Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I started writing before I could read. I’ve got ADD and I had a hard time getting to sleep at night, so I would tell myself stories in my head. I had one imaginary friend, “Baby,” who was not actually a baby, so I kind of freaked out when Dirty Dancing came along.
I’ve written nine novels, my first being lost to one of many moves in my early 20s. Four have not been published, although each of those got me an agent and some editorial attention. A fifth one got incorporated into my first published novel, THE PROVISO. The rest are STAY, MAGDALENE, and DUNHAM.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
DUNHAM is a Revolutionary War epic swashbuckler, and it came out on July 4, 2013.
So it was 1991 and I was sitting in a 100-level history class I had to take to fulfill some BS requirement I somehow missed. The professor was really rather paternal, very strict high-school-teacher-ish, but who could blame him? It was a community college and all the students were a lot younger than I was. They needed it. I didn’t.
But he had a way of lecturing that made class not quite hell, and occasionally he pricked my imagination. Somewhere around the time he started talking about the American navy during the Revolutionary War, which was nonexistent except for any profiteer who could post a bond for a letter of marque, he really caught my attention. He mentioned that there were black privateer captains and female sailors that didn’t bother to pose as men. Right about then, I took a U-turn right back into my head and did what I’d been doing for twenty years by that time—writing without a pen.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
1) I don’t outline. At least, not traditionally. I write character sketches, backstory, a few scenes playing out in my head. Then I start asking “Why?” which leads me down all sorts of interesting paths, and I write more scenes. I might write one scene from four or five points of view. I just keep going like that until I have a solid foundation.
2) I take a long time to write a book. That’s not normal in today’s self-publishing avalanche. People put out 3, 4, 5 titles a year. I can write that many words (and more!) a year, but that’s all my version of outlining.
3) I take so long to write a book because I incorporate a lot of philosophy and sometimes religion, pop culture and classical arts references, finance and law into the stories. I couldn’t do that if I put out so many titles a year.
4) Which means I end up with very long, very detailed books that I may have worked on for years. DUNHAM, as I said, has been cooking since 1991. For another example, THE PROVISO features three couples. The first couple’s story is the third iteration of that relationship I’d written since 1994.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
First and foremost would have to be Laura Ingalls Wilder. The second would be Stephen King’s short story “The Mist.” The third would be Kathleen Woodiwiss and other ’70s and ’80s bodice-ripper authors. The fourth would be Tom Wolfe, particularly THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES and A MAN IN FULL. The fifth would be Ayn Rand, followed closely by number six, Sheri Tepper. There are more, bits and pieces of other people’s works here and there.
What are you working on now?
Nothing! Well, at least not in earnest. I’m recovering from DUNHAM, and my creative well is a bit dry. But it’ll fill up again after I’ve done a few DIY projects on my house and indulged a few of my hobbies I’ve let slip by the last few years.
DUNHAM is the fourth in a series (Tales of Dunham). It’s the lone historical amongst the first three, featuring the ancestors of the characters in books one and three. The fifth (and final) book of the series is a post-apocalyptic tale that mirrors DUNHAM and features the progeny of the characters in book one.
There will be shorter standalone novels here and there, as stories come to me, but all from the same family line, the Dunhams.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I do really well on Twitter. I don’t know why.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
1. Read more than you write.
2. Study script-writing books to learn a story’s structure.
3. Write a lot.
4. Find a skilled writing mentor (this is difficult, I know) who can give you good critique.
5. See the answer to the next question.
6. Don’t rush to publish your stuff.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Oh! A friend of mine (Melissa Blue) said this to a newbie writer recently. I’d never heard it before.
“Buy a new copy of your favorite book. The one you’ve likely read one million times and could probably recite word for word. Get a good old dead tree copy. Get different colored highlighters and then highlight all the dialogue in one color. Description with another. Pure narration/navel gazing in a different color. Since it’s your fav book then you probably know what that one line means and that it’s really foreshadowing, underline it. Underline the when the character truly start to change. The book is likely seamless but by doing this you can find the seams and that’s craft. You’ll be able to see the book in parts and that can help you see things like POV, grammar and punctuation, paragraph breaks, page breaks, pacing, etc. Someone gave me this advice. I thought they were insane. It actually worked.”
What are you reading now?
Nothing!
After I finish a book, I have to decompress and I do that with physical labor and other creative endeavors.
What’s next for you as a writer?
My dream is to have an HBO series based on my books. So I’m working on a two-hour pilot script and series bible for my first book, THE PROVISO. I have had some encouragement coming from Hollywood that it might not be a waste of time to do this.
What is your favorite book of all time?
I don’t have one.
The last time someone asked me that it was ATLAS SHRUGGED, but then morphed into FOUNTAINHEAD. But that was a lie anyway.
LITTLE TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE is my favorite Laura Ingalls Wilder book, followed closely by FARMER BOY. I mentioned two of Tom Wolfe’s books above. I love FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM by Umberto Eco, which was a much earlier, much smarter version of The DaVinci Code. LAMB by Christopher Moore was a hoot, as was HOW HARD CAN IT BE? by Robyn Peterman. BUTTERFLY by Kathryn Harvey, MISTRESS OF MELLYN by Victoria Holt, TREGARON’S DAUGHTER by Madeline Brent, KISS AN ANGEL by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, THE RIVER WHY by David James Duncan, CRYSTAL SINGER by Anne McCaffrey, CRYPTONOMICON and DIAMOND AGE by Neal Stephenson, THE GATE TO WOMEN’S COUNTRY by Sheri Tepper.
There are so many. I could go on all day.
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