Writing What You Know by Bernadette Walsh

Like many of my books, JOHNNY BE GOOD is set on the North Shore of Long Island where I currently live. And like my other books, it also examines the delicate balance of mother-daughter relationships in a middle-class Irish-American family. As you may have guessed from my name, I’m writing what I know.

One of the benefits of  “writing what you know” is that you don’t need to do a lot of research and you don’t have to conjure a scene based on second hand resources. An intimate knowledge of a locale and a social strata allows the writer to delve deep and provides the reader not only a window into a particular setting but a window into the writer’s actual experience of a setting. When I write about the pebbled beaches of the North Shore I infuse those descriptions with recollections from my own life: my daughter's first sandcastle, a stolen beer after the homecoming dance, a clandestine kiss beneath a striped umbrella.

But there’s a downside to basing the setting of your angst filled novel with scenes from your own life. The Centerport church I visit on Sunday is no longer only a place where I find solace, it is also where my character Ellen from my second novel, THE GIRLS ON ROSE HILL, sang at her mother’s funeral. And the beach where my husband and I stroll together on lazy afternoons is not only where we reconnect after a hectic week but now is also where my teenaged character Maura in COLD SPRING was seduced by a much older man. 

Because as writers we spend so much time creating and nurturing our characters, they are in many ways real to us, and to an extent we feel what they feel. Thus there is a danger that my character’s experiences of the settings of my own rather undramatic life may in some ways taint those settings for me. For now I’m willing to pay the price of my fictional and real worlds colliding if it allows me to connect more with my characters and create a richer more nuanced book for my readers.

Bernadette Walsh has been writing contemporary and paranormal romance for over ten years. She has published seven novels to date. While Bernadette has hopped around genres, all of her books to date have a common theme: strong women handling what life throws at them the best way they can. www.bernadettewalsh.com

The Catharsis of Memoir Writing by Beth Ruggiero York, author of Flying Alone: A Memoir

It takes courage to write a memoir. Sort of like going to confession if you are Catholic. If you want absolution, you must admit to all the stupid things you’ve done. Similarly, if you want to sell your story, you must bare your moments of weakness to readers. The difference is that, in a memoir, you also get to tell about your triumphs and how you won in the end. Your life events need to span the full gamut of what life has thrown at you and resonate in the readers’ hearts and minds, and this means going deep into your soul to create the story, your story. 

For me, Flying Alone was not going to be a memoir, even though all the events and characters are real. It was going to be a novel. Actually, it was to be a memoir masquerading as a novel, complete with names changed to protect the innocent and not so innocent. This way, I could fully reveal the events without having to own up to them. Those years in the 1980s when I was climbing and clawing my way up the aviation ladder were filled with risk, dangerous situations and some bad decisions. When I lost my FAA medical certificate in 1990 with the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, my aviation career ended and I knew I had to write about it. Even though I wasn’t ready to expose some of it, I still pushed those thoughts aside and wrote… and wrote. The memories were fresh, and I could record them in the greatest detail. After completing the writing, I put it in a box and set it aside knowing that someday there would be a time to revisit it. Well, the time passed until about two years ago, when I finally knew I was ready. 

I read it all the way through for the first time in so very long, reliving the experiences with all the edge-of-my-seat terror and suspense as when it actually happened. 

Even though it was intended to be a novel, written in the third-person to shield myself from what readers might think of my escapades, there was no doubt only halfway through rereading it that it was, in fact, a memoir of a very turbulent time in my life. This posed the greatest difficulty in the editing process—telling it as my personal story in the first person, i.e., baring myself to readers and owning the truth. I had to make peace with all that had happened back then and, ultimately, I shared everything and could forgive myself for old mistakes and regrets. 

At times, the distance of thirty years made it seem unreal, but that separation also helped me to look at those years with the objective compassion that comes with maturity. I remember and love the people who played important roles during that time, from Rod, my employer, mentor and flight examiner, to Melanie, my student, friend and cheerleader, and Peter, my dear friend and fellow risk taker who paid the highest price.

Flying Alone is the result of the cathartic process called memoir writing. But not only is this process cleansing and peace-making, it serves another important purpose—that is, recording history. Whether my history is important or not is not the point. Rather, the point is it is the history of a time and a small slice of life at that time. 

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In sharing my story, my hopes are for a variety of reactions from a variety of people. For other women, I hope they can see how it is possible to emerge from life situations and decisions that make you feel as desperate as an airplane in an uncontrollable spin. My relationship with Steve was just that, and even though recovery was never a guarantee, persistence allowed it to happen. 

I equally hope that young women aspiring to careers in aviation and other male-dominated professions will understand that it can be done successfully. Certainly, the circumstances are much more forgiving today than they were in the 1980s, but there still remain obstacles. I hope the ultimate message received is never to give up even when it just doesn’t seem worth the effort anymore. Don’t plant the seeds for later regrets.

Of course, I also want to share it with pilots of all types so they can see my side of the world of civil aviation and perhaps derive amusement, stir their own memories or, in the case of student pilots, learn what not to do. An early reviewer of my book summed it up in this way: “… [Beth’s] book will warm the hearts of grizzled pilots like me or anyone seeking insight into the challenges and rewards of flying.

As I look back, despite the fact that quite a bit of courage is needed to write a memoir, the memoir is in fact a reward earned for simply living life. Taking the time to look back on years past and contemplate the events that have shaped and changed you as well as others is an act of accepting yourself, but writing about these events to share with others is the reward.

About the Author: 

Beth Ruggiero York is the author of Flying Alone: A Memoir. She is a former airline pilot for Trans World Airlines. She entered the world of civil aviation in 1984 shortly after graduating from college and, for the next five years, climbed the ladder to her ultimate goal of flying for a major airline. Beth originally wrote Flying Alone in the early 1990s, shortly after her career as a pilot ended and the memories were fresh. She is now a Chinese translator and a professional photography instructor for Arizona Highways PhotoScapes. She has published a popular instructional book on night photography, Fun in the Dark: A Guide to Successful Night Photography, which has worldwide sales, and she has co-written a book entitled, Everglades National Park: A Photographic Destination. Beth and her husband live in Fountain Hills, AZ. For more information, please visit https://bethruggieroyork.com/ and follow Beth on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Q&A with Liza Jonathan, Wrecking Christmas

What inspired you to write a holiday romance like Wrecking Christmas?

“It all started when I was going through my RSS feed one day, and I came across a piece on the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books Blog called The Painful Fantasy of Holiday Romances. Written by Amanda, one of the bloggers there, it was a very heartfelt missive about how people with difficult family lives read holiday romances differently. For them, stories where no one has any real problems and everything can be worked out by winning the cookie bake off can be hard to take. ‘Some of us,’ she said, ‘will never have a good Christmas.’

I found I couldn’t leave the ideas she brought up alone. What would happen, I wondered, if I wrote a book for someone like her? So that was how I came up with Hunter Holliday and Kathryn Winslow. They are two people with very tragic pasts, for whom Christmas has been ruined, permanently. They have deep regrets and things they can’t forgive themselves for. And they both get thrown together, completely by chance, in a magical mountain town that grants all their Christmas wishes. Yet, even here, in this perfect place, their baggage has hitched a ride with them. And against this improbable, Hallmark- movie-on-steroids backdrop, they have to work through all their problems and come out whole on the other side, together.

This book is steamy—not sweet—with a hard won happily ever after. I hope it inspires others the way it inspired me.”

Tell us about the real locations you used in this book.

“I was very fortunate to get permission from the Greenbrier Resort to use them as a setting in this book. The Greenbrier, if you’re not familiar with it, is one of the finest resorts in the nation, built in the 1700s in grand Georgian style in the cradle of the Greenbrier Valley. It has hundreds of rooms and is truly breathtaking. For Kathryn, it serves as a kind of El Dorado or Graceland. If she can just get her family there, they just might have the perfect Christmas after all, she thinks. But nothing goes according to plan.

I’ve also placed this Christmas series in Lewisburg, West Virginia, which is a small town neighboring The Greenbrier which is every bit as vibrant as I describe it. There’s people who have been there for generations, and wealthy retirees who have moved there and bought rolling hilltop estates so they can be nearby to the resort. The Holliday family farm is exactly like dozens of farms in the area, situated on the prettiest rolling landscape you’ve ever seen. It’s  the kind of jewel people don’t realize they can find in West Virginia, and I wanted to tell that story, too.”

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Any other tidbits we should know?

“I make mention in the book that Hunter Holliday is a winner of the Golden Horseshoe when he was in school.  People who grew up in the state will laugh with recognition at that. Every kid in eighth grade has to take West Virginia history, and the Golden Horseshoe test I part of that. l. I studied and studied for weeks, but I didn’t crack the code at the state level, though. So, I’ll never be a “knight” of the “golden horseshoe.” Alas. That ship has sailed.”

So we’re going to see more Christmas stories coming out of Lewisburg?

“Absolutely! I have the sequel to it already written and in development. It’s the story of Hopper Vance, who works at Holliday Hot Rods with Hunter, and Cookie, who’s Kathryn’s receptionist at her practice. Turns out, Hopper and Cookie are long lost loves separated by tragedy. And this will be a magically fueled second chance romance you won’t soon forget. It’s all about the persistence of the heart, and the journey to forgiveness. I can’t wait to introduce readers to it next year! After that, I’ve got another one sketched out from the Holliday garage. But after that, who knows? I’m sure readers will inform me what they want to see next. And I’m all ears.”

The Joys and Challenges of Writing a Long Series by C.R. Richards

I can’t think of anything better than a good book series. It has likable characters, an intriguing plot, and plenty of adventure. Throw in some good-humored banter between characters and I’m hooked. These are the books I’ll buy in bulk.

We, Readers, love book series (the longer, the better), but what about Authors? Is it easier to write a series of books than it is standalone novels? Do Authors enjoy writing about the same characters over and over again? Having written three books in my Dark Fantasy series, I can tell you the answer varies depending upon which phase of editing I’m in. Ultimately, it is love for the series that keeps me writing.

The Joys 

My characters become more “real” to me than living beings walking about in my hometown. I’ve spent so much time with them, they’ve become dear friends. The world in which they live is a familiar place to escape and renew my energy. 

In staying with the same fantasy world, I enjoy some delightful benefits:

• I have the opportunity with each new book to delve a little deeper into the fascinating aspects of the world I’ve built

• My readers are already familiar with the world and my characters, so I spend less time on development. I still love to have a bit of fun expanding my main character’s circle of friends and enemies

• The Best for Last: Fans of the series enjoy the characters and ask for more stories about them

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The Challenges

Every Author will tell you what a thrill it is to meet someone as excited about your work as you are. I enjoy attending conventions and meeting readers. Our chats usually move to scenes in my books. I hate to pull back the curtain, but it will be easy to stump me with questions. I don’t remember fifty percent of a book’s detail once I let it go off into the world. My creative brain has moved on to the next project. 

• The more books in the series, the more information I have to remember. Readers pay attention to what they read. Mistakes made in specific details of a storyline may slip by the Author and Editor. An attentive reader, however, will catch it. I keep a list of characters, incidents, and cultural details to jog my memory

• The urge to be perfect. We grow in our craft as we write. I try to improve my skill level with each new manuscript. It’s my goal to produce a better book than the last one. Unfortunately, the temptation to alter past novels is great. I resist all my perfectionist tendencies with a force of ferocious will. If I go back and update earlier books, then I will be delayed moving forward which brings me to the last bullet

• Binge Readers. I’ll admit it. I’m also a “series” binge reader. Give me a new series that I can sink my teeth into, and I’ll read every book until I reach the last “The End.” It can be frustrating when the story isn’t complete. I want to know what happens, but the Author hasn’t completed the next volume in the series. Waiting. I hate it. BUT – quality books take time to write. In my case, I usually put out a novel every 1.5 years. I don’t want to disappoint my readers, but art takes time. I won’t release a book until it is at the highest level of quality I can achieve

Every artistic endeavor has its joys and challenges, but the creator endures because their art is always worth it. Love keeps me writing the Heart of the Warrior series. I intend to keep going until the last “The End” of the last book.

Bio:

C.R. Richards’ literary career began when she interned as a part-time columnist for a small entertainment newspaper. She wore several hats: food critic, entertainment reviewer and cranky editor. A co-author of horror and urban fantasy novels, her first solo fiction project - The Mutant Casebook Series - was published by Whiskey Creek Press in 2013. Phantom Harvest (Book One in the series) is the winner of the 2014 EPIC eBook Awards for Fantasy Fiction. Cynthia is an active member of the Horror Writers Association, EPIC and Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. For more information about her books, visit her website: www.crrichards.com

Books and Short Fiction by C.R. Richards: Phantom Harvest (2013), Lost Man's Parish (2014), Pariah (2014), The Lords of Valdeon (2015) and The Obsidian Gates (2017)

Online Presence: 

Official Website: http://crrichards.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorcrrichards

Twitter: http://twitter.com/CR_Richards

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6916667.C_R_Richards

 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthia-richards-7a270b4/ 

Q&A with Eileen Pollack, author of “The Professor of Immortality”

What inspired you to write this book and how long did it take to write?

Not long after I arrived in Ann Arbor in 1994, the Unabomber’s manifesto was published in The New York Times. Ted Kaczynski’s brother recognized the language and ideas and, after much turmoil, turned him in to the FBI. That’s when we learned that Ted had been a graduate student in math at the University of Michigan, where I had just started teaching creative writing. One of his professors said that Ted had been his brightest student and earned the only A+ the professor had ever given. I’d had many bright but angry white male students, and I immediately began to wonder what I would have done if I had read the manifesto and recognized the language and ideas as belonging to a former student. Also, it turned out that a graduate of the MFA program in which I taught had been one of the Unabomber’s victims; that added to my interest and reassured me that I wouldn’t be tempted to sentimentalize anything about Kaczynski, even as I was trying to understand what turned him into a serial murderer. After that, the book took nearly eight years to research and write.

Did your background as a professor at the University of Michigan play a part in the inspiration for the book?

Yes, very much so. As I mentioned above, I’d always been drawn to students like Kaczynski, if only to try to help them express the truth of their lives in their assignments for my class. Reading so much of their writing over the years had given me insights into their anger and pain. I’m also interested in many of the topics Kaczynski warns about in his manifesto, especially the effects of technology on the environment and the quality of human life. I thought if I made my main character a professor who studies such questions, I could use her classes to help explore those topics in a natural way. I love my students, and I wanted to get their voices into the discussion. But I wanted the main viewpoint to come from an older woman because we so rarely hear from women when we’re thinking about technology and the future.

This novel very closely resembles the true story of the Unabomber, who was a student at the university where you taught for many years. Your character the Technobomber is not only angry at the ways in which technology is destroying the environment and ruining the quality of human existence, he also is deeply lonely and enraged by his inability to find a girlfriend. Today we might call such a young man an incel. Please talk about what you find fascinating about the Technobomber and the connections between his political anger and his sexual frustration. 

The more I read about Ted Kaczynski’s early years, the more I empathized with him. He was very, very bright and felt isolated from his peers in childhood. He was bullied. He was ostracized at Harvard for being working class and was the subject of some bizarre and sadistic experiments by a crazy psychology professor. By the time he got to Michigan, he was desperate for a woman to love, a woman who would love and hold him. But he had no idea how to connect to women, or even to other men. At one point, he was going to lie that he was transgender and convince the doctors to turn him into a woman because then he would be able to put his own arms around himself and be held by a woman. After that, he just snapped. The ideology came later, as a justification for his murderous rage at a society he felt had left him unequipped to be loved. I think that might be true for other young men who turn hateful, who channel their rage at women and minorities, who look for a larger cause, a larger “family” to belong to, even if that family is a group of white supremacists (or, for that matter, leftwing terrorists).

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Your protagonist, Maxine Sayers, not only has lost her husband but also is suffering from the disappearance of her son, who, some months prior to the opening of the novel, suddenly quit his job and vanished without a word. What is the connection between Maxine’s professional life and her personal losses? Why have you given her such burdens to bear?

Most writer subjects their protagonists to a maximum of stress and conflict, not because we’re torturers but because that’s what reveals a character’s deepest passions and beliefs and fears. Maxine has always been terrified of dying. That’s why she studies immortality—the effects that extended human lifetimes might have on our culture, our way of living. But the more losses she experiences, the lonelier she becomes and the less she wants to keep on living—even for the next day, let alone for eternity. At some point, her loneliness echoes the loneliness of the student who became the Technobomber. By the end of the novel, Maxine says society ought to put more resources into studying loneliness than how to invent the next gadget.

Your protagonist directs something called the Institute for Future Studies, whose members try to predict the effects of technology on human life. Why did you choose such an unusual profession for your main character? What about the future interests you?

Everything about the future interests me! My undergraduate degree was in theoretical physics. My senior thesis was on whether we would ever contact life on other planets. I want to live forever and find out how everything turns out! When Ray Kurzweil predicted immortality was just around the corner—but out of reach for me, given that I might die a decade or two or three before we reach what Kurzweil calls “The Singularity—I could stand the frustration. (Now, I’m more accepting of the idea. I might not live forever, but I will live a lot longer than if I had been born even a hundred years ago, let alone a thousand years ago.)

Maxine’s specialty is the study of human immortality. Do you really think that human beings will someday be immortal? 

Maybe not immortal. But we will live hundreds and hundreds of years, though not necessarily in our biological birth-bodies.

Do you agree with any of the points the Unabomber raised in his manifesto? Do you think that the dangers of global warming, which threatens the fate of millions of human beings and entire species of animals, might ever warrant the sort of radical action your character the Technobomber advocates? 

My heroes are people like Greta Thunberg—and my son, who works passionately for a better society—rather than terrorists like Ted Kaczysnki. If you read the manifesto, you can’t really disagree that the dangers he is warning us about are real and will result in millions of human deaths and extinctions of other species. But I don’t think the answer is destroying everything we’ve built and returning to a subsistence agrarian life. Or terrorizing the population to make that happen. 

Q&A with Jordan Zucker, One Dish, Four Seasons

Where did you grow up /live now?

I grew up in New York. Went to college in Philly. Moved to LA and have been rocking a bicoastal lifestyle (80/20 LA/NY) ever since.

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

Or what first inspired you to write? Definitely not in college – I was a math major because I’d rather do a weekly problem set than weekly paper back then! I think it became a byproduct of creating my own content as an actor.

Where/When do you best like to write?

I’m not a morning person. My brain and personality don’t kick in until midday. I usually write at my desk in my office but can usually get into a zone anywhere if I push myself.

Do you have any interesting writing habits or superstitions?

An old family drinking superstition was that the last drop of the wine bottle couldn’t go to a woman or she’d be an old maid (likely rooted from the old maid card game and also likely created by a man). This has grown tiresome with multiple bartenders around the world and also my bare left ring finger so I’ve been known to abandon its absurdity in recent days.

What do you think makes a good story?

Something that is either relatable or completely novel. Something that is memorable to the audience.

What inspired your book?

I subscribed to the old adage of “write what you know.”

What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your book?

How many moving parts there are to the process. I thought I could write it and print it. But the team required to make that happen is extensive.

What do you like to do when you are not writing?

Sports wise I ski and scuba dive. I used to be an equestrian but haven’t seen a stable in years. I go to Jazzfest every year in New Orleans. I’m going to Burning Man for the first time this year. Food. Wine. Music. Sports. I’m a social being and collect friends all over the map so I’m usually cultivating some connection or relationship along the way.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

We can start with my namesake – it’s a literary character – Jordan Baker from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Do you have a bucket list?

What are some of the things on it? World ski tour (still need Alps and Andes). World Chef’s Table tour (we travel to one new restaurant for my birthday every year). Monkey tour of the world (Silverback gorillas, chimps, mandrills, orangutans). Raise a family. Sing the national anthem at a sporting event. Watch a game with Obama. Go skydiving. Learn French. Host a cooking show. Etc.

What is the one book no writer should be without?

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse