Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
My name is Tara Wine-Queen. I’m a wife and mother, wildly in love with my husband and children.
I’ve always loved writing. When I was a little girl, we had an old computer my parents let me keep in the recreation room of our house, and I wrote a little book on it. Probably the most significant moment to me wanting to be a writer, though, came in high school when I was in Charles Jeffries’ AP class. Mr. Jeffries was a magnificent teacher, brilliant and wry with such a commanding presence, and he was a tough grader. You had to work hard and well, and even if you did, you still might not get an A; he was a perfectionist. He had us write each week, and one week we were supposed to write a story on something not being like it seemed. I wrote a story about a charismatic fireman who heroically saves a family and is getting lauded on the news for his bravery, but when we see the news playing at his house, we see that his own family actually lives in terror of him because he is a violent alcoholic. I’ve always been interested in the relationship between good and evil, how they exist within us alongside each other. When I got the story back, I could see where Mr. Jeffries had originally written “100%” and had later whited it out, replaced with a slightly lesser A. Below that he had written that he did not feel like he should give perfect grades because he was my teacher and nothing is perfect, but “Tara, this is devastatingly effective.” That Charles Jeffries thought a piece I had written was “devastatingly effective” really sparked something inside of me and I felt for the first time that I might be able to become a truly excellent writer.
The first one which The Write Launch published is what is called creative nonfiction, which is basically a story that is the truth but is open to bits of fictionalizing or styling. That story is called “One More Thing to Make You Proud” and was written about the loss of the man I considered my grandfather while I was struggling to be a young mother.
The next one that got picked up was a fiction piece called “Pretend Conversations a Regretful Father Has with His Deceased Lesbian Daughter” – an exceedingly self-explanatory title – which I felt compelled to write because of my experiences witnessing loved ones who are LGBTQ struggling to come out to their parents and families. There often seems to be a cycle of denial and distress on the part of the parent, and there can be many months or sometimes years of this kind of tense negative coexistence with the information, but eventually I think most parents settle into an acceptance of their child and if not a return to normal, then at least a new normal is formed where families can exist without too much conflict over it. But if an LGBTQ child is tragically lost before that acceptance can come – and LGBTQ individuals are far more likely to be the victim of self-harm or violence, far more likely to die at a young age – then that parent is left with this kind of particularly horrible lack of closure. There’s no regret like that which death takes away the possibility to ever make right, and there’s no one you want to do more right by than your child. So I wanted to explore that from that parent’s perspective, and the voice of this big, tough, no-nonsense father just came to me and I knew it was right.
“An Appalachian Story” was published by Literally Stories and is written from the perspective of a little boy listening to his mama kind of doing this monologue about her life and what she wants for her children. This piece was written from my experience living in West Virginia the whole of my life and witnessing its beautiful and proud people suffering through any number of inescapable circles, including poverty and addiction. Some cycles just don’t want to be broken.
“The Door” is my most recently published piece; Fiction on the Web put it out earlier this month. The story follows a rehabilitated drug addict as she tries to save her terminally ill child through otherworldly paths. The protagonist, Joy, feels a lot of guilt and pain, and the piece is ultimately about realizing that although we can’t change the past, we also can’t let ourselves drown in it. Forgiving ourselves can be so much more difficult than forgiving others.
One story that I wrote was too long – nearly a novella at around twenty pages – for the literary magazines and websites which I had been submitting my work to, so I went a different route and published it on Amazon. It’s called “Prisons” and actually made it all the way to #2 on the Amazon US Short Stories Bestsellers list, which was pretty cool. In it, friendship blooms between two prisoners over books, breakfast, and bullshit. One of them develops dementia and the younger one becomes his caretaker in a post-WWIII Appalachian prison. I was inspired to write this story after I listened to a TED Talks podcast on Gold Coats, a prison program wherein prisoners can learn to care for other prisoners who are suffering from Alzheimer’s, dementia, and the like. The thought of how difficult it is to take care of any person in that situation is sobering, and prisons aren’t naturally equipped to deal with the profound needs of that distinct population. I loved the idea of using other prisoners to take care of them because it allowed them to be responsible for another human being, to exhibit and experience empathy, which I think is a vital part of what it is to be human, one that is sorely lacking for opportunities in incarceration.
I have also had a few flash fiction pieces – very short stories – published on Maudlin House.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The name of my latest book is “Tenderness and Troubling Times: A Collection of Stories,” and what I wanted with this book was two-fold:
To create a permanent home for a number of my stories, easily accessible for those who desired it, and
To give a space over to The Baby Loser’s Club, a very important group of characters and experiences to me which I believed deserved to see the light of day, to be shared with others who might recognize themselves and their own experiences within them.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I write whenever I can, wherever I can.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Countless over a lifetime, but in the last year I’ve loved A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles books, E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End, and Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series (though to be fair, I have read those before and will again – they’re kind of on a permanent loop in the background of my life).
What are you working on now?
I am knee-deep in a fantasy story which I hope to grow into epic proportions.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Keep improving.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
“Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.” – Stephen King
Author Websites and Profiles
Tara Wine-Queen Website
Tara Wine-Queen Amazon Profile
Tara Wine-Queen’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Facebook Profile