Interviews
The foundation of writing a novel is plotting, and there are a plethora of books on the subject. One of the most popular methods comes from literary agent Evan Marshall. His book, THE MARSHALL PLAN, has been popular with novelists for over a decade because of its down-to-earth usefulness in helping novelists construct their plot. Marshall’s literary agency, The Evan Marshall Agency, represents NYT and USA Today bestselling authors. He’s also a novelist in his own right (more about that in a bit). So he knows a thing or two about compelling fiction.
Evan has teamed up with Martha Jewett, an award-winning business book editor at McGraw-Hill, to create a unique writing software based on his bestselling book, The Marshall Plan®. The software is a step-by-step program which takes the user through plotting their story. Additionally, Evan and Martha have created a webportal called Write A Novel Fast, which offers a ton of useful information for novelists. We were intrigued with their platform and asked Evan and Martha if they’d like to be interviewed for Writer Unboxed readers. Happily, they complied.
And because winning things is fun, Writer Unboxed readers have a chance to win a copy of Evan’s forthcoming mystery novel CITY IN SHADOW. Two winners will be chosen at random. Leave a comment in the interview, and your name will be entered in the drawing. Only residents of the U.S. and Canada are eligible.
Please enjoy part one of our two part interview with Evan Marshall and Martha Jewett, co-creators of The Marshall Plan® software for novelists.
Q: The Marshall Plan® is a popular fiction writing craft book on most novelists’ bookshelves. Why did you decide to turn The Marshall Plan® book into a software application?
A: Our plan’s highly structural approach lends itself beautifully to software. For instance, when you change any of a number of factors such as word length, whether or not to include a romantic interest, whether to make your antagonist visible or invisible (as in a mystery), the program instantly recalculates and presents a new template, with all story points in place. Previously, with the book and workbook, all of this had to be done manually. Over the years since the book’s publication, many people wrote to us asking for a software version, and we were thrilled to deliver it.
Q. The Marshall Plan® for Novel Writing software promises to help writers take their ideas and turn them into a useful manuscript template in 30 days or less. Can you explain how the software application gives users an advantage over other methods to help writers develop their stories?
A: Other methods give vague advice that leaves authors at a loss as to what exactly to do! Our plan takes you through the process of conceiving and structuring a novel from start to finish.
Read MoreUpdate: Elisabeth Weed has joined forces with several other star agents to form The Book Group! You can query her at submissions@thebookgroup.com (cc: Elisabeth).
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If you missed part 1 of my interview with agent Elisabeth Weed–who isn’t just any agent; she’s my agent–click HERE; that’s where you’ll learn what Elisabeth is looking for, how to query her, the importance of the first five pages of your ms, and common problems in a ms.
Today we’ll chat about how to write a good query, what Elisabeth would like to find in her inbox and more. Enjoy!
Interview with Elisabeth Weed, Part 2
TW: I firmly believe there are great stories out there that end up in drawers simply because the writer didn’t know how to draft a good query letter. Do you have any query-writing advice? What can a writer do to ensure that one page is doing her entire body of work justice?
EW: I think it’s helpful to read jacket copy, which is how books are sold in bookstores. Jacket copy is also kept under a page. A lot of times, I’ll see query letters that are trying to jam in too much information, when really, all you want to get across is the plot and flavor of the book. If it’s non-fiction and you want to sell your credentials, you can sum them up and refer someone to your website or to the proposal.
TW: How do you feel about writers who compare themselves to known authors in a query?
EW: I like it but I know from agent panels that not everyone does. I think it’s a helpful tool for the author to figure out who their audience is. It also shows that they are reading what’s currently out there. I think you can run into trouble if you compare yourself to an author, and then it really falls short, but if you truly feel it’s resonant of someone, then it’s a useful tool—and something agent’s use to pitch editors.
TW: How important is it to look at an agent’s client list before querying, and how can you use that list to help you decide if that agent is right for you?
Read MoreSocial media success story! Even though The Kitchen Daughter doesn’t come out for months and months, I’ve enjoyed “meeting” and building relationships with other authors through Twitter, which is how this interview came to be. Stacey Ballis is a friend to WU and participated in Therese’s recent book giveaway, but our paths didn’t really cross until we both started firing off #badliterarymashups. (Neither of us can resist a good hashtag.) Without further ado, here’s Stacey!
Q: I love the concept of Good Enough To Eat — can you give us the quick summary?
SB: The heroine has left a lucrative and high-pressure law career when she realizes her weight-related health scares are not going to go away without drastic change. She goes to culinary school, studies holistic nutrition and over the course of 2 years she loses 145 pounds, half her body weight. She then opens a healthy gourmet take out café, but the doors are barely open when her husband of nearly a decade announces that he is leaving her. For a woman twice her size.
Read MoreUpdate: Elisabeth Weed has joined forces with several other star agents to form The Book Group! You can query her at [email-obfuscate email=”submissions@thebookgroup.com”] (cc: Elisabeth).
Full disclosure: Elisabeth Weed is my agent. And she is a gem.
Though it’s a definite plus that she’s always available and helpful–not just to me, but to her other authors–it’s not exactly fair to keep her all to myself. If you have a manuscript you feel might be right for Elisabeth (read on to learn more about that), you should query her. If you’re so lucky as to be represented by her, you’ll learn how fab she is for yourself.
Please enjoy part 1 of my interview with the woman who pulled me out of the ranks of the unpublished and landed me a two-book deal with Random House.
Interview with Elisabeth Weed, Part 1
TW: How did you become owner of your own agency, Weed Literary? What was your journey?
EW: I started Weed Literary a little over three years ago, having worked as an agent at Kneerim & Williams and Trident Media Group. It’s truly been such an exciting experience to build my own business.
TW: What does a typical day look like for you?
EW: A really good day involves calling an author and telling them about an exciting offer from a publisher. Honestly, there is nothing better than hearing the happiness in their voice. Another great part of my job is meeting new authors after I’ve fallen in love with their work. I am fascinated by a writer’s process and how they find their ideas and inspiration and put them to paper.
A typical day includes a lot of email correspondence with authors and editors, having lunch or breakfast with an editor, negotiating of contracts and a lot of time on the phone. Sadly, reading is never done during the day because there’s just so much other busy work. (I only mention this because I still have people ask me how I can get paid to read all day. If only I were so lucky!)
TW: What are you looking for, primarily? Is there anything you’d like to represent more of, or anything you’ve represented in the past that you’d like to discontinue?
Read MoreMaybe This Time is Jennifer Crusie’s new book, landing on bookshelves everywhere today. This is her first solo novel since the wildly popular Bet Me, which won the 2004 RITA.)
Maybe This Time is smart and quirky, brimming with the trademark Crusie repartee. Here, with a Take 5 to whet your appetites, is Jennifer Crusie.
Q: Jenny, what’s the premise of your new book, Maybe This Time?
Andie Miller is trying to settle down, something she’s never been any good at, so before she gets married to an impatient fiance, she goes to sever her ties with her ex-husband, North. He asks her for one last favor: he has inherited guardianship of two children, and he needs someone to go to the isolated house where they’re living, evaluate their needs, and bring them to the city. Should take about a month. But when Andie gets there she finds that the children are hellions, the housekeeper is creepy, the house may be haunted, and she still has feelings for her North. Trouble ensues.
Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?
Andie and North both have intimacy issues and communication problems that they were never going to solve on their own. But when two children enter the mix (what Henry James called “another turn of the screw”), they have to take the risk and connect, both to the kids and then to each other if they’re going to save the kids. And the fact that the kids don’t want them means they have to go way outside their comfort zones. Add to that a cast of supporting characters who are, each in his or her own way, trying for second chances, and you have a lot of desperate people in one big house, which puts Andie and North under even more pressure.
Q: What has been the most rewarding aspect of having written this book?
Read MoreIn Part I of WU’s interview with MacAllister Stone, owner and CEO of Absolute Write, we spoke of minions, the challenges involved in herding 25,000 writers towards publication, and threats such as lawsuits. In an abrupt and unforeseen twist, this concluding post will cover more optimistic territory.
Jan for Writer Unboxed: Is there a special meaning to the avatar you use on AW and Twitter? (top left corner of this post)
MacAllister Stone: I grew up on a little place in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest neighbor, on the plains of eastern Montana. Coyotes were a regular feature of the landscape. One of the earliest stories I ever spun was explaining to my mother that I’d been kidnapped by a pack of coyotes who wanted me to be their leader, and that was why I was so late getting home for dinner. The Coyote-trickster tales were some of my favorites, too. So I’ve always felt an affinity.
The avatar is made from a photo of a coyote pictograph from the Columbia Gorge, very near where I lived for a while.
You’ve said you spend more time agonizing over the principles in settling minor board squabbles than lawsuits. In conflicts large and small, besides the moderators, is there anyone in particular who’s got your back?
You know, AW has just a huge number of members who I very much feel always have my back, and always have the best interests of the community in mind. AW is absolutely blessed with a membership who cherishes and nurtures this community just as passionately and with just as much dedication as any of the moderator staff, or myself. I really do think of the AWers as extended family.
A board dedicated to Celine Dion; days when all the threads are given silly or ironic titles; a calendar entitled “The Great AW Calendar of Neener and Triumph.” Please explain why you have left these things intact, or in some cases, even encouraged them.
All work and no play makes Jill a very dull writer? All that stuff comes down to a central question that I ask myself every single day: Is this something that’s good for the AW community? And while we all think and post about writing, every day, our lives as human beings are made up of all kinds of different elements, interests, and dynamics.
A healthy community needs to have enough room for those other interests. Moreover, play is something that’s really positive. People bond over play — whether that means more formal and structured sorts of games like the limerick thread that’s been running for years, or just having enough space to act really goofy sometimes. It’s how we get to know each other, find shared interests and common cause, and all of that works together to help us empathize with one another. That empathy is how we form bonds, and those bonds are what define our communities.
Money. You do not charge a membership fee. Absolute Write receives no compensation for the courses you advertise bearing the “Absolute” name. How do you make ends meet? Are there any plans to monetize the boards with membership fees? Why have you chosen to go this route?
Read MoreI’ve made no secret about my gratitude for certain literary communities — among them, Absolute Write . Its forums are a sprawling network where one can as easily receive critique on erotica as greeting cards; speak to industry people, such as agents or small press publishers; or joke around with other, writerly loons. (Guess where you’ll find me.)
In the midst of it all, a single figure roams, dispensing accolades and bannings as required. She assumed ownership of AW in 2006 and has taken it from 5,000 members to over 25,000 in that brief time. Known as “Mac” to her acquaintances, “El Jefe” to the boards, MacAllister Stone has always been an enigma to me. She was therefore a natural choice for my inaugural interview for WU.
Jan for Writer Unboxed: Welcome, Mac, and thank you for being here. As you know, I have a rep for asking hard-hitting questions – like the time on Tartitude when I forced Laura Kinsale to explain her fascination with hats. But we’re at a new venue now, and to establish my street cred here, let’s set the scene for our audience: Look around AW Central and tell me what you observe. How luxurious are the furnishings? Do your minions wear uniforms?
MacAllister Stone: Hi, and thanks for having me! Writer Unboxed is a great destination for writers, and a fun read besides. It’s an honor to be here.
Hmm. What do I see when I look around AW Central? I envision it sort of like a busy and vibrant multi-cultural downtown, full of distinctive little shops and bakeries and pubs and galleries. As for my minions wearing uniforms? Not so much, no. :) The mods are all a pretty individualistic bunch of folks, too. They’re more like municipal volunteers who paint signs, sweep streets, give directions, and act as designated drivers.
How does a double major in English and Arts end up running a board that serves writers?
Mostly by accident, actually. Much of my professional life has been spent working with horses. But I’ve always written, too. I found AW while I was researching publishers and novel-writing. I just lurked and read for a long time before finally signing up. After I’d been a member for a few years and a moderator for a couple of those years, when the former owner asked if I’d be interested in taking over the site.
Some people here won’t be familiar with AW. Can you give them a sense of its scope?
Hoo boy. It’s a pretty big place. On the forums alone, we have around 25,000 members — and since I purge inactive and spammer accounts, that’s actually a real number of people logging in and reading, even if they aren’t all actively posting. There’s something like 125,000 threads, and nearly five million posts. I occasionally stumble over a sub-forum that I don’t remember building, and had no idea was there.
And if that’s not enough, there’s also a blog and an archive with hundreds of pages of articles and interviews.
When I look over the threads that provide an introduction to newbies, two things struck me: first, that you have set down only one rule to guide members’ behavior, and second, that you value an inclusive […]
Read More“Are you insane, Bet?”
Not exactly the reaction I’d been hoping for when I made my proposal to Will, I’ll grant you. Still, I tried to tell myself it was a start. At least my idea was now out there, loose in the world.
Turn the clock back a minute or two . . .
“Perhaps,” I said, feeling the smile stretch across my face, “there is a way we can help on another out.”
“Such as?”
“You will go into the military, while I will take your place at school.”
This little passage from Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s new young adult release THE EDUCATION OF BET illustrates how a master storyteller can craft a hook, provide backstory and clearly outline the character’s goals in less than ten sentences.
Craftsmanship, a clean writing style and touches of humor are what make Baratz-Logsted’s books addictive. Her skillset also allows her to hop between genres with ease, whether it be a historical YA as in THE EDUCATION OF BET (set in Victorian England), or a chick-lit novel.
Last week, Baratz-Logsted revealed a little bit of her writing process and how she is able to write successfully for different genres. This week she talks about the inspiration for her latest release and the YA market.
Please enjoy part two of our two-part interview with Lauren Baratz-Logsted.
Q: You don’t shy away from dark themes for your teenage audience. CRAZY BEAUTIFUL, for example, deals with loss and self destructive behaviors. Have you ever had an editor tell you to “dial it down?” Should writers worry about getting to “real” for teens?
Lauren: Short answer to your second question: No. Look at the world we live in. And teens growing up, in the age of the Internet, are well aware of what’s going on in that world. Pretending that awful things don’t exist serves no one, just as pretending that wonderful things don’t exist serves no one. It’s a complex world, with both pain and joy. The thing to remember is that the teen audience covers a Grand Canyon of years in a person’s life, roughly from age 13 through high school. What’s appropriate for an 18-year-old to read might not be the same for a 13-year-old but the publishing world, bookstores and libraries are very good at channeling whether something is for barely-teens or almost-adults. Now I’m trying to think about if an editor ever asked me to dial anything down. In the original version of The Twin’s Daughter (Bloomsbury, August 31), there were a few more overtly sexual scenes that my editor wanted me to tone down so we could expand the audience to include the younger ages of YA. I immediately agreed because while the scenes were – I hope! – sensitively rendered, they were not critical to the plot or point of the book.
Q: Do you think that the YA market is more accepting of “alternative” themes and topics than adult genres might be? The reason I ask is that many of our readers who cannot be published in the adult market because their platform doesn’t fit this or that often move to YA and find success.
Lauren: I do think the market is much more accepting in YA.
Read MoreWriting in one genre is hard enough, but novelist Lauren Baratz-Logsted is one of those rare writers who works in three genres: adults, teens, and children. Break it down further, and Baratz-Logsted can transition between gritty urban fiction and sophisticated Victorian-era mysteries. In an industry that asks writers to develop a market-friendly identity and stick to it like glue, Lauren bucks the trends by successfully straddling multiple markets and writing where her muse takes her.
Her breakout bestselling novel for teens CRAZY-BEAUTIFUL, was an angsty modern retelling of the Beauty and the Beast myth. Her current release, THE EDUCATION OF BET, goes in the opposite direction. A YA historical set in Victorian England, Bet is a determined 16 year-old girl who wants a proper education. Trouble is, the good schools are for boys, and Bet decides to impersonate one in order to achieve her dreams. It’s a killer premise and a cracking good read.
Lauren has also collaborated with her husband Greg Logsted and daughter Jackie to write a children’s mystery series, the Sisters Eight. Yeah, I was blown away too.
Please enjoy part one of our two-part interview with mulit-talented author Lauren Baratz-Logsted.
Q: Tell us about your journey into becoming a full-time author. Have you always wanted to write fiction?
Lauren: I pinpoint age 12 as being the first time that I began thinking of writing in a way beyond school assignments but it wasn’t until 20 years later, in November of 1994, that I walked out on my day job of 11 years to finally take a chance on my dream. Over the next seven years I wrote as many novels, piling up a mass of rejections, until in May 2002 I finally sold the sixth novel I had written, The Thin Pink Line, as part of a two-book deal. To keep paying the mortgage during the unpublished years I worked as a Publishers Weekly reviewer, a freelance editor, a sort-of librarian and a window washer.
Q: How did you keep hope alive during the unpublished years? Also, does window washing pay well? Our readers might look into it, LOL.
Lauren: Window washing pays but I don’t imagine most people become wealthy at it. That said, it’s a great job for creative types – your body belongs to someone else but your mind is your own. I kept hope alive simply by believing in myself. Did I get discouraged at times? You bet. But as long as you keep putting one writing foot in front of the other, as long as you keep writing new books and coming up with new ideas and getting better at what you do, there’s no reason a person should ever give up on the dream.
Q: You are one of those rare birds in the industry, a multi-genre author. Can you tell us a little about how this happened?
Lauren: Organically. I didn’t set out to beat the odds or buck the system or however anyone might want to describe it. It’s simply that, from a reading perspective, I’m an eclectic reader. I read almost every genre as well as books for nearly every age group so it’s not surprising, at least to me, that my imagination would percolate in more than one direction. So unless […]
Read MoreIf you missed part 1 of my interview with novelist and fab human being Randy Susan Meyers, click HERE, then come back.
Randy’s debut, The Murderer’s Daughters, is a compelling read, a fascinating character study of two girls and the choices they make into adulthood following the murder of their mother by their father. I’m not the only one who thought so:
“Meyers’ empathetic, socially conscious debut considers the burdens carried and eventually shed by two sisters, survivors of domestic violence . . . with affecting moments and insights.” —Kirkus Reviews
“. . . psychologically complex characters make Meyers’s debut a satisfying read.” —Publishers Weekly
“Much like Janet Fitch’s White Oleander or Jacquelyn Mitchard’s The Deep End of the Ocean, her book takes readers on an emotional roller-coaster ride. Readers, get out your handkerchief and prepare to care.” —Library Journal Review
“Randy Susan Meyers’s sensitive story about the legacy of domestic violence is painful to read at times, but unforgettable. Meyers delivers a clear-eyed, insightful story about domestic violence and survivor’s guilt in “The Murderer’s Daughters.” It’s an impressively executed novel, disturbing and convincing.”—Boston Globe
“Meyers, in a remarkably assured debut, details how the sisters process their grief in separate but similarly punishing ways.”—The Denver Post
Feel the tug of Meyers’ writing from the first page in this excerpt (PDF), and enjoy part 2 of the interview.
Interview with Randy Susan Meyers, part 2
Q: You’ve mentioned that you have a few books “in the drawer,” and that now—with the passage of time and your own growth as a writer—you understand why they were never published. Can you share with WU readers why you think they never caught a publisher’s attention? What did you learn from each book?
RSM: I have three books in the drawer (not counting half-hearted starts, odd-ball attempts, and a co-authored near-miss.) One of the three is from many, many years ago and I would be terrified to open it. After I finished that book, someone convinced me to show it to their ‘connected-published-cousin-in-law’, who, after he read it, told me directly that it was awful and a waste of his time. His particular tough-love sent me away from the keyboard for years.
My second book-in-the drawer I think of as part of my trilogy:
Book One: The book in which I learned proper techniques for sharper writing and characterization, but forgot about incorporating sub-plots. I carry much tenderness for this book, for the characters, and am still in love with my opening paragraphs. I got an agent with this novel (not my current agent.) While this book was out on submission, I began writing my next one, which I quickly saw was a better book. This was:
Book Two: The book where I learned multiple points of view and how to weave major and minor plot-points, but where I didn’t learn that tiptoeing and/or being polite can weaken a book. I still had a reader-over-my-shoulder with this one. (I’m still attached to the story and the characters.) While this book was out on submission (former agent and I having made the decision to pull Book One in favor of Book Two) I began working on Book Three. In the midst of all […]
Read MoreIt’s going to be obvious that I kinda love Randy Susan Meyers.
Randy and I “met” on Twitter. I knew of her, peripherally, through the online writers’ group Backspace, but it wasn’t until Twitter that I felt a true sense for who she was as a person. Generous. Smart. Kind. I was happy to become one of the many supporters who flocked to purchase her debut novel, The Murderer’s Daughters, earlier this year. The book was so compelling, such a rich character study, that I read it slowly, savoring phrasings and technique. In read it so slowly in fact that I didn’t leave Randy much time at all for answering my interview questions. Despite the time crunch, Randy responded to all of my questions with full-bodied answers, sharing what she knows about the craft and the business of fiction.
See, I told you I’m biased. But it’s not without cause. Randy is fantastic. Her novel is fantastic. This interview? Fantastic. Enjoy!
Interview with Randy Susan Meyers, part 1
Q: What do you answer when people ask, “What’s your novel about?”
RSM: The Murderer’s Daughters tells the story of sisters Lulu and Marry Zachariah on their journey to overcome the damage of family violence after witnessing their father murder their mother.
Q: The Murderer’s Daughters can’t have been an easy book to write—the story about two girls, the people who desert, disappoint, and scar them; and the lives that unfold following those earliest understandings of love, commitment, and forgiveness. Why was this, for you, the story that needed to be told?
RSM: When my sister was eight, my mother warned her against letting my father into our Brooklyn apartment. Years later, as adults, when my sister and I began exploring our childhood in the way siblings do—comparing scars and recollections, piling up wrongs and shining up the funny stories—my sister said: “Remember when I let our father in the house and he tried to kill Mom?”
She swears I was there, but I didn’t remember it. As my sister fed me more details, the scene rooted in my mind and became my memory also. I heard my father sweet-talking his way in. My mother’s screams echoed. However, I kept asking myself. What if? What if my sister hadn’t been brave enough to get the neighbors like my mother screamed for her to do? What if the neighbors hadn’t pounded upstairs? What if the police hadn’t come in time? What if my mother had died?
Writing is like that for me, a series of “what if” after “what if.” When my sister and I were young, after being forced to turn out the lights, we’d pretend to take imaginary books off imaginary bookshelves and ask each other: what are you dreaming tonight? Somehow, my waking dreams were always part nightmare; giving the truth that macabre twist we all fear. The Murderer’s Daughters is from that childhood shelf.
Q: Lulu and Merry were very different girls; one grew up challenged by her unforgiving nature, while the other felt safe only with men who were inaccessible to her—jailed, in their own ways. Were their personalities difficult for you to capture? Was one girl harder to pin down than the other? Did either turn […]
Read MoreAfter I trapped three scientists in a fire I set in a brothel, enlisted them in the theft of a stampeding wagon, got them arrested by the French secret police, and then mired them in a mystic mission for Bonaparte, they began to question my judgement.
It’s a helluva hook, isn’t it? And William Dietrich keeps the surpises coming in The Barbary Pirates, the latest installment in his popular Ethan Gage historical adventure novels. Pulizer Prize recipient, journalist, adventurer and novelist, Dietrich is masterful at meshing historical detail with breakneck pacing and high stakes, narrated by his hero Ethan Gage, rougish anti-hero who has a penchant for getting in trouble.
Dietrich’s novels have been widely praised in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, the New York Daily News and USA Today. He’s also been canny about using new media to reach fans and new readers. Watch Dietrich talk about The Barbary Pirates in a promotional video for Harper Books (novelist take note!), and listen to his interview with PBS affliate KCTS TV.
In part one of our two part interview, Dietrich reveals his approach to crafting compelling characters and how to artfully use historical detail to serve the plot of the novel without letting it overwhelm the narrative. We think you’ll enjoy part two of our interview with William Dietrich just as much.
Q: The research you’ve done in this series is impressive, involving disparate myths like the Little Red Man and Archimedes’ “flamethrower” invention. How much research do you do before you begin drafting your novel, and when do you know when to stop. Can writers get too caught up in that sort of time suck?
Read MoreIn my other life, I studied Early Modern European history with an emphasis on the Age of Fighting Sail. So I felt my heart beat a little faster when the opportunity came to interview William Dietrich on his latest historical adventure novel, The Barbary Pirates. Dietrich is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and prolific novelist. His bestselling Ethan Gage series is part Indiana Jones, part Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s books, with a smattering of ancient mysteries and hilarious asides; this confection is all wrapped up in the delicious sweep of history.
His latest novel, The Barbary Pirates, reintroduces the reader to adventuring rogue Ethan Gage, who has a talent for getting himself into trouble. Set at the turn of the 19th century when Europe is convulsed in war, Gage negotiates with Bonaparte, falls afoul of pirates, and a woman scorned. Somewhere along the way, he reunites with the love of his life, who presents him with the son he never knew he had. And this is for starters. Dietrich knows how to keep the reader on their toes, and The Barbary Pirates is a wonderful brew of storytelling from a deft master of the art.
Please enjoy part one of our two part interview with William Dietrich.
Q: You had a long career as a highly-regarded journalist, covering high-profile stories and earning a Pulitzer Prize. Why did you decide to turn your craft toward historical novels?
WD: The decision combined a childhood dream to write fiction, midlife restlessness, and opportunity. I went to Antarctica at age 43 after a bout with testicular cancer and musings about mortality, and was entranced by the place. When my book agent was unenthused about non-fiction there (I’d already written other non-fiction books about my native Pacific Northwest) I wrote a novel called “Ice Reich” based on a real-life Nazi expedition to Antarctica. To everyone’s surprise it sold and did rather well. My agent said, “Don’t quit your day job!” I did anyway, but actually wrote journalism part-time for ten more years, and I teach it now. I still love journalism. Historical fiction, however, gives me freedom to follow my curiosity and have fun with my writing.
Q: How did a career in journalism prepare you for the often harsh industry of commercial fiction?
WD: Journalism teaches research skills, writing on deadline, competition with other reporters, dealing with editors, and reader reaction. It doesn’t quite prepare you, however, for the occasional snarky review, trying to promote you book to a crowd of two, or the fierce competition of a crowded book marketplace. Commercial fiction is as humbling as it is rewarding, and a real learning curve. I have enormous respect for the authors at the top of their game, and at the top of the lists.
Read MoreIf you missed part 1 of my interview with WU friend and retired physician, Richard Mabry, click HERE, then come back.
Richard’s debut novel of medical suspense, Code Blue, was released last week by Abingdon Press. Need a refresher as to the plot summary of the book? Here’s the publisher’s description:
In the first book of the Prescription for Trouble series, “Code Blue” means more to Dr. Cathy Sewell than the cardiac emergency she has to face. It describes her mental state as she finds that coming back to her hometown hasn’t brought her the peace she so desperately needs. Instead, it’s clear that someone there wants her gone…or dead.
Cathy returns to her hometown seeking healing after a broken relationship, but discovers that among her friends and acquaintances is someone who wants her out of town…or dead. Lawyer Will Kennedy, her high school sweetheart, offers help, but does it carry a price tag? Is hospital chief of staff Dr. Marcus Bell really on her side in her fight to get hospital privileges? Is Will’s father, Pastor Matthew Kennedy, interested in advising her or just trying to get her back to the church she left years ago? When one of Cathy’s prescriptions almost kills the town banker, it sets the stage for a malpractice suit that could end her time in town, if not her career. It’s soon clear that this return home was a prescription for trouble.
Today, we’ll learn more about Abingdon Press, Richard’s experience with an agent and editor, his three-book deal, the best writerly advice he’s ever received, and how he almost pushed his wife off of an elephant. (Yes, you read that right.) Enjoy!
Interview with Richard Mabry, MD, part 2
Q: How did you go about finding an agent?
A: The first thing you have to do is quit writing. I’d done what I initially set out to do, with the publication of my non-fiction book, The Tender Scar: Life After The Death Of A Spouse, so I figured that those “excellent writing, but not right for our house” rejections for my novels were as far as I was going to go with my fiction. My agent and I agreed we seemed to be butting our heads against a stone wall, so I dissolved our relationship and decided to stop writing.
I’d met Rachelle Gardner when she was an editor, and even though she didn’t accept my submissions, we sort of clicked. She left publishing for a while before joining WordServe Literary agency. I kept up with her through her blog, and her contest for the best first line of a story piqued my interest, so I decided to enter. Imagine my surprise when I won first prize with “Things were going along just fine until the miracle fouled up everything.” (That story’s still on my hard drive, by the way). Anyway, the prize was an edit of a first chapter. I submitted the first chapter of my most recent novel—one that had been turned down several times—and I’ll never forget Rachelle’s reply: “Send me something that needs editing.”
That was all the encouragement I needed. I submitted a query to Rachelle about representation, hoping to get a request to send a proposal […]
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