Monthly Archives: May 2016

An Interview with Author Lois Ruby

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Ex-librarian Lois Ruby is the award-winning author of 18 middle-grade and young adult books. Whether the stories are contemporary or historical fiction, reality-based or paranormal, her characters are ordinary kids in extraordinary circumstances who always have options but don’t always make the best choices. Her latest novel, The Doll Graveyard, is a “gently spooky” work published by Scholastic Paperbacks (2014). You can find Lois on her website at LoisRuby.com.

TheDollGraveyard200What is your elevator pitch for The Doll Graveyard?
What if you’re twelve-year-old Shelby, and you’ve just moved into a house populated by mysterious, mischievous, highly spooky dolls that refuse to stay buried in your backyard? And they keep changing before your eyes! 

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
I’m a person steeped in pragmatic realism. I don’t believe in supernatural hokum. But that doesn’t stop me from writing about it. The challenge for me is making it sound plausible, as if (under the right circumstances) everything in the story could happen. So, I had to avoid outrageous leaps that couldn’t, even by the wildest stretch, have realistic explanations. I also had to overcome my resistance to writing such an absurd story and cope with the truth: that I had a great time writing it.

What is it about your main protagonist that makes readers connect with her? Did your characters surprise you as you wrote their story?
My characters always surprise me. I do an extensive inventory on each of the main characters as if I were interviewing them for a biography. Just when I’m sure I know them, know what motivates them, know what stumps them or terrifies them, they turn on me and do something I never expected. What’s worse (or maybe it’s better) characters appear on the page that I never invited and sort of thumb their noses at me and say, “Hah! I’m here now, so what are you going to do about it?” My first inclination is to scold them and send them back into the hazy oblivion from which they reared their heads. Then I decide to trust them for a while and see where they lead me. Sometimes they’re pretty clever and bend themselves to just the plot turn I needed. As for my main protagonist in The Doll Graveyard, I hope what makes readers connect with her is that she’s normal, healthy, inquisitive, and secure in a loving family—but lonely and vulnerable just the same. Like the best of us in this life.

Tell us about the setting and why you chose it.
As I’ll explain later, the idea wasn’t my own. It came from a wonderful editor as just a wisp of a preposterous plot, with lots of freedom to develop it any way I wanted to. The only absolute was that there would be a girl named Shelby and a bunch of tiny dolls that refused to stay buried. I decided to set the story in a remote part of Colorado. Why Colorado? Honestly, because my only nonfiction book, which has garnered as much attention as, say, soggy coffee grounds, is entitled Mother Jones and the Colorado Coal Field War. I thought a paranormal novel also set in Colorado might cause a librarian or teacher or two to suddenly discover Mother Jones. (It didn’t work.) Anyway, Shelby’s house is one of two lone, scary old houses up on a hill in the middle of nowhere, and the graveyard behind the house is home to a bunch of small, mysterious graves. The novel has all the standard creaky floors and doors, hidden places and dark corridors savored in this sort of story, plus creepy, misbehaving dolls.

Is there a scene in the book you’d love to see play out in a movie?
Oh, yes! There’s a scene at the end of the book where all the disparate characters come together in the graveyard for a funeral for the stubborn dolls, each of whom represents something dramatic that happened in the history of the house. Now each doll merits a touching testimonial, as he or she is laid to rest. Good, satisfying ending. They’re buried for good, right? Believe me, my readers are sure they shall rise again! Do I hear sequel?

What makes this novel unique in the children’s/teen market?
I suspect it’s not unique but is rather one in a slew of gently spooky paranormals that tickle the fancy of young readers. And when I say gently spooky, that means nothing horribly violent happens. To the disappointment of children I talk to in schools, these dolls are not Chucky and Annabelle, the killer dolls. They’re just mischievous and stubborn and creepy. So, maybe I’m trying to say that what’s unique is that this book is relatively safe for readers who don’t want, or can’t handle, really intense supernatural or hyper-violent material, but still like chills to race up and down their spines.

Tell us more about the book: where the story idea came from, how long it took to write, editing cycle, etc.
As I mentioned, the idea came from an editor, generated in-house at Scholastic. But she gave me free rein to develop it any way I wanted and to complicate the story way beyond her expectations. I’ve often been chastised for including too many characters and too many complex issues in an otherwise simple story. That’s what makes it worthwhile for me. So, this was pure fun to write, and it wrote itself very quickly in about six months. I ran a fairly detailed plot proposal by the editor and got her go-ahead. Then she didn’t see it again until I’d written and revised it about six times. When next her eyes fell on it, she had some good suggestions for the logical tying up of loose ends, and for one or two more dramatic scenes, all of which I gratefully heeded. And then it took very little more work. This experience was totally different from the process of my more serious books; the books that consume me for two, three, five years; the books that touch my heart and challenge me after I’ve researched them to death, but aren’t as jaunty and fun to play with.

StealAwayHome150Steal Away Home (Aladdin Paperbacks/Simon & Schuster, 1994) is your most well-known book. Why do you think it continues to be so popular?
It’s an absolute conundrum as to why this book continues to have a vibrant life 22 years after publication, while so many of my other books have quickly vanished into the miasma. (As some famous author once said, “First you’re an unknown. Then you write one book and quickly sink into obscurity.”) I like to think it’s because Steal Away Home is a magnificent masterpiece of brilliantly universal appeal. Yeah, sure. There are a few more likely reasons. It’s set in Kansas in two periods—the present, and 1856. I wrote it while I was living in Kansas, and it caught immediate attention as a local book by a local author. But it moved beyond that designation and continued to be read in schools all over the country and in some foreign countries, as well. Right now it’s being used in a school in Kathmandu, Nepal, where I’ve been invited to speak. The main reason for its longevity, however, is that five years ago the state of Georgia adopted this novel for its fifth grade Civil War curriculum. So, this anti-slavery book has reached a much wider audience than I ever dreamed possible, and in a former slave state.

Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you started your publishing career today?
I would have found a young, hungry agent who would read my manuscripts immediately, make a few suggestions for quick revision, and submit them to a dozen editors at once. Alas, that’s not what I have, though—can I brag a little?—that’s what just occurred in my son’s life. He wrote a wonderful middle grade novel, found an aggressive agent who submitted it to eleven houses, and within a month he had three offers and just signed a contract with Random House. I, on the other hand, wait six months to two years for response. Often it’s a rejection, but after blubbering for a day or two, I ask my agent to send it out again. Sometimes she does.

What is your writing routine like? What is your writing process like? What part do beta readers or critique groups play in your writing process?
Calling it a routine is a big stretch, as each day is different, and life intervenes. What generally works is that I’m up about 5:30am, take care of a few emails that dared to come in while I slept, then get right to writing the ideas that I’d processed in those few precious minutes before I fell asleep the night before. About 8:30 I saunter into the kitchen for a cup of tea and a bowl of cereal. Then, on an ideal day, I return to the writing until noon. More likely, other pressing engagements, such as reconnecting with my sweet husband, or running errands, overtake my compulsion to write.

As for process, I do not outline a novel. I do extensive, character sketches of the principal people who populate (talk about alliteration!) the story at hand, and let them take over. I complete one scene, print, revise, print, revise, sigh, then move on to the next scene. When I think I’ve reached something approaching a cliffhanger after two or three conjoined scenes, I declare it a chapter and move on to the first scene of the next chapter. I keep revising the completed chapters maybe a dozen times more, until I discover that they’re woefully out of sequence. That calls for a detailed summary of what I’ve done so far, chapter by chapter, and then I begin shifting. Sometimes I jot a few key words of each scene on a Post-It note and tack them to the big picture window above my computer, then juggle Post-Its until something makes sense.

Now, about critique groups. I’ve been in some fabulous ones, in some humdingers, and a couple that did me little good because no one in the group understood how novels for youth were different from novels for adults. Still, any kind of critique group is better than laboring in the field alone without anyone’s help with the back-breaking (mind-bending) work.

If you suffer from writer’s block, how do you break through?
I don’t suffer from writer’s block. Just the opposite. I suffer from resistance to taking up the work in progress because I’ll be reluctant to quit and do something else that’s more necessary but less satisfying. I suffer from fear that I’ll submerge myself in my work, become a cranky hermit who never brushes her teeth and lives on cold pizza or macaroni and cheese, and neglects loved ones who deserve something better from me.

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
Message, no. But I discovered after about nine books, that a theme pervades all of them, despite their diverse subjects and eras. The theme is justice, whether I’m writing about abolition of slavery, faith healing, skinheads, the Battle of Gettysburg, Holocaust refugees in China, or even my sweetly weird paranormals. As it says in the Good Book, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” I try.

How has the teen market changed since you first started publishing?
Interesting question that stumps me, yet one I’ve puzzled about quite a lot. In terms of the emotional preoccupations of young people, nothing has changed. There are still the terrors of the emotional dark, the confusion over identity and purpose, the family entanglements, and school. Books for this readership need to deal with those unchanging issues along with the joys and optimism of youth. But there are differences. Thanks to the Janus effect of technology, it being a blessing and a curse, kids have much more limited attention spans. You’ve got to hit them right away, scene by scene, and keep it short and immediate, or they abandon you. Harry Potter and a few other long and complicated books are delightful exceptions, of course. And books for teens are definitely edgier; there are no subjects, violent events, or unsavory language off-limits.

All the above is from the standpoint of subject and style. As for marketing, that’s where I’m clueless. I can’t fathom why some books get published and widely/wildly read, while others more worthy languish, if they see print at all. The one thing I do know is this: it’s no harder now to get published than it was 35 years ago when my first books came out. It’s always been difficult and very much a crapshoot.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Yes, I’ve got to add this: no matter how things change in history or in our social milieu, books for young readers must offer hope, must assure them there are caring and responsible adults to turn to, and must remind them that the universe is not indifferent to their highest aspirations.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



Robert Gassaway – Gentleman Author

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Bob Gassaway was a journalist for more than 20 years. After earning a Ph.D. in sociology, focusing on human communication, he began teaching journalism and conducting research as a sociologist. He is co-editor of a non-fiction book called Dirty Work and later in life wrote murder mysteries, drawing on many memories of crime scenes.

After a long illness, Bob passed away in May.  A SWW member and board member, many of us remember him as soft spoken and unfailingly polite, always noticing the efforts of others and encouraging positive interactions.   Before the SWW Memoir Conference in 2015, Bob wrote the following article, and in doing so exposed many of his own experiences and memories for us to enjoy.

 

The Many Faces of Memoir

The memoir is a curious kind of writing. It has many faces because it has a different style and tells a different story for every person who creates one.
Bookstores tend to lump biographies and memoirs together, but they actually are very different beasts. A biography tells the story of a person’s life from childhood up until the time the story is written. But a memoir is a narrower take on a person’s life-just a segment of the life that the writer deems interesting and worth recounting.
One writing teacher uses a kitchen metaphor to distinguish between them. She says a biography is the whole pie. But a memoir is a slice of the pie. It should be an interesting slice with characters and probably conflict that will hold the reader’s attention, but it’s just a piece of the life, covering a particular time period in the writer’s life.
One thing is clear: Biographies and memoirs are shelved in the nonfiction section of the bookstore. Indeed, the memoir is expected to be a true account. If you plan to write fiction, write a novel, not a memoir.
Gassaway 2.jpg   Nonetheless, the writer can take some reasonable liberties with a memoir. Memoir, after all, derives from a French word meaning memory. So you’re drawing on your memories when you write a memoir. Yet many memoirs reproduce conversations of years gone by. Are they verbatim transcriptions that the writer is reproducing? Not likely. The reader should understand that the writer has reconstructed the events as he or she remembers them. In fact, a note early in the book might remind the reader that the writer is depending on memories to tell the story.
One of my friends, Fred Bales, has used a variety of approaches to telling stories from various parts of his life. He published one book, mostly for friends and family, using the letters he and his wife, Jan, wrote to their parents when Fred and Jan were serving in the Peace Corps in Chile.
In another project, Fred created a novella based on boyhood memories of a scandalous sex triangle in his hometown. He also produced a short nonfiction book on his experiences during an attempted coup in the Philippines. He was in Manila as a Fulbright lecturer, teaching at two universities, when some members of the Filipino military tried to overthrow then-President Corazon Aquino in December of 1989. Fred holed up in his small apartment, but often could hear gunfire not far away.
Bright journalist that he was, he cranked paper into his typewriter and began keeping a log of his daily life, describing what he could see and hear, plus what he learned about the attempted coup d’état from television news and from people at the U.S. embassy. Last year, when he decided to write about his coup experiences, that log provided the facts he needed.
He used memories in a more traditional approach to memoir to produce an account of his work as a volunteer for a homeless shelter in Albuquerque. The residents in the shelter are men with medical problems, some of them quite serious.
That book, called Our Sheltered Lives, actually sort of sneaked up on Fred. He had been volunteering at the shelter for about three years, he says, when he decided that he could write a book about his experiences. At that point he began making some notes after each day of volunteer work to describe his more interesting experiences.
In the book, Fred recounts conversations with the men as he drove them to medical appointments and on errands around town. He disguised the identities of the men to protect their privacy.
Fred is a former journalist and a retired journalism professor who taught at the University of New Mexico (UNM). After he retired from UNM, he taught for several years in New Orleans and later in Brownsville, Texas, before he returned to Albuquerque to settle down and start writing.
“I think everybody ought to have something to look forward to, and for writers, that is writing,” he says. “I do if for my own self. It has its own rewards. I’m not in it for the money.” (But he does have four books for sale on Amazon.com)
Jim Tritten, a member of the board of directors of SouthWest Writers, is a retired Navy pilot and draws on those experiences in some of his writing. He has 3,345 hours of pilot time in 24 military airplane types to his credit. And he has made 320 landings on nine aircraft carriers-one of the most difficult things a naval aviator will ever do.
A modern aircraft carrier is a huge ship when you go aboard one or see it tied up at a dock. But it looks like little more than Gassaway 1a speck in the ocean when you are flying thousands of feet above it and planning to land on the flight deck below. The carrier is not parked at sea when a pilot is trying to land. The ship is underway, rolling and pitching with the waves and the actions of the sea, plus it is steaming into the wind to grant the airplane extra lift as it makes its precarious landing.
If you are able to touch down on this moving target, a tailhook under the plane is supposed to grab a steel cable strung across the deck. An aircraft traveling 120 miles an hour is jerked to a stop in just two seconds.
Jim has penned a few short nonfiction stories about his years of flying, the close calls, the tall tales the pilots tell each other, his visits to foreign ports and his other adventures. And he has written a novel, not yet published, that includes a fictional chapter that is based on a real-life crash that Jim experienced firsthand.
But we all have stories that will interest others. For instance, I spent a year in Vietnam as a war correspondent for The Associated Press. (Actually it was one year, two weeks, five hours and 18 minutes-but who’s keeping track?) I spent most of my time with the U.S. Marines in the northern part of South Vietnam-and I made a very large target at 6-foot-4 and 300 pounds. I’ve started writing a book about covering the war.Gassaway 3
Beyond that, I’ve been a journalist, a firefighter, a paramedic, and a sociologist. Along the way, I’ve been to dozens of murder scenes. Now my primary writing interest is mystery novels based on what I’ve learned about the work of crime scene investigators.
Naturally you don’t have to go to a war or make a habit of landing on aircraft carriers or see lots of dead people or work with the homeless to have an interesting tale. The trick is to pick out the pieces of your life that are the most interesting and find a narrative structure that you can use to knit those together into an intriguing story. And that makes a memoir.
With some thought and effort, you can turn your story into a memoir that your family will cherish-and it might just find a publisher who will spread the word far and wide.

Thank you, Bob, for your wisdom, your friendship and the sense of adventure you gave in everything your wrote.



The Writing Life: Is Technology an Advance or a Hindrance?

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by Sherri Burr

SherriBurr

In our advanced technological age, we are bombarded by the latest gadgets for everything from appliances to voice recording apps, all claiming to make lives more efficient. But do they?

This question occurred to me after two home appliances broke, and I replaced them with “high efficiency” models. The new washing machine included a sensing device that calculated the amount of water it needed. Since it had a glass top, I watched the machine twist the load back and forth before it turned on the water. Although I had piled in clothes to reach the top of the tub, the machine added water to fill only about a quarter of its capacity. Eighty minutes later a load was finished, yet several items had dry spots. A load of whites took two hours, and I tricked the machine into filling up the tub by first bleaching clothes in a bucket, which made them heavier.

My initial reaction was astonishment. The machine took nearly three times as long to wash loads, and it didn’t get them as clean as my 1989 Kenmore machine that went to washing machine heaven after three attempts to fix it failed to produce a functional apparatus. I questioned the term “high efficiency,” and realized it only referred to the machine’s miserly water use. When it came to electricity, my bill would go up because it now took nearly all day to wash four loads of laundry, instead of two hours. When I went back to the store, the clerk questioned whether I had loaded the machine correctly. I thought, given the cost, the machine should have loaded itself. I requested the store pick up the machine and return my money before purchasing a non-high efficiency machine that allowed me to set water levels, and clean loads in half the time.

I share this story to challenge writers to question whether the new technology in their lives is an advance or a hindrance. Are we better off interviewing subjects and typing our notes on our laptop at the same time? Are we better off interviewing subjects and exclusively using our iPhone’s or iPad’s Siri to record the notes?

As someone who has used technology to her detriment in interviews, I submit that both questions must be answered with “no.” I interviewed someone and placed my “iDevice” on the table to record the conversation, while I actively listened and took notes on a paper pad. Thank goodness I did the latter because Siri recorded gibberish. I learned the hard way with voice-recognition software that if it doesn’t recognize the nuances in a person’s speech patterns, it may not accurately translate the person’s sentences.

The other problem I’ve found with recording devices is that subjects are intimidated by them. After getting nothing from a former bachelor from the television show The Bachelor, I put away the recording device. He immediately started talking. Since I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the conversation, I just actively listened. The minute we finished, I ran to my car and wrote everything I could remember. I went to bed that night thinking I had nonsense, but awoke the next morning with a complete story organized in my head. My subconscious had sorted out the text while I slept.

In a law class simulation, I asked four students to role play as clients and lawyers. In the first group, the lawyer wanted to use his iPad to take notes. As the interview progressed, he didn’t use his iPad once. Rather, he focused on the client’s pre-interview sheet to ask questions. Because he was reading from the sheet, he didn’t observe his client. In the second demonstration, the law student used no electronic device and, even though he had the pre-interview sheet, he focused on talking and listening to the client. The second interview was more effective.

My final technology concern focuses on studies demonstrating that students who type their lecture notes on computers produce more complete notes but do not processes the material as well and do worse on exams. Other studies have proven that reading material on electronic devices leads to less recall of the material learned.

Thus, before you ditch your paper products in favor of electronics, think about whether they will advance or hinder the cause of obtaining effective interviews and learning material. Those who feel they are listened to will tell more. Look directly at interviewees, and actively tune your ears to capture all that you can from them.

A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.



2016 Novel Conference Report by Conference Manager Joanne Bodin

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2016 Novel Conference Report

According to all the feedback received, the Novel Conference was a success on all counts.  All attendees who wished to pitch their novels to an editor or agent were able to do so, the speakers were both knowledgeable and entertaining and the proceeds exceeded the cost.

Novel Conference staff

Pictured right are Novel Conference Volunteers:  L-R:  Joanne Bodin, Dino Leyba, Jeanne Shannon, Ernie Leggett, Edith Greenly, Kimberly Mitchell, and Sam Moorman.

We couldn’t have put together such a great conference without the help of our wonderful SWW volunteers. A big thank you goes to the following people for their help and flexibility in putting this conference together.

Kathy Wagoner, Bobbi Adams, Melody Groves, Dennis Kastendiek, Ernie Leggett, Sam Moorman, Don Morgan, Rose Marie Kern, Don DeNoon, Dino Leyba, Kimberly Mitchell, Larry Greenly, Edith Greenly, Jeanne Shannon, and Rob Speigel.

A special thank you to Bookworks for setting up a table during the con-ference. Also to Jason’s Deli for providing the delicious box lunches. Thank you to Rob Spiegel for making cookies for our afternoon snack. Thank you to the Hilton Garden Inn Albuquerque Uptown for housing our keynote speakers and finally thank you to Chez Axel Restaurant for opening up exclusively to SWW on Friday evening.



An Interview with Author Corran Harrington

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Corran Harrington is a former attorney who writes literary fiction described as radiant and revealing. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Bosque Fiction Contest finalist, and a New Millennium Writings Award semifinalist. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary publications. Corran’s first book, Follow the River Home, is an Arbor Farm Press release (2016). You can find her at CorranHarrington.com, on her SouthWest Writers’ author page, and on LinkedIn.

FollowTheRiverHome200What is your elevator pitch for Follow the River Home?
Daniel Arroyo has suffered a lifetime of guilt over the sudden death of his infant sister, who died when he was eight years old. He now lives his middle years between that guilt and worsening episodes of PTSD from a Vietnam he left thirty years ago. When a violent encounter on a dusty highway forces Daniel to face what haunts him, he finds himself pulled back to the neighborhood of his youth, where old houses hold tired secrets. What really happened on that steamy August afternoon? The answer comes spilling from the old neighborhood, and Daniel begins to find his way home.

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
On the surface, I want readers who may not be familiar with New Mexico’s middle Rio Grande region to gain an understanding of the physical setting and some of the cultural aspects present in that setting. I enjoy reading fiction that is set in places and among people I do not otherwise know. But I mostly want the reader to experience the rich emotional and psychological landscapes my characters traverse. For me, the joy in reading is when I resonate emotionally with a line or phrase, and that is what I want my readers to experience. Someone who I don’t know well wrote to me the other day, just to tell me that my book had given him the chills and caused him to tear up on more than one occasion. That he felt moved in that way was moving to me.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
Prior to this book, I had only written short fiction. So it was challenging to structure a longer piece, which became the first part of the book called “The River Reader.” The other main challenge, then, was to make consistent all the stories, which formed the second part of the book called “The River Flyway.” It was like putting together a huge puzzle, which was actually very fun for me.

Tell us about your main protagonist’s flaws and strengths and the hurdles he’s trying to overcome.
Daniel Arroyo is an ordinary man who comes from ordinary means. But he is scarred as a young boy by a family tragedy that goes unexplained for decades, and that consumes him with guilt. He is also a product of his times, and is often rendered fragile because of what he experienced in Vietnam. His guilt and his PTSD contribute to marital problems, and to identity issues. But Daniel Arroyo has a vast capacity for kindness and generosity, which is what ultimately saves him, and lets him begin to find peace for himself.

Why did you choose New Mexico as the setting for the book? How does the setting impact the story and the characters?
The setting is essential to Follow the River Home, as it forms the spine for the entire story. It is practically a character in its own. I see the setting of the Rio Grande as it courses through New Mexico as a series of detailed paintings against which the plot unfolds. As I say below, the book was originally going to be a short story collection, where the only link between the stories was the Rio Grande. As it turns out, though, the main characters’ lives had all intersected. The river, as a flyway for the migration of the sandhill cranes, becomes a metaphor for Daniel finding his own way home.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing Follow the River Home?
I was fortunate to be able to work with a wonderful editor, Ladette Randolph, who is the editor of Ploughshares, one of the most esteemed literary journals in the country. I became a better writer for it, which is what I aspire to with any writing project.

Tell us more about the book: where the story idea came from; how long it took to write; editing cycle, etc.
I’m often asked how long it took to write this book. Since this is not the book I set out to write, my answer is somewhere between 2 and 15 years! I started writing short stories in the late nineties, and the first one was published in 2000. My intent was to create a short story collection where the only link between the stories was that each story would at least reference the Rio Grande. So the stories were set in various places along the river, from the headwaters to the sea, though most were set in the middle Rio Grande valley.

A few years ago, I realized two of the stories had main characters named Daniel, but with different last names and different lives. I began to wonder, what if they were the same character? Almost immediately, all the characters and stories came together. It turned out that the main characters grew up together in the same neighborhood during the fifties and sixties, and that many of their lives intersected again in adulthood.

I then wrote the whole story as a novella, which became the first part of the book. The previously written short stories became the second part of the book, and each story casts a different light on the characters and scenes from the first part of the book. It’s almost a retelling of the whole story, but from very different points of view and in a different order. The stories informed the novella, and then I went back to each story to tweak for consistency.

Do you have other creative outlets besides writing?
When I was twenty, I announced to my grandmother that I was going to start writing novels. She very tactfully and wisely suggested that I first get a little more life experience. So I wrote songs for the next twenty years or so, just to keep the creative juices flowing (guitar and vocals). Sometimes I steal lyrics from my songs, and put them in my fiction. For example, a recurring line about the sandhill cranes in Follow the River Home comes from one of my old songs.

What first inspired you to become a writer?
I was first, of course, a reader. I had a great passion for books from the time I could read. My grandmother (who was an artist and librarian) and I came up with a plan where I would write children’s books and she would illustrate them. That never came to fruition, but it tells me I wanted to write from a very young age. My first serious attempts were in high school, with some poetry and short stories that were published in the high school creative writing magazine. At that time I submitted to a national writing competition for high school students. My work did not make the cut, but it was a valuable experience that taught me to not be afraid of submitting work, to not be afraid of rejection letters.

Who are your favorite authors, and what do you admire most about their writing?
I have to answer this with respect to two different parts of my life. My first favorite author was John Steinbeck, who I discovered in junior high school. I read everything he wrote, and found it very evocative. He could write about social and political issues through the eyes of a character’s psychological landscape, and without being pedantic. I don’t enjoy his writing so much as an adult now but was very influenced by him. And now, I have too many favorite authors to name them all. I love literary fiction—beautiful writing that aspires to be art, that is evocative, and that portrays characters’ rich, internal landscapes set against compelling plots and/or physical/cultural settings that are almost visceral. I love learning about places and people that are foreign to me. A few of my favorite authors are Andrei Makine, J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, José Saramago, Annie Proulx, Michael Ondaatje, Ian McEwan, Claire Messud, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Cunningham, David Guterson, and Graham Swift.

Share a bit of your journey to publication.
I started writing and submitting short fiction as a serious endeavor in the late nineties. I spent a lot of time learning everything I could about the process of submissions. My first story was published in a small college review in Kentucky in 2000. I wrote short stories for many years thereafter and was lucky enough to have all my stories published (amidst a wealth of rejection letters!). The thirteen stories in the second half of Follow the River Home were all previously published. Follow the River Home, published by Arbor Farm Press, is my first full-length book.

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
I like to celebrate ordinary people who are capable of extraordinary deeds. There is something redemptive about every human being, no matter how ordinary—no matter how flawed.

What are your strengths as a writer, and what do you do to overcome your weaknesses?
My prose is very lyrical, sometimes almost poetic. Writing is an auditory experience for me. I can hear my internal writer’s voice, which is the same voice that does public readings. I can also paint vivid physical settings and rich, emotional landscapes against which my characters’ lives play out. Readers often tell me my writing is very evocative. What I struggle with mostly, though, is dialogue, presumably because it cannot come from my own voice. It has to be contrived, by definition. I have overcome this weakness by being a careful listener of other people. I have also come to embrace dialogue as an effective tool to move the writing forward when I otherwise might feel stuck.

What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write?
I struggle with scenes that might be offensive to a reader, such as a racist term used by a character in a line of dialogue, or a scene that is particularly graphic. I never write scenes that contain gratuitous violence, or anything else purely for shock value. But I believe strongly that a writer must “write brave.” And sometimes that means writing a passage that makes me, as the author, cringe a little. But, if it’s true, I don’t water it down. To me, that is “writing brave.”

What advice do you have for beginning or discouraged writers?
First, be willing to write embarrassingly bad prose! No one will see it but you. Second, be brutal with your editing, and meticulous with your research. Learn all you can about the craft of writing. Read books about it, and read books by authors you admire. Third, be professional when you make submissions, and follow all the submission guidelines of the publisher. Finally, be welcoming of rejections. Every writer probably has enough to wallpaper his or her house! Rejections are rarely hurtful, and occasionally an editor will write a personal note, which can be very helpful and encouraging. Rejection letters are a sign that you take your writing career seriously.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I am almost done with a first draft of a novel based on one of the stories in Follow the River Home. It is set in the Pacific Northwest. I am also writing two short stories, one of which is almost completed; and I just found a home for a third short story in a literary review in Wisconsin.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



Hanging by the Fingernails: Writing Cliffhangers

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by Chris Eboch

AdvancedPlotting200

Several years ago I ghostwrote a novel about a well-known girl sleuth. The series used cliffhanger chapter endings. That seemed easy enough—find a dramatic moment and end the chapter.

Turns out writing strong cliffhangers is trickier than that. The editor responded to my effort with this comment: “I would like to see more of a slow build-up toward the intense action. In horror movies, it’s always the ominous music and the main character slowly opening the closet door that scares us the most, not the moment right after she opens the door.”

She’s noting the difference between suspense and surprise.

When something happens suddenly and unexpectedly, that’s a surprise. If you’re walking down the street and something falls onto your head, you’ll be surprised. But since the surprise came out of nowhere, it wasn’t suspenseful.

When writing, we may be tempted to keep secrets and then let them out—bang! But suspense comes from suspecting that something will happen and worrying about it or anticipating it.

To build up dramatic chapter endings, give the reader clues that something bad—or excitingly good—is happening. Here’s an example from Haunted: The Ghost on the Stairs, a novel for ages 8 to 12. The narrator, Jon, isn’t sure he believes his sister Tania saw a ghost, but goes with her to look as their stepfather films his ghost hunter TV show.

At the top of the stairs, my stepfather stood in the glare of a spotlight, a few feet away from a camera. I took a step backward and tugged at Tania’s arm. No one had seen us yet, and we could still escape.Tania turned to me. The look in her eyes made my stomach flip.The moment isn’t bad for a cliffhanger, but it needs more buildup. Here’s the published version:

At the top of the stairs, my stepfather stood in the glare of a spotlight, a few feet away from a camera. I took a step backward and tugged at Tania’s arm. No one had seen us yet, and we could still escape.She didn’t back up. She swayed.I took a quick step forward and put my arm around her so she wouldn’t fall. I looked down into her face. I’d never seen anyone so white. White as death. Or white as a ghost.“Tania,” I whispered. I gave her a shake. She took a quick breath and dragged her eyes away from the staircase and to my face. The look in them made my stomach flip.To get the most out of dramatic moments, you actually slow the pace by using more detail. Focus on sensory details with emotional impact.

Powerful Paragraphing

Long paragraphs are fine for description. Short paragraphs are best for action, because the eye moves more quickly down the page, making the story read faster. You can also emphasize an important sentence by putting that sentence into a paragraph by itself. Compare these examples:

Version 1:

My car picked up speed as it rolled down the steep hill. The light at the bottom turned yellow so I stepped on the brakes. The car didn’t slow down. The light turned red as I pressed harder, leaning back in my seat, using my whole leg to force the brake pedal toward the floor. I sped toward the intersection while other cars entered from the sides. I sailed into the intersection, horns blaring and brakes squealing around me as I passed within inches of two cars coming from each side.Version 2:

My car picked up speed as it rolled down the steep hill. The light at the bottom turned yellow.I stepped on the brakes. The car didn’t slow down.The light turned red.I pressed harder, leaning back in my seat, using my whole leg to force the brake pedal toward the floor.I sped toward the intersection. Other cars entered from the sides.I sailed into the intersection. Horns blared and brakes squealed around me.I passed within inches of two cars coming from each side.These use nearly the same words, but in the second version I broke up long sentences, and I used seven paragraphs instead of one. The second version better captures the narrator’s breathless panic.

You can have dramatic chapter endings even if the characters aren’t in physical danger. In a young adult romance, for example, the drama may come from social humiliation at school and awkward or exciting moments with the love interest. Play up those moments for maximum effect.

Not every chapter has to end with a major cliffhanger. You can end in a quieter moment, as long as you’re still looking forward, reminding the reader that the character’s troubles are not over.

Cliffhangers are a powerful tool to build suspense. Choose a dramatic moment and expand the moment with sensory details for drama. You’ll keep readers turning the page.

BanditsPeak150Chris Eboch writes fiction and nonfiction for all ages. In Bandits Peak, a teenage boy meets strangers hiding on the mountains and gets drawn into their crimes, until he risks his life to expose them. The Eyes of Pharaoh is an action-packed mystery set in ancient Egypt. The Genie’s Gift is an Arabian Nights-inspired fantasy adventure. In The Well of Sacrifice, a Mayan girl in ninth-century Guatemala rebels against the High Priest who sacrifices anyone challenging his power. Her writing craft books include You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers and Advanced Plotting.

Learn more at www.chriseboch.com or her Amazon page, or check out her writing tips at her Write Like a Pro! blog. Sign up for her Workshop newsletter for classes and critique offers.

Chris also writes novels of suspense and romance for adults under the name Kris Bock; read excerpts at www.krisbock.com.

This article was originally published in the August 2011 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Revising Fiction: Avoid These 4 Common Characterization Pitfalls

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by Kirt Hickman

Revising Fiction

You’ve fleshed out your characters. You’ve given them flaws as well as virtues, internal struggles and external conflict, past lives and prior relationships. In short, they’ve become real people with real goals, real motivations, real relationships, and real emotions. Great! Now go back and make sure you’ve avoided the following characterization pitfalls:

1. Characters That Are Too Similar

Make sure each character’s personality is different from that of every other character. You don’t want all your characters to behave in the same way or talk like one another. They’re people, not automatons. If each is like the others, none will seem real. And if your characters don’t seem real, your reader won’t care about what happens to them.

2. A Weak-willed Hero

It’s hard for your reader to relate to a wimp or a pushover. If your hero doesn’t care enough about his cause to assert himself to achieve it, why should the reader care enough to read about it?

Make your hero a doer, not a watcher. If he just stands by while somebody else solves his problems and overcomes his obstacles for him, he’s not much of a hero. Your reader wants a hero who rises to the challenge, faces his problems head-on, overcomes adversity, and either achieves his goal or becomes ennobled by his effort to do so. Put your hero in the driver’s seat, literally and figuratively, at every opportunity.

3. Cliché Character Traits

Go back though your list of traits for each character. Have you created a dumb blonde, a mad scientist, a brutish albino hit man, a crooked sheriff, or any one of dozens of character types that have been done to death in books and movies? Take your dumb blonde and make her not dumb or not a blond. Make your mad scientist not mad or not a scientist.

Consider a western with a stereotypical crooked sheriff. He owns the town, rules by fear, accepts bribes from criminal elements, and has the judge in his back pocket. Too cliché! When I find a cliché character in my own writing, I play “What if…” or “Suppose…” These words help me brainstorm ideas to twist my character until he no longer feels cliché.

For example, suppose the sheriff is a woman. Suppose she’s corrupt in actions, but not in motivation. Suppose she was made sheriff by her father, a powerful and corrupt politician who not only threatens her life, but that of her children as well. Suppose she must find a way to overthrow her father’s influence in order to free herself from his web of corruption.

You see how it works? More subtly, do you have an otherwise-original character who exhibits a single trait that’s a cliché for his character type? The brutish hit man who happens to be albino might fall into this category. Albinos are certainly rare, but in literature and movies, they almost always appear as brutish villains. Move this trait to a sophisticated good guy, maybe even the hero. How might that affect his life, the way people treat him, or his opportunities for social, political, or economic advancement? Is his society tolerant of such aesthetic differences? Does it hinder him in his quest?

Here I must make a distinction between realism and cliché. What if you create a 10-year-old boy who never cleans his room? Is he realistic or cliché? Here’s my test: Do most real ten-year-old boys live in dirty rooms, or do most keep them clean? I suspect the former. If so, a character with this trait is realistic. He should have some trait that’s unusual for his demographic, however, so he doesn’t feel to the reader like a cardboard cutout. If most real ten-year-old boys live in clean rooms but a high percentage of fictional ten-year-old boys are characterized by dirty rooms, a ten-year-old boy with a messy room falls into the realm of cliché.

By contrast, are most sheriffs really corrupt, or are they just portrayed that way too often? In this case, the latter is true. This is what makes the crooked sheriff, the dumb blonde, the mad scientist, and numerous other character types clichés.

Apply this test to each of your characters. If you find a single cliché trait in an otherwise-original character, one solution is to replace the trait with its opposite. Do what the reader won’t expect.

4. Forgetting Secondary Characters

The waiter, the cab driver, the shoeshine boy, and other characters who appear fleetingly need not be fleshed out as completely as your main characters, but that doesn’t mean you should leave them as cardboard cutouts. Give each character at least one interesting trait.

It’s not enough for your characters to be realistic. Make sure each one is both unique and memorable.

WorldsAsunder125_2Kirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the August 2009 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



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