Monthly Archives: September 2016

An Interview with Author Joyce Trainor

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Author Joyce Trainor writes and weaves, and loves on her grandchildren and 92-year-old mother, from her home in northern New Mexico. Joyce didn’t start out to be an author, but an encounter with a homeless man sparked the story idea that became her first book, No Handbook for the Homeless: A Novel (Sunstone Press, 2015).

nohandbookforthehomeless200What is your elevator pitch for No Handbook for the Homeless: A Novel?
A middle-class woman, overcome by debt caused by a drunk-driving accident, loses everything and everyone except her deceased son’s Belgian Shepard. The two must learn to survive among the homeless as she slowly rebuilds her life.

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
I want readers to gain a new perspective when they see a homeless person, one filled with empathy—there but for the grace of God go I. I also want those who read the book to think it was time well spent.

Tell us a little about your main characters. Did they surprise you as you wrote their story?
Aileen, the narrator, is an ordinary person who finds herself in extraordinary circumstances. She is both mystified and terrified by what is happening. The other major characters, Wizard, Cesar, Father Rico, and Billy Dean all developed as I wrote the story. Occasionally, I wrote a scene, read it back, and decided it was something that would never have happened with that character—and it was back to the keyboard. Wizard especially was looking over my shoulder to make sure I got it right, and believe me he is opinionated. Billy Dean was pure fun. Everything about him still makes me laugh. And then there is Peanuts. His picture is on the cover. A lot of my readers became emotionally attached to him. They expressed more concern for the dog than Aileen.

How did No Handbook for the Homeless: A Novel come together?
I have to begin by saying the book is not autobiographical. I am blessed with a wonderful home, family, good friends, and neighbors. But it’s based on things I’ve observed in the world around me. The story began as one of those “I wonder” moments. My husband and I were stopped at an intersection and a homeless man was panhandling. He held up a sign to about every third car, but he was agitated, walking in circles, talking to himself and trying to cope. For the next few weeks he stayed in my mind. I wondered who he was and how his circumstances led him to that street corner. I wondered what my life would be like if I found myself without a home. It took a few more months before I wrote my first chapter, which I later moved to the middle of the book. From there the book took off. I wrote a chapter at a time, not always in chronological order. It took two years to write and rewrite the book and another year to find a publisher. I received dozens of rejections before Sunstone Press picked it up. I’m inexperienced when it comes to the business end of books and publishing. I was lucky to have a mentor, Santa Fe author Robert Mayer. He was generous with his advice.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
I needed to make the situations believable but also respect the reader. That is, I wanted the reader to feel an emotional connection with Aileen without betraying her thoughts. Some of the chapters were incredibly hard to write and rewrite. For example, the Christmas Eve and Christmas morning scene at the motel, I wanted to engage the reader without being overly sentimental. I paid a lot of attention to the details that set the scene, the little things, like spirals of snow in the stairwell.

Why did you choose New Mexico as the setting for the novel?
It’s a New Mexico story, but it could easily have been set in another state except for the weather. The weather is a key element in the story and helps drive the plot. You have to remember the impact weather has on the homeless. If it rains or snows or winds are thirty miles an hour, the person on the corner has no place of refuge. Most shelters are only open part of the year, and only at night. The people who stay there have to be up and outside early in the morning no matter what.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing the book?
Once the book was published and people started to read it, I got a tremendous amount of feedback from readers who told me it changed their way of thinking. They do things they never would have before, like buy an extra hamburger and give it to the man or woman standing on the corner.

What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write?
There are a number of deaths in the book. They were emotionally draining for me. I cried with my characters. I knew what was about to happen but couldn’t bring myself to write it down. I would write around it until I was in a mindset that allowed me to finish the chapter.

Who are your favorite authors, and what do you admire most about their writing?
I love good storytelling. Tony Hillerman, Barbara Kingsolver, James Lee Burke, John Grisham come to mind immediately. I appreciate the way they use setting to drive the plot and characters and the way they engage all five senses.

Do you have other creative outlets besides writing?
I weave. I have two Rio Grande walking looms at home, and I love the feel of the wool as I weave. It’s gratifying to see the design develop from tiny threads set in just the right place. I find it very meditative. I do some of my best writing while weaving a rug.

What are you working on now?
I’m in the rewrite stage for another novel, Code Name Simpson. It’s a spy story set during World War II. It’s loosely based on my mother’s experience as a WAC assigned to a secretarial pool in Germany during the waning days of the war. Times being what they were, she was called upon to serve in a classified capacity. I may decide to self-publish this one because Mom is about to turn ninety-two, and I want her to be able to read it. If I wait to find a publisher, and then get it into print, that may never happen. I can’t wait to apply what I learn from SWW’s Self-Publishing Conference in October.

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.



An Interview with Author Joseph Badal

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Author Joseph Badal’s passion for writing was seeded in the tales his father told in which Joe and his siblings were the heroes. In addition to ten novels, Joe has published dozens of articles and short stories, and writes a column for his blog focusing on an Everyday Hero each month. His newest book, The Motive (Suspense Publishing, 2016), is the first in a trilogy that deals with human trafficking. You can find him on his website at JosephBadalBooks.com, his Amazon author page, and his SouthWest Writers’ author page.

themotive200What is your elevator pitch for The Motive?
When Doctor Matt Curtis flies from Albuquerque to Honolulu to bury his sister—a supposed suicide—he unearths reasons to question the coroner’s findings into his sister’s death. His search for the truth leads him into the dark and dangerous world of police corruption, human trafficking, and drug smuggling.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
The Motive is based upon actual events that happened to a friend of mine and to his sister. I wanted to keep the storyline true to those events but, at the same time, inject enough fiction into the story to make it more attractive to the reader. Also, because the book includes a great deal of activity that revolves around human trafficking and drug smuggling, I needed to do significant amounts of research into both those topics.

What sparked the initial story idea for the book?
Friends often approach me with ideas for a book, but 99% of the time the ideas are less than stimulating. In this case, when a friend told me what happened to his sister in Hawaii, I was immediately enthused about the topic. In fact, when he mentioned the actual events to me while at a dinner party, it was all I could do not to get up and leave the party. I couldn’t wait to get home to begin writing.

Tell us a little about your main character. Did he surprise you as you wrote the story?
Matthew Curtis is an Albuquerque orthopedic surgeon in his early fifties. He is a hard-working, everyday kind of guy who lost his wife to cancer and is estranged from his two adopted sons. Although he served in Special Forces as a young man, there is nothing dramatic or heroic about his current existence. When he learns his sister’s death has been ruled a suicide, he initially accepts the ruling and is anxious to settle her affairs and return to New Mexico. But as he begins to suspect that his sister might have been murdered, he slowly changes. How Matt changed throughout the book was a surprise to me. He goes from being reluctant about digging up the real cause of his sister’s death to being an active and heroic participant in dealing with vicious criminals and corrupt officials.

Why did you decide to use the particular setting you chose?
As I mentioned already, the idea for this story came from a real-life story told to me by a friend. Actual events occurred in Hawaii, so it was a natural step in writing the book to place it in the Hawaiian Islands. I did extensive research into the demographics of Hawaii and into crime in Honolulu. I patterned my characters after people I’ve known and after actual Hawaiian criminals.

Was there anything surprising you discovered while doing research for this book?
I would have to say the biggest surprise for me was how angry I became while researching and writing The Motive. The more I dug into the topic of human trafficking, the angrier and more disgusted I became. I was shocked at how pervasive the crime of trafficking has become, and how commonly it occurs in the United States. I had always thought this was a crime committed by foreigners against foreigners, in foreign lands. I was mistaken. As a result of my research, I vowed to write more about this subject and have now converted The Motive from a stand-alone thriller to the first book in a three-book series titled Cycle of Violence. The subsequent two books in the series are tentatively titled Obsessed and Final Justice.

Evil DeedsYou’ve written five thrillers in the Danforth Saga and two mysteries in the Lassiter/Martinez Case Files (one to be released in November 2016). What are the challenges of writing a series?
The biggest challenges in writing a series are keeping your main characters fresh for the reader and allowing your characters to continue to grow with each subsequent book in the series.

Looking back to the beginning of your writing career, what do you know now that you wish you’d known then?
I wish I had known early on that writing isn’t just about putting a good story on paper. A story must follow certain rules and must be “mechanically” well-structured.

What is your writing routine like?
I write every day, except during the 2-3 week periods before and after a book is released. I find myself so immersed in marketing and promotion around a new release that finding time to write is difficult. Although I have worked on two books at a time in the past, I try to avoid doing that today. I usually focus on one project at a time so that I can give that project my full attention.

BorderlineDo you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
I try to avoid proselytizing and topics such as religion and partisan politics, although I do tend to denigrate politicians, in general. But the one item that comes through in all of my books is that my main characters are everyday people. They are never superheroes who leap tall buildings in a single bound. I want my readers to see themselves in my characters.

What are you working on now?
I am currently writing the 6th book in the Danforth Saga. It is tentatively titled Sins of the Fathers. I am also finishing the final edit of Dark Angel, the second book in the Lassiter/Martinez Case Files series, which will be released in November.

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.



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