Interview With Author MaryAnn Clarke
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
USA Today Bestselling author MaryAnn Clarke is a Chatelaine Grand Prize winner and Next Generation Indie Book Award finalist for The Art of Enchantment, first in the Life is a Journey series about young women on journeys abroad who discover themselves and fall in love while getting embroiled in someone else’s problems. Her Having it All series is about professional women struggling to balance the challenge and fulfillment of their careers with their search for identity, love, family and home. Her newest series, the Most UNLIKELY To series, centres on a group of close high school friends ten years later, beginning with their ten year reunion.
As of September, 2022 MaryAnn Clarke has nine published titles. She’s also planning travel research for the next three books in her Life is a Journey series. Books one and two are out soon in a box set.
Always eager to fill blank pages and empty canvases with ideas swirling in her head, MaryAnn set out to write emotionally engaging stories that walk a tight rope between intelligent Women’s Fiction and heart-warming Romance.
A socially awkward polymath with ASD who studied Fine Arts, Urbanism, Architecture and Gerontology at university on both coasts of Canada, she turned to her first love, writing stories, when she realized she could have more fun with fewer rules to follow. When not writing, she meditates while hiking wooded mountain trails, does yoga and Pilates to fend off decrepitude, reads eclectically, contemplates wormholes, experiments with painting abstract expressionism, kills plants and tries not to burn dinner while solving her next plot problem. Now that her chick has flown the coop, Clarke lives on beautiful Vancouver Island, Canada with her husband and cats. Although she knows she lives in Paradise, she still loves traveling the world in search of romance, art, good food and new story ideas.
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What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The newest release is The Phoenix’s UNLIKELY Prodigy and is book 2 in the UNLIKELY series. This was once planned as book one but the prior book, the high school reunion, was a better way to introduce this new ensemble cast of friends. Several popular tv shows about groups of friends were the inspiration behind writing this series, along with the challenge of including as many popular romance tropes and diverse characters as possible. This series is designed to be inclusive and varied in every possible way while still providing the warmth, comfort and familiarity of a supportive group of friends and a small home town setting – all the best romance experiences that readers seek in these troubling and stressful times.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I’m what has been called a “bread machine” writer, though I also love high level series and story planning. Character is my favourite part of stories and figuring out what happened to them and motivates them is my candy. But despite my best plans, a good deal of the story is worked out in my subconscious brain while I’m doing things that, on the surface, might look like procrastination. I have an insatiable appetite for ingesting content, so love to read, binge watch great shows, and fall down deep research rabbit holes.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Different authors at different stages of my reading and writing life. I have literary authors whom I greatly admire, such as Ann Patchet, Lisa See, E. Annie Proulx, Barbara Gowdy and many others. I also deeply admire authors of complex speculative fiction such as William Gibson and Neil Stevenson. But I still always gravitate to my favourite romance authors, such as Christina Lauren, Sarina Bowen, Penny Reid, Chloe Liese, Mhairi Macfarlane, Lindsey Kelk, Portia MacIntosh and a few other British writers I’ve been discovering.
What are you working on now?
Once The Phoenix’s UNLIKELY Prodigy is released, I’ll be working on a new novella in the shared world Cataluma California small town main street motorcycle club series, book two in her Off The Grid Christmas trilogy, and the next book in the UNLIKELY series.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
That’s too complex a question to answer concisely. But I follow an approach that involves newsletters, book swaps, stacked promotion sites, price drops and targeted advertising. I also try to ensure my titles are listed and up to date on as many reader sites as possible, such as Goodreads, Bookbub, AllAuthor, Bublish, LibraryThing, and others.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Get ready for a long haul. If you think you want to publish independently, you must be prepared to immerse yourself in the publishing industry and get ready to promote yourself as well as your books for a long time. It’s a business, and maybe not what you though you were getting into when you sat down to write your first story.
What are you reading now?
I have a few titles on the go or lined up. Wilder by CL. Something by Claire Kingsley and Lucy Score. And I’m in the middle of It Happened One Summer on audio by Tessa Baily.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Trying to catch up with my ideas. I always have more ideas than time, energy or brainpower to write the books. My focus for the next while will be to add to and complete the series that I have started, with the UNLIKELY series as my top priority.
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?
Pride and Prejudice
My Favorite Half-Night Stand
Mariana
The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe
Author Websites and Profiles
MaryAnn Clarke’s Social Media Links