After retiring from a 26-year teaching career, author Patricia Gable has published short stories for children, hundreds of articles for an educational website, and three middle-grade novels. The Right Discovery (November 2024) is the third book in her The Right Series. Look for the series on Barnes & Noble and the individual books on Amazon: The Right Address (book 1), The Right Choice (Book 2), and The Right Discovery (Book 3). You’ll find Patricia on her website PatriciaGable.com, and for more about her work, read her 2022 and 2023 SWW interviews.
Are you happy with how the plot and characters have developed in The Right Series?
The characters have become friends to me. That may sound silly, but I’m sure authors understand. I want young readers to grasp good traits from these characters. The friendships have evolved since the first book. They have fun and look out for each other. Without the parents around at the beginning of book three, they need to think for themselves.
How did you come up with the plot in this book: a dangerous blizzard…five friends trapped in a large house without parents?
School has been cancelled due to the snow, but the blizzard progressed as the day went on. The parents went to work early. Each parent was helping the small town in a variety of ways. One mom was a nurse, another fixing the school furnace, others checking in on the elderly and lastly the manager of the diner kept the hot coffee and breakfast ready for the city workers. The children were dropped off at the big house, so they could be together, be safe, and have fun while the parents worked.
Tell us more about the characters. Are Annie, Willie, Emma, and Christopher (introduced in books one and two) the focus of The Right Discovery? Any new characters readers should know about?
The characters were gradually added in the first two books. Annie and Willie were the main characters in The Right Address. Then they met Emma and her mother. In book two, The Right Choice, they meet Chris and Kellen. In The Right Discovery, Annie, Emma, Chris and Kellen are in tenth grade and Willie, funny and daring, is in second grade. He tags along. A guardian angel follows Christopher to protect him and the town.
When looking for inspiration for your works, what are the two or three things that mostly motivate you to write?
As a former teacher, I always tried to celebrate good qualities in all my students. Humor was added to my teaching, because it kept their attention. Even then, I was writing in my head. I didn’t want to write science fiction or evil. I wanted the characters to have fun and do good things.
As an author, do you plan out the whole written work (and accompanying plot and story line) in advance, or is yours a more spontaneous and flowing style?
To write a book or short story, I have a few notes to begin, but I usually just start typing. The first draft might be nothing like the final story. I always keep a note pad or a scrap of paper close by to capture the ideas in my head.
What have been some of the challenges facing you as a writer, in this third middle-grade book?
In the third book I wanted it to be better. So, I added drawings, character summaries in case the reader hadn’t read the first two books, an active guardian angel, and discussion questions.
How did you come up with the title? Was it hard checking to see if the title had already been used in another publication?
The first book, The Right Address, was based on a story I wrote in a contest in 2006. I won honorable mention. The story “haunted” me for years. So, in 2022, I made the short story into a book. I didn’t even think about changing the title. After it was published, I found out that there were at least twelve books with the same title. Not very smart.
Who are some of your greatest mentors in writing? People who have either helped you or inspired you on your writing path?
My dad was my first mentor. He wrote poetry, long letters, and editorials. He encouraged me to always learn new words. Along the way, I enjoyed great children’s writers. When I discovered author Tomie dePaola had converted a barn into a studio to write and paint, it hit me. I wanted that, too. So, I retired from teaching. But sadly, I didn’t get a barn.
Do you collaborate with other middle-grade authors?
A few years ago, I enrolled in an online writing class. There were three students. My sister, who lives in Ohio, Diane who lives in England, and me in Arizona. We became great writing buddies. We meet on Zoom every two weeks to discuss writing.
What writing projects are you working on now?
My next endeavor focuses on the guardian angel. It won’t be linked to The Right Series.
Interviewer Christina Sultan is a former Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico resident who joined SouthWest Writers in 2022. A graduate of the English literature program at McGill University, Montreal, she has been an avid reader and writer of literary criticism all her life. She interned as a journalist at United Press International before working at the Whistler Question Newspaper and Whistler Magazine. She then went on to obtain a master’s degree in business in California. She was named to Who’s Who U.S.A. in 2007 and devotes much of her time to working in the arts, investments, and the humanities.
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