Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I have written and recently published one book, a historical novel entitled Compromise With Sin. I live in Austin, Texas, with my husband, Tim. We’re both volunteer narrators for the Texas Talking Book Program. He’s an actor and a much better narrator than I am.
In my free time I like to inline skate and make polymer clay jewelry.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
When you were born, it’s almost certain that a nurse or midwife treated your eyes with prophylactic drops or ointment to prevent possible blindness from gonorrhea. It was state law then and still is.
My historical novel, Compromise With Sin, deals with the controversial campaign for legislation–controversial because it was taboo to speak of venereal disease. In my research I found out that Helen Keller had been instrumental in this movement, and I made her a character in my novel.
The story is also one of betrayal and redemption, and romantic love at its most complicated, tragic, and poignant.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
You probably have a mind’s eye. If I asked you to picture your first car, you probably could. Not me. I flat out can’t see pictures in my head. There’s a name for this condition: aphantasia.
So it helps me, especially with character descriptions, to use pictures. For example, I used a picture of Harrison Ford in developing one of my characters.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I’m very much drawn to books that dramatize and humanize big social issues. I’m thinking especially of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which exposed the horrific conditions in the meat-packing industry, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which brought home the human cost of racial prejudice. Another book that affected me is Ben Rehder’s The Chicken Hanger, which shows the perils of immigration today and the ruthless disregard for immigrant workers’ safety.
What are you working on now?
I’m drafting the second novella in a trilogy I’m spinning off from Compromise With Sin. The theme of the three novellas is what happens to ordinary people whose darkest secrets are revealed in a novel that only thinly disguises their identities.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I don’t know yet, but I can tell you what I’m doing. I’ve hired a marketing consultant who is in the process of buying advertising to promote my eBook. I’m also lining up appearances at local book clubs, and I’m participating in a library’s Indie Author Day.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
1. Don’t try to write and edit at the same time.
2. Your first draft is perfect. (I read that somewhere.)
3. Face the blank page, and give yourself permission to suck.
4. Join a critique group.
5. Persist.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Write the book you want to read.
What are you reading now?
A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman
What’s next for you as a writer?
For the first book in my trilogy, I need to research the culture of Santa Fe around 1912, which was when New Mexico was granted statehood, and life in a tuberculosis sanitorium. That’s where Irina Taylor, a nurse in Compromise With Sin, goes to work after she leaves Riverbend, Nebraska.
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?
Back to the Top of the World, by Hans Ruesch; Ragtime, by E. L. Doctorow; Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger
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