How has reading played a role in your writing life?
My dad (a WWII vet with Purple Heart plates on both of his convertibles; now you know where I get my feisty spirit) loves to tell the tale of how, when I was a kid, he'd put boxes of books I'd checked out from the library in the passenger seat of his pick up truck, stopping off to return them on his way downtown to his machine shop in the industrial side of Dayton, Ohio.
As a kid, I read all of the time. I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder. Louisa May Alcott. Jules Verne. Charles Dickens. John Steinbeck. Madeline L'Engle. Fairy tales. Mystery novels. Anything vaguely Arthurian. For awhile, in junior high, all I read was Harriet The Spy, at least 13 or more times in a row. I wanted to BE Harriet in junior high... and even in high school.
So, reading has always been a major part of my life. In fact, years ago I realized that I should be writing mysteries because I was reading mysteries of all types, all of the time. Now-a-days, I read a lot of stand-alone fiction, an occasional mystery, and some creative nonfiction. I think it's important for writers to be active in the literary community as readers, so on my Facebook Author page, I try to mention what I'm currently reading. (It's also a nice way to promote other writers!)
Where, besides your reading life, do you find creative inspiration?
My family members and I are huge movie fans. Sunday evening tends to be our 'movie night.' However, it's a point of pride for us that we watch plenty of non-blockbuster movies, such as In Bruges, or Winter's Bone (also a fantastic novel, of course), or Saint Ralph, or Everything is Illuminated. (I will admit I am a huge fan of the first Tremors movie, too.) We often spend as much time discussing a movie--what motivated the characters? were their actions realistically motivated? did the movie teach us anything new about how to view life? Or about the time and place in which it was set?--as we spend watching it.
I'm also inspired by live theater, our local art museum, and hiking in our nearby parks--but I don't spend nearly as much time as I'd like on those pursuits.
For specific writing ideas, something has to spark for me--a snippet of conversation, a tid-bit of information, a flash of memory--anything that makes me start wondering, 'what if...' To keep going, I have to see something deeper in the idea. I ask myself: if I keep working on this story or novel, is it possible I could show something about life--love? relationships? loss and redemption? healing? forgiveness? If the answer is 'yes,' then two things happen. I feel humbled and honored to work on the piece. And I keep working, with the fragile hope that in the end my story or novel will illuminate something about at least one of those aspects of life.
My One Square Inch of Alaska was inspired by a stray bit of conversation in which an acquaintance mentioned a cereal box promotion for square inch deeds to the Yukon Territory in the 1950s. My two main characters, Donna and Will (although nameless in that moment), immediately popped up in my imagination, and I knew that Will would want that square inch deed, and Donna would initially find his desire frivolous but end up passionately helping him. That's it. I didn't know why the deed would matter to him, why she'd be opposed to something so innocent, why she'd end up helping him... but I knew I needed to find out. I loved following Donna and Will to find out the answers to those questions, and ended up loving them (and their story) too!
When did you start writing?
As a little kid, I wrote a 'book' called "The Fireman." I gave it a red construction paper cover, priced it at one cent (so noted in its upper right hand corner), proclaimed it to be published by Little Golden Books (so noted on the inside front cover), and promptly sold it to my Aunt Christine. I was very pleased with that penny she paid me. (I no doubt spent it on the most illicit substance I could imagine at age six... bubble gum.)
Years later, after my Aunt Christine died, my uncle remarried. His new wife was going through boxes of mementos, and she found "The Fireman." My first novel had just come out. She thought I'd like to have "The Fireman" back, and returned it to me.
So I guess it's fair to say that I wrote and self-published my first book at age six, gave it a print-run of one, and ended up with it remaindered and back in my hands decades later! (Actually, I'm touched that Aunt Christine bought my little project and kept it all those years, and that my uncle's new wife was kind enough to return it to me rather than toss it.)
The point is that somehow or another--perhaps because of my passionate love of reading--writing has always been a part of who I am.
At a high school reunion many years after I graduated from Centerville High School in Ohio, I was greeted thusly: 'hey, weren't you that girl who was always writing things down in notebooks? Even at lunch?'
Yes, that was me. I also wrote and directed a musical play in which I cast as the lead the young man who would become my high school sweetheart. Oh, and also my future husband and father of my children. (Ah, sweet proof that the best rewards from writing aren't tangible.)
And I won First Place in the fiction contest (high school category) put on by the English Department of Sinclair Community College. It was for a fairly maudlin little story, about a man who'd given up on his dreams, and his son who hadn't, and proved that I had a real penchant for overwrought description. On the other hand, it also proved I knew how to set a scene and create dialogue, both excellent techniques for writers.
Producing my play and winning that contest was all the affirmation I needed that someone, in addition to Aunt Christine, every now and then might be interested in the stories I wanted to create.
At Wright State University, I learned about writing and literature from outstanding English Department professors who insisted I push myself harder and harder, all the time, to become a better writer. And thinker. And student of literature.
After graduating from Wright State University with a B.A. in English, I went to Bowling Green State University to study English with a specialization in Technical Writing. At the time, Bowling Green had one of only three technical writing programs in the United States, which seemed a practical pursuit. However, I kept finding myself wandering out of the technical writing wing of the English department and over to the creative writing side to pester the visiting novelist-in-residence (whose name now escapes me) with questions about characterization and voice and setting and imagery and...
Nevertheless, I finished my M.A. in English and stuck to the specialization in Technical Writing, although I kept writing as many stories and false starts to novels as I could.
I also finally married that high school sweetheart of mine. We lived for a few years in the tiny Mojave desert town of Ridgecrest, California, where I read every mystery that I could find in the town's library. After a failed attempt at writing a romance novel (a wise but blunt editor rejected that novel with a note calling my hero a wimp), it occurred to me that since I loved to read mystery novels, I might want to try writing one.
The writing life presents many challenges, not the least of which is finding publishing homes for one's work. How did you deal with the frustrations of rejection slips and other challenges, and make the transition from writer to writer who has at least some of her work published?
Shortly after we moved back to Dayton, Ohio because David had taken a job as a statistician at Wright State University, I started my first mystery novel. At my sweetheart's encouragement, I went to Antioch Writers' Workshop in 1990 in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I'd been helping pay our bills as a technical writer, but I'd never given up on my dream of writing creatively, although I did have plenty of doubts about whether or not I'd ever surpass my high school writing success. That doubt had something to do with having received more than104 rejection slips during the previous five or so years. (Yes, 104. I know this to be a fact because I stopped counting at 104, because I thought that's how old my great-grandmother was when she died--she was actually 102 I learned later--and I just couldn't keep counting after I reached that number. It seemed, somehow, too much like tempting fate.)
But at that 1990 Antioch Writers' Workshop, I studied with the wonderful and amazing mystery writer, Sue Grafton. At that workshop, I learned that every piece of our writing can teach us something about writing itself, that while every piece has merit of some sort, every piece can also be honed and improved.
I wrote another mystery, Angel's Bidding. It was the third full novel I'd written, but the first that found a publishing home, and it came out in 1992, the same year as our first child was born. Our second child was born in 1993.
I published two more mysteries in that first series and then tried my hand at stand-alone thrillers, which didn't get published, but I had fun writing them and learned from the experience. (Mainly, that I don't have as wide a dark streak as I wanted to think I had.) All along, I was getting closer to that elusive quality all writers desire and talk about but can't quite define: voice.
Then, in 1999 my professional life turned into something of a bad country song. I was "right-sized" (that means, in corporate speak, fired) from my job along with all the members of my department. My then-agent decided after the two not-quite-right thrillers that it was time to part company. And... well, fortunately, that was it. My dog didn't die, mainly, I'm sure, because we didn't have a dog just yet.
I started a one-woman marketing communications company. About that same time, I wrote short stories about this quirky character that wouldn't quite let me be--Josie Toadfern. Then I wrote a novel about Josie, Death of a Domestic Diva. I also started sending in a few, occasional columns to the Dayton Daily News to an editor there, a gentleman I'd met back in 1990 at Antioch Writers' Workshop and remained friends with.
In 2002, Death of a Domestic Diva was published. Also, the Dayton Daily News editor asked me in late 2001 if I'd be interested in my occasional pieces becoming a weekly Monday column in the Life section. It took me awhile to say yes (every now and then, a writer does like to be wooed), but finally I did, and thus Sanity Check launched in 2002 and ran until June 2012, when our youngest daughter graduated from high school.
So after publishing nine mystery novels, why did you switch to writing mainstream stand-alone novels such as My One Square Inch of Alaska?
We all know what happened in 2008, right? The economy tanked. My marketing communications business all but folded since so many of my clients were suddenly out of work or had their budgets slashed. My Josie Toadfern series wrapped up.
So I did what writers do, whether or not they have paying work or contracts or readers... I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote numerous false starts in 2008 and through most of 2009, knowing that through Josie I'd found my way to voice but that I hadn't quite found the right project just yet.
In the meantime, though, the Antioch Writers' Workshop needed a new director. I needed a new job. So, I delightedly accepted the position of Antioch Writers' Workshop director at the beginning of 2009. I am honored and humbled to serve the workshop that has served me so often over the years in my development as a writer and as a person.
And after spending the 2009 Antioch Writers' Workshop encouraging other writers to be brave and honor whatever ideas they had that just wouldn't let them go, I decided to follow my own advice. (See clip, above, from Walk The Line.) The concept for My One Square Inch of Alaska had been rumbling around in my imagination since early 2008, as described above. In September, 2009, I finally started working on it.
Early chapters of My One Square Inch of Alaska won a Montgomery County (Ohio) Arts & Cultural District Literary Arts Fellowship as well as an Ohio Arts Council Literary Artist's Fellowship. I was blessed to sign on with Weed Literary Agency and am so delighted that My One Square Inch of Alaska found a publishing home with Penguin Plume. The novel has received a good deal of critical praise and glowing reviews from readers.
What's next?
I'm working on an historical suspense novel. I write a weekly column for the print version of the Dayton Daily, "Literary Life," which focuses on writers, literary history, and literary events in the Greater Dayton area. I also write an in-depth feature as exclusive online content, called "Dayton Reads." I serve as Executive Director at Antioch Writers' Workshop. In addition, the Barnes & Noble in Dayton has given me a "Sharon Recommends" shelf, so I have fun making selections each month and promoting those titles. Learn more about these endeavors on my Facebook Author page.
My dad (a WWII vet with Purple Heart plates on both of his convertibles; now you know where I get my feisty spirit) loves to tell the tale of how, when I was a kid, he'd put boxes of books I'd checked out from the library in the passenger seat of his pick up truck, stopping off to return them on his way downtown to his machine shop in the industrial side of Dayton, Ohio.
As a kid, I read all of the time. I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder. Louisa May Alcott. Jules Verne. Charles Dickens. John Steinbeck. Madeline L'Engle. Fairy tales. Mystery novels. Anything vaguely Arthurian. For awhile, in junior high, all I read was Harriet The Spy, at least 13 or more times in a row. I wanted to BE Harriet in junior high... and even in high school.
So, reading has always been a major part of my life. In fact, years ago I realized that I should be writing mysteries because I was reading mysteries of all types, all of the time. Now-a-days, I read a lot of stand-alone fiction, an occasional mystery, and some creative nonfiction. I think it's important for writers to be active in the literary community as readers, so on my Facebook Author page, I try to mention what I'm currently reading. (It's also a nice way to promote other writers!)
Where, besides your reading life, do you find creative inspiration?
My family members and I are huge movie fans. Sunday evening tends to be our 'movie night.' However, it's a point of pride for us that we watch plenty of non-blockbuster movies, such as In Bruges, or Winter's Bone (also a fantastic novel, of course), or Saint Ralph, or Everything is Illuminated. (I will admit I am a huge fan of the first Tremors movie, too.) We often spend as much time discussing a movie--what motivated the characters? were their actions realistically motivated? did the movie teach us anything new about how to view life? Or about the time and place in which it was set?--as we spend watching it.
I'm also inspired by live theater, our local art museum, and hiking in our nearby parks--but I don't spend nearly as much time as I'd like on those pursuits.
For specific writing ideas, something has to spark for me--a snippet of conversation, a tid-bit of information, a flash of memory--anything that makes me start wondering, 'what if...' To keep going, I have to see something deeper in the idea. I ask myself: if I keep working on this story or novel, is it possible I could show something about life--love? relationships? loss and redemption? healing? forgiveness? If the answer is 'yes,' then two things happen. I feel humbled and honored to work on the piece. And I keep working, with the fragile hope that in the end my story or novel will illuminate something about at least one of those aspects of life.
My One Square Inch of Alaska was inspired by a stray bit of conversation in which an acquaintance mentioned a cereal box promotion for square inch deeds to the Yukon Territory in the 1950s. My two main characters, Donna and Will (although nameless in that moment), immediately popped up in my imagination, and I knew that Will would want that square inch deed, and Donna would initially find his desire frivolous but end up passionately helping him. That's it. I didn't know why the deed would matter to him, why she'd be opposed to something so innocent, why she'd end up helping him... but I knew I needed to find out. I loved following Donna and Will to find out the answers to those questions, and ended up loving them (and their story) too!
When did you start writing?
As a little kid, I wrote a 'book' called "The Fireman." I gave it a red construction paper cover, priced it at one cent (so noted in its upper right hand corner), proclaimed it to be published by Little Golden Books (so noted on the inside front cover), and promptly sold it to my Aunt Christine. I was very pleased with that penny she paid me. (I no doubt spent it on the most illicit substance I could imagine at age six... bubble gum.)
Years later, after my Aunt Christine died, my uncle remarried. His new wife was going through boxes of mementos, and she found "The Fireman." My first novel had just come out. She thought I'd like to have "The Fireman" back, and returned it to me.
So I guess it's fair to say that I wrote and self-published my first book at age six, gave it a print-run of one, and ended up with it remaindered and back in my hands decades later! (Actually, I'm touched that Aunt Christine bought my little project and kept it all those years, and that my uncle's new wife was kind enough to return it to me rather than toss it.)
The point is that somehow or another--perhaps because of my passionate love of reading--writing has always been a part of who I am.
At a high school reunion many years after I graduated from Centerville High School in Ohio, I was greeted thusly: 'hey, weren't you that girl who was always writing things down in notebooks? Even at lunch?'
Yes, that was me. I also wrote and directed a musical play in which I cast as the lead the young man who would become my high school sweetheart. Oh, and also my future husband and father of my children. (Ah, sweet proof that the best rewards from writing aren't tangible.)
And I won First Place in the fiction contest (high school category) put on by the English Department of Sinclair Community College. It was for a fairly maudlin little story, about a man who'd given up on his dreams, and his son who hadn't, and proved that I had a real penchant for overwrought description. On the other hand, it also proved I knew how to set a scene and create dialogue, both excellent techniques for writers.
Producing my play and winning that contest was all the affirmation I needed that someone, in addition to Aunt Christine, every now and then might be interested in the stories I wanted to create.
At Wright State University, I learned about writing and literature from outstanding English Department professors who insisted I push myself harder and harder, all the time, to become a better writer. And thinker. And student of literature.
After graduating from Wright State University with a B.A. in English, I went to Bowling Green State University to study English with a specialization in Technical Writing. At the time, Bowling Green had one of only three technical writing programs in the United States, which seemed a practical pursuit. However, I kept finding myself wandering out of the technical writing wing of the English department and over to the creative writing side to pester the visiting novelist-in-residence (whose name now escapes me) with questions about characterization and voice and setting and imagery and...
Nevertheless, I finished my M.A. in English and stuck to the specialization in Technical Writing, although I kept writing as many stories and false starts to novels as I could.
I also finally married that high school sweetheart of mine. We lived for a few years in the tiny Mojave desert town of Ridgecrest, California, where I read every mystery that I could find in the town's library. After a failed attempt at writing a romance novel (a wise but blunt editor rejected that novel with a note calling my hero a wimp), it occurred to me that since I loved to read mystery novels, I might want to try writing one.
The writing life presents many challenges, not the least of which is finding publishing homes for one's work. How did you deal with the frustrations of rejection slips and other challenges, and make the transition from writer to writer who has at least some of her work published?
Shortly after we moved back to Dayton, Ohio because David had taken a job as a statistician at Wright State University, I started my first mystery novel. At my sweetheart's encouragement, I went to Antioch Writers' Workshop in 1990 in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I'd been helping pay our bills as a technical writer, but I'd never given up on my dream of writing creatively, although I did have plenty of doubts about whether or not I'd ever surpass my high school writing success. That doubt had something to do with having received more than104 rejection slips during the previous five or so years. (Yes, 104. I know this to be a fact because I stopped counting at 104, because I thought that's how old my great-grandmother was when she died--she was actually 102 I learned later--and I just couldn't keep counting after I reached that number. It seemed, somehow, too much like tempting fate.)
But at that 1990 Antioch Writers' Workshop, I studied with the wonderful and amazing mystery writer, Sue Grafton. At that workshop, I learned that every piece of our writing can teach us something about writing itself, that while every piece has merit of some sort, every piece can also be honed and improved.
I wrote another mystery, Angel's Bidding. It was the third full novel I'd written, but the first that found a publishing home, and it came out in 1992, the same year as our first child was born. Our second child was born in 1993.
I published two more mysteries in that first series and then tried my hand at stand-alone thrillers, which didn't get published, but I had fun writing them and learned from the experience. (Mainly, that I don't have as wide a dark streak as I wanted to think I had.) All along, I was getting closer to that elusive quality all writers desire and talk about but can't quite define: voice.
Then, in 1999 my professional life turned into something of a bad country song. I was "right-sized" (that means, in corporate speak, fired) from my job along with all the members of my department. My then-agent decided after the two not-quite-right thrillers that it was time to part company. And... well, fortunately, that was it. My dog didn't die, mainly, I'm sure, because we didn't have a dog just yet.
I started a one-woman marketing communications company. About that same time, I wrote short stories about this quirky character that wouldn't quite let me be--Josie Toadfern. Then I wrote a novel about Josie, Death of a Domestic Diva. I also started sending in a few, occasional columns to the Dayton Daily News to an editor there, a gentleman I'd met back in 1990 at Antioch Writers' Workshop and remained friends with.
In 2002, Death of a Domestic Diva was published. Also, the Dayton Daily News editor asked me in late 2001 if I'd be interested in my occasional pieces becoming a weekly Monday column in the Life section. It took me awhile to say yes (every now and then, a writer does like to be wooed), but finally I did, and thus Sanity Check launched in 2002 and ran until June 2012, when our youngest daughter graduated from high school.
So after publishing nine mystery novels, why did you switch to writing mainstream stand-alone novels such as My One Square Inch of Alaska?
We all know what happened in 2008, right? The economy tanked. My marketing communications business all but folded since so many of my clients were suddenly out of work or had their budgets slashed. My Josie Toadfern series wrapped up.
So I did what writers do, whether or not they have paying work or contracts or readers... I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote numerous false starts in 2008 and through most of 2009, knowing that through Josie I'd found my way to voice but that I hadn't quite found the right project just yet.
In the meantime, though, the Antioch Writers' Workshop needed a new director. I needed a new job. So, I delightedly accepted the position of Antioch Writers' Workshop director at the beginning of 2009. I am honored and humbled to serve the workshop that has served me so often over the years in my development as a writer and as a person.
And after spending the 2009 Antioch Writers' Workshop encouraging other writers to be brave and honor whatever ideas they had that just wouldn't let them go, I decided to follow my own advice. (See clip, above, from Walk The Line.) The concept for My One Square Inch of Alaska had been rumbling around in my imagination since early 2008, as described above. In September, 2009, I finally started working on it.
Early chapters of My One Square Inch of Alaska won a Montgomery County (Ohio) Arts & Cultural District Literary Arts Fellowship as well as an Ohio Arts Council Literary Artist's Fellowship. I was blessed to sign on with Weed Literary Agency and am so delighted that My One Square Inch of Alaska found a publishing home with Penguin Plume. The novel has received a good deal of critical praise and glowing reviews from readers.
What's next?
I'm working on an historical suspense novel. I write a weekly column for the print version of the Dayton Daily, "Literary Life," which focuses on writers, literary history, and literary events in the Greater Dayton area. I also write an in-depth feature as exclusive online content, called "Dayton Reads." I serve as Executive Director at Antioch Writers' Workshop. In addition, the Barnes & Noble in Dayton has given me a "Sharon Recommends" shelf, so I have fun making selections each month and promoting those titles. Learn more about these endeavors on my Facebook Author page.
