Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
How are you defining “books” and “written?” I’ve published five, and my sixth book will be out March 14th. But I’ve also got half-written books, books that I’ve written that aren’t ripe yet, books in other genres than the ones I’ve written in so far. It gets complicated, when I have an unpublished erotica series, AND there are children’s books that I need an illustrator for.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
“My Dearest Miss Fairfax.” I have two other books that are Jane Austen-inspired, so I belong to a lot of Jane Austen chat groups. I wrote a comment in defense of Emma (the character, not the book). For all her faults, she has a generous heart. But in the course of the conversation, I ended up intrigued by the end of writing a novel from the point of view of her…well, I’ll call her rival, for lack of a better term. Or maybe frenemy? Anyway, I reread Emma, then went to the used bookstore and bought a beat up used copy that I could take a highlighter to, and I read it again – and this book is the result of hours of carefully extracting every bit of Jane Fairfax’s life that is buried in Emma.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I don’t know how unusual it is, but I love to write in pretty places. Hotel lobbies while my husband is at a conference. An Air BnB by the beach, or in the woods. I’ve rented cabins in Allegheny National Forest, and stayed in a friend’s cabin in Canada, looking at Lake Erie from the opposite shore than I usually see. I love traveling and writing. Wineries are fabulous places to write. So is the library where I currently live in Champaign, Urbana.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Well, Jane Austen, obviously. I grew up adoring Gone With the Wind (and its author Margaret Mitchell), so my first book is historical fiction set in Pittsburgh in the Gilded Age, heavily influenced by Margaret Mitchell. She was a journalist, so she knew how to do her homework. There are some very subtle historical details buried in Gone With the Wind. I wonder how many people have noticed the references to abortion? There are quite a few.
Another writer who has strongly inspired my writing is Edith Wharton. I have tried in my first two books to make Pittsburgh society come to life as clearly as she did with New York society.
What are you working on now?
Well, once “My Dearest Miss Fairfax” is well and truly launched, my husband is finishing new cover art for my romantic comedy, “Jane Austen Lied to Me.” Once I get that relaunched, I was in the middle of writing a textbook series on historical dancing when I got distracted by the Jane Fairfax project. I really do want to finish the dance books. They are for small historical museums all over the country who have school programs, and festivals, and no one employed there knows anything about dancing in the eras they teach about.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I love going to book festivals all over the country! I don’t know if it’s my “best” method. But it is my favorite. It is so much fun to get to spend a weekend talking with a festival full of voracious readers. I’ve met so many amazing people there. Inspiring people.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Don’t start writing because you think you are going to make money at this, unless you realize the first thing you have to do is spend a lot of money. It’s like most other business ventures: if you are going to open a store, you have to buy a building, buy the merchandise, hire people to stock the shelves and help customers. Same with writing. You aren’t writing a book. You are starting a business. You are going to spend several thousand dollars getting a product worth selling AND getting it into readers’ hands.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
From the artistic side: my college professor talked with us about the writing process, and said do NOT censor yourself as you write. You’ll never get anywhere. Just write it all down, spit it all out on paper, then go back and edit. If your censor monkey is really preventing you from getting anything down on paper to start with, give it a shot and a beer and tell it to go to sleep for a while. Only in Wisconsin would you have a college professor advocating drinking…I am old enough that I started college when the drinking age was 18, not 21. But I have never had writer’s block. How much can I blame all the wineries that I write at? I don’t know. My coffee shop around the corner from my house is a good place to write, too. It has a pretty patio in the summer.
From the marketing side: network. You can’t just ask your friends to buy your book when it comes out. If they put up a review on Amazon for you, Amazon will see that you are friends on Facebook, and they will remove that review. You need acquaintances through a network of connections that have to do with what you write about, and help each other getting the word out.
What are you reading now?
I just finished “A Visitors Guide to Jane Austen’s England, and after I get through my Smithsonian Magazine and the latest National Geographic History Magazine, I haven’t decided if I’m going to tackle Mary Chestnut’s diaries from the Civil War, Mark Twain’s autobiography, of David McCullough’s book on Theodore Roosevelt. Funny thing, I write historical fiction, but I don’t read much historical fiction. I love biographies and history books. It means that when you read my historical fiction, you can trust any historical fact in it. I do my homework. I don’t even stop doing homework after the book is published… nice thing about the publishing industry as it is, I can always go in and fix a mistake.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Besides the dance instructional books for historical museums, I have so many more projects to tackle! One book that I had started writing was about Belle daCosta Greene, JP Morgan’s librarian. Some of the research I needed to do was in Florence Italy, and then Covid put a stop to any trips to see materials that weren’t digitized yet. Now, someone else has just released a novel on that very topic! As soon as I get caught up on those other 3 books I mentioned, I need to go buy that book.
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?
Shelby Foote’s The Civil War. My copy is broken into 3 volumes, does that mean that’s all I get to bring? If I’m allowed the books, I’ll take the complete works of Edith Wharton, and an anthology of all Jane Austen’s letters – because, I’m sorry to say, I still haven’t read her letters! Which is a disgraceful state of affairs.
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