Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
The Shores of Our Souls is the first of my books to be acquired by a publisher, but I wrote my first novel, Moments on the Edge, in the 1970s, and it won the Hollins Fiction Award. Being a published novelist and memoirist has been a lifelong dream of mine, but I tell students (mine and in local classrooms, too) that you don’t have to be published to be an author. It’s the day-to-day process and progress that makes a person a great writer, though of course, it’s nice to get it out into the world to stand on its own legs. Look at Emily Dickinson, for example. We never know how long-lived our work will be, or whose lives it will touch.
In addition to writing creative works, I’ve been a journalist, published in local newspapers, national magazines, and syndicated online, as well as a humanitarian, working for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent here in the U.S., Africa, and Europe. I became a life coach almost a decade ago, and when I’m not writing, coaching, or posting, I’m walking in Nature, traveling, hugging my fur babies, or having fun with my family. We currently live in Maryland, where my kids join my husband and I on school breaks from university.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My debut novel, the first in a multicultural romance trilogy, is called The Shores of Our Souls. I live in the Washington, DC suburbs, so to me, 9/11 still feels like it happened yesterday. My son was in kindergarten, my daughter in preschool. I didn’t want them to ever experience such an event again. I wanted peace in their world. However, I also knew so many Arab Muslims; they were my colleagues and friends from my neighborhoods and my work with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva, Switzerland. I’m a champion for anyone who is blamed unfairly, and treated unjustly, and I saw that blame beginning in 2001. Plus, peace will not come to this world as long as we don’t realize we have to work together toward it. So I decided to write a story featuring a protagonist that reflected a well-rounded character, full of angst and contradiction, full of compassion, with a very good heart, whose only mission is to spread peace he’d not had himself to the world. And then he happens to fall in love.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I download ideas on my walks or in the shower. I always have a pen and some scrap of paper handy. The rare times I don’t, I’ve been known to write on my skin. You never know when you’re going to get an idea that will solve a plotting problem, or a character telling you something you’ve never known about them. For me, it’s usually in the park or in the shower. I think that’s pretty common, though. I’ve also gotten ideas taking the recycles out to the curb. At least then I have plenty of paper and cardboard to write on.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I graduated from a creative writing school called Hollins University in Virginia, so all Hollins graduates’ work influences me, including that of my advisor and mentor there, Richard Dillard. Though I’ve never met his former student and ex-wife Annie Dillard, her work speaks to my heart, and swayed me to attend Hollins instead of University of Virginia. At Hollins, I was able to sit in small classrooms and workshops and get hand-on advice from Henry Taylor, Richard Adams, Dara Weir, Alan Weir, and Greg Pape, to name a few. I also went to every reading I could in Hollins’ Green Drawing Room, and my favorite author who read there regularly was Eudora Welty. In my 20s, I actually followed her up and down the Coast for a while just to hear her read. My second favorite author of all time is John Steinbeck, and my favorite current author is Barbara Kingsolver. I wanted to write social justice literature about human connection, peace, and humanitarianism, just like Kingsolver. Yet Welty and Steinbeck are the reason I write at all.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on my revisions to my second novel in the trilogy and a children’s book, and I’ve just begun taking notes for a historical novel that takes place in World War II. I come from a family of World War II veterans, and I’ve always wanted to write about it. It could end up being fiction, nonfiction, or even fantasy. We’ll see!
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
People seem to like visit my Facebook page more than my website: facebook.com/kathyramsperger
I use all of social media and have a monthly newsletter, but I have the most followers on my facebook page.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write often, Revise more often. Rinse. Repeat. During all of this, don’t doubt that voice in your head that’s telling the story. That’s your one true thing in the midst of chaos. Take care of yourself. Exercise. Eat right. This is a marathon, not a sprint. And never, ever, ever, give up, as Winston Churchill said. It’s the best of times to be a writer, and it’s the worst of times to try to determine how to publish. You’ll figure it out step by step. Just keep writing.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
I had a dream one night about a decade ago, in which angelic voices sang a gorgeous tune: “Trust. Trust. Follow. Follow.” I can still hear the melody. I believe that the dream and advice from many friends are all about the same thing: trusting my own feelings and intuition. If something doesn’t feel right in a story I’m writing, I don’t try to wedge it in there. I’ve also learned the hard way to surround myself with a team that vibes well together. Timing is everything in getting your words read and heard, so you have to trust and believe that you’re following the right path and not give up on it too easily. I have hundreds of rejections from agents and publishers to prove that you have to believe in yourself, your words, and your journey, and success will eventually show up to meet you.
What are you reading now?
I’ve been excited to be reading lots of my friends books. We’re all getting our novels out there! Yet I took a brief moment this month to read Eleanor Roosevelt’s My Day. It gives me great hope for our world today. We think we’re dealing with new dilemmas, but we’re not. History repeats itself, and yet if we read about how people solved similar problems 100 years ago, we might use their solutions, find better solutions or improve upon theirs.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I hope to publish my sequel, which is in revision now, as soon as my book tour slows down a little, and I’ll keep writing and publishing the scores of books on my list, some near revision stage, others just seeds. I also hope to travel more. I miss traveling. I’m happy to come to your town; just ask!
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?
1. Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet
2. John Steinbeck’s East of Eden
3. George Eliot’s (aka Mary Ann Evans) Middlemarch
4. My latest manuscript…I’d get a lot of work done on a desert island!
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