Q & A with Joanne Bischof, author of Sons of Blackbird Mountain

With the novel set post-Civil War, what aspects of the war play a role in the novel?

In Sons of Blackbird Mountain, everyone has been effected by the war on some way. Several of the older characters fought in the war, while others are now freedmen and women who once were slaves. It’s this generation that raised children and even grandchildren, with their mindset, passions and outlook, so it’s greatly affected the younger generations, including the “sons” in the story—the Norgaard brothers. They lease land from a former slave holder and have a freedwoman living with them who helped raise them from boyhood. Because of this, there is much at stake still and while The War Between the States is a bygone era, the tensions and beliefs that clashed during that time, are still alive and active in the novel.

What was it like writing a Deaf character?

It was an immense challenge, but one I really enjoyed. I found it quite a process to write from Thor’s point-of-view. For me, it went much farther than simply writing a man who couldn’t hear sound, or who communicated through Sign Language. His lack of hearing became the very makeup of who he is, beginning from childhood and into manhood. It effects nearly everything about him to the way he is around others, to the way he walks, and even some of his skills that he’s honed due to his Deafness. Skills that those around him even lack. It was quite an adventure writing Thor’s character and I’m so thankful that readers have enjoyed that aspect of the story so much! 

Why is the word Deaf capitalized in the novel?

It’s my understanding that by capitalizing Deaf, it refers to someone who was born Deaf, while the lowercase deaf represents hearing loss. Because Thor was born Deaf, I decided to use this spelling throughout the novel as well as in my use of the word to pay homage to this. 

Do you have a favorite scene in the novel?

It’s so hard to choose so I’ll share one fun scene and one romantic one. The fun scene has to be the pie eating scene I the kitchen. Readers have harkened the story to having a “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” kind of feel and that one is probably one that harkens most to the aspect of a woman living aside men who don’t quite follow the rules of convention!

The romantic one would have to be the moment when Thor has gone through his great trial—one involving alcohol and his desire and hard work, to overcome it. Because of how challenging it was for him, and because of his lack of hearing, the scene when Aven kneels beside his bed and runs her finger against this knuckles as her first “hello” after a full week apart, always seems to bring a tear to my eye. It’s such a simple gesture but to both her and Thor, was so significant to the newness that had come due to his efforts of detoxing and that he was doing the hard work to ensure her safety. 

What might readers expect in the coming sequel, Daughters of Northern Shores?

There’s more to come for the Norgaard family and it’s been a joy to see readers so excited about this! People often ask me if Haakon, the youngest of the Norgaard men, is going to have his story told. While he wasn’t one of the main POV characters in Sons of Blackbird Mountain, he just about stole the show as far as the plot went…which is very fitting to his personality! The second novel will not only have the other characters involved, including Thor and Aven’s points-of-view again, but Haakon will be a steady thread throughout. To such a degree that my editor and I, as well as a few early readers, have come to know this book as Haakon’s story. He’s a headstrong man and has quite a complicated past, so it made this novel one of the most challenging – yet rewarding – that I’ve ever written.

Guest Post: Laura Emily, Embracing Your Divinity

To understand ones self, one must understand the infinite power that surrounds our mind, body and spirit. There are many universal laws that surround us, the Law of Attraction being one of them. It is the most powerful law within our Universe and it tells us that like energy attracts like energy. Our Universe shall always match the frequency in which our energy is vibrating. When we know this we notice it. When we look around, we see it. Those who are speaking of their lack are always losing out. Those who are speaking of their prosperity are always receiving.

We may all look like unique beings on the outside, but we are all the same within. We are all souls, here to create in this physical realm, but that soul, our inner being, is still with us. It is always with us, it just gets ignored sometimes.

We may look like we group together in friendship circles based on our similar interests and hobbies, but we do not. We are grouped together because our energy matches those around us. We may see a group of people sat around a table, laughing and giggling, and we may even notice that they all enjoy similar material things like clothes, jewellery and make-up, but actually underneath all that they are vibrating at the same frequency, which therefore draws them together.  This is what is happening everywhere. It happens on a small and large scale.

The power that we have as a human race is phenomenal. We create everything as an individual and as a whole. We create the good and the not-so-good. We create the welcoming manifestations and the detrimental ones. We create the physical wealth and the physical disease. We create the emotional abundance and the emotional turmoil. We create the sunshine and we create the hurricanes.

We are always being guided. When we walk into a situation where the energy does not feel good we naturally walk away. This is not because it does not match ours, because it does; it is because we have experienced a sense of our own negative energy and left it behind. It is like walking into a physical manifestation of your own negativity and you did not like it. If we did not like it when we walked into the room then why would we hold it in our hearts? We feel it in different ways, through different urges and cravings, we walk this way, go that way, talk to this person, avoid that person. It all seems like every day life, but what is truly happening is that you are a magnet. My soulful friend Stephen Conner, author of 'The Divine Spirit' and who also appears in this book, calls it your 'inner magnet', which is extremely accurate. That magnet attracts only to its counterpart and so we are naturally weaving in and out of different energies and frequencies depending on what frequency we are on.  Therefore, happiness attracts happiness and sadness attracts sadness without fail. Our energy is always changing too. We tend to bob up and down on this universal current. Sometimes we stay aligned to it for a while, whilst other times we seem to dip in and out of it. This is why some days can feel like we are neither here nor there.

We also see this in the people we run into. We run into friends who make us laugh, we cross paths with those who are helpful, we float by the ones who are smiling. This is when we know we are vibrating at a high frequency. It is when we run into people that displease us, we cross paths with those who are impatient, we float by the ones who are frowning: that is when we know that we need to check back in with ourselves and connect with our inner being once again. The Universe is always right. The sooner we know this the sooner we can use it to our benefit and create abundantly, for we are abundant beings. We can use what is around us to see where we are at and fine tune our vibration to our benefit, or we can ignore it and act like it is wrong and believe that we cannot possibly be feeling that way and continue to struggle through everyday life as we always have. The choice is absolutely ours, but it is important to remind ourselves that the Universe is our friend and it is not showing us things to upset us, offend us, or create something purposely unpleasant. It is only ever matching us up to where we are at that moment in time. There is good in everything; if we know how to look for it. The Universe is never wrong. It never sends people to you to test you, only to teach you. If you are facing someone who is upsetting you then this is your indicator to pick yourself up.

The Universe is always guiding us to the best thought. It is always wanting us to be as aligned with it whenever possible. Every single moment in our lives we are learning something. Even if it is small, or seems small, there is something. We are constantly growing and expanding; there is evidence of it everywhere we look: if we look for it. The more we connect to our inner being the more we see things as the Universe does and so the more we see our power, our worth and our growth.

The Law of Attraction is always at play and we can never shut it down, it will never stop. Whether we can understand it or not; it will continue to be and so I ask you to ponder over its power and use it for its purpose. It is there for us to create a delicious experience.

About the Author

Laura Emily, also known as The Happiness Coach, considers it her mission in life to help uplift the planet and encourage a shift in the consciousness that people have today. Laura currently does one-to-one coaching through her website, http://www.beagoodsoul.com, to help others achieve their goals, fulfill their dreams and awaken their connection to the Universe.

Writing Expectations by Robert E. Dunn

Expectations for writers. Expectations for characters. It’s something I’ve touched on a few times when writing about writing. The first assumption that I break, is choosing to write books with women as main characters. The odd thing about that is my tendency to write books filled with adventure, physical hardship, and sometimes, violence. That’s to say, I’ve become a crime writer. I’m not saying that I’m a first. There have obviously been many great mystery/thrillers with women running the show. But the books I love, and that I read the most, are a bit grittier. Noir is not the most obvious place to look for women in the lead role.

Something else. The kind of noir I and my characters are drawn to, tends to the rural, outdoorsy, modern western kind of stories. In those books, the strong, self-reliant-to-a-fault, usually with a checkered or damaging past, man overcomes impossible odds. We’ve seen it a million times before. No one reads it because it hasn’t been done. They read, and write it, because it is a rich mine of conflict and character. I had an idea brewing in my head after years of reading the Dave Robicheaux novels of James Lee Burke, the Longmire books by Craig Johnson. By the way, you should try the border noir thrillers by my friend, J. Todd Scott. The thing is, I sometimes thought the women in the books were underplayed. Strike that. I often think it. Let’s face it, the tough guys usually make the women, not much more than a frame. The female characters are a way to see the men or to stand for the sane world. They are often no more than the person who needs saving or protecting. Expectations.

So I wondered what would happen if that strong character with issues, a past, and the drive to protect, was a woman. If you’re writing the character who plays by their own rules why not break the rules to do it?

Now there is a funny thing about expectations. People tend to like them satisfied. Predictability is comforting and, well, predictable.

Writing is one of the few artistic or business areas truly dominated by women. Even the genres traditionally dominated by men, horror, adventure, science fiction, etc. are changing. For the better you better believe. Aside from writing the books, most agents and editors are women. I think, part of the reason that the book world is so open to women is that you can’t hide behind gender or bluster or tradition when you literally have your words doing the talking for you.

You would think that helps me and my books, right? Maybe it does. My main characters are women, judged by women gatekeepers and readers. I hope I do a good job. The response had been overwhelmingly positive. But…

There have been times that the main female characters in my books, the ones who are carrying the load of the story—the heroes—have been described to me as, not feminine. The really strange thing about it is that those same characters also get a lot of attention, from readers and reviewers, as true people. Readers respond well to the characters aside from gender.

When I really took a look at the criticism my characters were getting I noticed something. It was not about the women. It was about their role. All of my female main characters defy gender expectations. In my Katrina (Hurricane) Williams series, the main character is a female sheriff’s detective, a former military police officer, who has issues with PTSD, drinking, and violence. Yeah, I don’t write damsels in distress. I took a traditional male literary trope and put a woman in the same situations. And what I encounter are two general criticisms. That my women are not feminine. Or that they are too feminine.

You’re right, there is no way to please everyone.

But…

Defying expectations. That’s what the criticisms are really about. Don’t think I’m saying my writing or my characters deserve no criticism. No writer can support that. But it is important, for the writer, to recognize the difference between criticizing the art and criticizing the expectation. It’s not just for writers. We see it every day, and hear it played out on the TV news almost every night now. People who like things—just so—like to define things as normal. They like to say things like, smile more, no sleeveless tops on the house floor, if it was true she would have said something years ago…

I’m an old guy. Simply by writing women characters I have seen a bit of what it means to be a women—that someone is always willing to tell you what it means and how to do it. Well I’m an old guy with daughters. I don’t want anyone telling them how to be feminine. I want them to be able to define it for themselves. They are doing great at it by the way.

So, if you read my books, or meet my daughters, remember, they may not be your kind of feminine. But let them be their own kind. You will enjoy the story more and maybe, in small gestures, make the world better for the women you know.

Coming Up With Ideas by Carrie Stuart Parks

For the past two books, I’ve let my husband choose the setting. I’m convinced he goes by the quality of the barbecue in the area, how close it is to one of his banjo-picking buddies, or where he wants to go for his bucket list.

Kodiak Island, Alaska, the location for Formula of Deception, was in the bucket list category. He wanted to see the Kodiak bears. I knew nothing, I mean NOTHING about the place, so I immediately ordered twelve books on the region and contacted the only two people I knew who either lived there in the past (Priscilla Patterson,) or currently lives there (Voni Harris.) In both cases they were absolutely a blessing and a treasure-trove of information.

Husband Rick and I needed to actually visit the island to even know the kind of questions I needed to ask to make the location believable. Kodiak is surrounded by smaller islands, but they all seemed to have names and didn’t have what I wanted on them—hence Ruuwaq, an invented place.

We weren’t able to get up to Kodiak until about a month before my book deadline, so I wrote around the parts I needed answers to.

I’d go into all that we learned while visiting there, but I really want the reader to be surprised by the story. Thank you for stopping by and taking a look at my book! Blessings, Carrie.

After Nightfall: Behind the Book by A.J. Banner

On a January night in 2001, after a toxic mix of arguments, tranquilizers and alcoholic drinks, the Countess Francesca Vacca Agusta, former model turned millionaire, stumbled out into the garden of her luxurious clifftop villa on the northern coast of Italy—and disappeared. She was wearing only a dressing gown and slippers. Three people were staying with her in the 40-room mansion: her lover, a cook, and a young divorcee. After a few hours, her companions sounded the alarm, and the Carabinieri arrived but found no trace of the countess anywhere on the premises. However, their divers found her ripped dressing gown in the water below the cliff and recovered two mismatched slippers from the nearby rocks. Sadly, a few days later, Countess Agusta’s decomposed body washed up on the French coast nearly 200 miles west of where she had fallen, consistent with ocean currents. Her skull was smashed, she had suffered multiple fractures, and fish had gnawed off her feet. Was her death an accident, suicide or homicide? Eventually, analysis of microscopic particles on the soles of the two mismatched slippers suggested that her death was accidental. But I wonder – without witnesses, video footage or a suicide note, how can anyone ever know for sure?

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Maybe the case of Countess Agusta became the idea for my novel, After Nightfall, in which a young woman tries to solve the mystery of her estranged friend’s death from a cliff fall. I say, “maybe,” because I don’t remember when I read about Countess Agusta—before or after the story idea came to me. But the Countess’s strange death stood out in my mind as I revised my manuscript several times, seeking a satisfying ending, focusing on one or another suspect as the likely perpetrator. In later drafts, I broadened the field of suspects without focusing on any one character. I rearranged the puzzle pieces, experimenting to see where they fit. I had to figure out how to create an active protagonist who is not herself a detective. Many former detectives are already writing excellent mystery novels told from the detective’s viewpoint. I needed another path, and so my sleuth became a speech language pathologist who grapples with her own feelings of guilt and grief even as she tries to solve the case. She interacts with a detective throughout the novel, but we don’t get his point of view. Writing this book challenged my analytical mind, engaging my passion for problem-solving. I also enjoy surprises, and so I wanted to write an entertaining story with unexpected twists. If the reader keeps flipping the pages and trying to guess the ending, well, then I’ve done my job. 

Q&A with Traci McDonald, Soul of Stone

Do you believe certain types of writing translate better into audiobook format?

The sound of a human voice telling a suspenseful, action, or thriller works, for me to help feel the suspense is alive.

How did you select your narrator?

The setting of this story includes a well-educated, traditional southern belle. Amanda Striplings voice was intense, articulate and had a hint of ‘southern’ without being ‘Hick’.

How closely did you work with your narrator before and during the recording process? Did you give them any pronunciation tips or special insight into the characters?

Amanda and I didn’t cross over into each other’s expertise. I write, she brings the characters alive. The only tips I gave her were to be aware of pronunciation of words, to balance her speed and accuracy and to keep the characters sounding like their age.