters from one character to another. These are words they may never say to each other, but they’re words I need to know about. I may jump back into poetry for a while. I’m rewriting entire scenes from different characters’ POVs and rewriting them from different starting points.

I may be off the treadmill of a thousand (or however many) words a day, but that doesn’t mean I have to stop going. Progress means we keep moving forward, even if we have to change the approach a little.

How do you keep things moving in your writing?

 photo credit: jfdervin

10 Months of Blogging & 7 Links: A Look Back

October 20, 2011 in blogging, just for fun | 89615 comments2011-10-20+17%3A15%3A17Natalia

Let’s just say I’m fashionably late on this one. Earlier this month, Lori Parker invited me to participate in the 7 Links Challenge and I’m only now getting around to it. But I’m pretty excited because it’s like a greatest hits album for a blog. The 7X7 links highlight posts in certain categories that deserve a second look. For a lot of you who are newish around here, this may even be a first look.

I'm not sure what this picture has to do with today's post, but I just had to use it.

So here goes:

1. Most Beautiful Post: My post about What My Mother’s Sewing Taught Me About Patience was a necessary nostalgia trip: it made me see things from my childhood that I didn’t notice until now.

2. Most Popular Post: It seems writers are obsessed with finding time to write. My experiment of taking an entire workday to do nothing but write continues to get more and more hits every day. Maybe it’ll inspire you to try an experiment of your own?

3. Most Controversial Post: Authenticity plays a huge part in establishing an online presence, but here I admitted that my online and in-person personalities don’t always match up—and why I’m really okay with it.

4. Most Helpful: This one’s tough because I don’t like to give writing advice. What works for me might not work for others, so maybe my most helpful advice is to find your own.

5. Most Surprisingly Successful: Inspired by a writing prompt during Emily Suess’s Writer’s Week, I wrote about a self-portrait I took in my high school photography class, and what it taught me about taking risks. It really resonated with people, and I’m sure the title helped: I Once Shot a…

6. Post That Didn’t Get The Attention It Deserved: This is probably my third or fourth post, but it’s also one of my most personal. My parents’ divorce and what happened to our house while it all played out probably changed my writing forever: When the Wall Came Down, It All Made Sense.

7. Post I Am Most Proud Of: To be very honest, I’m probably most proud of the above post, but a close second is one less serious in tone. In Dear Characters, Please Leave Your Baggage Here, I write about how I smothered a new character that popped into my mind, to the point that she almost ran away in fear.

There you have ‘em. Now it’s my turn to pass along the challenge to five bloggers.

1. Valerie at Bohemian Season, because she’s created the Anthropologie of blogs.

2. Mahesh Raj Mohan, a fellow freelance writer/Buffy the Vampire Slayer enthusiast/pediatrician’s child/so much more. We geek out over lots of things.

3. Barb over at Written Not With Ink, because she manages to find creative inspiration in things many of us overlook.

4. Brian D. Buckley, who keeps a spreadsheet of books he’s read (he’s got my “jot them down in a notebook” system beat). Bonus points: he’s not a genre snob. He’ll read anything proudly.

5. Parisian Feline, a fearless blogger who tackles issues surrounding gender, feminism, body image, sexuality, and more in a thought-provoking and brutally honest way.

Thanks again to Lori for tapping me for the challenge. I hope you all enjoy the posts and that you’ll share some of your own.

photo credit: The Grim Atheist

This Is What Happens When You Watch All the Star Wars Movies & the Documentary in the Span of Four Days

October 17, 2011 in movies, persistence, revision, risk-taking | 88822 comments2011-10-17+14%3A38%3A58Natalia

For one, you don’t seem to mind incredibly long titles for your blog posts.

Also, you learn a thing or two about not giving up on a creative vision.

Before any of you start feeling sorry for me, watching all six movies was actually my idea. E has a tendency to play movies like one would a new album—to have it as background noise to ignore. I have a tendency to get sucked into them (and how can you not with a theme song like this?).

He started with the original, and when that ended I was wide awake and insisted we watch The Empire Strikes Back. By the next day, when E thought I’d had my fill, I was already on a roll. Why watch two if you’re not going to watch the next? And after watching the original trilogy, why not watch the prequels leading up to it?

As we watched all the pretty neon lightsabers clashing and wooshing through the air during the fight scenes, I couldn’t help but imagine how ridiculous the actors must’ve felt as they were filming it. They basically just had these white wooden poles that made an awkward clanking sound when struck together. Those guns with the cool laser beams shooting out of them? They were glorified toys. And before the music, the sound effects, the visual effects and the editing added their magic touch to the film, being on set probably felt a lot like walking into a cheap Halloween haunted house. Except with costumes no one could make sense of.

So imagine my delight when we started watching the Making of the Trilogy documentary and got to see behind-the-scenes footage and the actors’ commentary. Did you know they shot most of the original movie in London? The English crew members thought Lucas and the cast were just shooting a silly children’s film. The actors often had no idea what their lines meant (Harrison Ford has been quoted saying, “George, you can type this shit, but you sure as hell can’t say it.“) R2D2 was constantly breaking down. The studio was threatening to close the whole production down because they were way over schedule. And the first time Lucas went to check on his visual effects team (because the VFX would tie everything together, right?!) he was less than impressed.

All signs pointed at no. No, this isn’t such a good idea after all. No, this isn’t going to magically come together. Even after all the scenes were shot and the movie was edited, that first cut was a distaster. Apparently it lacked urgency. It was boring and confusing. While most people would give up at this point and accept they’ve made a bad movie, Lucas and his team hired a new editor and started over. The movie’s release date was pushed back several months. People started suspecting it’d be a flop.

Before watching this documentary, I never thought I’d incorporate Star Wars into this blog. E and I often poke fun at George Lucas, because he has a tendency to tinker with his films so much that he makes them worse. But I have to give him credit for actually seeing his vision through. No one around him understood what he was trying to do. They couldn’t see what he saw in his mind, and what’s worse, they didn’t think he could pull it off. Every single day he worked on Star Wars, he could’ve decided to give up and no one would’ve argued with him.

But he pushed through. And then the movie came out and broke every record imaginable.

Yoda would sum up the lesson here in a very wise, oddly-structured way. But I trust you all don’t need me to point it out.

 photo credit: JD Hancock

Fresh Ink: An Interview with Debut Novelist Erika Marks

October 10, 2011 in debut novelists, Erika Marks, Fresh Ink, interviews | 87321 comments2011-10-10+05%3A17%3A06Natalia

Fresh Ink is a monthly series of interviews with debut novelists that focuses on the journey to publication. Please welcome Erika Marks, author of Little Gale Gumbo, the story of a single mother who moves from New Orleans to a small island off the coast of Maine in search of a fresh start. What she finds is a passionate romance that inspires her to open an authentic Creole café and a new family that, years later, will be tested by tragedy.

I’m especially excited about today’s Fresh Ink because Erika has offered to send a free copy of Little Gale Gumbo to one lucky commenter! Anyone can enter (even if you’re outside of the US), and the winner will be chosen randomly at noon EST this Friday, October 14. Good luck!

Length of time from book’s start to pub date: 3 ½ years

# of agents you queried before signing: I was very fortunate in that I found my agent through a referral from another agent I had developed a lovely relationship with over several years of querying; her list was full so she forwarded my manuscript to another agent and it was a perfect match!

# of books written before this one: 13

# of revisions you went through: 3 with my agent then 2 with my editor

We’re lucky that there are so many great resources for writers to learn about publishing these days. That being said, what’s the one aspect of the process you never could have predicted?

I would say the implementation of social media. I know I’m supposed to see it as an extension of the business of writing, but honestly, I can’t see it that way. The friends I have made on Twitter, other writers and readers, are truly people I’ve come to feel I know and want to check in with. I never would have imagined having that sense of genuine community through social media. I am so grateful for it and for everyone I’ve met through it. As you well know, Natalia, writing can be such an isolating endeavor. It has to be, somewhat, but I think that is the appeal of something like Twitter—that it allows for communication, even if it seems brief, it can provide some much needed interaction in the midst of so much quiet. That said, I know we all are aware that sometimes that temptation to check in can be prohibitive to keeping our focus, but for me, I think I have found a good balance. (Well, most days, anyway.)

Your road to publication is so inspiring. Can you share it here and tell us, what is it that kept you going despite the bumps along the way?

You are so kind, Natalia. I have been writing and pursuing publication for twenty years, if you can believe that! I sent off my first manuscript while I was still in college—a crushingly overwrought romance novel called Reasons of the Heart—and this was in the old days when you could submit unsolicited manuscripts to publishers AND receive personal letters in response. Mine were the most gracious rejections. I still have every single one. They kept me motivated, they really did. Every rejection seemed to promise (in my mind, anyway) that the next project could be the one. And so many agents were so generous—even the smallest tidbit of advice as to why it didn’t work was a gem and I savored every word. I also believe the key to staying motivated is to start something new. As tempting as it is to re-work and re-query a project, there comes a time when the best thing you can do for yourself and your writing is to move on. I am always comparing relationships to writing, and it’s true in this case, too. You can learn what is and isn’t working in a relationship and try to make those needed changes, but if it’s a fundamentally flawed relationship, I think it’s better to implement those revelations with someone new.

Little Gale Gumbo sold as part of a two-book deal; can you tell us a little about book number two? Had you already written it when it sold or is it something you began working on after?

I had a good chunk of a first draft written, so I essentially sold the second book with a proposal/outline. Since I’m a terribly superstitious person (as Little Gale Gumbo probably reveals!) and it’s still in draft form, I won’t get into too much detail but I will say the second book is set in a coastal Maine town renowned for its mermaid legend, and tells the story of how the mysterious arrival of two brothers to the town’s lighthouse sparks romance and revelations for its residents, including a young woman who can’t let go of a past heartbreak.

You mentioned that prior to launch of Book 1 you were on deadline for Book 2. What has it been like to work on two books at once, with each being in a different part of the process? How do you handle switching modes?

You’re so right that it requires switching modes. Even now as I am immersed in getting Little Gale Gumbo out into the world, my head is still very much jumping back to the characters of my second book. You do start to feel a little nervous, hoping you can give equal time to both endeavors. But I never feel as if the new story loses steam just because I have to be away from it for a while, and that helps. Read the rest of this entry »