Frank Wilson, Retired Inquirer Book Editor: Interview by Nannette Croce

Frank Wilson is the recently retired book editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he assigned reviews and covered the book beat since 2000. As someone who has enjoyed the Inquirer’s Sunday reviews for many years, I’m now enjoying his blog, BOOKS, INQ.: THE EPILOGUE . Frank was kind enough to take time out recently to answer questions on books, reviewing, publishing, and changes to the newspaper industry.

R&T: How long were you The Inquirer’s book editor, and could you describe briefly the route that took you there?

Wilson: I was named book editor on Oct. 31, 2000. I had been writing book reviews for the paper since 1976 and had seen my first professional review published in October 1964. By the time I got the job I had worked for the paper for 20 years and had recently won a first prize from the Society of Professional Journalists for Feature Headline writing. In short, I was the proverbial known quantity.

R&T: What did you like best about your work?

Wilson: What I liked best about it is what I called its impresario dimension: I put together what I thought was an excellent repertory company of reviewers, and I thought that on most Sundays the mix of reviews made for what Ed Sullivan used to call “a really big shew.” And the best part of that was reviewing those books that were well worth reviewing, but likely to be overlooked—Torgny Lindgren’s Hash, Lisa Tucker’s The Song Reader, to name two that I reviewed myself.

R&T: For many years at The Inquirer and other newspapers, the book review section was a Sunday Supplement, that is, a stand-alone magazine. From that it was constantly whittled down until now there are just a few reviews bouncing between Arts & Entertainment and Currents (the Sunday opinion section). What do you think about those changes and why did they occur?

Wilson: The Inquirer’s book section was a stand-alone section when I was appointed book editor in 2000. But it was soon folded into the Arts & Entertainment section, then later was divided between that section and the Currents section. Now it’s back—in a much-reduced form—in A&E. With the clarity of hindsight I now realize the best thing would have been to move all of it to Currents, the principal reason for that being how much Currents editor John Timpane and I saw eye-to-eye on book coverage.

The stand-alone section was dropped to save money, of course. Dividing reviews between A&E and Currents actually enabled us to increase coverage. Putting them all back in A&E was so the newsroom management could have greater control of book coverage. And that is all I choose to say on that subject.

R&T: Point taken. What do you see as the role of the book reviewer in today’s world?

Wilson: I think the best way to see the role of the book reviewer is to see it from the perspective of the reader—the common reader, to use Virginia Woolf’s phrase. What that reader wants to learn from a review is what a given book is about and whether it is worth reading or not and why or why not. If the reviewer’s reasons for liking or disliking the book are clearly expressed, the reader of the review can either buy those reasons or not and decide whether the book is worth reading or not.

One has to bear in mind that, while reviewing employs criticism, it is not the same as criticism. Criticism is an evaluative analysis of a work both the critic and the reader are familiar with. A review is an appraisal of a work the reader of the review is presumed not to have read.

In theory, practically anybody who can read can review a book addressed to the common reader. But some people are better at it than others and a few people are really good at it. That is because, while we all pretty much know immediately that we like something, or that we don’t, a certain skill and talent and experience are necessary to explain why we feel as we do in terms of specific elements in the work under review.

There is, of course, a large subjective component in all of this, but there are also objective considerations as well.

Take The Da Vinci Code. Anyone familiar with art history knows that the artist is referred to as Leonardo, not Da Vinci. But then the opening chapter has a man in his 70s displaying preternatural toughness after suffering one of the more painful and debilitating gunshot wounds. Later, the supposedly learned Lee Teabing declares that English is the European language with the fewest words of Latin origin, as absurd a statement as you are likely to encounter. Finally, there is the book’s highly implausible time frame. So there is plenty to complain about without even getting into the Dick-and-Jane prose or the historical inaccuracies. In other words, The Da Vinci Code may be said to be, objectively, a bad book.

R&T: Did that role of the reviewer change at all when Amazon opened reviewing to “Everyreader”? Did the style and background of reviewers change at all?

Wilson: While the number of reviewers may have increased exponentially, thanks to Amazon and to blogs, the number of competent reviewers probably has not. What has changed is the number of outlets available to those reviewers—that number has sharply declined. So the opportunities to earn money from reviewing—which used to be a way for aspiring writers to support themselves while writing that novel of theirs—have correspondingly declined, especially now with intellectually insecure editors wanting “credentialed” or “name” reviewers. Any sensible reader of reviews will apply the aforementioned criteria even to a review by John Updike.

R&T: Do you have any thoughts or feelings on the trend to categorize books into ever-narrower genres?

Wilson: Once you’ve divided fiction from nonfiction, I think you’ve probably gone far enough. A crime novel is, before it is anything else, a novel. If it doesn’t work as a novel, it doesn’t work, period. It isn’t the subject of a novel that determines its quality. What matters is how well it’s executed. Crime and Punishment will serve to show just how far you can take the crime novel. And the same holds true for romances or historical fiction or whatever.

R&T: There is criticism of the publishing industry from some circles that it’s become too commercial. Always focused on the next bestseller and either rejecting work that’s not expected to be a major commercial success or not promoting those authors. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Wilson: There are lots of good reasons to criticize the publishing industry but trying to make money off books isn’t one of them. Publishing is a business. Businesses that don’t make money go out of business.

One of the strangest things about the publishing business—at least lately—has been all the books that have been published that almost certainly did not make any money and were unlikely to from the start. There may have been a small market for Bush-bashing books, but the steady flow of them that came into my office must have been heading straight to the remainder piles. There just aren’t that many political junkies around. Then there are the huge advances paid to retired politicians and over-the-hill movie stars.

I often wonder how many Rabbit Angstrom types—presuming there are any—ever read John Updike’s Rabbit novels. Thanks to his wife, Rabbit ends up owning a car dealership. I wonder how many car dealers have read Rabbit Is Rich. And I wonder what their reaction would be. I mention this because Updike’s work is a perfect example of literary fiction, meant to illuminate our society. But what are the demographics of his readership? Bear in mind that the Micawbers of the world may well have read Dickens, whose work was as popular in his day as any television series is today.

At any rate,the principal problem with the publishing industry, I think, is how out of touch with readers it tends to be, as reflected in the me-tooism of what is published. (Think of all the imitation Da Vinci Codes.) Like newspapers, publishers seem to think that what readers want is the endless re-packaging of what they’ve already had. No, they want something genuinely, perhaps along those lines, or something altogether different, or...who knows—but that’s what they’re supposed to find out, and that takes looking in places different from the ones you always look at, finding someone besides “the usual suspects.” And of course that means taking some risks and maybe even backing a dark horse from time to time. Two of the best novels I’ve reviewed in the past few years are by William Nicholson—The Society of Others and The Trial of True Love. Nicholson wrote Shadowlands and co-authored the screenplay for Gladiator. He’s not an unknown quantity. But did either of his novels get any real publicity campaign behind them? Not that I’m aware of.

R&T: A chasm also seems to exist these days between writers of “popular” fiction and writers of “literary” fiction. I suspect some sour grapes in each camp, but basically, writers of “popular” fiction are seen as focusing too much on page-turning plots and not enough on craft, while “literary” writers are sometimes accused of focusing too much on the well-crafted sentence and not enough on an engrossing story. Do you think either of these notions is valid?

Wilson: I don’t think this has anything to do with “popular” versus “literary”—though God knows it is presented as such often enough in the media. Are there utterly superficial, in-one-eye-out-the-other thrillers? Sure. Just as there are plenty of let’s-watch-the-paint-dry, oh-so-precious short stories and novels. The former in many cases find an audience because they can be diverting and require virtually no effort to read (unless, like me and many others you find reading disposable writing a waste of time). The latter just fade away, I guess, like the old soldier. The “literary” writer who substitutes style for substance is the worse offender, in my view. If you don’t have anything to say, try not saying it at all instead of trying to say it exquisitely.

Here is a passage, chosen more or less at random, from a novel I just reviewed—Marisa Silver’s The God of War. The narrator, Ares Ramirez, has this to say about his brain-damaged younger brother:

I could never understand what Malcolm saw in the orphaned bits and pieces he collected or why they were meaningful to him. I knew they didn’t exactly explain or describe him. But I could believe he had made choices—this rock, not that one; this feather, and not another—and that each object moved him in some way, and that he was capable of a kind of attachment, a very particular sort of love.

This is plain, simple, and touching—even more so when read in context, when it is actually heartbreaking. The God of War is skillfully plotted, filled with vivid characters. I guess it would be called “literary fiction,” but the categorization is meaningless. It is simply great fiction, which does what great fiction is supposed to do: It reminds you of what life is about.

R&T: I’m sure you’ve read the dire statistics on reading, particularly among the young, reported recently by the NEA. Would you care to comment on either the report and/or what you think it means about our culture?

Wilson: As with anything, the more you read, the easier reading is to do. So the first problem in getting people to read is to get them to a level of proficiency where they feel comfortable reading. Unfortunately, the way in which schools tend to go about doing this is often counterproductive: They assign books that are widely regarded as “great,” “classics,” “masterpieces.” And the books in question usually are all of those things. That doesn’t mean they’re easy to read, though, and if they’re hard to read, they are not only not going get people hooked on reading, they are going to turn people off on reading. I have myself never been much of a fan of Jane Austen quite simply because my first experience of her came when I was a sophomore in high school. To this blue-collar kid, Pride and Prejudice might as well have been written in Urdu. I suggest to people who aren’t comfortable reading that they find some good young adult fiction and read that—because once people start reading without having to work at it, they are ready to move on to reading all sorts of things they never imagined they would have wanted to. If a kid wants to read science fiction rather than Moby Dick, let him. Moby Dick’s not going anywhere; it’ll be around whenever he feels ready to tackle it. That’s another reason why this precious distinction between genre fiction and lit’ry fiction is so pernicious. Leave people alone. Let them get up to speed in their own way at their pace. Once they discover they can have fun reading, the problem of getting them to read is solved once and for all.

R&T: During your time I’m sure you’ve witnessed some major changes in the newspaper industry as a whole. Many venerable city newspapers have folded or—dare I say, like The Inquirer—are mere shadows of their former glory. Do you think newspaper owners, writers/reporters share in the blame for this or is it simply a phenomenon of wider Internet access?

Wilson: Do owners, writers/reporters share in the blame for this? I would give the lion’s share of the blame to newsroom managers, most of whom are philistines who think that the be all and end all of human existence is politics and policy, and that art, music and literature are just diversions, things to amuse ourselves with when we take break from the latest white paper. In fact, art, music and literature are what enable us to live truly human lives and I would suggest that a careful reading of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar or Richard II is worth a lot more than reading one more rehash of the conventional political wisdom in some newspaper column. Just ask yourself: Which would you rather have, a citizenry that only knows what it reads in the paper or sees on TV, or a citizenry that has read Plutarch and Gibbon and John Stuart Mill? The internet has revealed to an increasing number of people how selective coverage of events in newspapers is. And they have not been gratified by the discovery. And newsroom managers simply do not know how to compete. They think that by doing something that faintly resembles the sort of thing they did when they dominated the market—long, repetitive, tendentious “investigative” pieces—that subscribers will come flocking back. But that’s journalism written for other journalists. Real people don’t want to waste their time wading through what amounts to a reporter’s notebook. They want you to get to the point.

R&T: Along those lines, you’ve written for print and now maintain a popular blog. Do you see one as having an advantage over the other?

Wilson: Once upon a time, print was the only way you could communicate to the general public. Which meant the people in charge of the print media had to decide that you were worthy to be included among them. If you were so included, that lent you a certain modicum of prestige. Now, if you have a computer and modem, you can communicate to the general public and they can decide for themselves if what you have to say is worth paying attention to. And people are discovering that lots of other people they would never have heard of in the old days do indeed have much to say that is worth paying attention to. Even better, they can interact with those people and that interaction itself tends to generate elucidation. The only advantage print now has over new media is economic—and that is changing. People can now sit in their homes and be their own media outlet. And we are only at the beginning of this. We have focused on the challenge it has posed to newspapers and publishers. It’s also proving to be a challenge to politicians and their operatives. The legacy media can still ignore things, but those things won’t be ignored by the blogosphere, and the more people find out that the papers they read and the news shows they watch have chosen not to cover things about one candidate, say, that they would have covered had they pertained to another candidate—well, people are going to walk away. So, to answer your question: Regardless of what you read in the papers, the advantage is to the bloggers.

R&T: Do you have any advice for new writers, especially those trying to get a first novel published?

Wilson: Start a blog. It will force you to write every day, which can only improve your style and help you overcome the anxiety that comes from staring at a blank page (or screen). You will start making contact with the people you hope will buy your book: readers. You may start to build an audience.

R&T: Finally, now that you have retired from The Inquirer, what are your future plans? A book? Teaching?

Wilson: Living, for one. Re-reading the classics. Savoring what I read, look at, listen to. Enjoying for its own sake.

I’m also interested in seeing how blogging can develop. I think some forms of writing are better suited to blogs than others. I’d like to find out what those are. I also want to write some things I didn’t have time to before. And if someone offered me a teaching gig, I might well accept.


Nannette Croce is Co-Managing Editor of The Rose & Thorn and an official YOGer. Her work has appeared in various online and print publications including, of course, The Rose & Thorn. For more information on her published work, visit her website.

Tim Sandlin: Author Interview by Nannette Croce

Tim Sandlin has written eight novels and several screenplays too. His two most recent novels, Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty, about a Baby Boomer revolt in the year 2023, and Rowdy in Paris, about a modern day cowboy’s exploits in “The City of Lights,” demonstrate Sandlin’s ability to develop a wide range of characters in such detail that the reader really comes to know them.

Born in Oklahoma and now living in Wyoming, Sandlin has not limited himself to the typical “Western” novel, though, as I think you'll find, he's a Westerner through and through when it comes to his dry wit and straight shooter approach.

R&T: Rowdy in Paris is your eighth novel. Among them, do you have a favorite story or character?

Sandlin: That's like asking a parent if they have a favorite child. Even if you do you can't say it out loud for fear of driving the others into therapy. That said, the GroVont folks are more real to me than people I see every day. Maurey, Sam, Shannon, Lydia. Their lives continue even when I’m not writing about them. Every few years, I check in to see what they are up to, but the directions they veer off to are beyond my control.

R&T: You were born in Oklahoma and spent most of your life out West. The third person POV of Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty required you to get into the heads of not just native Oklahoman, Guy Fontaine, but a variety of California Baby Boomers from former Love Children to Berkeley activists. What was your inspiration for those characters and how did you come to know them?

Sandlin: I live with my characters for a year before I turn them loose in a story. Many of these particular people are sixty year projections of kids I went to college with. The premise was that when the hippies retire they will revert to their old ways, so I didn’t have to change them much. I just gave them arthritis and different drugs.

R&T: Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty takes place in the year 2023, about 14 years in the future. Except for a few touches like the proliferation of professional conservators, you didn’t include much “futurism.” How did you decide what to make different and what not to?

Sandlin: The professional conservators aren’t futuristic or even exaggerated. There are people who make a living by getting a court order to control the money of the elderly.

R&T: Wow, that’s a little scary. I didn’t know that.

Sandlin: [For the rest] I didn’t want this book to be about the future so much as about people in it, so I kept the details of 2023 to a minimum. Mostly, I invented the obvious stuff. I made communications tools that exist now but are not widespread into common objects. The book isn’t science fiction. Most of it could happen now, but I wanted the hippies fifteen years older than they are.

R&T: I’m curious about Rowdy in Paris. Was it a trip to “The City of Lights” that inspired the novel or did you get the idea and then set out to do research in Paris?

Sandlin: Both. I went to Paris around 1979 or 80 and I’ve been trying to find an excuse to go back ever since. The book was a tax write-off excuse to spend a few weeks where I wanted to be. I used pretty much everything I saw in Paris.

R&T: As Rowdy travels around Paris he is often greeted with “Clint Eastwood.” While most of the US population is concentrated on the east and west coasts, why do you think this “cowboy” image is seen around the world as so representative of Americans?

Sandlin: Whole books and dissertations have been written on that question. American cowboys are not just watered-down versions of the familiar to Europeans. They are mythic. Unknown. Cowboy music, as opposed to country music, is huge in France, Germany, and Switzerland, especially Switzerland. Europeans and Asians buy the myth, which not many in the American West do. Rowdy was something of a reaction against that myth.

R&T: You seem to really identify with the “cowboy.” Have you ever considered that life for yourself?

Sandlin: Cowboys aren’t Western rednecks. They spend a lot of time outdoors alone, so they think more than most folks.Cowboy is the only profession with its own poetry, dance, art, and music. You never hear about drywall hanger poetry or lawyer dance.

But I have no desire to be one. They have to get up too early. I’m not God’s gift to horses and the boots are uncomfortable.

R&T: Outside of Islamic nations, France is probably the culture most antithetical to the US, and Rowdy represents much of what is seen by others as the downside of American culture. He regularly resorts to violence to solve his problems. He prefers fast food to haute cuisine, and he plays by his own rules. Did you set out to write about this clash of cultures or did it simply evolve?

Sandlin: Most books written by Americans about France are obsessed by the food and the charm and the wonderfulness of the French countryside. I love France, but I wanted to write a book from the point of view of a guy who had no desire to go there and no preconceptions of how it would be when he got there. Rowdy is not intimidated by French food. I’ve never read of another American fictional character in Paris who can say that. Rowdy doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him. That is a cowboy attitude. Americans in Paris over-tip and over-apologize and over-fawn because they hate the Ugly American label. Rowdy would never apologize for asking for ketchup. Or ice.

R&T: Were there any particular challenges in Rowdy using characters who could have easily become cardboard cliches and developing them into real people with their own unique stories?

Sandlin: If the people are real to the writer, they tend to come across as real to the reader, no matter how bizarre they would be in life its own self. If I go into a restaurant, I first figure out what every character would order before I figure out what I would order. I know their choices better than I know mine.

R&T: You’ve written several screenplays as well a novels. Which do you prefer? Any thoughts on the recent writers’ strike?

Sandlin: I prefer novels because the writer owns the copyright in fiction and he doesn’t in screenwriting. That’s a big difference. Screenwriters spend two years working on a project, then they lose it and someone rewrites the story. Most novelists don’t work well with others or they wouldn’t become novelists in the first place. Screenwriting is art by committee. Social skills are much more important than characterization. Writing a good screenplay is very difficult, but at its best, it’s raising other people’s children for adoption.

You rarely meet an old novelist who is happy, but you never meet an old screenwriter who happy. On the other hand, screenwriting pays ten times the money for ten times less work. So, there is a trade-off.

Writer’s Strike: In my lowly opinion, the writers lost. The Evil Boss Men won.

R&T: These days many writers have dual careers. I’ve interviewed writers who are engineers, historians, and lawyers. You always worked at more menial jobs like ice cream truck driver and dishwasher, and you’ve said you think menial jobs are better for you as a writer. Why is that?

Sandlin: Most writers will jump at the excuse not to write, even though they live for it. Successful writers get sucked into magazine work, or teaching, or screenwriting. I found being in desperate straits for money is the best inspiration for prolific writing. I made a conscious decision at 25 that I would grow old as either a dishwasher or a novelist — nothing in between. The jury is still out on which way that will come down.

Also, it’s easier to daydream on a menial job than a prestigious one. A writer’s most prized treasure is his daydreaming time. Any job — or fame — that takes away from that is to be avoided like bubonic plague.

R&T: In another interview you said “...writing programs tend to put out good writers without much to say.” You graduated from and MFA program. Would you say you benefited from it and what would be your advice to someone considering and MFA in Creative Writing?

Sandlin: I benefited a lot from my years in a writing program. God, or the nice folks at UNCG [University of North Carolina at Greensboro], gave me two years to write, two years to be treated like a writer and to think of myself as a writer. Imagine that. I wasn’t a dishwasher pretending to be a writer. I was a writer. I wrote three novels in four semesters.

My advice to someone considering an MFA program: I gave advice to a guy who wanted to be a writer once. I told him to quit his good job with benefits and become a dishwasher and write. And the son of a bitch did it. To this day, his wife (who was pregnant at the time) won’t talk to me. So, I don’t give advice anymore. I can give a prediction. A real writer writes everyday, no excuses. If you don’t have a job, you don’t get days off. A real writer writes. That’s all it comes down to. The MFA program gave me a chance to do that and I took it.

R&T: With eight novels it would seem that you never have difficulty finding something to write about, but do you ever suffer from the proverbial writer’s block?

Sandlin: My first five published novels were all about me working out my problems. Write 100,000 words about something bothering you and it won’t bother you anymore. But then I ran out of problems. I never had writer’s block, as I understand it, but I did run out of anything I thought was important enough to say, and there’s nothing worse than a writer who keeps talking after he’s run out of things to say.

So, I wrote movies for seven years. I wrote 11 scripts for hire, countless drafts, countless takes and treatments. You don’t have to have anything to say to write movies for other people. You just have to write. By then, I had lots of new problems so I returned to novels.

R&T: What is the writing life to you? Could you ever imagine yourself doing anything else like bull riding for instance?

Sandlin: I get to feel the things a bull rider feels, and the things a tough guy feels, and a woman, and a cat — why would I limit myself to just one life? Writing is all I’m qualified to do, so that’s what I’ll do.

R&T: How difficult was it getting your first book published and what, if anything, did you learn from the experience?

Sandlin: My story is fairly typical. My first published book was the fourth one I wrote, and I didn’t sell it until I was nearly finished with number five. I wrote the first three and after each one, I would send out 120 or so query letters, but no one ever read any of my books. They still exist in files, unread and unwanted. Sex and Sunsets was rejected about 65 times before I found an agent and another 60 times after I signed with an agent. I wrote 12 drafts.

Let’s backtrack a moment.I published a poem in Highlights for Children when I was nine, and wrote every day (more or less) between then and now. My second publication, Sex and Sunsets, came out when I was 37.

What did I learn: 1) Don’t kill yourself because you can’t find readers. You might be jumping the gun. 2) It is more important to write than to call yourself writer.

R&T: Finally, I know it’s been a while, but do you have any advice for writers just starting out?

Sandlin: Read everything. Write a lot. Guard your daydreaming time with your life. Writing cannot be done casually. It’s not a hobby; it’s a calling. If you can possibly be happy without writing, I would advise you not to write. If you can’t be happy without writing, you’re the luckiest human alive, so don’t whine when it’s hard. The alternative is a meaningless existence.

For more books by Tim Sandlin, visit his website.

Nannette Croce is Co-Managing Editor of The Rose & Thorn and an official YOGer. Her work has appeared in various online and print publications including The Philadelphia Inquirer. For more information on her published work, visit her website.

Chris Tusa: Author Interview by Angie Ledbetter

Meet Chris Tusa – poet, professor, and southern fiction writer – not necessarily in that order. Born and raised in New Orleans, the south’s most gothic of cities, is it any wonder Tusa’s work is filled with haunting images, crazy characters, and unforgettable twists and turns? A few of Tusa’s favorite quotes might be clues to his mindset and show his love of quirky characters: “I can’t see a man but you! Even with my eyes closed, I just see you! Why don’t you please get fat or ugly or something so I could stand it?” ~ Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and “Our Generation has had no Great war, no Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club.

Tusa takes time out of his busy schedule to talk with Rose & Thorn readers a bit here:

R&T: Not many writers delve into both fiction and poetry simultaneously. How do you manage it?

Tusa: For me, separating the two (fiction and poetry) has always been difficult. Many of the poems from my recent collection, Haunted Bones, were generated while I was working on my novel. For some reason, writing fiction always seems to initiate ideas for a poem. In fact, rarely do I complete a story without at some point considering the story as a poem. In a few cases, I have actually converted existing poems into stories and vice versa. As a result, many of my poems tend to sound like stories while much of my fiction tends to be overly lyrical.

R&T: Have your writing interests always been so varied?

Tusa: Yes. I’ve always enjoyed drama, poetry, and fiction. I try to read a novel every week, and I read drama and poetry here and there. I also read non-fiction occasionally, mostly when I’m looking for ideas for my next story or poem.

R&T: That’s interesting. Maybe your eclectic reading preferences reflect in your work. Being a college professor must seriously eat up your writing time. How do you find time to craft words while teaching?

Tusa: No matter where I am, I’m always obsessing over some image, idea, or phrase. I only teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I usually have lots of time to write. Ironically, though, most of my best ideas come to me when I’m busy (shopping, exercising, driving in my car), not when I’m sitting at home in front of the computer.

R&T: Lots of writers swear their best ideas come through when their brains are occupied by some mundane chore. How did you come up with the title for your book of poetry Haunted Bones? Our readers would probably like to hear about how creativity evolves from ideas to plots, titles, etc.

Tusa: Haunted Bones deals primarily with phobias and fears, particularly those obsessive fears that often take over our lives. The title comes from a poem in the collection entitled "Hypochondriac" which describes a potential illness haunting the narrator’s hollow bones.

R&T: And about Dirty Little Angels, your novel. How long did it take you to write it?

Tusa: I completed the first draft of Dirty Little Angels in about eight months, but I spent another year revising and polishing it.

R&T: What are you currently reading outside of class work?

Tusa: Fahrenheit 451, Paris Trout, Lullaby, and Wasp Factory.

R&T: Chris, how did you get started? Did you always want to be a writer? Can you give us some background?

Tusa: I always loved writing, but I never considered writing as a career until college. In 1992, I took a fiction class taught by Tim Gautreaux at SLU [Southeastern Louisiana University], and from that point on, I wanted to be a writer.

R&T: What do you think are the worst mistakes you made in writing your novel or poetry book?

Tusa: While working on Haunted Bones (my book of poetry), I made the mistake of writing individual poems rather than writing a book of poems. As a result, I had to rewrite much of the book so that the collection would read as a collection.

R&T: How do you come up with your material?

Tusa: Most of the characters in my stories are actual people I’ve known (or know), and most of my ideas for stories come from stories I’ve heard from family members and/or friends.

R&T: Thanks for doing this interview, and best of luck with all your writing projects. I can’t wait to read more.

Get a taste of Tusa’s work by following these links:
Poetry - http://christophertusa.com/hbsample.htm
Fiction - http://christophertusa.com/dla1.htm

Chris Tusa was born and raised in New Orleans. His work has appeared in literary magazines Passages North, Spoon River, New York Quarterly, The New Delta Review, Louisiana Literature, and many others. With the help of a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Tusa completed his first poetry chapbook, Inventing an End. His debut novel, Dirty Little Angels is currently agented and under consideration. Tusa holds a B.A. and M.A. in English, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Aside from teaching in the English Department at LSU (Louisiana State University), he acts as Managing Editor for Poetry Southeast.

More on Chris Tusa.


Angie Ledbetter is a freelance writer, author, and sometime poet. When not wrangling her three teens or teaching school, she works on various writing projects, including a fiction novel. She enjoys being part of The Rose & Thorn.

Brent Martin: Author Interview by Kathryn Magendie

Brent Martin lives in the Cowee Community near the town of Franklin in the mountains of Western North Carolina with his wife, singer and songwriter Angela Faye Martin. They live in a historic home named for its original owner, local logger and sawmill owner, Doc Clark. It sits just off Snow Hill Road, nestled within one of the many spectacular drainages of the Cowee Creek Watershed. For most of his adult life, Martin has worked in the field of forest conservation, and currently works for The Wilderness Society. poems from snow hill road is his first collection of poems.

R&T: In your collection, “poems from snow hill road,” what are you most proud of? Do you have a favorite poem?

Martin: I suppose it would be the rendition of local characters (both dead and alive) that I spent a lot of time thinking about, as well as what I hope is the conveyance of the special qualities of a special place – Cowee Valley. It has also been a wonderful experience for me to have the book so well received by local people. As for a favorite poem, I suppose it would be “Meditation on a Ceiling Fan.” It suffered many renditions before I settled on the one in the book, and though it is most likely not the best written or finely crafted poem in the collection, it’s one for me that I had to wrestle demons for, as it was birthed from true pain and angst at the time.

R&T: Your poems are steeped in nature images, raw and wild and beautiful, and also of life lived in these Western North Carolina Mountains. What is the message you want readers to discover by reading your poems?

Martin: The mountains here are full of special places, stories, and characters and all that is required to see these special qualities is to pay attention and look for the mystery and magic in it and behind it all. This area, despite attempts by certain elements and interests in turning it into Anywhere America, retains a raw and wild quality, one that we all should be fighting to retain. If we discover the uniqueness of our individual communities, which is uniqueness derived largely from cultural and equally important natural history, we become resistant to the idea of wholesale and blind efforts to plow it all over.

R&T: I agree wholeheartedly, Brent. Now, you wrote a poem from the point of view of someone who was almost lynched, and then the next poem is from the point of view of the one who attempted to do the lynching—tell readers something about these two poems: i.e., what prompted you to write from these two perspectives?

Martin: Escomoe Howell, who was almost lynched as a young adult in Cowee Valley, was an African American who lived one of the most colorful lives of anyone in the valley, past or present. And trust me; there are a lot of colorful characters there. I could write pages about him, so I will try to restrain myself. He lived up at the end of the road from me and ran a gambling hall, prostitution house, and liquor business. The attempted lynching of him by two local young white men almost sixty years ago (he died in 1984) is something that is almost a secret history, though local people who are still alive and remember it will talk about it. I have yet to get a clear answer on why they tried to kill him, though one of them was caught and did prison time for it. The two poems were my attempt to portray what I thought were the circumstances of the actual event, based on the history I could obtain from local people, and as interpreted by both of the men involved. It is just the beginning – I am digging much deeper into Escomoe’s life and will be writing more about it for the foreseeable future.

R&T: I can’t wait to read more about him. So, then, your poetry doesn’t necessarily soft-soap mountain life—yes, your poetry is filled with breathtakingly beautiful images, but, your poems also reflect lives that are lived hard and hard to live—and you do this with a matter-of-fact hand, not a heavy one. Is it important to you to convey Mountain Life in a certain way?

Martin: It is very important for me convey Mountain Life in a certain way. There is a vanishing culture here that will be gone in another generation and most of the people moving here don’t seem to care much about it. To illustrate, last year I published an essay in New Southerner titled The Lamentable Loss of Appalachian Yard Junk. It was the result of observations made during conversations that usually involved someone from somewhere else who had moved here lamenting the junk that piled up around old Appalachian homesteads, roadsides, trailers, and how it all needed to be cleaned up. Why? Because it flew in the face of the suburban values that they are transferring to their new second, third, or fourth home. People who have lived here for five or six generations never had land fills and at the same time never threw anything away if it could possibly be used in the future for parts, or some other practical use. I love the old mountain homes that still exist where the porch has a car seat on it, and a washing machine, and a few junk cars out back. Hopefully there are some chickens running around, a few goats, and a nice garden site. I’ll take that over a ridgetop of million dollar houses any day.

R&T: You are passionate about our mountains, as I am. Are you from Western North Carolina, or did the mountains call you Home?

Martin: My family is from North Georgia, in the Ridge and Valley province, which is still considered Appalachia, but I grew up in a rural area north of Atlanta that is now completely screwed up and developed—unrecognizable. I was always drawn to the mountains and it took me getting into my thirties to figure out how to move and still make a living.

R&T: How important is the writing life to you? Or, I could ask, what does poetry do for you? What does it give to you that you crave?

Martin: Writing, as difficult as it is for me at times, is a major part of my life at the moment. It hasn’t always been that way, and it ebbs and flows, but I am staying at it. For me, a good poem is like a good painting—it transports you somewhere that you don’t get transported to by reading the newspaper or even a good novel. It’s condensed consciousness that speaks to larger things, with the power to shake us loose from our perception of the world as mundane.

R&T: Do you feel poetry quiets something wild inside of you that needs to be soothed? Or, does poetry give something to you that you do not get from work, family, friends?

Martin: That’s an interesting question, as I feel the answer cuts two ways. It quiets something wild inside while at the same time making me part of something wilder, or making me look at what I value as wild—wild places, wild energy, and the freedom of expression in both. Working for The Wilderness Society is my day-to-day job, and so what I do for a living is protecting wild places. Doing this type of work informs my private life and writing greatly. My wife is a songwriter and musician, so her creative energy is very important to me and my writing. Our interests are similar in our material, and that feeds my own creative energy a lot.

R&T: We need the protectors, Brent, thank you. So, what motivates you to sit quietly and create poetry? Any advice for emerging poets/writers out there?

Martin: I’ve always loved quiet places and living in beautiful rural areas. It’s important to pay attention to what moves you the most, and what matters to you the most. In the winter, there is nothing better to me than sitting in front of the wood stove with a glass of wine and a blank piece of paper. We don’t have cable TV, and can’t get reception where we live for commercial television, so we don’t have that distraction to keep us from being creative. There are so many distractions today that how does anyone just sit still and be quiet and let creative processes unfold? It takes discipline and winter where we live is a great place to develop it.

R&T: How did you and your publisher, New Native Press, find each other?

Martin: Thomas Rain Crowe, founder of New Native Press, lives in nearby Tuckaseegee community. I met him a couple of years ago at a Wilderness Roundtable discussion at Brevard College and we agreed to do some canoeing and fishing. At our first get together we discussed my writing and he asked to see some of my poems. After reading a few he said, “send me some more.” He quickly saw connections and was able to push me in certain directions when putting it all together for a chapbook. He is a true writer and observer of place, and critical in the creation of this collection. It was an extremely fortuitous meeting for me.

R&T: How do you overcome what some call “writer’s block,” or just plain, “I don’t feel like writing.”?

Martin: That’s a tough one. I get it a lot, and so I sit down and do stream of consciousness writing. It’s mostly unintelligible gibberish, but sometimes when I go back through it I’m able to pull out lines and ideas that I develop further. It really works. When I truly don’t feel like writing, I read. I love to read so much that it actually gets in the way of my writing sometimes. I have to make myself not read in order to write.

R&T: Finally, where can our readers find “poems from snow hill road,” and, what are you working on next?

Martin: It’s available at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC; Malaprops in Asheville, NC, and Books Unlimited in Franklin. It’s also available at www.newnativepress.com. It can also be ordered directly from me for $8.00, plus $1.50 for shipping, at 376 Snow Hill Falls Circle, Franklin, NC 28734. I am currently working on a new collection of poems, and a collection of essays on a variety of Appalachian subjects. My wife is also trying to talk me into completing a series of sketches that I have noodled around on titled “Tales of the Snow Hill Dead.” We’ll see.

Thank you, Brent, for taking time to do this interview with me.

For more on Brent Martin, visit http://www.newnativepress.com/

Read a review of poems from snowhill road.

Kathryn Magendie is a writer, freelance editor, and a Senior Editor & Senior Newsletter Editor at The Rose & Thorn. Visit her website at http://www.kathrynmagendie.com/, her GOT YOG? blog at http://barbaraquinnyearofgratitude.blogspot.com/, or her personal blog at http://kathrynmagendie.spaces.live.com/

Ed Cullen: Author Interview by Kathryn Magendie

Ed Cullen's first commentary, "Porch Steps Baseball," aired on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered in July 2001. Since then, he's written humorous sketches about life in southern Louisiana including commentaries on Mardi Gras, science fairs, and the way denizens of Guatemala North attempt to stay cool. Cullen is a feature writer and columnist on The (Baton Rouge) Advocate in Louisiana's capital city and author of Letter in a Woodpile, a collection of essays that includes his commentaries for All Things Considered.

R&T: Tell our readers a bit about your collection of essays: Letter in a Woodpile. For example: What are you most proud of? Do you have a favorite essay?

ED CULLEN: I like “The Manta Ray” and “Heart Volcano” because writing them let me revisit times in my childhood that were so vivid I felt like I'd stepped out of a time machine and into an afternoon at the movies with my father. [Favorites:] ("Manta Ray") and back to science fairs ("Heart Volcano") where I stood sweating in my Easter suit in front of another lame, last minute work in clay.

R&T: How does it feel to open the pages of your book, to see your words there, and to know many others are, and will be, reading your work? Is the feeling different from when you read your work aloud on NPR’s All Things Considered?

EC: I'm print-oriented, but I have come to enjoy the challenge of saying in 400 words for NPR commentaries what I would normally say in 1,500 words. There is the challenge, too, of selling a piece on the radio as a little drama or comedy with pauses and inflections. A test of any piece of writing is how it sounds when read aloud. The reader hears a writer's words in his head just as though they were being read aloud. Reading out loud gives a writer a feeling for the rhythm of his words the way a reader will see and hear them.

I confess to wandering the aisles of Barnes and Noble to discover anew my book in "Essays." It's a wonderful feeling, but by the time a writer gets a book published, he or she has worked so hard there's satisfaction but no magic.

R&T: Who wouldn’t want to wander the aisles to re-discover your own words, there on the shelf! Ed, with your publishing success, do you feel validated as a writer? Or have you always had a sense of completion or success in your career? Perhaps the two are the clichéd apples and oranges?

EC: I felt successful as a newspaper reporter, then feature writer, and now a columnist. Writing commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered that led to Letter in a Woodpile was something good and different at just the right time in my life and career. I was 59 when the book was published.

R&T: How did you and your publisher, Cool Springs Press, find each other?

EC: A woman named Lola Honeybone, her real name though I thought at first I'd been telephoned by a James Bond girl, was a publicist at Thomas Nelson who had a good track record of suggesting books to Thomas Nelson acquisition editors. Working from home in Connecticut, Lola heard me on the radio. She was with Cool Springs Press, then a division of Thomas Nelson. Cool Springs was looking to broaden its list to include literary books. Cool Springs had until then been (and still is) the publisher of great garden books. So, I came to Cool Springs' attention at just the right time.

R&T: It’s Kismet! In the piece entitled, “New Orleans, the Poem,” you write a beautiful glimpse into a slice of New Orleans life—the one “that the tourists miss.” From your perspective as a native Louisianian, how has Katrina affected not just beloved New Orleans, but Baton Rouge? Or are you sick of that question? Perhaps you want to say something completely different; if so, pretend I asked something else and answer it.

EC: I like that essay because it's a love poem to a great old city, warts and all, written about a month before Hurricane Katrina. What the storm did TO New Orleans and to a lesser extent FOR Baton Rouge is something we'll be studying for a long time.

R&T: Your essays hold poignant glances backward to your childhood, peeks into other Louisianian’s lives, and as well, you invite the reader into your own yard to garden with you. Reading, I get a sense of a life well lived. Any regrets? Anything you’d do differently?

EC: People who KNOW me from my newspaper column in The (Baton Rouge) Sunday Advocate, NPR and, now, Letter in a Woodpile know what I choose to let them know. I have the same regrets most people have, but I wouldn't change anything about my life.

R&T: I love that answer, Ed. So, in the essay “Letter in a Woodpile,” your last sentence in a note to your son, reads, “I hope you enjoy your time here as much as your mother and I did.” Does the meaning of this essay, this last sentence, really mean much more than first apparent?

EC: That last sentence, to me, is just what it says. It's something I'd say to my son if we were together stacking wood at the farm. But I've learned that my words are no longer mine alone when read by someone else. Readers make of a piece of writing what they will.

R&T: Yes! and isn’t that one of the wonderful things about writing? But, how is your circle of friends and colleagues reacting to Published Writer You versus the You they know from your thirty-years in The Business—writing for The Advocate, and your work with National Public Radio? Any envy? Any sidelong glances of jealousy? Come on, tell us the scoop!

EC: My friends celebrated with me when the book came out just as they did when I started appearing on NPR. Most of us like to see someone who lives in the same town we do make good. Success makes the air sweeter and routine work less grinding. There's the feeling, too, of if it happened to him it could happen to me.

R&T: Very gracious and humble answer. What do you do to motivate yourself to write when you’d rather be out in your garden—overcoming what some may call “writer’s block,” or just plain, “I don’t feel like it today”?

EC: There's no such thing as writer's block. There IS such a thing as not having anything to say. On days like that, you dig to write a column because you have to. It's your job. Essays, novels, poems that stand up may be inspired but they require work to produce. It's hard work making writing seem effortless. Some days at the keyboard are better than others.

R&T: What is the writing life to you, and how important is it to your sense of well-being?

EC: If writers relied on writing for a sense of well-being, they'd feel lousy all the time. Writing is a struggle. When I finish a piece of writing what I feel is relief. Then, I go play in the garden or take a bicycle ride to feel well be'd.

R&T: (laughing) Well, when your reader turns the last page and closes the cover of Letter in a Woodpile, what do you want to imagine they are feeling, or to take away from the experience?

EC: I'd like for readers to feel reading this book wasn't a waste of their time. Then, I'd like for them to think, "I wonder what I'll have for supper."

R&T: It was certainly not a waste of my time, and I’m having salmon and a salad, by the way, Ed. Now, I have to know: Is Amal still coming around for grubs, despite, or perhaps because of, your extra Louisiana seasonings?

EC: "Amal the Armadillo" was in the garden last night.

R&T: Finally, where can our readers find Letter in a Woodpile, and, what are you working on next?

EC: I like sending readers to Barnes and Noble because B&N put me in all 850 of their stores on Day One and have been great to work with. I like sending readers to The NPR Shop online because a portion of sales goes to National Public Radio. And I like for readers to go to their favorite independent bookstores. Like newspapers, we don't fully appreciate neighborhood bookstores until they're gone. I'm working on another collection of essays.

R&T: Thank you, Ed, for taking time from your busy schedule to talk with me.

EC: You're welcome.

For more on Ed Cullen, visit http://www.npr.org/

Read a review of Letter in a Woodpile.

Kathryn Magendie is a writer, freelance editor, and a Senior Editor & Senior Newsletter Editor at The Rose & Thorn. Feel free to visit her website, GOT YOG? blog, or her personal blog.

Judy Larsen: Author Interview by Kat Magendie

Judy Merrill Larsen was born in Whittier, California in 1960, and grew up in Northbrook, IL, Upper Saddle River, NJ, and Dunwoody, GA. She attended University of Tennessee (Knoxville) for two years before transferring to and graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She taught high school English in Madison for three years before staying home with her two sons. In 1991 she moved to Kirkwood, MO, where she received a Master’s Degree from Washington University and taught high school for twelve more years.

Larsen’s debut novel All the Numbers was published in 2006; she is currently at work on her second novel. Previous publishing credits include a variety of letters to the editor. She enjoys talking to students and book groups about writing and is always eager to recommend her new favorite book. She currently lives in Kirkwood with her husband and their five children.

R&T: In All the Numbers, you deal with a topic some would consider difficult to write about—the death of a child. How did you keep yourself focused on the story and the writing without allowing the subject to cloud your thinking?

LARSEN: I’m not sure if I did—the whole story arc came to me while sitting on a dock watching my kids play in a lake. A jet skier went by and I thought, “What if?” So, as I was writing, I became Ellen, in a sense. I needed to get her story out. There were times I cried as I wrote. There were days I was exhausted for and with her. There were afternoons it was very hard to let my own sons head off to the pool.

R&T: I understood the rage Ellen felt, even in the face of her “doing the right thing” when it came to organ donation. Have you experienced a loss, one which gave you insights into how to write about a mother’s grief and the anger that consumed her?

LARSEN: I feel so guilty saying this, but no, I haven’t experienced such a loss. But, as a mother, I think that’s THE fear—losing your child. So, I’ve had those moments of panic when they have a fever that won’t break. Or when you look away for one second and they’re gone in a crowd. And at those times, all the horrors that can befall them (and me) ran through my mind. I approached the writing with that same “What if?” question—how badly would I handle such a loss? How angry would I get? How much would I crawl away from the world and into a hole of my own making? And then, what would it take to get me to come back out of it?

R&T: At the end of the book, Ellen and her surviving son, Daniel, return to the lake where the accident happened—after the trial and Ellen’s decision concerning the one who accidentally killed her son—which gave her some closure. Did this give you, as a writer and a mother, a sense of relief and joy and closure?

LARSEN: Yes. I really love this final scene. From my first draft to the final published version, I don’t think I changed a word. I had this scene in mind from the very beginning, so I always felt l was pulling Ellen to this place as I wrote. When I wrote the last word, I was all teary with relief, joy and closure. I’d done it and Ellen had done it. It was pretty cool.

R&T: Tell the readers a bit about your title, All the Numbers. Is there a symbolic meaning to this, beyond the one explained at the beginning of the novel (how she loves her sons “all the numbers…”)?

LARSEN: I wish I could tell you something really significant and secret about the title, but it really just comes from what Ellen tells her sons when they are young. A friend suggested it was also appropriate because it hints at how Ellen needs to find new patterns for her life, but that wasn’t something I consciously intended. I will say that this is something I completely stole from my own mothering—“all the numbers” was something I said to my boys when they were young and it came about in the same way it does for Ellen.

R&T: There is the issue of organ donation in All the Numbers. Is this an important personal issue? What about the possible dangers imposed by jet-skiers? Have you had personal experience with either of these?

LARSEN: I’m a big supporter of organ donation—I have friends who are alive because others were generous in their deaths. But I don’t think I’d have the grace to be comforted by donating in the moment. I’d still do it, but if it was my child, I’d also be as angry and bitter as Ellen is. I have nothing personal against jet-skiers. They actually used to look like fun, but after writing this book they give me the willies.

R&T: In the beginning of the book, Ellen does not buy James the shoes he desires; and then, after his death, she purchases the shoes so he can be cremated in them. What message are you trying to give readers here?

LARSEN: Well, I guess I could say, “Always buy the shoes!”, but I think it more goes to the idea of hoping those I love know I love them even when I’m not being particularly nice. I’d imagine that when you’ve lost a child, you have so many regrets—stories you didn’t take the time to read, cookies you were too rushed to bake. And you wish you could rectify that. When my uncle was dying of cancer twelve years ago, as hard as it was for all of us, we at least got to let him know how much we loved him. With a sudden death you don’t get that chance. So maybe the “lesson of the shoes” is to not let opportunities pass to let your loved ones know how much you care.

R&T: You are an English teacher—do you feel as if you are held to a “higher standard” in your writing? And if so, how does this affect your writing?

LARSEN: Well, I wanted to be darn sure there were no apostrophe errors in my book (just ask my students—I was a real bear about that!). But, yes, I do think I worried more about how the book would be received. I’d taught great literature, I’d been a stickler for clear writing. I’d harped on kids to use the right words. One of my real fears was that former students or fellow teachers would read my novel and think, “Huh, I thought it’d be better.” If anyone has, he or she has kept that opinion private. And it was especially gratifying when one of the private girls’ schools here in St. Louis selected All the Numbers for their whole-school summer read.

R&T: What are the steps you took to get from finished book to printed copy? And, is there anything you would do differently if you had it to do again?

LARSEN: I had no clue what I was getting into when I first sat down to write this novel. I didn’t know anyone in the business and had never published any stories or articles. Once I’d finished a draft I started querying agents. I promptly racked up 100+ rejections. So, I revised and rewrote and started attending writing conferences. I did that for a couple years, all the while revising when I had time. My big break came when I attended a week-long summer workshop at The University of Iowa. At the end of that week, the editor who’d led my group offered to introduce me to some agents. Three weeks later I had an offer of representation and within 4 months we’d sold the manuscript to Random House.

R&T: What are you working on now?

LARSEN: I’m deep into what I hope will be my next novel—through two different narrative lines, one set in the present and the other set between 1958-1971—it explores how women are too often defined by others’ expectations and judgments, rather than by themselves and their dreams.

R&T: What is the writing life to you? Or, how important is your writing to your sense of well-being?

LARSEN: Well, it’s been a dream of mine since I was a little girl, so on one level it’s a dream come true. Now, I find that if I go a few days without writing (unless I’m on a vacation or something like that) I get itchy for it. It’s what I do and who I am.

R&T: Do you have a certain time and place you prefer to write?

LARSEN: Mornings are best for me—the house is quiet and my mind is fresh. When the weather is nice, I sit out on my front porch, coffee in hand and write for two hours. If the weather is too chilly, I park myself on the living room sofa by a roaring fire. I write my first drafts in longhand, so I can write anywhere which is nice. Then, in the afternoons, I enter what I’ve written into the document on my laptop and give it my first edit.

R&T: Do you ever get the old so-called “writer’s block,” and if so, what do you do to overcome it?

LARSEN: I think we all get writer’s block at times. One thing I do, if I’m stuck in a scene (or with starting a scene) is to begin a conversation between my characters. I just start writing dialogue. They’ll always talk me out of being stuck and often take the story in a neat direction I hadn’t even seen coming. One strategy to head it off altogether is to never end a day’s writing when I feel stuck, and to always end knowing where I’m going to start the next day so I’m eager to get back to it.

R&T: Since many of our R&T readers are also writers, what advice or insights can you give them?

LARSEN: Don’t give up. Ever. Also, read, read, read. Read in your own genre and in other genres. Read great literature and read “vacation” books. If you can, network with other writers. Every writer I’ve met has been encouraging and fun.

For more on Judy Merrill Larsen, check out her website and blog.

Read Kat Magendie's review of All the Numbers.

Kat Magendie is a freelance writer/editor, and Senior Editor/Newsletter Editor at The Rose & Thorn. She has written, is writing, and will ever-more be writing novels, short stories, essays, and a few sad but hopeful poems. She has been published here and there. Visit her at www.kathrynmagendie.com.

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print without the express permission of the interviewer.

Deborah LeBlanc: Author Interview - Pt. 2 by Angie Ledbetter

It’s not often one comes across people in the writing world who love to share what they know with others and are generous about doing so. Author Deborah LeBlanc is one of those rare birds and Rose & Thorn tracked her down between flights long enough to have a chat.

LeBlanc is an award-winning author from Lafayette, Louisiana; owner of several businesses; a licensed death scene investigator; popular conference speaker; first female president of the Horror Writers Association (a post once held by Stephen King); president of the Writers’ Guild of Acadiana; and active member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers Inc., and the National Association of Women Writers. In addition, she is the creator of the LeBlanc Literary Challenge and author of Family Inheritance, Grave Intent, A House Divided, and Morbid Curiosity. Her next book, Water Witch, will be released in 2008.

Part II – The LeBlanc Literacy Challenge

R&T: In a nutshell, what is your Literacy Challenge?

LeBlanc: The idea for the Literacy Challenge came not long after I finished touring for my first book. During the tour, I had the opportunity to visit numerous bookstores around the country and chat with some of their customers. Unfortunately, it didn’t take me long to realize many patrons visited the bookstores because of the adjoining coffee shop. Yes, a few individuals would browse through the bookshelves, maybe flip through a magazine or two, but many of them left empty handed. Whenever I asked one of these coffee-only browsers, “Who’s your favorite author?” or “What do you enjoy reading?” the most common response was, “Oh, I don’t read much anymore.” Even worse, if the individual was under the age of twenty-five, the response was usually, “I don’t like to read.”

To say I was disheartened by this seemingly endless tide of ‘non-readers’ would be a gross understatement. So I decided to do something about it.

I had an artist create scenes from two of my books, then put those scenes on the challenge website: www.theleblancchallenge.com. Each scene contains ‘clickables’, and each ‘clickable’ drops down a list of multiple choice questions. The person who scores the highest in the challenge wins $5000 in cash, plus an additional $1000 for the public school or library of his/her choice. Now, the winner has the right to spend the $5000 any way he or she chooses, but to further encourage literacy, I added a kicker. For anyone interested in putting the money aside for a college education (either for themselves or a child), I will personally contact their chosen university about a matching funds program. In essence, a matching funds program can turn that $5000 into $10,000.

The second place winner of the Challenge wins a new desktop computer, and third through tenth place winners get bookstore gift certificates with values up to $175.

Although the Challenge has become an annual event, I plan on making a significant change to it in 2008. I do motivational presentations at public high schools around the country at no cost to the school. In 2008, we’ll have corporate sponsors who will be purchasing books needed for the challenge for every student I’ll be presenting to in high schools around the country.

R&T: This sounds like a wonderful program. Why are you so passionate about this project?

LeBlanc: Extreme concern makes me passionate about this project. I fear for our young adults and their future.

Most people my age have been reading all their lives. We didn’t grow up with the distraction of video games and televisions with a thousand channel choices. Today, I believe some folks with very young children are starting to realize the importance of reading, and they’re trying to steer their kids in the right direction by reading to them each night. However, we’re forgetting (or ignoring) a large group of people, namely those between the ages of 14 and 27. Most of them don’t read unless they’re forced to in school. If something isn’t done to change that course, we’re looking at a whole generation teetering on the brink of illiteracy. Reading exercises the mind and strengthens creativity and imagination. Without that exercise, a person’s mind will atrophy and become dependent on someone or something else to do the job it was meant to do.

These young adults are supposed to be our future leaders, but if they’re unable to read, how will they lead? How will they create or imagine new ways to solve our nation’s challenges or even work through basic life challenges? And will their inability or unwillingness to read carry on to their children and their children’s children?

R&T: Where can we find more information on the LLC, and are you scoping out sponsors?

LeBlanc: Currently, you can find more information on the Challenge at www.theleblancchallenge.com. I’ll soon have a video available on my website (www.deborahleblanc.com) that will visually explain why I think this literacy issue is so important. Yes, we’re always looking for sponsors. Right now we have commitments from corporate sponsors like Chase Bank and Safeway. Their generous contributions will put the books needed to take the literacy challenge in high school students’ hands.

R&T: In your opinion, what has led to our country's increased illiteracy problems?

LeBlanc: We’ve become a microwave society. All of the technological advancements made in the last ten to fifteen years were supposed to lessen our workload, make our lives easier, like the microwave. Press a button, and in two minutes it’s done—whatever ‘it’ is. Instead, we’ve created the expectation for immediate gratification. Whatever we want, we want NOW. (By the way, don’t you find it odd that with all these do-it-faster-easier gadgets, more people are dying from stress and stress related illnesses than ever before?)

In that same immediate gratification vein come things like video games, cell phones with text messaging, emails, instant messengers, Ipods, portable DVD players—notice the trend? Everything is available to us instantly, already formatted, be it visually or audibly. Reading an actual book requires work. You have to open the book, turn the pages, read the words, and allow them to create images in your mind. That’s too much work according to some folks. They’d prefer to sit in front of the television, pop in a DVD, and allow whatever is playing to be dumped into their brains. Strangely enough, people claim they don’t have time to read anymore. There’s that time issue again—didn’t we create gadgets that were supposed to take care of that problem?

R&T: What can the average person do to help? Why should we care?

LeBlanc: Everyone can make a difference in two ways. The first is to challenge themselves to read EVERY day, even if it’s only one page in a book that interests them. The second is to make sure that challenge includes your kids. If you have small children, read to them every night. If you’ve missed that chance and your kids are older, create some kind of system that will reward your teen for reading. Find out what really interests them (the operative word here is them, not you), then take them to the bookstore and help them find a book that revolves around that interest.

R&T: Do you have an appearance schedule for the Challenge?

LeBlanc: The list of high schools I’ll be visiting this year and in 2008 will be listed on the website very soon.

R&T: How can people sign up for more information? Do you have a newsletter available?

LeBlanc: For regular updates on the challenge and any other projects we’re working on, all you have to do is go to www.deborahleblanc.com, click the “Subscribe to newsletter” button, and the newsletter will show up in your email inbox about once a month.

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In Part I of this interview, Deborah LeBlanc discusses her books, work habits, and balancing career and family. For even more on the author, read Angie Ledbetter's earlier interview of Deborah LeBlanc in the Spring 2005 issue of The Rose & Thorn.

Angie Ledbetter is a Rose & Thorn newsletter and prose editor. She is a Regional Representative for the National Assn. of Women Writers in Louisiana and writes as often as time allows.

This interview may not be reproduced electronically or in
print without the express permission of the interviewer.

Deborah LeBlanc: Author Interview - Pt. 1 by Angie Ledbetter

It’s not often one comes across people in the writing world who love to share what they know with others and are generous about doing so. Author Deborah LeBlanc is one of those rare birds and Rose & Thorn tracked her down between flights long enough to have a chat.

LeBlanc is an award-winning author from Lafayette, Louisiana; owner of several businesses; a licensed death scene investigator; popular conference speaker; first female president of the Horror Writers Association (a post once held by Stephen King); president of the Writers’ Guild of Acadiana; and active member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers Inc., and the National Association of Women Writers. In addition, she is the creator of the LeBlanc Literary Challenge and author of Family Inheritance, Grave Intent, A House Divided, and Morbid Curiosity. Her next book, Water Witch, will be released in 2008.

Part I - Book Talk

R&T: What was the timeline/turnaround time on finishing your newest book?

LeBlanc: The initial turnaround time for Morbid Curiosity was five months. However, when the editor sent me the cover copy for review, I noticed the copy said the twins (main characters) were sixteen-years-old. I contacted him, reminding him they were in fact fourteen, not sixteen. A major debate ensued between editor, publishing house marketing group, and me regarding the twins’ age. Everyone but me was convinced they had to be sixteen. From a marketing perspective, I understood where they were coming from. However, there’s a HUGE difference between fourteen- and sixteen-year-old girls—the way they think, talk, interact with peers, etc. Geez, I should know because I raised three of them. Needless to say, though, I lost the debate and had to rewrite the book—in a week and a half.

R&T: How do you keep yourself motivated to get your manuscripts done and still have time for taking care of the details of the businesses you own?

LeBlanc: The motivation to get the manuscripts completed comes easily because I love telling stories. Once I start writing a book, I can’t wait to get to the end. It’s sort of like telling a joke, when you build up to the punch line and are anxious to deliver it. Fortunately, I can weave writing into the business part of my life because of the great team of people who work with me. Because of them, I don’t have to worry about the day-to-day business minutia. They take care of just about everything, which allows me time to write.

R&T: Do you have any tips for authors/writers about self-motivation?

LeBlanc: I think self-motivation is only part of it. Writing is not an easy gig. You’re alone most of the time and have to fill up hundreds of blank pages with just the right words placed in just the right order so they tell a good story. That’s easier said than done. Having the desire to write isn’t enough, in my opinion. The motivation may be there, but unless you have enough self-discipline to force yourself in a chair and on a keyboard (or pad and pen) each day to write, all the motivation in the world won’t mean squat. Before you know it, twenty years will have passed, and all you’ll have to show for it is a list of woulda, shoulda, coulda’s.

R&T: Can we have a short description of Morbid Curiosity’s plot line?

LeBlanc: Morbid Curiosity is about a set of twin sixteen-year-old girls who get involved with Chaos Magic because they think it will allow them to gain control over people and things in their lives. What they wind up conjuring, however, is their own death sentence.

R&T: It sounds like a fascinating story. What would you do different with this book if you hadn’t had deadline pressure?

LeBlanc: Without the pressure of a deadline, especially that ridiculously tight one created by the emergency rewrite, Morbid Curiosity would have probably been a different story altogether. And it