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Q: When will your book be out?
A: The minute I know the answer to this one, I will post it EVERYWHERE. Here, FB, on telephone poles like those 'Lost Pet' signs and possibly using skywriting.
********************MY BOOK IS OUT!!!!! You can see a great description of the plot at www.createspace.com/Customer/EStore.do?id=4916073 ******************
Q: What is the book about?
A: Tempting as it is to answer "about 400 pages," I will restrain myself. It is about ordinary people (teachers, firefighters, policemen, etc.) who find themselves drawn into a mystery which will require all their courage and skill. It celebrates what I call the everyday hero. People like you.
Q: Where can I buy it?
A: It will be available through Amazon and will come in both book and e-book forms. I will also be shlepping it to bookstores in an effort to get them to carry it. Let your local bookstore know I would LOVE to give them a free copy to read in the hope that after they read it they will want to stock it. PS I would happily give a talk, do a reading and autograph books! (I even have my own posters. How well-prepared am I, right?)
Q: What made you decide to write a book?
A: Three things: Joseph Heller, my childhood imaginary friends, and Mark. Something tells me you'd like a bit more explanation.
Joseph Heller
I have a book called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, by Mason Currey. In it, he tells us that once, while Joseph Heller was working on Catch-22, he stopped for a while. Decided to give normal life a try. "I gave up once and started watching television with my wife. Television drove me back to Catch-22. I couldn't imagine what Americans did at night when they weren't writing novels." Precisely. Why would you live in someone else's world when you could create your own? I started doing just that...and 400 pages later, it was a book. I am hoping that others might like to join me in my world.
My Childhood Imaginary Friends
I was a weird kid. I had way more imaginary friends than real ones. It was a darn good thing I had them, because I had no support at home for the person I was turning out to be. They stayed with me far longer than imaginary friends usually do, but at some point I became aware that having such friends might be dangerous to my mental health. So I gave them up, cold turkey. All these decades later, they have come back in the form of the characters in my book. I love them (well, most of them). In fact, I enjoy hanging out with them so much, I am creating a series of books for them to inhabit. (PS. The next one is called Long Shadows.)
Mark
My husband has been telling me FOR YEARS (you could almost call it nagging) that I should write a book. Quite frankly, I did not think I could sustain my own attention for that long. Poems, yes, I could do those (not necessarily well, and not if they were 'Leaves of Grass' length). Theses? Yes, I've written two and particularly enjoyed working on the most recent one about William Blake. But a novel?
Well, on May 1, 2014, without much of an idea where the story would go, I sat down to write. I really liked the first scene, the first character. Then I liked the second scene, the second character. And it just kept going. Soon the plot was being revealed to me. By the time I was 5 chapters in, I knew I had an important story to tell. And every day, Mark was there, being my sounding board and first fan. He, more than anyone else, deserves credit for sticking with me all these years knowing that, somewhere in there, was a writer.
Q: How would you describe your book: Romance, Mystery, Self Help, etc.?
A: You'd think a person who wrote a book would know this one, wouldn't you? But I struggled with classifying Siren Song.
At its heart is a mystery. But it's not a police procedural in which you follow a detective step-by-step in solving a crime. Frankly, when I read such books, I often find myself becoming impatient with what can be their plodding nature. Besides, my book doesn't have some Superdetective like Poirot and Maigret or Gamache. So, despite its suspenseful aspects, I decided this wasn't quite a mystery.
Then I considered the possibility that it might be a literary novel. Especially given chapter 14. You'll understand when you get there. But then I decided that, despite chapter 14, it really isn't experimental in form. Besides, I heard that critics evaluating literary novels are extremely snarky. So I checked off that one.
That left me with mainstream fiction. The description of it on Writer's Digest seemed closest to what I have written. One characteristic of it is that it delves more deeply into characters and themes than your typical mystery. So, yeah. Mainstream fiction. That's what it is. I think.
A: The minute I know the answer to this one, I will post it EVERYWHERE. Here, FB, on telephone poles like those 'Lost Pet' signs and possibly using skywriting.
********************MY BOOK IS OUT!!!!! You can see a great description of the plot at www.createspace.com/Customer/EStore.do?id=4916073 ******************
Q: What is the book about?
A: Tempting as it is to answer "about 400 pages," I will restrain myself. It is about ordinary people (teachers, firefighters, policemen, etc.) who find themselves drawn into a mystery which will require all their courage and skill. It celebrates what I call the everyday hero. People like you.
Q: Where can I buy it?
A: It will be available through Amazon and will come in both book and e-book forms. I will also be shlepping it to bookstores in an effort to get them to carry it. Let your local bookstore know I would LOVE to give them a free copy to read in the hope that after they read it they will want to stock it. PS I would happily give a talk, do a reading and autograph books! (I even have my own posters. How well-prepared am I, right?)
Q: What made you decide to write a book?
A: Three things: Joseph Heller, my childhood imaginary friends, and Mark. Something tells me you'd like a bit more explanation.
Joseph Heller
I have a book called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, by Mason Currey. In it, he tells us that once, while Joseph Heller was working on Catch-22, he stopped for a while. Decided to give normal life a try. "I gave up once and started watching television with my wife. Television drove me back to Catch-22. I couldn't imagine what Americans did at night when they weren't writing novels." Precisely. Why would you live in someone else's world when you could create your own? I started doing just that...and 400 pages later, it was a book. I am hoping that others might like to join me in my world.
My Childhood Imaginary Friends
I was a weird kid. I had way more imaginary friends than real ones. It was a darn good thing I had them, because I had no support at home for the person I was turning out to be. They stayed with me far longer than imaginary friends usually do, but at some point I became aware that having such friends might be dangerous to my mental health. So I gave them up, cold turkey. All these decades later, they have come back in the form of the characters in my book. I love them (well, most of them). In fact, I enjoy hanging out with them so much, I am creating a series of books for them to inhabit. (PS. The next one is called Long Shadows.)
Mark
My husband has been telling me FOR YEARS (you could almost call it nagging) that I should write a book. Quite frankly, I did not think I could sustain my own attention for that long. Poems, yes, I could do those (not necessarily well, and not if they were 'Leaves of Grass' length). Theses? Yes, I've written two and particularly enjoyed working on the most recent one about William Blake. But a novel?
Well, on May 1, 2014, without much of an idea where the story would go, I sat down to write. I really liked the first scene, the first character. Then I liked the second scene, the second character. And it just kept going. Soon the plot was being revealed to me. By the time I was 5 chapters in, I knew I had an important story to tell. And every day, Mark was there, being my sounding board and first fan. He, more than anyone else, deserves credit for sticking with me all these years knowing that, somewhere in there, was a writer.
Q: How would you describe your book: Romance, Mystery, Self Help, etc.?
A: You'd think a person who wrote a book would know this one, wouldn't you? But I struggled with classifying Siren Song.
At its heart is a mystery. But it's not a police procedural in which you follow a detective step-by-step in solving a crime. Frankly, when I read such books, I often find myself becoming impatient with what can be their plodding nature. Besides, my book doesn't have some Superdetective like Poirot and Maigret or Gamache. So, despite its suspenseful aspects, I decided this wasn't quite a mystery.
Then I considered the possibility that it might be a literary novel. Especially given chapter 14. You'll understand when you get there. But then I decided that, despite chapter 14, it really isn't experimental in form. Besides, I heard that critics evaluating literary novels are extremely snarky. So I checked off that one.
That left me with mainstream fiction. The description of it on Writer's Digest seemed closest to what I have written. One characteristic of it is that it delves more deeply into characters and themes than your typical mystery. So, yeah. Mainstream fiction. That's what it is. I think.