Interview With Author Heather Grace Stewart
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a Canadian mom, wife, journalist, and poet. I started my own freelance magazine article and editing business in 1999 and have had my home office since then. My first novel was published by Morning Rain Publishing in 2014 and I’ve since become a full-time novelist. I’ve written six novels, six poetry collections and two screenplays. I most love creating romantic comedies and contemporary stories, but I’ve also produced fanciful time-travel stories.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My most recent novel is Lucky. The meet-cute between heroine Dylan and hero Mason was inspired by real events in my life. I was driving on the highway just outside of Ottawa going home to Montreal, when a piglet “flew,” or so it seemed, out of the back of a transport truck, narrowly missing my car! The poor thing looked lifeless as it rolled to the roadside. I swerved, almost had a collision, was horrified, certain the piglet was dead, and decided to chase after the truck, hoping to get him to stop and help the piglet. No luck, he actually sped up. Just awful. But the feisty little guy lived.
The real “Lucky” was rescued by a local vet and eventually taken in at an animal sanctuary. I stayed in touch and was inspired by his story of survival. The events shook me and changed me so much I became a pescatarian a few days after the incident. (Now almost four years of eating no meat, only fish). The rural areas in the book are inspired by places I explored when growing up in rural Ontario and Quebec.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Isn’t everything writers do unusual? 😉 I pace a lot, especially when speaking dialogue out loud, especially when it’s a screenplay. I find long walks by the water or taking showers helps my creative flow, as does inline skating or roller skating. Not sure why, but I always do those activities when I feel stuck, and it helps me move forward.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
So many! I read Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story at 11 and when I finished it, I knew I wanted to be a writer of some kind. I think success of The Notebook got me thinking about how I could write a romance story, and the side-splitting laughter and tears that romcom writers Nancy Meyers (The Holiday) and Richard Curtis (Love, Actually and About Time) gave me inspired me to try my hand at writing romantic comedies.
What are you working on now?
I have a time-travel romantic comedy in the works as well as a contemporary romantic comedy inspired by a true news story. Most of my work – all the novels and screenplays, except the time travel romances which are simply inspired by my strange amusement park brain- are sparked by a local or international news headline that catches my eye. I’m also trying to pen a poem every day, but I’m very picky about what I publish, so I may not have a new collection for a few years yet.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I love the Bookstagram community and spend most of my time on social media at Instagram, but I also have a loyal following on my Facebook Author page and the Facebook group I created on Facebook, Owl Be Reading. I started all of those profiles to promote my books, but ended up making lifelong friends. It’s like the characters in my screenplay The Friends I’ve Never Met – the friendships are very real even though they were made online, and I hope I can meet my online girlfriends soon even though they’re in the US and UK!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write for yourself first, and a good friend or family member who you think will like what you’re creating. If you keep doing that your work will remain authentic. It’s so easy to be influenced by what’s trending on TikTok or one or two nasty reviews on Goodreads; so easy to begin to feel that your work won’t make any dent in the vast sea of other writers out there publishing in your genre. But no one is you; no one writes like you. So believe in your unique voice and keep creating for your own happiness and joy. I’ve told my writing students that writing fiction won’t always make you a great living, but it will make you a great life. And who knows? You could end up with a surprise bestseller, but that shouldn’t be your motivation.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change – Wayne Dyer.
What are you reading now?
I’m just finishing up a wonderful book called Coming Home by Sawyer Cole Hobson, who I’ll soon be interviewing on my IG Vidcast Grace Period. It’s such an heart-wrenching, engaging story about Sawyer’s struggles coming out in an evangelical southern small town, and how they found themselves and their community. And since I don’t like to read in my genre when I’m writing a romcom so I’m not influenced, I’m not reading any at the moment but I do love books by JoJo Moyes, Sophie Kinsella and Christina Lauren. I also like to mix up my fiction with autobiographies – you can learn a lot by reading about a person’s whole life.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I’m never really sure, and that’s the fascination with this career! I didn’t expect all of my novels to be published in Polish in 2022. That was so cool; now they’ll be translated into four other languages in 2023-2024. Lucky comes out in audiobook format on Feb. 13, 2024 and I’m so excited to hear Gary Furlong and Parker Everly’s take on it – these audiobooks always sound a bit like an old radio play to me without the bad sound 😉 I love them! I’ve had interest in my books from producers -three times with exciting phone or Zoom calls that left me weak in the knees actually! and The Ticket has been optioned for film, but hasn’t gotten the “green light,” and I’m just a gal from small town Ontario who has no pull in Hollywood, so I’ve stopped getting my hopes up about selling film or TV rights and I’m just following my own advice: writing for my own amusement and joy and we’ll see where that takes me next.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
My grandfather gave me large hardcover copy of Bartlet’s Familiar Quotations when I was about 10, and I’ve loved leafing through it ever since. It’s kind of like the internet in one book, or at least the literary internet. I’d bring that, Roger Housdon’s 10 Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again, and a David Sibley Guide to Birds for whatever region that island was located. I’m a nerdy birder and I’m not ashamed.
Author Websites and Profiles
Heather Grace Stewart Amazon Profile
Heather Grace Stewart’s Social Media Links