Author interview no.701 with memoirist Fiona Gold Kroll

Welcome to the seven hundred and first of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with non-fiction author Fiona Gold Kroll. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Fiona. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Fiona: Hello Morgen. Thank you so much for having me! My name is Fiona Gold Kroll and I live in Toronto, Canada. I’m a married mother of two adult children and a grandmother. Before retiring five years ago, I was a corporate researcher. Writing came naturally to me even as a child and I frequently added pictures my stories. Though my work entailed writing reports, I didn’t begin writing for myself until five years ago. An editor friend suggested that I write a memoir about my search for my great-uncle Benjamin. People were fascinated with the story. So, I sat down and wrote. The novice in me said “get an editor” before submitting the manuscript to agents and publishers and it was a very smart move. I chose the perfect editor. She is not only a consummate professional, she understood the story. Her contacts in the publishing industry were instrumental in finding a publisher interested in my book. The manuscript was also in good shape when they read it.

Morgen: A very wise novice. Having an editor is the most costly part of self-publishing (eBooks are uploaded word processed documents and covers are fairly easy – and free – to create – I have a guide here) but it’s certainly the most important aspect. Sure, a cover, title and blurb entice the reader but have an average or below-average book and your reader will not only make it to the end of your book and certainly be unlikely to read any more but these days, authors rely on positive word of mouth (it’s how ‘Fifty Shades’ got so big). To-date, 95% of my editing clients have been self-published as it’s very encouraging that they are so willing to make their product the best it can be before sharing it with the wider world. I do know of someone who finished writing their novel on a Friday and published it online the following weekend. I’ve never read it but even the best writers need editors. Even though I’m an editor, I still hire one for my writing because she spots things I haven’t (because I wrote it and knew what I meant by something) and comes up with great suggestions.

Fiona: I also took a creative writing course, when I had almost finished writing A Stone for Benjamin. I loved it and began writing short stories including The Butterfly Effect. Encouraged by my instructor to submit the story for publication I was surprised when it was accepted by our national newspaper The Globe & Mail. I was told that I had a voice and I realized that I loved writing. I write every day, it helps distract me from winter. Then I get distracted walking our dog through the forest and beside the river during the summer months! Joking aside, ideas are constantly drifting through my mind and I can’t wait to write each day.

Morgen: That’s lovely. I started with short stories and they’ll always be my first love. With your non-fiction, how do you decide what to write about?

Fiona: This was an easy decision for me. I spent several years searching for my great-uncle who disappeared from Paris in 1941. I travelled to Paris and Poland in an effort to find the truth about his disappearance. Once I had all the answers, I knew I had to write about Benjamin and the effect the research had on me.

Morgen: It does sound like a great story. What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

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Author interview no.693 with multi-genre novelist Carmen Reid

Welcome to the six hundred and ninety-third of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with contemporary women’s, young adult, and historical novelist Carmen Reid. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Carmen. Please tell us something about yourself, and how you came to be a writer.

Carmen: I’ve been reading and scribbling for as long as I can remember. I studied English at university, went on to be a journalist and in my late 20s, decided I had to get on with writing fiction because it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I’m now on my 19th novel. I’ll always write even if no one reads a word, because it’s how I do my thinking, really.

Morgen: I write to be read, and love it when I get reader feedback (positive or otherwise) because it means it’s being read. I have six novels in files (waiting for final editing) so no one will if they stay there. You live in Scotland, as do many other authors (especially Edinburgh and Glasgow), do you think the country has a particularly literary pull?

Carmen: The rain, the long dark winters… maybe we’re an indoors nation so there is lots of writing going on.

Morgen: Not a bad thing. You’re best known for writing contemporary women’s fiction but you have also written young adult and a standalone historical novel. Do you think the genre boundaries have softened in recent years and, have you considered other genres?

Carmen: I think genres are useful because they signal to readers what kind of book they are picking up. The boundaries have definitely blurred, because writers push at them. If love stories are allowed in crime novels, why not have a crime in a love story? I never worry too much about what the genre demands. I write the stories I’m bursting to tell and just hope readers find them as interesting as I do.

Morgen: I’m sure they do. You’ve had 18 novels published to-date, all as ‘Carmen Reid’, have you ever been tempted or, or indeed written, under a pseudonym?

Carmen: No, I’m not sure I get the pseudonym thing. If you’ve written something, especially in the social media age, don’t you want to talk about it, champion it and stand up for it? Even if you have to explain to your readers that you’re doing something different.

Morgen: I think that’s where publishers have been keen, up to now, for authors to have other names (Caroline Harvey = Joanna Trollope, Barbara Vine = Ruth Rendell etc) because they don’t want readers to expect one thing and get another and possibly be disappointed, although they’re covers tend to have ‘x writing as y’ which sort of defeats the object. It’s hard enough to market one name let alone more. Have you self-published? If so, what lead to you going your own way?

Author interview no.692 with novelist M.L. Gardner

Welcome to the six hundred and ninety-second of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with historical / YA / romance novelist M.L. Gardner. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, M.L. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

M.L.: Hello and thank you for the opportunity for an interview. I’m a wife, mom and cat lover who loves to write. I’m based in Northern Utah, USA. I have written stories for my own entertainment since I was 12 or so and after taking a lengthy break to raise my family, am back writing full time. I work closely with two other women in the process of bringing novels to the world. Lisa is something of a co-plotter and I give her credit in some of the creative force behind the series. She also helps with the editing before it goes off to my main editor. Monica is the marketing maven behind the series. She keeps the digital house neat, orderly and productive. I refer to them frequently as I could not do this without them.

Morgen: Second opinions / pairs of eyes are so important. I’m also a freelance editor and many of my authors have said how I pick up on things that wouldn’t have occurred to them, and I hire a freelance editor for my writing, and it’s all the better for it. What genre do you generally write and have you considered other genres?

M.L.: I write mainly historical fiction. During the Great Depression more specifically. I have published one Young Adult novel and will soon release a Contemporary Romance novel as well.

Morgen: It’s good to have variety – it keeps our writing fresh and the readers don’t pigeon-hole you (something actors try to avoid). What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

M.L.: I have published the novels ‘1929’, ‘Elizabeth’s Heart’, ‘1930’, ‘Drifter’, ‘Short Stories from 1929’ and ‘Simply, Mine’. ‘Simply, Mine’ is my Young Adult novel and was published under the pseudonym Jane Carrington. I am currently trying to merge those names for simplicity. My main pseudonym is a combination of my first name, Molly, and the best friend, Lisa’s initials and my grandmother’s maiden name.

Morgen: The important thing I’ve found about an author’s name is being found on search engines. I don’t suppose it does Geoffrey Archer any harm having a name like Jeffrey Archer. Maybe I’ll interview him one day and ask him. Have you self-published? If so, what lead to you going your own way?

Guest post: Festivities And Frost by Lorna Fergusson

Tonight’s festive guest blog post is brought to you by novelist, short story author and tutor Lorna Fergusson.

Festivities And Frost

‘Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.’ (Mary Ellen Chase). By the time you read this post, you may well be vowing never to eat turkey again; the children will have broken at least one toy; you’ll be wondering just how many repeats of old shows the BBC can get away with and you’ll be uneasily aware that you need to get on with those accounts for the tax man by the end of January…

At the start of this month I ran a Fictionfire Focus Workshop on ‘Festivities and Frost’, where we examined how writers make use of winter scenes and festive scenes in their fiction, so in this post I want to share what we discovered about writing about Christmas. We started by listing adjectives for Christmas and our feelings about it – and those pretty soon demonstrated a certain ambivalence of attitude!

Everybody feels the pressure of the Christmas ideal. We love the thought that it’s a cosy traditional time, imbued with rituals and bonhomie, full of unquestioning beliefs and a sense of safety. This is why, if you ask anyone to name a Christmas story, they’ll immediately come up with Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. We think of rich food, games, carols, candles, parcels, Christmas trees, nativity plays, family gatherings – the whole ‘God bless us, every one’ package of it. If you want to write a story which evokes the atmosphere of Christmas you absolutely must go into sensory overdrive, so that your readers can smell the spices, hear the flute-like voices, feel the crunch of snow underfoot and be warmed by the crackling logs on the fire (central heating not so festive!) …

In the workshop we considered T. H. White’s marvellous description of a medieval Christmas in The Sword in the Stone: in it he evokes a snowy castle on which snow lies ‘like extremely thick icing on a very good cake’, where there are skaters ‘on the moat, which roared all day with the gliding steel, while hot chestnuts and spiced mead were served on the bank to all and sundry’ and where out in the cold, comic-book wolves wander about ‘slavering in an appropriate manner, or sometimes peeping in with their blood-red eyes’. White is deliberately tongue-in-cheek, creating a fantasy of Christmas as we would most like to think of it. At the end of the chapter the Castle of the Forest Sauvage sleeps ‘peacefully and lightless, in the strange silence of the holy snow.’

This brings us to the second aspect of Christmas a writer can explore: its spiritual and moral force. You can choose to highlight the magical atmosphere and the opportunities the season presents for your characters to grow and change. You can write stories to warm the cockles of your readers’ hearts, where characters come together, rediscover each other and are reconciled to one another. The bonds of family and friendship can be strengthened and renewed, or characters can be tested and pass those tests, because Christmas is a time of transformation where the meaning of life is heightened. Think of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which opens with a test: the girls have to give up their Christmas to help others – their individual attitudes to the idea of sacrifice help to show us the differences in their characters. Or George Eliot’s Silas Marner, where a tiny lost child wanders into the house of a lonely embittered man – a child who will bring him love and redemption. Or the Grinch, in the story by Doctor Suess, whose shrivelled heart grows and blooms once he realises Christmas isn’t delivered from a shop. The central paradox of Christmas is that a life-affirming mystery takes place in the depths of winter. This provides huge potential for drama, emotion and spiritual significance in your writing.

Finally, there’s the negative side of Christmas, which you can use to counterbalance all that cheery bonhomie! You can focus on the practical problems of travelling to family reunions your character doesn’t even want to attend, or the split loyalties of broken families. You could write about the tacky commercial excess of it all: the pressure to conform to the traditional image, the need to buy presents nobody actually wants, the envy, the racking-up of debts. You could describe the loneliness of those excluded such as the recently-bereaved or the down-and-outs: those people looking in on the Christmas and New Year scene but shut out from it like Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl.

Christmas offers the writer a great range of storylines which all pack an emotional punch. It gives you the chance to use evocative detail and pull at your readers’ heartstrings. It’s at the turning point of the year and triggers memory and anticipation. Ultimately, it’s hard to resist the positivity and the schmaltz, so whether you’re a ‘God bless us, everyone!’ type or your default state is ‘Bah, humbug!’, go on – have a wallow!

I will. Thank you, Lorna!

Lorna Fergusson is a novelist and award-winning short story writer who has taught creative writing for Oxford University and the University of Winchester. She runs a literary consultancy, Fictionfire, offering workshops, day courses, editing, critiquing and mentoring to writers. Her novel, The Chase, first published by Bloomsbury, will soon be re-released on Kindle and she is currently writing a historical novel. She blogs about books and the writing life at http://literascribe.blogspot.com and her website is at www.fictionfire.co.uk. You can follow her on Twitter at @LornaFergusson and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/lorna.fergusson. Contact her at info@fictionfire.co.uk.

And a little more about her book ‘The Chase’…

Le Sanglier: a house buried in the woods in the heart of the Dordogne, a region steeped in dark history.

Gerald Feldwick buys Le Sanglier as a refuge. He tells his wife Netty that in France they can start afresh – they can escape the unbearable pain of an event which is fracturing their marriage. He tells her they can put the past behind them.

Netty is not so sure.

Netty is right.

‘This is a haunting book, skilfully written and tantalisingly unravelled. Lorna Fergusson weaves a vivid but dark tale set in the beautiful Dordogne, where past and present fuse in a page-turning mystery.’ Alison Weir, novelist and historian

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If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.

The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with fantasy and thriller writer Tracey Alley – the five hundred and ninety-fifth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

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