Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

Insofar as a book is a complex, separate, unwieldy, difficult, beloved, independent creature, then yes, my book was my baby. But now that my children are in their twenties, I find it more relevant to compare the process of completing a book to the entire scope of parenting, which for me began when those tiny individuals popped out and I instantly knew  two things: I was hopelessly in love, and they were going to require more resources from me than I possessed at the time. That disquiet and passion also pretty much sums up the beginning of writing My Name is Mary Sutter. I can never say that I was certain, at any given moment of parenting or writing, what the right choice might be for any given problem. Sometimes I guessed, sometimes I followed a primal, maternal or literary instinct, sometimes I floundered, and on the good days—which I hope were more frequent, not less—I tried to make intelligent choices based on that underlying, enduring love. What I learned over time was that my characters, like my children, had their own truths, their own lives, and it was my job to discover who they were, what they wanted, what they needed from me, and then at moments of intense pressure, summon spontaneous wisdom to figure out how to equip them so that they ultimately could become their best selves. And after I had given each of them every chance, every attention, every ounce of love I could squeeze from my exhausted soul, I sent them all out into the world. It was then that I knew what a folly the concept of “finished” was, because my worries for my book, like those for my children, including whether they will flounder and sink far from my the reaches of my arms or whether anyone will ever love them as much as I do, are never-ending, and that in choosing to write a book, I have risked my heart once again, fool that I am.

-Robin Oliveira, author of MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER

***

I do feel that my books are indeed, very much my babies. As far as gestation goes, not really. I wish I had only carried my kids for around a month. After that though, very much so. I am always very protective of my work and will only give it out to a limited number of eyes, like trusting your kids to only the best babysitters. I have nightmares about dying before I get to see their full potential. ie: published vs graduation, great jobs & grandkids. I drive with my laptop in my passenger seat, protecting my novels within and use the “mom arm” with it if I have to hit the brakes fast. I love each one for it’s own differences and try not to love one more than another. * grins * After receiving the news that I was going to be published, I did refer to it as “my baby” because it was going to take nine months for anyone else to be able to see it.

So yes, freakazoid sounding as it may be, my books are my babies. * throws cover art over shoulder and burps it *

-June Donaghy Kramin, author of the just-released paranormal romance, DUSTIN TIME

“It’s a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.”

-Erle Stanley Gardner

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Author Jenny Nelson takes the heat in the kitchen and wrestles its romps onto the page through the heart and adventures of Georgia Gray, the chef and heroine of this debut novel, GEORGIA’S KITCHEN.  Tapping into our love of love and fine cuisine, it’s likely to find its target wide and eager.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Jenny: Way back when, I was editorial assistant for a short-lived Time Inc. start-up magazine called Talk TV Weekly. This was during the heyday of talk shows, when Maury Povich, Montel Williams and Sally Jesse Raphael ruled the airwaves. I wrote a column called “Really!” where I was supposed to reveal wacky factoids about the different hosts. The problem was, nothing was all that wacky, and each week I struggled to turn the mundane into the madcap, with little success. Still, I got a huge kick out of seeing my byline week after week and working at a weekly was a terrific experience.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Jenny: Georgia’s Kitchen tells the story of thirty-three-year-old Georgia Gray, the soon-to-be married head at a trendy New York City restaurant. When Georgia suddenly finds herself unemployed and unengaged, she takes her bruised ego to Tuscany, where she sharpens her skills at a new trattoria, turns up the heat with Gianni, the owner of the winery next door, and embarks on a crash course in self-discovery. Though Gianni tempts her to stay in Italy indefinitely, the desire for something more looms large in Georgia’s heart – the desire to run her own restaurant on her own terms in the city she loves.

If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to be a top chef, or make it in New York, or what really goes on in a professional kitchen, or dreamed of chucking it all and moving to Italy, Georgia’s Kitchen is for you. It’s packed with heart and humor, glamour and guts (not to mention food and cooking galore!) and a heroine you’ll root for to the very end.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Jenny: I am incredibly lucky to have a terrific family who supports me in every possible way. My husband, my parents and my sister have encouraged me from the get go, urging me on and bucking me up when I needed it most. And my twin daughters, now six, are the most loyal and enthusiastic cheerleaders any mother could ask for. I sometimes think they’re even more excited about Georgia’s Kitchen than I am (despite its glaring omission of any cool pictures). Also, I would be absolutely nowhere without all the incredible authors out there who inspire me to be better, help unlock my creativity when I feel tapped out, and provide hours of pure pleasure and joy through their wonderful books. And finally, the many amazing writers I’ve befriended through classes, online or just by chance. Writing is such a solitary experience and connecting with other writers helps me feel like I’m part of something much larger than myself.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Jenny: It really depends. I like to write in the morning, but it sometimes takes me a while to get going. I check email, make a phone call or two, drink a cup of tea or two, and before I know it, half the morning’s gone and I haven’t written a word. The afternoon is a little better, probably because the pressure’s on to write something, anything, before my kids come home from school. If I’m really wrapped up in a scene, I find it hard to leave, and will write after I put my kids to bed. But usually by the time evening rolls around I’m totally spent and want nothing more than  to hang with my kids until they go to sleep, and then zone out with some mindless TV or  a flick, or lose myself in a good read.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Jenny: Write! Sit down at your computer and get those words out. The biggest impediment to writing is not writing, so turn off your email, along with your inner perfectionist, and just get the words down – you can fix them later. If there’s a writing class nearby, sign up for it. Classes are great for learning craft, imposing deadlines, connecting with other writers and making you feel like a writer. I’ll leave you with some advice Michael Cunningham shared with me when I took his creative writing course as a high school student: Never use the word beauteous (he hated it), and never compare a redhead to a tomato (I did and boy, I’ll never make that mistake again!).

***

GEORGIA’S KITCHEN is ready when you are, so swing by the bookstore as soon as you can, or the Nook and Kindle people will beat you to it.  And have a look online for more info on what Jenny Nelson’s up to at her website, www.jennynelsonauthor.com.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

Is my book my baby?  Initially I thought, emphatically, no.  I found it very easy to say why not.  But, with time and reflection, I found that the answer depends heavily upon perspective.  If the question is whether writing and parenting are analogous, I don’t think so.  But if it’s about what happens to the author?  I might say yes.

A written work will naturally develop in fits and starts, as children do.  But time and age carry children with them.  If I put away a draft for lack of knowing what to do next, it will stay as it is - and when I come up with the idea, it’s there waiting, as I left it.  And I can be satisfied that it’s been improved.  Children will grow and learn, with or without me.   Many of the questions change from moment to moment - as do the answers.  There is much greater peril in waiting or sitting idle for a parent than there is for an author.  In fact, a parent is scarcely an author at all, much as one might like to be; I’d say a parent is more an editor anyway, and one who will never see the entire manuscript.

In either case, there’s a sense of personal investment - if they’re coolly received or, far worse, unnoticed, I’ll take it hard.  But with a written work, it’s a personal disappointment: maybe I feel misjudged, or deflated because my best isn’t good enough - or that I could’ve given better, and I’m disappointed in myself.  But that’s nothing like the wrench I feel on behalf of my children when they encounter disappointment or rejection; my hurt has nothing to do with me.  It’s the futility that stings.

When I write, if the work ends up well, I’m delighted.  If I run into trouble early on, I may abandon it and start another.  It’s not easy to give up on a nascent work, but it’s possible.  Fatherhood, though, is one long final draft with no chance to edit, no rewrite.  It’s no good just banging out any old words just to unblank the page, knowing I can fix them later.  And I can’t just take a hiatus, stick the work in the drawer until inspiration strikes again, or give it up and go back to whatever the day job was.  I have two works going at once, and there’s no switching between them.  They all need my full and best attention, now.

But, rather than looking at the work, consider the creator.  What happens to a writer through the creative process?  How is one engaged, moulded, enlightened?  What happens to us as our children grow, with us, next to us, beyond us?

As a poet, I’m altered by anything I write; I can’t be unaffected by it.  Every line, whether I use it or not, advances my experience and informs my consciousness somehow.  Every poem that follows is in the context of what I’ve already written.  As a father, I’ve been unceasingly amazed and in love with each of my children, from the moment I learned they were imminent.  I revel every moment in the beauty of their imperfection and the imperfection of their beauty. Sometimes it doesn’t look or sound like I’m revelling.

But I’m a work in progress too; I learn and grow with, and thanks to, my children.  Because of them, I view life and the world - and myself - much differently.  It’s not just their perspectives as people; it’s the fact of my responsibility as a father.  I must always consider how they see and feel the world, and how my own childhood experience should - or should not - inform my role in our relationships.  I see things differently because they are here, and because of them, I am changed.

There’s no chance, for me, that my written work could ever fit the baby metaphor. But what I write shapes me as truly as I shape it.  And that’s startlingly like parenthood.

-Rob McCreery, poet and AuthorScoop contributing editor

***

The Question: How do you, as a writer, relate to the gestation, childbirth, and parenting metaphor as it pertains to your work?  In short, is your book your baby?

The Short Answer: No.  Writing a book does not make you fat.

The Long Answer: In which I compare gestation and childbirth to the writing process.

(Disclaimer: I write this while 8 months into my fourth pregnancy.  Which, as I’ve written about before, means that I am now a constantly grumpy person.)

Below you will find my very scientific research comparing several components of the two situations.  I did this by fabricating conducting a completely unbiased and very real interview with myself a writer and a pregnant woman.

***

Me: First, I’d like to ask you about conception.  What was that like for you?

Writer: Well, it depends on the story.  Writer sits back and sips a cup of hot, fresh coffee. Often I have a dream, or sometimes the big “What if?” question pops out at me.  Every once in a while I’ll have this revelation in that moment before waking up, and I’ll jot down thoughts in my little writer’s notebook.

Usually, there’s a seed of an idea, and I take it from there.

Pregnant Woman: Eyes coffee enviously.  Fidgets with glass of ginger ale. Um…really?  Do we need to talk about this?

Me: Right.  We’ll move on to the physical nature of your job as mother and as writer.  Could you please describe the changes that happen to your body during the gestation process?

Writer: Long pause and furrowed brow. I guess I can get a stiff neck if I sit at my computer for too long.  Carpal tunnel on the days when I’m really typing fast.  Sometimes a headache if my characters don’t cooperate.

Pregnant Woman: Pushes ginger ale to the side and launches in with obvious delight. Well, it starts with several months of intense nausea.  Throwing up at unpredictable moments.  Ravenous hunger paired with momentary food aversions.  Then there’s the heartburn, insomnia, headaches, and mood swings.  The second trimester is a little better, but that’s when the weight gain starts in.  The swelling.  The back pain and the round ligament stabbing pain and the shooting pain down the sciatic nerve.  Sometimes there’s carpal tunnel or a tingling in my hands.  Hemorrhoids.  Toward the end, the insatiable need to pee returns.  The hugeness of my belly and the stretch-marks.  The internal jabs of another person inside growing.  More heartburn.  Less room for anything.  The impossibility of hoisting myself off a couch or rolling over in bed.  And then –

Me: I see.  What about the actual process of gestating.  How do you personally contribute to it?

Pregnant Woman:   Rubs belly fondly. I try and eat right and exercise.  But, you know, it always feels like such a miracle.  A tiny person is forming, complex cellular division leading to the formation of organs and bodily features.   Did you know that you can see the little heart beating as early as 8 weeks?  And I don’t plan that.  My body just knows what to do.

Writer: Pulls out notebook with outlines and penciled in charts. Well, I’m a plotter.  Which means once I have an idea I sit down and write a detailed outline of how the events will unfold.  Sometimes things change, which means I’ll have to rewrite the entire manuscript.  But, if all goes well, I set aside two hours a day to really focus on my writing.  Once the first draft is complete, then the endless round of revisions comes into play.  It really is time-consuming but so very worthwhile.

Me:  Hmmm.  Finally, let’s talk about delivery.  How do you know when you’re finished?

Writer: Sits back in chair and stares dreamily off into the sunset. You’re never finished.  It’s like this journey of editing and revising, and, even when your work is ready to be sent out there in the wide world, you’ll always be engaging with the creative process.

Pregnant Woman: Seriously?  I push an eight-pound human out of my yoo-hoo.

***

The Conclusion: And there you have it.  Given this incredibly insightful data-finding interview, I think we can conclude that the merit of the pregnancy/writing comparison lies in the carpal tunnel connection.

Can someone call a book their baby?  I suppose so, but the last time I checked, a book won’t poop on your favorite shirt.  Or wake you up to be fed in the middle of the night.  Or give you a heart-melting smile first thing in the morning.  Or a sticky, jammy kiss after lunch.

I get why people make this comparison between parenting and writing, I really do.  And I see the usefulness of a word-picture to help capture the challenges and rewards of the creative process, the mysterious formation of a story out of nothing, and the long, drawn out days of writing and waiting and writing some more.  But, please, for the sanity of all the pregnant women out there – especially, the pregnant writers – let’s put a quick end to this metaphor.  Or, if you must tout it, pack on 40 pounds for every book you write, and then we’ll talk.”

-mid-grade author of the upcoming THE TALE OF UNA FAIRCHILD, Marissa Burt

June Kramin hits the last high crest of this summer’s reading wave with her paranormal romance debut, DUSTIN TIME.  As it gets its legs, AuthorScoop snags a chance at a peek to see how it all came about.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

June: DUSTIN TIME is actually my first published work. For me, writing novels is where my heart is. Querying them is time consuming enough. I have never written short stories or poetry so I haven’t submitted to magazines, newspapers and such. Makes for a short publication history but I hope my other novels will follow soon.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

June: DUSTIN TIME was actually the fifth novel I completed. It was everyone’s favorite so that’s when I decided to shelve the others for the time being and hit it hard. Dusty is a character you just have to love, while Kaitlyn is so strong – you just have to cheer for her. Kaitlyn tries to leave Dusty on her thirtieth birthday, but fate strongly disagrees. She travels between the birthdays of an altered present and past, which leave her more confused than ever about her feelings for Dusty, who seem to be the only constant in all of the trips.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

June: I have a lot of writer friends on my forum and facebook that have been the best sounding boards for everything. It’s more helpful than you could imagine knowing that you are not alone out there in this process.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

June: I get 98% of my writing done during my workday. My job isn’t usually of high demands. My boss said, “It may get boring there, bring a book,” so I write them instead. Sometimes on the drive home I get a thought that pops into my head or the dreaded shower “OMG! I gotta get that down quick!” and my husband & daughter will end up watching a movie without me, but for the most part, all day is my time to shine. I try to make the best of it. I feel very fortunate to be getting an hourly wage while I write. Please don’t hate me.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

June: Run!!!! Run while you can!!!! Just kidding. It is a world of ups and downs – prepare yourself for letdowns. In all honestly, I swore I had sent out my last query and thought I was about to give up when I got my acceptance letter. I always cheered people on with “Never give up!” but sometimes it’s hard to follow your own advice. All I can say is keep writing if it’s what you love to do. That has to be enough. You’ll only make yourself miserable always living for that next step.

***

DUSTIN TIME is ready for download from Champagne Books - no waiting at red lights or in line, so no reason to put it off!  Have an early look at a brand new author on the scene.

Heather Sharfeddin comes to us just as her latest novel, SWEETWATER BURNING, gets rolling with a timely and layered story that’s some literary heavy lifting in the summer reading aisle.  All the better to strengthen and entertain you with, my dear.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Heather: My first publication credit was a short-short titled “Birdshot” in Sacred Stones, an anthology edited by Maril Crabtree. It was a semi-autobiographical piece I wrote about a Nez Perce arrowhead I found as a kid in central Idaho and have carried with me since. I didn’t get paid, though I was (and still am) proud of the piece. In 2005, the following year, my first novel was released, and I haven’t written many short stories since, though I often think I ought to. I love to read short fiction, and with the rapid pace of life they are a great way to discover new authors.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Heather: SWEETWATER BURNING just hit the store shelves on June 22nd. It’s the story of Chas McPherson, a social outcast and self-proclaimed loner in a small Idaho town. His character is drawn on the quote (and I can’t remember who said it) “Show me a loner, and I’ll show you someone who tried to fit in.” By the time we meet Chas, he’s done trying to fit in. He’s built a sturdy wall of crusty attitude, fueled by hard-drinking, to protect a tender and generous heart.

Chas’s journey takes off when he reluctantly hires a homecare nurse for his estranged father, allowing the former preacher to die at home. While Chas deals with the presence of this man he fears, even as the elder McPherson is paralyzed by Parkinson’s Disease, and that of Mattie Holden, a woman who could only have taken the job if she were crazy or hiding something, he is accused of burning down the home of a local Muslim family. Only Sheriff Edelson, new to Sweetwater, is able to look past long-held resentment toward the McPherson men, and learn who Chas truly is.

SWEETWATER BURNING has received starred reviews from Kirkus and Library Journal and was recently honored at the San Francisco Book Festival.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Heather: My family has been very supportive of my writing, allowing me hours, days, and weeks away from them. And by “away” sometimes that means holed up in the library. I face the same challenges of writing while holding a day job, raising children, etc. Being surrounded by people who believe in you can be the difference.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Heather: For years I wrote in the middle of the night because I battled insomnia. When you’re tired, you write stuff you might never put on paper in the light of day. I went down some dark rabbit holes and plumbed the depths of heinous crimes during those wee hours. The cool thing about writing at night is that my inner critic was usually absent. Then I changed my eating habits and started sleeping like a baby! That was a challenge to overcome, and it actually took me several months to find my balance again. Now I get my best traction from late morning through early evening. Fortunately, I’ve written enough by now to know how to turn the critic off manually when necessary.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Heather: If you are unable to take college and graduate-level creative writing classes, hire a professional editor with publishing experience (not to be mistaken for a publishing service–be sure the editor is not affiliated with vanity press). Storytelling is not easy. There are so many intricate parts that must come together; it’s like a symphony. Don’t be afraid to seek help. Critique groups can sometimes be good, and sometimes they can be very bad. Paying for an editorial service ensures that you get professional advice and not simply random opinions. And never stop honing your craft. Even after you’ve gotten published, there is so much yet to learn.

***

SWEETWATER BURNING is out now in bookstores and ready for delivery from your favorite online outlet.  Learn more about Ms. Sharfeddin on her website and Amazon.com author profile, and find her on FaceBook and Twitter for even more.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

“Are my novels like my babies, or even my child?

I have to say no.  More like each tale is a new best friend. They’ve got the keys to a fast car and a wicked look in their eye.  They have a journey in mind, some destination with adventures along the way. I get to go along for the ride.  Sometimes I get to drive for a short while, but mostly I’m in the backseat, with a keyboard, trying to keep up.  Now and again I’m back there praying we don’t run out of gas.

Sad to say it, though, I am a fickle friend. When the adventure is done and the story is told?  I’m looking around for a new best friend, hoping they’re driving something cool.”

-author and writer-tech expert, Eldon Hughes

***

“Are my scripts my babies?  Eh… no.  No, they’re more like… I don’t know… circus monkeys.

What do you mean, “go on”?

Well, work with me here.  See, I’m the guy in the red dangly coat with the top hat, you know, the important one with the loud voice, and my monkeys are the ones that run around doing all the tricks, impressing the audience and drawing investors (hopefully), and all with the minimum of screeching and tossing of faeces—though that happens more often than you’d ever want to know about.  Think of them as prizes.

Anyway, when my monkeys go out there and perform and do well, I couldn’t be happier. They’re mine—I did that.  I trained them and nurtured them and ran them over with a floor-buffer for that final polish.  It’s the closest I come to feeling parental towards them and their cute little fanged faces. (They’re all for sale, by the way.)

But some of the time, the monkeys fail and I’m left to deal with it.  “I didn’t connect with your monkey,” says one. “Your monkey threw his peanuts at me,” says another.  “One went in my eye and I’m going to sue.”  OK, that was an actual real monkey incident which I’m unwilling to discuss but you get the idea.

See, I can believe in them.  I can be sure they’re the best they can be and that people will love them.  But come show-time, it’s out of my hands.  I can’t account for the fact that it’s just the wrong time for a monkey-show right now, or that the audience has seen it all before, or that all the frothing at the mouth really was rabies.  Again.  (Did I mention they’re for sale?)

I can be hard on my monkeys then.  I’ve been known to take a belt to them and yell things like, “You call that a midpoint?!  Don’t you know a good midpoint falls around page 55-60?  What the hell are you doing up there in the 70s? Gah!”

Sadly, the show must go on and only the best get to perform.  If something’s not working, you’ve got to be tough about it.  Yank that monkey.  Get a dress on it.  Teach it the harmonica.  Anything.  Sometimes they can be whipped into shape.  Other times I have to let them go—relegated to the cage in back where maybe one day they’ll buck their ideas up and do something original before my circus licence expires.

It’s not always easy—you try getting a shako on a monkey—but when all is said and done, it’s my job and it’s a job I love.

So no, my scripts are not my babies.  But they are my monkeys.

Now, how many monkeys do you want?”

-screenwriter, Chris Hyde

***

Never! Writing is a labor of love, I’ll give you that. But it takes a hard, cold eye to be successful. I would be the Susan Smith of the writing world if they were my babies. I’ve neglected, abused, and killed too many fully formed manuscripts to subscribe to that idea.

They are more like marathons to me. I start out hyped and zoom along feeling great for about the first third, then comes the hill. During the second third of the book I alternate between believing I’m an Olympian and contemplating slitting my wrists. I like to call it the Hemingway-Moron pendulum. It swings one way, then the other. Day by day, mile by mile, I am either a genius or an idiot, but I take comfort in knowing that neither is permanent. At some point it becomes a one-foot-in-front-of-the other sort of race. Write the next scene. Write the next scene. Write the next scene. As I near the end, my energy surges again and I find new momentum, usually because I’m sick to death of it and I can’t wait to ditch it. When it’s finally done, I’m tired but elated, and I remember every excruciating step. But that’s just the process. I may have to stuff it in a closet and pretend I never conceived of such a horrid thing.

-Heather Sharfeddin, author of SWEETWATER BURNING

I liked the book.  I liked the interview. And now, we’ve got 5 minutes of our very own with Robin Oliveira on her debut novel, MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER.  A rich historical narrative like this can only come from excellent research married to strong talent.  Ms. Oliveira’s got both well in hand and brings us the story of a young woman’s progress over the hurdles of tradition, heartbreak, and the Civil War to achieve her dream of becoming a surgeon.  There’s lots to talk about at the closing of the back cover of MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER.

We’d like to thank Ms. Oliveira for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Robin: My first credit was an article in the local newspaper on the building of a road behind my home on Cougar Mountain outside of Seattle. The new road spanned a lovely, quiet creek and displaced cougar, bear, deer, and coyote in order to serve the new homes springing up in what had once been dense woods. My home was one of the newly built houses. The story was one of regret about how, in choosing a place of beauty in which to live, I had unwittingly contributed to its destruction.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Robin: MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER is a book of historical fiction about a young woman who risks everything to become a surgeon during the Civil War. It’s a family saga, a love story, and an epic about the unpreparedness of both sides of the divided country for the political and medical apocalypse that was to come.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Robin: Several institutions and people contributed to my success. I could not have written this book without the fine education I received in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. An enormous encouragement was winning the James Jones First Novel Fellowship in 2007 for my book when it was still a work-in-progress. And I am deeply grateful to my family, who never questioned the value of what I was attempting to do.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Robin: I write best during the day, usually before two p.m. After that, I find I spin my wheels. However, during the final draft of writing MARY SUTTER, I stayed at my desk from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I had just dropped my son at college, and was determined to write one more draft before Christmas. During that time, I did not see my friends, exercised rarely, and did not answer the telephone. That approach worked and I finished on December 14th. I remember the date because I was so happy to know that I was finally done, until, of course, I learned that “done” was a relative term.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Robin: Believe in the vision for your book even when you don’t yet have the skill to execute it. Persevere in learning the craft of writing and have patience with yourself in the terrible years of apprenticeship. Persist, but persist with purpose, reading literature to learn from the masters, seeking help when necessary, and never ceasing to work for the truest and best incarnation of your story.

***

MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER is in bookstores everywhere and also available for eReader instant gratification from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Sony eBookstore. Find more on Robin Oliveira at her website and on her author profile at her agent, Marly Rusoff’s, website.

We’ve already spotted him in last Friday Evening’s Book Reviews for the glowing commentary in the San Fransisco Chronicle, but one quick peek and we find Adam Langer reaping praise for his latest novel, THE THIEVES OF MANHATTAN, in The LA Times and The Chicago Sun Times - and that’s without even digging around.  There’s much buzz over this satirical skewering of the publishing industry - and the critics love it.  It’s a morality tale that puts a disillusioned writer in cahoots with a disillusioned editor to burn the pretense out of the pockets of the business’ worst offenders.  We’re quite lucky to snatch our 5 minutes.  Mr. Langer’s going to be a very busy guy in the coming months.

We’d like to thank him for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Adam: Hmm. I guess that depends on how you define “publication credit. Probably my mom—who has always kept somewhat better tabs on this stuff than I do—would be better qualified to answer. I was thinking that it might have happened in second grade when all students in Mrs Hersh’s class at Boone Elementary had their critiques of the school assembly posted to the bulletin board. But since mine was the only negative critique, Mrs. Hersh chose to leave it off the wall, so I guess that doesn’t count. When I was about ten, I wrote a review of the Mel Brooks movie “High Anxiety” for my grade school paper, which was called “The Demonstrator” and appeared in glorious white and purple fresh off the ditto machine. But if “publication credit” means first byline in a professional publication, that came when I was a sophomore in high school and wrote an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune about book censorship (I was opposed to it).

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Adam: THE THIEVES OF MANHATTAN is intended to be a literary thriller, a satire, a love story, a comedy, a quest novel, a wild adventure with gunplay, betrayal, complex villains, con games, and buried treasure. It’s a novel in which just about every detail should be worth paying attention to.  In short, it’s intended to be just about every sort of novel I love told in a fast-paced format that shouldn’t take longer to read than a nonstop flight from Chicago to Los Angeles. Oh, what’s it about? It’s about this thirtysomething, Indiana-born writer who gets involved in a complex con game when he receives a tempting offer to make a bundle by putting his name to a fake memoir. Complications ensue.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Adam: I’m going to leave aside that S word since success is relative and all that. But there are a lot of people who contributed to the publication of “Thieves of Manhattan.” Here’s how it worked. When I was 14, my mom and dad agreed to let me use my sister’s Evanston address so that I could go to high school in Evanston. When I was attending Evanston Township High School, my best friend’s name was Paul Creamer and he and I ate lunch in North cafeteria with a number of other guys, including one named Chip Wadsworth. I didn’t see much of Chip after high school until he hired me to become editor of a Chicago arts and culture magazine called Subnation, and after it folded, Chip helped to introduce me to a guy named Mark Gleason, who was starting a magazine called Book with his college pal Jerome Kramer who hired me as an editor. While working at Book, I met Harold Bloom, whose editor was named Cindy Spiegel (who would later become my editor) and also a friend of Mark’s, whose name was Marly Rusoff (who later became my agent). After I had written and published a number of books, I decided to start work on a screenplay and asked advice from my Hollywood agent Rich Green and from a writer friend of mine named Laura Moser and her friend, an editor named Claudia Herr. I started work on a screenplay that was inspired in part by a Scandinavian film called Reprise (which I saw with a writer friend of mine named Jennifer Gilmore) and Sunset Boulevard (which I saw with Jerome Kramer). I got feedback on the script from an early supporter of mine named Mary Herczog, along with Jennifer and my mom and my brother and my spouse, and also Jerome, who said that I should rewrite it as a book. When I was done doing that, I sent it to my agent Marly, who sent it to my editor Cindy. And those are just a few of the people I have to thank (or blame).

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Adam: Right now. At 10:34 PM when spouse, daughters, and dog are sleeping. Also, between the hours of 10 AM and 2 PM, particularly in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts or the Hungarian Pastry Shop and Café in Morningside Heights.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Adam: Oh, gosh, how about these:

1. Read work that inspires you, challenges you, entertains you, angers you.
2. Learn how to shut off your internal critic when you’re writing and how to turn him or her back on when you’re editing.
3. Learn how to become your own best reader.
4. Write the book you want to read, not the book you feel you have to write.
5. Screw writers’ block; just keep going—you can fix it later.

And above all:
6. Never take advice from another writer unless you feel it rings true for you because soon, you’ll be answering this question in a whole different way, though you might well be telling new and unpublished writers to be very wary of advice from other writers.

***

THE THIEVES OF MANHATTAN, by Adam Langer, is everywhere.  So, better grab a copy to bring you up to speed on what’s making all that happy racket in all corners literary.  It’s also available for Kindle, Nook, and Sony eReaders.

Think women’s fiction and beach read, and if you think hard enough, you’ll conjure something along the lines of Christine Lemmon’s fourth novel, SAND IN MY EYES.  Or you can just read on and let her take you there.  You’d be in good hands.  She’s an expert.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Christine: A poem I wrote in high school was published in the year book.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Christine: SAND IN MY EYES is the story of a woman so overwhelmed by life that hardly is she seeing the beauty around her. It’s as if she is walking around with sand in her eyes until her elderly neighbor brings her flowers, and wisdom related to womanhood.

I let the characters in this story be who they wanted to be and do what they wanted to do without following an outline. It was a bit hard for me to create a woman so overwhelmed and on the brink of misery, especially while in that stage of life when her children are small. I find a tremendous amount of joy being a mother to three young children but also have those hard mommy moments, too. There is a balance in the story between the mother who is spinning around her house like a top, answering the demands of her children while desiring to write a novel, and the wise woman next door who tells her this phase will pass, that she might as well look for the daisies hidden within the weeds.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Christine: If it weren’t for my husband, my manuscripts would be tucked away in a drawer and hidden from the world. When we were dating I would write of him in my diary and then dangle it in front of him, reading only that which I chose to read and substituting ‘blank blank’ for the juicy parts. But I have read every one of my manuscripts to him line by line in a monotone voice, hitting him with a pillow whenever he’d fall asleep. He is honest about my stories, what he likes and doesn’t like but through it all, he is the one who has coached me on tenacity, hard work and pursuing my dreams. When I have felt down with regard to my writing, my husband tells me to get over it and get writing.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Christine: Either early in the morning, right after I wake and pour myself a cup of coffee, or at night from nine until eleven. I write best when I have a daily and consistent uninterrupted chunk of time and when my room does not have sunlight coming through the window. I find it is easier to enter into the story when there is not that bright light coming into the room. If I do try writing when my husband and children are awake, I often turn on classical music to tune out the noise in the house.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Christine: Discover your best time to write and write each and every day regardless of how hectic life becomes. Life only enhances the writing, so write through good times and through bad. Don’t wait for the right time to start writing; just write and enjoy the process. It might takes years to finish your story, or to get published, so make writing your special time and enjoy it. And don’t feel bad about all those stories you wrote that didn’t get published. Writing is like practicing the piano. No one hears all those times a pianist’s fingers hit the keys. They only hear the recital. All those hours you have spent writing in solitude, those pages no one will read, have only gone into making you a better writer.

***

SAND IN MY EYES is summer reading to the letter and is available now.  Ms. Lemmon’s web page has the lowdown on getting a copy into your beach bag.

Holly Christine unveils her latest, TUESDAY TELLS IT SLANT, a cautionary tale of self-criticism, ambition, and being careful what you wish for.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Holly: A spritual fable, THE NINE LIVES OF CLEMENZA. The story begins in heaven and follows one soul through its journey of life. It’s a tale of reincarnation, but with a special twist: Clemenza can become anything that she wishes. She begins as air.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Holly: TUESDAY TELLS IT SLANT is the story of a girl with a past that is less than desirable. During an especially traumatic moment, she decides to ditch her real past and create one that she has always dreamed of. She becomes thin, popular and desired. In doing this, she loses herself. The book unravels through diary entries, third person narratives and the poetry of Emily Dickinson as Tuesday strives to find her true past.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Holly: My family is incredibly supportive. I also have a few college professors that guided me through the editing and publishing process.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Holly: I start very early, especially from a night of tossing and turning with bits of storyline and dialogue, and down a pot of coffee. I let the caffeine do the work and I work until I’m exhausted.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Holly: Never, ever give up on your dream. Everyone says it, but write every day. Start a blog. Share your dream with others. Sometimes sharing makes it all the more real.

***

TUESDAY TELLS IT SLANT is available now, so check out Holly’s handy link to find the print or e-version that suits you best.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in, three at a time on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

“I don’t view my book as my baby. If it was, I’d be the most callous parent on the planet. I’d have CPS called on me in a heartbeat. I have high expectations for my books, and if they don’t reach those expectations, they can anticipate being shredded to pieces and rebuilt into something better, or else they’re trunked, never again to see the light of day. I’m proud of my work, and I do get attached to it, but I’ve never quite made the connection between book and baby.”

-erotica author, L.A. Witt

.

***

“God no. My book is my teenager. Unruly. Uncooperative. Determined to go off in its own direction. Surprisingly mature at the odd moment. Poignantly lost and confused and fragile at other moments. Something of which I can be proud and something whose neck I can as quickly want to wring.

A baby can’t make it out there in the real world on its own…and of course, this is precisely what a novel must do. I can’t hold its hand. It has to go out there and make friends all on its own…as well as manage with whatever unpopularity it might encounter. By the time the work - the novel - has emerged, there’s no time remaining for any parenting.

I take it that ‘childbirth’ - in the metaphor - is intended to stand in for the bursting forth of the creative act. But for that, aren’t we really talking about conception. I guess I’m a little amused that the metaphor neglects to take us back to that heady moment. The - sorry - creative explosion(s), the - sorry - juices flowing, those rapturous feelings of power and potential.

So yeah…the metaphor doesn’t really work for me. In my view, we have this gestation process, followed by the act of creation (not the other way around). There’s no gestation as a book is being written…only moments of indigestion mixed with moments of intoxication. At best, ‘childbirth’ might be representative of the publication of the work…but I suspect the metaphor is not working on that particular angle of things. God help us. This would make ‘parenting’ the marketing of the book!

So, I’ll stick with my twist on the question. No babies. Fully-formed creatures with minds and personalities of their own. Sometimes you want to sit own and have a drink with them…sometimes you wish they’d go bug somebody else. (and sometimes, that’s exactly what they do)”

-Tim Cockey (aka Richard Hawke)

***

“Some authors do feel toward their books as parents do toward their children. Their books are conceived, birthed, and then sent out into the world. Throughout, authors are more than occasionally overprotective and irrational about their offspring. Just as every parent’s kid is a genius, every author’s book is brilliant.

But let’s unpack this metaphor a bit. First off, if the book begins as a gleam in someone’s eye, whose eye is that? Doesn’t it take two to conceive? A co-author, so to speak? And do end-of-life metaphors apply? Does a book mature to adulthood, totter into old age, and then die? And then does the author go through all those grieving stages psychologists say we should when the thing goes out of print?

I don’t regard my books as children. Rather, they’re interesting projects, fun diversions; children are occasionally like that, but only occasionally. If books weren’t fun, I wouldn’t write them. Perhaps my own writing background contributes to this. I write nonfiction, in which making stuff up is discouraged. Or perhaps it’s because before I published any books I spent a couple of decades doing scientific paper and grant writing, in which one routinely gets smacked by often anonymous critics. Some of this criticism can be quite nasty. The experience tends to make you less protective of the words you write.

So, although I like my books, I’m glad I don’t need to raise them up, send them off to college, and then pay for their weddings. It would be nice if they could support me in my old age, though.”

-Dr. Christopher Johnson

One of my very favorite contemporary writers, Edgar Award winner, Tana French, is gearing up for the much-anticipated release of her third novel, FAITHFUL PLACE.  Just as a character from her debut novel, IN THE WOODS, steered THE LIKENESS (Ms. French’s second book) in FAITHFUL PLACE we’re drawn into an intrigue involving a detective that we’ve already met and found fascinating.  Each novel stands alone, but Tana French’s people, places, and insights will have you craving to connect all the dots.  Clever.  Very.  Honestly, I can’t wait to read it and it doesn’t hurt a bit that Booklist tagged their review of FAITHFUL PLACE with a star and proclaimed it, “Her best book yet.”

We’d like to thank Ms. French for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Tana: IN THE WOODS. I wrote short stories when I was a teenager, along with your standard-issue terrible poetry – I actually submitted one short story to a couple of places and even got a great rejection letter from The New Yorker saying they’d like to see more of my work, but that was as far as I got. When I started drama school, the acting took over and the writing went out the window – till I had the idea for IN THE WOODS, years later.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Tana: It’s called FAITHFUL PLACE, and it’s out this July. This time the narrator is Frank Mackey, who showed up in my second book, THE LIKENESS, as Cassie’s old undercover boss. Back in 1985, Frank was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin’s inner city, living crammed into a tenement flat on Faithful Place. But he had his sights set on a lot more. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and all their old lives.

But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn’t show. Frank took it for granted that she’d dumped him – probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

Neither did Rosie. Everyone took it for granted she had gone to England on her own and was over there living her shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie’s suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he’s a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to know what happened to Rosie Daly – and he’s willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done…

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Tana: The obvious, and wonderful, people: I’ve been lucky enough to have an amazing agent and three amazing editors. And my husband is my first reader – he’s got an incredible sense of pace and structure, and somehow he can tell me ‘You know you need to cut that scene and rewrite the whole chapter in a different setting, right?’ without making my head explode.

And drama school. I had a great acting teacher, and I think that, deep down, acting and writing (specially writing in the first person, like I do) are basically the same skill: you’re aiming to create a complex, three-dimensional character, draw your audience into that character’s world and bring them the story through the lens of that character’s needs, fears, biases and preconceptions – you’re aiming to have the audience go away feeling like that character is someone they know deeply and intimately. Plus, in drama school you spend a lot of time observing the nuances of behaviour and relationships, and a lot of time working in minute detail on some of the best plays ever written, which helps to develop your instinct for what works in terms of structure, plot and character. It was great training.

And I never forget to be grateful to pure dumb luck. I believe that talent and/or hard work can get you to the right place to grab hold of luck when it goes past, but then you’re going nowhere until and unless it does.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Tana: Late at night. I’m nocturnal. Which is unfortunate, given that I have a baby so night writing is out. These days I write at whatever time I get the chance, including early mornings. Up until my daughter came along, I thought the only reason for early mornings to exist was when they were actually very, very late nights…

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Tana: You have absolute licence to screw up. For me, this was one of the big revelations while I was writing IN THE WOODS: if you need to rewrite a paragraph fifty times because the first forty-nine versions are so awful they make you cringe, that’s OK. I guess I was conditioned by doing theatre, where the show has to be right every single night, because that audience will never get another chance to see it. It took me a while to figure out that writing doesn’t count as the show until it goes to print; until then, it’s all rehearsal. It’s really easy to get discouraged when something just isn’t working, but that doesn’t mean it’ll never work. You can get it wrong as many times as you need to; you only need to get it right once.

***

FAITHFUL PLACE hits the shelves July 13th and is more than ready for preorder at your favorite online bookseller if you can’t trust yourself to remember to put it on your errand list.  (Yes, that would be me.)  Get it.  Get it soon.  And learn more about Tana French and her work at www.TanaFrench.com.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

Four Births and a (literary) Death

By Sharon Maas

I’ve given birth to and raised two human babies; they are now adults, walking on their own two feet, living their own independent lives. I never cease to be amazed at the miracle of their growth and their existence.
I’ve brought several novels into the world: some alive and kicking, others barely breathing, hidden in darkness, waiting their turn to see the light of day. They too are my children; the heartache and the joy they have caused may be on a smaller scale, but I have loved and nurtured and cherished each one, each in its own way, like a child, and still I marvel at the fact of their existence.

My first literary child went through an excruciatingly difficult gestation and labour. It was a wild, passionate, lumbering, naive plunge through a story that was thinly disguised autobiography: a year’s trip around South America when I was 19, and my adventures on the road. The heroine of this story was me in a much improved form, a funny, charming, heroine whom everyone noticed and admired, quite unlike the shy, awkward and very insecure original. Just as we want our children to do better in the world than we did, to make up for the mistakes we made, so did this girl stand in for me, corrected my blunders; if I remember rightly her name was Katy, and in the end she got the guy (I never did).

That novel was over 700 pages long. Amazingly (looking back with the wisdom of hindsight, I can only now appreciate just how amazing this was) it found an agent at the first attempt, a new agent seeking clients; I had read an article about her in Writers News. A few weeks after receiving the manuscript she asked me to come to her office in London. Immediately I jumped on a plane and turned up at her door with my whole family. I was riddled with fear. She had not said whether she actually liked it or not; she only asked me to come. I was sure she’d say it’s terrible; that my beloved baby was too ugly to live and needed to be incinerated on the spot.

“It’s terrific!” she said.  “But it needs a lot of work.”

Right there and then she sat down with me and went through the manuscript. She slashed way at page after page. Cut, cut, cut, she said. “It’s all padding. Get out the story!”

Several months later I sent her a slimmed-down manuscript of 450 pages; this one she liked, and submitted.  Rejections poured in. “But many of them want to see it again, if you revise it!” she said, and so it was back to the drawing board. Blood, sweat, tears and several months later, a sparkling revised version went out on a new set of rounds.

I waited. And waited. And waited. I was a husband pacing the floor outside the maternity ward, wringing my hands in anguish. This book had to make it; it had to! I had put everything into it. All my love, all my care, all my being. But the phone refused to ring.

Finally I summoned the courage and rang her myself. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve only had rejections. I don’t think this one will make it. Write another one.”

I broke down. “I can’t!” I sobbed on the phone. Huge body-wracking sobs. “This was my life! I can’t write anything else!”

“Yes you can!” she said. “You did it once, you can do it again.”

And somehow, I did. This baby was different. I felt it from the first word. The story, this time, was original, and not based on my own life. I had no idea where it would go when it began; I only had one character, then another, then another; their lives took shape and wove themselves into a pattern, and I knew it was good.

That was an easy pregnancy, a glorious birth. A new book, a new agent; this time an established one with a major London agency. She sent the book to auction, and before that summer was out I had a HarperCollins contract as well as several foreign sales. Of Marriageable Age was published in July 1999; on its birthday I walked into Books Etc in the Hammersmith Underground and there it was, all new and shiny on the shelf! No mother could be prouder of her child.

Other books came. In each case, they started with that first seed. Nourished with imagination, tended with my growing skill as a writer, they found their final form. HarperCollins published two more. Three more, as beloved to me as the others but not yet viable in the big bad world, are resting, waiting their turn.

That first one, the failed one? Can it be resuscitated, rescued? No. Sadly, my first literary baby died; and unlike with a real life baby, I did not mourn for it, not even for a day. Once it was gone it was gone.

But its spirit lives on: I’ve taken that same fiction and rewritten it as fact, a memoir of my year in South America, to be followed by a memoir of my year in India. The real, flawed, awkward me, growing up along the way. My truth, I feel, is better than my fiction, and these two unborn kids of mine… well, let’s just say they’ve always longed for life. Their birthdays, too, will come.

Bente Gallagher finally gets to roll out her first-written novel, A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS, as her fifth published mystery.  Taking a little from both the write-what-you-know and dream-big axioms, Bente delivers the fun and intrigue between each set of covers.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Bente: There was that article in the LaGuardia Community College newspaper some years ago, about a drama department production of The Wiz… No, I wasn’t a student there, although my husband was. In retrospect, I think the byline may have been his, not mine, although I’m damn sure I was the one who actually wrote the article. Along with quite a few of his assignments and essays, as I recall.

As books go, A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS was the first complete manuscript that I wrote, but it took a while to find a home. While we were waiting for a publisher to fall in love with it, an editor at Berkley Prime Crime approached my agent and asked if I might be interested in generating a series for them about a home renovator. She’d read A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS and decided it didn’t fit their line of cozy crafts- and activity-related mysteries, but she liked me and my writing style, and also thought my background as a realtor and home renovator might be a good fit for them. I was offered a three-book contract to create the Do-It-Yourself home renovation mysteries. The first book, FATAL FIXER-UPPER, was released in November 2008. I guess that’d be my first professional publishing credit.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Bente: A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS was the first book I wrote, four years ago. It’s a rather obvious case of writing what you know. I was a brand new realtor in Nashville, going into empty houses with strangers every day, and I got to thinking about what I might find behind the locked—and sometimes unlocked—doors. Out of that came the story of a struggling realtor and Southern Belle, Savannah Martin, who’s sitting in her office one early Saturday morning hoping that the phone will ring, when the phone rings and the man on the other end tells her that he’s been stood up by Savannah’s colleague and competitor Brenda Puckett.

Savannah, delirious at the thought that Brenda has dropped the ball, rushes to the rescue, only to discover that her caller is none other than Rafael Collier, former black sheep of the little town of Sweetwater, where they both grew up. Oh yeah, and Brenda is dead inside the house, chubby throat cut from ear to ear; that’s why she was unable to show him around. Of course, Savannah has to figure out who killed Brenda, and avoid getting killed—or kissed—by Rafe, all before the money in her savings account runs out and she has to go back to selling make-up at the mall.

It’s a sort of a hybrid of genres: a Southern romantic chick-lit mystery, or maybe a romantic mystery with a Southern chick. Or as it has also been described, “a frothy girl drink of houses, hunks, and whodunit, narrated in a breezy first person voice.” (The Nashville Scene said that, and I love it.)

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Bente: My success? Don’t know that I’ve had a whole lot of that, frankly, but whatever you want to call it, it wouldn’t have happened without a lot of people marketing and promoting and talking about the books. There’s my in-house publicist, employed by the publisher, and my independent publicist, employed—or at least paid—by me, and then there are all the people who’ve read and reviewed all the books on their blogs and in their magazines and newspapers and on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all the other websites. None of us would be anywhere without readers, of course, and I’m sure luck has played a part too. And then there’s God…

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Bente: I don’t think my writing changes much with the day or time. I can write any time, just as long as I have the necessary time to get into the zone, if you will. That said, if I wait too long in the morning before getting to work, it becomes easier to get distracted and not get to work at all. I do better, i.e. I’m more disciplined, when I get started right away. The quality of the words I churn out seems to be much the same whether I’m writing at night or in the morning, and whether I write fast or slow, though.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Bente: Read a lot. In any genre, not just the one you think you might want to write in. Sure, you’ll have to be intimately familiar with what sells and what doesn’t, what works and what doesn’t, in your chosen genre, but good writing has a way of sinking in when you’re not paying attention, and you can absorb good writing from any genre or format. So read widely, anything you can your hands on. It’s the best way to learn the craft of writing, and the best way to figure out what you like and don’t like.

Then write a lot. The more you do something, the better you’ll get at it—usually—and writing is no exception. Everything will be easier the more you do it.

And finally, learn as much as you possibly can about the business you want to get into. Because it is a business, and it has its own ins and outs and ways of functioning, and if you don’t understand the inner workings of the publishing industry, you’re gonna find it hard to break in. Case in point: some seven years ago, I thought I wanted to write romance novels. Someone had told me it was ‘easy’ to get published in romance—I’ll take a break for laughter here; no, it isn’t ‘easy’ to get published in any genre—and I thought I’d give it a try. So I wrote a synopsis and shipped it off to the biggest romance publisher in the world, Harlequin. (I should probably mention that at this point I hadn’t actually written a book. I just had an idea for a story, wrote a two page synopsis, put it in an envelope, and hoped for the best.) A couple of weeks later I got a response: a two page rejection letter detailing everything that was wrong with my synopsis and outlining suggestions for what I could do to fix it.

Now I know that this is code for ‘fix this and send it back to me.’ Then, I didn’t know anything except that I’d gotten rejected. So I put the letter in a drawer, never looked at the manuscript again, and basically shot myself in the foot. If I’d known a little more about the industry and how it works, I might have gotten published a whole lot sooner.

Just goes to show.

***

A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS rolls out later this month from PublishingWorks.  You can secure a signed bookplate for your copy by contacting Bente through her website - www.jenniebentley.com.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in, three at a time on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

“Hello, my name is Jessica Brody and I am the proud mother of three books…with another on the way. The parallel between writing books and being a parent is not accidental. It’s a brilliant comparison. I don’t have any “real” children so I can’t say with absolute certainty that writing and publishing a book is exactly like gestating and giving birth to a child, but I can say it’s as close as I’m going to get…for a while anyway. At 30 years old, I’m in no rush to have children. I’m not even sure I’ll have any ever. Even as all of my friends are starting to multiply with offspring, I feel content in my existence as a writer. I’ve heard mothers say that they weren’t “fulfilled” until they had their children. I feel the same way about my books. I didn’t feel like my life was on track, like I had found my true purpose, until I started writing for a living.

My books are my children. They start with a planted seed. They’re gestated, molded, shaped, and instilled with wisdom until they’re ready to face the world on their own. I try my best to prepare them for what they’ll encounter on the outside, but in the end, they’re on their own. And I just have to sit back and hold my breath while the world receives them. I have no control over what or who will affect them. If they’ll be faced with kind words or hurtful ones. All I can do is be there to support them through the good times and the bad. Because no matter what happens to them, I will always love them. Because each one of them has a tiny piece of my soul within it. Each one of them is my pride and joy. And I’m proud of them no matter what.

And isn’t that the very definition of a good parent?”

-bestselling teen and adult author, Jessica Brody

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***

“If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard the comparison of a writer’s work to his child, I wonder if it would take the sting out of writing for only hope and heartburn?  Probably not.  But no matter, the question is: is it true?  Is each story a spawn?

In a word, or three – not at all.  Not for me, at any rate.

This has less do to with what I think of my writing than it does with how I think of my children.  From the moment I knew they were there, they were never mine.  Even earlier than that, in the days before I realized that everything was about to change, or change again, the DNA had already merged; the match was in the tinder.

After that, nothing beyond my dumb animal functions of chewing the choicest feed and resting when the hooves and hide told me to was going to make much of a difference.  That baby, to an extent, was what it was going to be from the first spark, and all very much beyond my control.

And no plea or plan I owned had any bearing on labor and delivery, that’s for sure.

Making a baby is easy.  Writing is hard.

It’s is an act of will, and I’m not exactly known for my flint and iron.  As such, I can’t relate my work to a cosmic roll of the dice and the ensuing biological avalanche.  My inertia or distraction, thank god, never kept a fetus from growing her fingernails or hooking up her little gall bladder pump to her small intestine.

It really comes down to what I imagine I can take credit for.  The word ‘pride’ has never sat snuggly in the hole that each of my daughters has scooped out of my heart. What I feel for them is far purer than what I feel for anything I’ve written.  They are a product of all their world, inside and out.  My writing is more of me than my children ever could (or should) be.  It’s mine.

Of course that means a small, bound universe fails in its entirety when I don’t write it right, and it’s all my fault.  But I know the difference.  Ruin a child and you’ve committed the gravest sin.  Ruin a manuscript and, in godlike prerogative, you can stir the deluge, commission an ark, and try it again - albeit perhaps in the employ of a new pen name.  (And a new agent, if you’ve really mucked it up.)

The biggest challenge in handling my babies is doing it well.  With the writing, the fight is more of a joust with the Devil.  He whispers sweet stingingly that I don’t have to do it at all.  It’s much harder to rouse my artistic diligence than it is to surrender myself to the mostly-happy obligations of family life.  Praise for one certainly tingles in an entirely different place than for the other.  Same goes for the pain.

Of course, all of this may simply mean that I’m doing it wrong, either the mothering part or the writing.  Holy hell, what if it’s both?”

-Jamie Mason, novelist and AuthorScoop editor

***

“Are my books my babies? Well, now…you’re asking the least maternal person I know, who never wants children, so I’d have to give the potentially-controversial answer: I like my books more than I could ever love a child. There’s a definite connection with creativity and production, although with a child you have to take what God gives you. With books? In the main, I’m the one in control, barring recalcitrant characters and their unpredictable shenanigans.

I don’t get morning sickness. I get all-day excitement. The ‘new-book fizz’ in the pit of my stomach when I realise a new idea will fly, and the only cure isn’t ginger biscuits, but to sit down and write until the voices in my head shut up.

Gestation? I think I’d go mad if I had to wait nine months to finish a book! I’m a fast writer and the longest I’ve taken to write anything of note was five and a half months. The quickest novel I wrote took me two and a half. I’m impatient, and don’t like the thought of lumbering around with a steadily-increasing bookbaby waiting to make its way in the world. Luckily, timescale isn’t down to Mother Nature. It’s down to no-one else but me; a fact which greatly appeals to the control freak in me. Babies are a lottery and a thing apart. Books are entirely me and mostly under my control. I’m too much of a narcissist to present the world with something that’s down to chance and 50% its father’s issue. Either a narcissist or an approval-whore.

All of the above is not to say I’m a conveyor belt of prose, churning out product with little or no care for each book. I love each ‘baby’ individually and intensely while it needs me, but when they’re done, tire of them very quickly. “Okay, you’re done. Your story’s told, I’m going to kick you out of the nest now ’cause I have another batch of eggs waiting to hatch. Go. Make me some money.”

Is my book my baby? Well, I love my ‘children’ but it’s not unconditional. I pick them to pieces and criticise in ways no loving mother ever would. When my babies are born, they are ugly and I have no problems with telling them so. I see their potential, but wouldn’t think twice about telling them, “You’re not good enough.”

I think books are a more intimate production than a child could ever be, because they are 100% of me. They require no father, and don’t develop their own personality. They don’t make their own way in the world and change and grow - they’re static. Frozen pieces of Scarlett Parrish as she was at the time of writing. Like an embarrassing school photo plastered on the internet for everyone to point and laugh at.

I think publishing a book is closer to masturbating in public rather than having sex and producing a child.

I also think I’d be a terrible mother.”

-erotica author, Scarlett Parrish

Allison Winn Scotch has struck NYTimes bestselling gold with TIME OF MY LIFE and THE DEPARTMENT OF LOST AND FOUND.  Now she’s back with a third ringer, THE ONE THAT I WANT.  Summer reading is in full swing and THE ONE THAT I WANT crops up on recommended lists all over the place.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Allison: My first publication credit is kind of nebulous because the first thing I wrote - professionally, aside from my college paper - was ghost-written. I was working in PR, ghostwriting for celebrities, when I was hired to ghostwrite a book for The Knot on wedding flowers. Though my name was supposed to be on the spine (I can’t remember in what capacity, but in some capacity), it wasn’t, and thus…no one really knew that I did it. (Trust me, I won’t go into the details but I was IRATE.) Anyhoo, the upside was that this gig led to my first bylined piece, which was an article for Bride’s, also on wedding flowers. So even though I don’t have a lot of positive memories of that very first experience, I’m grateful for it because it definitely opened a lot of doors.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Allison: I wanted to take the themes I explored in my last book, Time of My Life, and flip everything on its head, while still delving into the concept of how we – and my characters – can create more fulfilling, fleshed-out lives. So for The One That I Want, it was this whole concept of, “What happens when you think you have a perfect life, and it totally gets shattered to pieces?” In this day and age, not an entirely uncommon – unfortunately – scenario. In The One That I Want, Tilly Farmer is thirty-two years old and has the perfect life she always dreamed of: married to her high school sweetheart, working as a school guidance counselor, trying for a baby. One afternoon at the local fair, everything changes. She wanders into a fortune teller’s tent and meets an old childhood friend, who gives her the gift of clarity. Tilly starts seeing things: her alcoholic father relapsing, staggering out of a bar with his car keys in hand; her husband uprooting their happy, stable life, a packed U-Haul in their driveway. And even more disturbing, these visions start coming true. Suddenly Tilly’s perfect life, so meticulously mapped out, seems to be crumbling around her. And as she furiously races to keep up with - and hopefully change - her destiny, she faces the question: Which life does she want? The one she’s carefully nursed for decades, or the one she never considered possible?

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Allison: I think that I’ve surrounded myself with really good, solid, high-quality people. My agent is a dear friend and trustworthy and hard-working and full of kindness and integrity. Too many authors settle for the first agent who offers, which, in my opinion, can be a mistake. Your agent has to be your biggest advocate, and if he or she isn’t, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot. The same holds true for my editors. I opted to leave my first publishing house because it wasn’t the right fit for me. I ended up taking a lower advance from an editor and imprint who I thought were better long-term career fits, and they were. As an author, you’re pretty solitary in a lot of what you do, but having the right support around you - and for me, that means nice, dedicated, funny, honest, hard-working people - is really important.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Allison: Well, in an ideal world, I’d probably have the luxury of writing at night. I’ve always been a night owl, and tend to get big spurts of energy after 8pm. BUT. I have two young kids, so I DON’T have this luxury! I need to be in bed fairly early if I’m going to have the stamina to get through the day, so to that end, these days, I write in the mornings. I drop my son off at school, then head home to write for a few hours. Trust me, it’s not always easy, but I’ve found that if I don’t get it out of the way before lunch, I’ll procrastinate the whole day through.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Allison: Never assume you are as good as you think you are. What I mean by that is that many new writers - and I CERTAINLY fell  into this category, so I know of what I speak - think their first work (or works) are genius. And the simple truth is that they’re not. That there is SO MUCH to learn about writing fiction that sometimes, those early manuscripts are just there as a learning tool. There’s no shame in that. I have one and a half unpublished manuscripts too, and I still take heavy notes and constructive criticism from my editor and agent. I revel in that. I love that they help me take my work to the next level: that’s what they’re there for. So be  open to constructive criticism and be okay setting aside a manuscript and starting fresh. It’s not a failure, it’s a stepping stone.

***

You can snag Allison Winn Scotch’s, THE ONE THAT I WANT, anywhere you can land a new book - in brick and mortar bookstores or online, with ease, from the handy link at www.allisonwinn.com.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in, three at a time on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

“Given the number of stories I have neglected, ignored, mistreated and outright abandoned, I definitely do not like to think of my work as my children. Horror is my preferred genre, so even the best of my “babies”–nurtured with care to their fullest potential–are destined to be screwed up and twisted. Worse still, I desperately try to sell all of them off to complete strangers for a modicum of personal profit, fame, adulation and fulfillment.

If my stories were my children I would be obligated to buy a “World’s Worst Dad” t-shirt and coffee mug, at the very least.

A metaphor that’s less apt to give me nightmares or lead me to the crippling realization that I am a disturbed human being is that my stories are creations developed and cultured by various, questionable scientific processes. I tend to think of my workstation at home—my simple desk and computer—as a laboratory; a carryover I think from my days as an aspiring hip-hop artist when I used to refer to the recording studio as the “lab” like so many other rappers.

I am a scientist–perhaps insane, intelligent, both or neither–employing formulas, experimentation and inspiration to manufacture my “creations.” I can accelerate or decelerate their growth as needed. I can leave any particular project alone in its own self-sustaining, nutrient-rich soup to work on another project that is in greater need of my attention, comfortable in the knowledge that when (or if) I return to the initial project it will not have deteriorated or broken containment and run amok. Although, to be honest, I don’t think I would mind the latter.

I monitor and encourage the progress of these artificial organisms. Stories after all have some approximation of life and—with their characters and environments—are also home to a multitude of smaller symbiotic life forms. If I observe any of my creations evolving in a way that is inconsistent with their planned development I can surgically prune and mold them to fit the desired shape. Or, alternatively, I can say, “Wow, it appears to be growing an extra arm. Let’s see where this goes.” All in the hope of creating something so horrific, compelling, or horrifically compelling that people will pay me just to view it, and ask me questions like, “How in the world did you come up with /that/?”

That this metaphor is less apt to give me nightmares than the “my book is my baby” metaphor probably says something about me I might be better off not thinking about. It all sounds so cold and joyless, but I promise it’s not. I love my work—the process and the product equally. But I don’t feel like I can afford to get too attached to a single story that may or may not grow into something worthwhile. I never start a story believing that it will turn out lousy, or that it is destined to go unfinished, but the possibility is something I am always aware of. It is similar to boarding a plane: if you /believed/ it would crash you probably wouldn’t get on the flight, but the possibility of a crash is always there buried in your mind.

Anyway, I’ll start winding this down now before I find even more metaphors to clumsily throw into the mix. Hopefully this answered the question and was a tiny bit entertaining, or at least comprehensible. For my part, this helped me to better understand my own motivations and methods. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear one of my dear creations beating against the glass of its confinement cylinder.

Back to the lab I go.”

-Johnny Compton, horror writer, blogger

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***

“My book isn’t my baby–it’s more like my teenage son with a freshly-minted driver’s license. I’ve given over the keys, the car has a full tank of gas, and now I’m staying up late wondering when he’ll be home and what kind of adventures he’s had. Once the book is out there in the hands of readers, it takes on a life of its own. And as much as I try to shepherd the process, there’s only so much I can do at that point. As they say in latin, spero meliora–I hope for better things.”

-Jamie Ford, author of the bestselling HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET

***

“The more I learn about writing, the funnier I find the “my book is my baby” metaphor.   I understand how it applies to the creation (to the planning and writing) of a book—to an extent.  You create a baby, sure, but you don’t edit a baby, query a baby, or sell a baby to the highest bidder for mass reproduction and distribution across the country.  At least, no responsible parent I know does.

Babies are fragile things that must be nurtured and protected and taught.  Books are fluid things that often need to be ripped apart and put back together in order to improve the finished product.  Babies are born with all of the genetic material they’ll need to grow into an adult.  First drafts of books are written too long or too short, with too many characters or not enough, subplots are added or removed—in short, books are rarely “born” with everything they need.

I know it isn’t a perfect metaphor, and I doubt the first person to say “my book is my baby” meant it literally, but it’s difficult to not giggle at the logical fallacy of such a statement.  Writers who apply that metaphor to their work are setting themselves up for trouble, because criticism is part of the process.  No one is going to say “your baby’s nose is too flat for her face,” but they might say “chapter three is boring and doesn’t fit with the rest of the narrative.”  Applying the baby label makes the book personal, which in turn makes criticism personal.  And neither books nor criticism are personal—not if you plan on being a selling author.

We buy and sell products, and consumers want the best possible product for their money.  I don’t say this to devalue the importance of creativity and artful prose.  Far from it.  No one wants to buy a dry, boring, badly-written book.  But I bet they don’t want to buy your baby, either.”

-urban fantasy author, Kelly Meding

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in, three at a time on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

“Babies are small, helpless, and need nurturing and attention.

My books go out into the world big and bold and ready to earn some money. No coddling required.

Writers need to get over their unhealthy attachment to their own words. Writing is a business. Treat it like a craft you can make a few bucks on, not a child you fall in love with.”

-thriller, mystery, horror writer, J.A. Konrath

-.

.

***

“Are my books my babies?  Yes, especially from a birth-order perspective. The first/oldest one is still my sentimental favorite, the middle ones sometimes get lost in the shuffle, and the newest/youngest one always gets the most attention and praise.

As far as the gestation process, ideas do sometimes hang around in my head for a long time before I finally pop them out in a writing process that is similar to childbirth in that I find it consuming, sometimes painful, and am mostly just happy when I get that first draft out.  I find the research process (I write nonfiction books about animals) fascinating, and I love that most people are happy to talk to an author and go out of their way to help, much as they do with pregnant women.

As a children’s author, I have to parent my books by doing numerous school visits during which I actually schlep the babies/books along with me in a suitcase, put them up on display, and then gush about them to kids and hope they love them as much as I do.  Of course, I frequently write about disgusting creatures, so I don’t mind when kids call my babies ugly, as long as they keep reading!”

-Ginjer Clarke, children’s author

***

“One thing I remember after the birth of my daughter: the feeling I had coming out of the hospital for the first time as I walked up the hill towards where I’d parked the car. A feeling that the world would never be the same again and that I had done something to change it. I felt curiously outside time, as if the ordinary rules of existence had been suspended. It was a feeling of privilege. There’s an excess of emotion, of hope, a sense of the miraculous, and of power. For a brief time, it seemed that anything was possible. I had played a part in the creation of something amazing. I also felt as though I was in possession of a secret –the secret - though I couldn’t put into words what that secret was. Do I have such feelings in relation to my books? Not really. Not to anything like the same degree, not so vividly or so powerfully. But perhaps the short-lived spark of something similar does possess me for the briefest of moments and I’m surprised by the realisation that something new exists, and bewildered by the possibility that I might have had something to do with it.”

-Roger Morris, author of the Porfiry Petrovich historical mystery series

Jessica Brody first visited with us in February of 2009 when her fiction debut, THE FIDELITY FILES, had cracked its release date and taken off at a run.  It proved to be just the thing to rouse the admiration of her publishers, reviewers, and readers.  It also drew the curiosity of the industry over the possibilities for how Jessica’s ideas and talent might be applied to sequels, media adaptations, and the Young Adult market.

We’d like to welcome her again and thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: THE FIDELITY FILES seems to have been wearing some grippy cleats.  Tell us about what’s happened to your career since that book went over so well and how it’s led to your latest release, THE KARMA CLUB.

Jessica: LOL! Love the cleats metaphor. Yep, I’m holding on for dear life! And that’s quite appropriate given the fact that my career as an author often feels likes a roller coaster ride!

Well, after I wrote The Fidelity Files and its sequel, Love Under Cover, I decided to try my hand at young adult. But not really on purpose. It was more of an accident…a very fortunate one.

I came up with the concept for The Karma Club as an adult novel (because that’s all I really knew)—about three women who decide to take Karma into their own hands and get revenge on the men who have wronged them. But something wasn’t sitting right for me. I kept thinking, “Shouldn’t these women know better than to go around plotting revenge?” Well, we would hope so (although it’s not always the case, right?)

Anyway, it seemed to me that this book could have a much deeper message hidden within it, about the universe and its mysterious ways in which it works, and I quickly realized that it would make such a better story as a book for teens. A sort of coming of age—or coming of wisdom story. So I wrote 50 pages of it, sent it to my agent to get her thoughts and she said, “You have a very natural voice for young adult!” And I thought, maybe that’s because I never really grew up! I still think of myself as an awkward fifteen year old! Haha. But seriously, I loved writing The Karma Club so much—the teen voice feels so organic to me—that shortly after I sold it, I went on to sell two more YA novels to the same publisher. They’ll be coming out in the next two years. I can’t wait!

AuthorScoop: You’ve gone from debut novelist to busy, busy and much sought after.  Has the ride, so far, been what you’d dreamed it would be?

Jessica: Well, to be honest, not exactly. And that’s probably because my dreams of being a full-time writer never actually included any real writing. LOL! They were all just fantasies of glamorous parties and book signings and big fat checks. But it turns out, if you want to be a full time writer, you have to…well, write! And I do. All the time! Every day. As soon as I finish one book, I start the next. Idleness is my worst enemy! I guess I would say it’s just more work than I expected. But since I love what I do so much…it rarely feels like work…except maybe during those really hard parts in the middle of the story when you question your sanity and your decision to become a writer over something much simpler, like say, a candlestick maker.

AuthorScoop: With all of your book tour travels and general hubbub, it’s probably safe to guess that this past two years has been unlike any other.  But what’s been the same for you?

Jessica: I think it’s important to keep some things constant in your life. I know it’s huge for me. Otherwise, I’d feel like I had nothing to “go home to.” And even though I love traveling, I also really love coming home. To familiar things that rarely change. I’m still with the same wonderful, supporting man. I still watch the same television shows (unless they were unjustly canceled—yes I’m looking at you, NBC. Bring back Journeyman!). And I still live in the same apartment…which I adore. Although we’ll probably be moving soon, so that one’s a wash!

AuthorScoop: And with the accomplishment of these successes secured, what new advice would you offer to aspiring novelists?

Jessica: Try to write every day. Even if the stuff that’s coming out reads like a third grade book report. Sometimes you have to get the crap out in order to get to the good stuff. And sometimes, writing just to write is the only way to get a book done. Even if it means having to go back later and delete it all!

AuthorScoop: What’s next for Jessica Brody?

Jessica: Ahh! So many cool things! As mentioned earlier, I have two more young adult books coming out in the next two years. My Life Undecided—about a girl who enlists the blog reading population to help make decisions in her life—is coming out in Spring 2011 and 52 Reasons to Hate My Father—about a spoiled teen heiress who’s forced to take on a different low-wage job every week for a year if she wants any hope of receiving her trust fund—will be out the following year. I’m so excited about both! And right now, I’m working on a new sci-fi-ish series for teens that I hope to sell soon! Lots of good stuff in the works! I hope you’ll stay tuned!

___________________

Find out what Jessica Brody is up to online at her website and here’s an incentive to head on over and bookmark the page: the very clever trailer for her latest release, THE KARMA CLUB.