I have taken a breath, relaxed my shoulders and sipped my tea, so here goes ...
What are you working on right now?
I'm working on a YA dystopian novel that takes place a couple of years from now. The working title is Lena Ladimer Chronicles: Bury the Dead.
How does it differ from other works in its genre?
The only magic or power is displayed by forces that desire to control, and this is a purely technological "magic" that exists in our world today. My protagonist, Lena, is a
thirteen-year-old girl whose only "power" is that she loves to read and write. But she must also learn to survive and she and her friends walk the fine line that exists when all mercy seems to have fled the world and survival can become yet another form of brutality. Also, the grownups in Lena's small, isolated neighborhood are not stupid jerks and once they become resigned to the situation, they demonstrate that life must go beyond mere survival. Lena Ladimer Chronicles: Bury the Dead was inspired by the book How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by Thomas Cahill. Cahill writes of his Hinges of History series, of which How the Irish Saved Civilization is Volume I: "We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outage by outage—almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance." Lena Ladimer Chronicles: Bury the Dead is a fictional narrative of grace, albeit action-packed. And don't worry—no in-your-face deus ex machina plot devices. Just coincidences.
Why do you write what you do?
I write what I do because my comprehension of the world writ large went off the rails around age 13. I am now in my fifties and I've carried this story around my entire life. I've read a lot of literary fiction, but it's been the works written for children and young adults which have always resonated with me. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare was the first book I cried over when I was a kid. I think I was eight or nine. I cried the hardest when I finished it—how could it be done? The feeling of deep satisfaction coupled with loss is the hallmark of the end of a wonderful read, and I've chased that feeling my whole life. I hope Lena will do that to readers.
How does your writing process work?
Oy! What process?! THAT is still in the developmental phase. All I know is that I always have a book (or two!) on hand to read and I am always thinking about something. I plop myself down in front of the keyboard many times during the day and start typing. Much of what comes out is blather, so I love this James Michener quote: "I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent re-writer." An essential part of the process for me is critique. Any "excellence" in my revisions is due in large part to these folks: Lynn Guelzow, Sarah Gilligan and Chris McAuliffe
Any departing words of wisdom for other authors?
Not every young adult novel has to start with unspeakable violence (although Neil Gaiman does this to perfection in The Graveyard Book.) So, actually, no ... I don't have too many words of wisdom. Except write. No matter what, write. No writing goes to waste.
Check out the writers listed below. Perhaps THEY will answer these questions next week, talk about their works-in-progress and continue the KidLit Blog Tour!
1. Faith E. Hough
2. A. L. Sonnichsen
3. Ann Marie Schlueter
4. Laurel Garver
