Interview with Lynelle A. Martin, author of "Zapped, Danger in the Cell"

Wordtryst: We have a very special guest on Wordtryst today: 11 year old Lynelle A. Martin, co-author of Zapped, Danger in the Cell. Welcome, Lynelle, and congrats on your debut release! Can you tell our readers how you got started as a writer?

Lynelle: Telling stories was always a big part of my bedtime ritual. My mom and I would take turns telling each other stories or we would do team storytelling: we would make up a story and take turns adding pieces. When I was five years old I saw my Mom’s book in the book stores for the first time. I thought it was so exciting I asked her if I could write a book with her. She said that I couldn’t because she wrote grown up books. But I kept asking her until she finally gave in and decided to write a children’s book so that we could write together. We started this book when I was 8 years old. 

Wordtryst: How did you come up with the idea for your book? Tell us about the book.

Lynelle: My Mom used to work in a lab and sometimes she would take me to work with her and let me look at cells under the microscope. One time she showed me a movie with some cells dividing and I asked her, “What if someone could go into one of those cells?” I guess that, plus the fact that she was trying to teach me the parts of the cell, gave her the idea for the story.

Zapped! Danger in the cell is about four curious children on a field trip who discovers a strange machine. One of the kids touches a button on the machine and the three others got shrunk and zapped into an animal cell. While trying to escape the cell they go through a lot of exciting and dangerous adventures in different parts of the cell that have them running for their lives.

Wordtryst: When you began writing the story, did you know how it would end?

Lynelle: No. I knew I wanted it to begin with a field trip to the Museum of Natural History, because I had just been to that museum on my third grade field trip. But I had no idea how it would end.

Wordtryst: What kind of research did you do for this book?

Lynelle: We did a lot of research by watching videos on the internet that explained the parts of the cell, but I kind of thought it was boring especially when the models in the videos were labeled with words I could not even read or pronounce right at the time.

Wordtryst: When and where do you write?

Lynelle: I write anytime ideas come to my head and I decide to write them down if I can find paper. For Zapped! I wrote a lot of it during the summer of 2011 because I didn’t want to go to summer camp, so my Mom and I made it my summer project.

Wordtryst: What is the hardest part of writing for you?

Lynelle: The worst part of writing is the research and the part where I sign autographs because as it is my first time having a signature it takes time to get it right.

Co-authors Jewel A. Daniel & Lynelle A. Martin
at the Baltimore Book Fair, Sept. 2014

Wordtryst: What’s the best thing about being an author?

Lynelle: The best thing about being an author is the experience of seeing my book with my name and picture on it and knowing that I wrote that.

Wordtryst: What's the worst part of being an author?

Lynelle: Signing autographs, answering lots of questions, and sitting through book conventions.

Wordtryst: Do you plan to co-author other books with your mom?

Lynelle: Yes. Zapped! is actually part of a series where kids get shrunk and go on adventures that you can only see using a microscope. We wrote the second book in the series over the summer of 2012 and we began the third one in the series this summer (2014).

Lynelle demonstrating how to make a model cell out of
jello and candy, Baltimore Book Fair Sep. 2014

Wordtryst: How do you decide which parts you would write and what your mother would write?

Lynelle: My mom is a scientist so she wrote a lot of the “sciencey” parts. We did a lot of brain storming together about what would happen to the children in each scene. I wrote a lot of the children’s dialog to make sure the children sounded like children. And I did a lot of the editing especially when we were getting ready to publish it.

Wordtryst: How did you come up with the characters?

Lynelle: My characters are based on me, and my little brother and sister. My brother and sister are funny but very mischievous, just like their namesakes in the story.

Wordtryst: Did you and your mom disagree on anything?

Lynelle: How about everything? I wanted to start the story with a field trip, she didn’t agree, but in the end we started with the field trip. She wanted the characters to be nine years old, I wanted them to be around 10 or 11, but she came around. We even disagreed on how the kids got zapped.

Wordtryst: LOL! You must have been very convincing because you got to do some things your way. I understand some disagreement is normal with creative collaborations. So, what advice would you give aspiring writers?

Lynelle: I guess I would tell them to keep writing and let their imagination guide the way.

Lynelle signing copies of Zapped! Danger in the Cell! at the
Baltimore Book Fair

Wordtryst: What are some of your favorite books?

Lynelle: Dork Diaries. I could hardly wait for each new one to come out. When I first started writing the books I was into the Magic Tree House series, but I’ve grown out of them now.

Wordtryst: Tell us three interesting or crazy things about you.

Lynelle: My sister, my brother and my Mom (They are all crazy :) ). I don’t know, let’s see … I play soccer (interesting not crazy), I do gymnastics (interesting not crazy) and I play the clarinet (interesting and crazy: I’m not kidding, it really can get crazy).

Wordtryst: Where can people buy your books?

Zapped! Danger in the Cell can be purchased at Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble in both paperback and e-book format. It can also be purchased from the publisher’s website www.caribbeanreads.com.

Wordtryst: Lynelle, thank you so much for visiting our blog today and sharing your publishing journey with us. All the best to you, and to your mom and co-author Jewel A. Daniel. We look forward to hearing all about your future collaborations!

Blog in the Round - 4 Questions and Pass It On

I’m honored that bestselling, multi-genre author, Novel Spaces blog team member, and one of the most gracious and generous people I know, Marissa Monteilh (Marissa's blog link), has asked me to participate in Blog in the Round - 4 Questions and Pass It On. She was asked by award winning author Karla K.L. Brady (Karla's blog link). In the Blog in the Round, one author invites two authors, and so on, with each answering the following four questions about their writing life. It’s a great way for readers, and other authors, to get to know us better, and it demonstrates the amazing author camaraderie and support that we have for each other. I have chosen to invite mystery writer and acquisitions editor Sunny Frazier (Sunny's blog link), and award-winning author Stefanie Worth (Stefanie's blog link). You can check out their interview answers when they post on August 04, 2014.

So here goes:

What am I working on/writing?
I have several partly written short stories and novellas that I'm working on completing and getting out of the way before I begin my August task of editing a memoir and completing the first draft of my mystery novel.

How is my writing/work different from others in its genre?
I write in several genres, and I think that my Caribbean perspective is what makes my work different from other romance, mystery and lit fic stories. Even when the stories (such as Give Me the Night) are set outside of the Caribbean, the Caribbean vibe is there. As far as literary fiction goes, while a number of writers from the Caribbean have made significant contributions to the genre, each brings a different personal ethos to the work. The islands/territories are different in terms of language and culture, even though the history is similar, and each writer's experience is unique. I don't burden myself with an agenda, a "message", unlike other writers in the arena. What I do is tell stories of lives lived, and I leave it to the readers to take from them what they will. For me, story trumps all, regardless of the genre.

Why do I write what I do?
I've been an obsessive reader from childhood, and I write the kind of stories that I like to read. I write to escape the realities of the world and create a place where I have some measure of control over outcomes. I write because I love language. While I will read pretty much any story in any genre, my main interests lie in literary fiction, relationship fiction, mystery, and memoir--and this is what I write. I also enjoy humor and satire and I strive to incorporate these in some of my writing.

How does my writing process work?
First there's the idea, which can come while I'm sleeping, washing dishes, bathing, reading... When a story comes it feels like a flash out of the blue, but I think it really evolves out of the meanderings of my subconscious. Sometimes I have to stop whatever I'm doing and write the story immediately, as happened with "Miss Annie Cooks Fish" which ended up being shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. I was editing another story for a class I was taking and this one just jumped on me: Zap! Write me! I don't have a strict writing regimen; I write whenever I can. I get the most done when I'm on vacation and can maintain an interior focus, or stare into space indefinitely without freaking people out. I write the first draft then send the manuscript to my beta reader. When I get it back I start editing. This takes several passes until I tell myself to leave the darned thing alone or I'd never be done.

Thanks again, Marissa, for including me. I can't wait to read each author's blog as they travel in the round, a unique and inspiring circle of writer love!

Writing advice from the greats: John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck

In my first post on writing advice from the greats, we looked at what the Slaughterhouse-Five author, Kurt Vonnegut, had to say about writing good stories. The good writing advice does not stop there; John Steinbeck famously claimed that no one has been able to reduce story writing to a recipe, yet even he had a few ingredients of his own for creating good stories.

John Steinbeck's 6 writing tips:

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

Even the writers who claim there are no rules admit that there are a few that they live by. The only one I've taken to heart is that you never, never show anyone your work until the first draft is complete. Do you have one unbreakable writing rule? Please share it with us.

Next up on Advice from the Greats: Henry Miller's 11 commandments.

—Liane Spicer

Writing advice from the greats: Kurt Vonnegut

Remember the good old days when authors could exist in virtual anonymity? Back in those antediluvian times there was no need to strut the Facebook catwalk shaking our pert titles, or sashay our tight mini-blogs on Twitter. I, for one, never wanted to see authors, or chat with them, or discover their politics, religion, or taste in sex toys. If I liked them I wanted one thing only: more of their books.

Kurt Vonnegut

What always fascinated me, though, was what authors had to say about writing. Somerset Maugham famously claimed that there are three rules for writing the novel, but no one knows what they are. True, maybe, yet some of the guidelines passed along by famous authors can help us write the stories we want to write, and that readers want to read. Among the most helpful I've read are Kurt Vonnegut's 8 great writing tips.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Next up: Great writing advice from John Steinbeck.

—Liane Spicer

Passages: Rosa Guy

Two revered authors passed on in June: Ray Bradbury in California, and Rosa Guy in Manhattan, New York.

Rosa Guy, without ever knowing it, was responsible for one of the great serendipities in my life. When I started the query process for my first novel I discovered a website that listed literary agents who accepted e-mail queries. My current agent, Susan Schulman, was one of those who responded immediately to the first batch of e-queries I sent. I later learned from Susan that my query had stood out initially because I'm from Trinidad, the birthplace of one of her favourite authors - Rosa Guy.

Ms. Guy, who hails not only from my homeland but also my home town, did not hang around Trinidad for long. She went to join her parents in New York at the age of seven, but her mother died shortly after. Within a few years her father also died, and her round of orphanages and foster homes began. Her young adult (YA) books draw heavily on her experience of coming of age in New York without parents, money or family stability.

In her obituary in the NY Times, she is described as "one of the 20th century's most distinguished writers for young adults". Ms. Guy pioneered the exploration of tough, realistic themes in YA fiction - themes such as race, class, poverty, death and sexuality. In one of her books a teenaged character embarks on a lesbian relationship with another girl, a subject which was taboo in children's literature at the time.

She is best known for her trilogy of YA novels, The Friends (1973), Ruby (1976) and Edith Jackson (1978). Her novels for adults include My Love My Love, Measure of Time, and Bird at my Window. She was one of the founders of the Harlem Writers Guild in 1950 and a key figure in the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. Her gifts to literature and to humanity are immeasurable.

Ray Bradbury: A Legend is Gone

When I read that Ray Bradbury had died in California, my first thought was that I'd had no idea he was still alive. This was partly due to the fact that in my mind, all the the truly legendary writers have already passed on. He was 91.

I've read just two of Bradbury's works: Farenheit 451 (of course) and more recently, Zen in the Art of Writing. Farenheit is the kind of science fiction I love - great stories featuring heroic characters who are idealistic to the bone, with strong sociological themes that make them all the more compelling. These stories tend to be chilling: the dystopias they present are all too possible, even probable. Many are projections of conditions and trends that already exist in society. As Bradbury himself has said, "I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it."

When I read Zen in the Art of Writing a few years ago I discovered that many of Bradbury's famous quotations on the craft were lifted from that book. There's a reason these quotations have become common coin: they contain a wealth of wisdom condensed from the author's experience:

"Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories." (Hear that, people? Put down the danged iPhone, go outside and look at the stars!)

"I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it."  (Writers, there are no short-cuts. Grease up those elbows and get to work!)

"Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things." (Hope y'all are listening. Save the thinking for the editing phase.)

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." (Reality is a bitch. I often wonder how many of us would be locked up in jails or psychiatric facilities if we didn't have our creative outlets.)

Ray Bradbury lived his words; we can do worse than to live by them. The literary community has lost a great author, an invaluable contributor to that filigree that stretches back into the dim past from the books, films and songs of today, through the oral traditions to the stories imagined in dark caves. His bibliography - the novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, teleplays, children's literature and non-fiction - is staggering, and the works are as popular today as they were in the 50s. The author lives on through them.


—Liane Spicer

In the nude

I live on an island located within spitting distance of the equator and the setting on the regional thermostat is stuck at HOT. I don't thrive in heat; it makes me want to do nothing more strenuous than lie around and pant while fantasizing about diving headfirst into a pool filled with chilled watermelon cubes, or having a clutch of buff, dedicated young men in togas take turns at sliding ice cubes all over my skin. Focusing on anything that takes actual effort, such as writing, is really asking too much.

The first thing I do on entering the house is strip; once I'm in the privacy of my home I wear little or nothing. I've written roughly half a million words of fiction, most of them in the buff (or close), late at night when the air has cooled enough to render me capable of coherent thought.

My relatives and friends who know of my aversion to clothing are unanimous in their verdict: "Girl, you're CRA-ZY!" I was therefore delighted to stumble across an article this week that proved I was not alone in my strange (to others, utterly natural to me) predilection for writing au naturel. These famous authors did not live in the tropics, to my knowledge, so heat and humidity could not have been that much of a problem for them, but they're kindred naturist spirits.

• Agatha Christie liked to write in the bathtub. (Sounds lovely, but I'm a shower gal.)
• Benjamin Franklin liked to take 'air baths' where he sat around naked in a cold room for a couple hours while he wrote. (Air baths rock!)
• D.H. Lawrence, author of the controversial erotic novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (one of my favourites), liked to climb mulberry trees in the nude before coming down to write. (Um, no. No splinters in delicate crannies, thank you.)
• Ernest Hemingway, author of A Farewell to Arms and other classics, wrote nude, standing up, with his typewriter about waist level. (His cousin Edward Hemingway opened Britain’s oldest nudist colony, a nine-bedroom chateau called Metherell Towers, back in the 1930s. Cool!)
• Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, overcame writer's block by having his servant take all of his clothes away for the day leaving him nude with only pen and paper so he’d have nothing to do but sit down and write. (Wasn't life simple before they invented the Internet...)

I'm in such great company. I can't help wondering, though: Are there other closet naturist writers out there - or am I the last survivor of an almost extinct species?

Novel Spaces: The Novelist and his Work: Degrees of Separation

Who else found VS Naipaul's assertion that no women writers are his equal amusing? Join me on Novel Spaces for another view on the controversy.

Novel Spaces: The Novelist and his Work: Degrees of Separation: "The furor is at least a week old and has seemingly given way to newer feeding frenzies such as Weinergate . Yet, the uproar over VS Naipaul'..."

Guest author KS Augustin: Sharing the lurve

I'm truly delighted to host KS Augustin, fellow author, fellow Novel Spaces member, IT specialist, martial artist, and much more besides! Science-fiction romance is her first love, but she has also dabbled in fantasy and contemporary action romances, picking up a CAPA award nomination along the way. She was a Spectrum award finalist and has appeared on the Fictionwise Best-Seller List. Kaz has visited, lived and/or worked in the UK, North America and Australia, and has now settled back in south-east Asia. Without further ado, I give you... KS Augustin!

You can't believe how happy I was to discover Liane! The one thing that I love about being a writer is the ability to form friendships with extremely talented people from around the world. And, considering that Liane is in Trinidad and I'm in Malaysia, that's some distance to cover.

But one thing that also brings Liane and I together is language. With all those North Americans filling up the ether, it's nice to touch base with someone else who uses British English. You wouldn't think it's such a big deal, would you? It is. Finally, someone who can spell “centre” correctly. ;) Who's not going to confuse me with usage of the word “fanny”. (What, you mean...there [pointing to one part of the anatomy]? But I thought it meant...here [pointing to another part]?) Who knows that you cut up your meat as you eat it, not all at once at the beginning.

There's also a certain reserve to those of us who don't use US English. We're the more shy, retiring type. It takes a major effort, plus crowbar work, to get us to actually (shhhh!) promote ourselves. Mix in a Roman Catholic education and it's a wonder we don't faint the moment we're introduced to someone new. Oh yes, take all the neuroses of the average English person you've always read about, inject it under the skin of a colonialist education mixed with Catholic guilt for just breathing and you have us. ::waving:: Hi.

So, in true self-deprecating fashion, that's my roundabout way of introducing you to my latest novel. It's a science-fiction romance about an astrophysicist, the man she falls in love with and a weapon of immense destruction. But, it's written in UK English and I'd like to give each and every member of the Carina Press editorial board a big, smoochy kiss for that alone. Thank you Carina. And thank you Liane.

IN ENEMY HANDS

The Republic had taken everything from Moon―her research partner, her privacy, her illusions. They thought they had her under control. They were wrong.

Srin Flerovs, Moon's new research partner, is a chemically enhanced maths genius whose memory is erased every two days.

While he and Moon work on a method of bringing dead stars back to life, attraction between them flares, but that poses its own problem. How can their love survive when Srin forgets Moon every two days?

When she discovers the lethal applications her research can be put to, Moon knows she and Srin are nothing more than pawns in a much larger game. Together, they must escape the clutches of the Republic before they become its scapegoats. But there are too many walls around them, too many eyes watching. They want to run, but they're trapped on a military vessel in the depths of space, and time is running out....

COMPETITION: I'm giving away two copies of IN ENEMY HANDS at my blog, Fusion Despatches. To be in the draw, stop by and comment at the Competition post, telling me at which blog you read about my book. You have till 30 June!

Kaz Augustin is a Malaysian-born writer of science-fiction, romance, and permutations of the two. Her website is at http://www.ksaugustin.com and she blogs at http://blog.ksaugustin.com You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter; just look for “ksaugustin".

R.I.P. Frank McCourt

Even though he was 78, the news still shocked me. Chauncey Mabe, former books editor at the Florida Sun-Sentinel who now writes a blog for the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, has written a tribute here. I'll repeat my comment on his post:

This is indeed sad news. As a former teacher in the process of reinventing myself I take a particular pride in Frank McCourt’s achievements. Teacher Man is the most unsentimental and profound reflection on the profession that I’ve read. The prologue to that memoir was circulated among my teaching colleagues; it is a brilliant, painful shaft to the heart: Yes, he’s one of us. He knows.

He will be sorely missed, but he’ll live on in his work.

I reviewed Teacher Man on this blog almost two years ago. (The post is here.) His other books, Angela's Ashes (for which he won a Pulitzer Prize) and 'Tis, have been languishing on my wish list for too long. I'm moving them to the head of the queue.

Men, Fidelity and a Skillet

Novel Spaces is honored to host Bonnie Glover, our very first guest blogger, on July 10th. Her column, with the intriguing title Men, Fidelity and a Skillet: Back to the Basics, promises to be a thriller - so don't miss it!

Bonnie is the author of Going Down South (nominated for an NAACP Image Award for an outstanding literary work of fiction earlier this year) and The Middle Sister.

News just in: Bonnie Glover's novel Going Down South is #3 on Essence magazine's paperback fiction list - that's the August issue that's on newsstands now. Congratulations, Bonnie!

Elizabeth Gilbert: A New Way to Think About Creativity

Found this over at The Largest Writing Group on Facebook and just had to share. I don't think the author of Eat, Pray, Love needs an introduction.

Author interview: Lynn Emery!

Wordtryst: Lynn, welcome to my blog! I think I'm a bit starstruck... I've seen your books in stores here in Trinidad and in the US. When I think of the big names in multicultural romance, yours is one that immediately comes to mind. How many novels have you had published?

Lynn Emery: You're too kind! Thanks for the huge compliment. I have thirteen novels to my credit so far.

W: That is a staggering achievement. Monica Harris, my current editor at Dorchester, actually founded the groundbreaking Arabesque line of romances at Kensington around the time that your first novel was published there, I believe. Did you ever work with Ms. Harris?



LE: For sure! Monica bought my very first book for Arabesque. She was my editor for maybe 4 books until she left Kensington. I loved working with her. She is a wonderful editor, and a truly savvy book biz pro.

W: She certainly is! Lynn, one of your novels was made into a movie for BET. That must have been very exciting! Tell us a bit about that project.

LE: Not much to tell because it was a big surprise to me. I didn't even know that one of my books had made it to the short list (so to speak). BET bought the Arabesque line from Kensington in 1998 because they wanted to make made-for-television movies based on the books. Fast forward to a year later. I was taking my traditional Sunday afternoon nap and the phone woke me up. The president of BET Books told me After All had been selected. I managed to be coherent somehow- between being half asleep and surprised I may have come across as a bit too blase about the news or just as a spaced-out screwball, LOL! Either way once the fog cleared I was excited. The movie premiered on BET in December 2000. I had a huge party - had a blast. I still enjoy seeing characters I created walking around and talking. Kind of a strange experience, too!



W: I've heard that when writers sell movie rights to their work, they have absolutely no say in the making of the film. Was that your experience, or was there some measure of collaboration?

LE: Answer A is the correct one! LOL! I had nothing to do with the making of the movie. Once the company pays for the movie rights, that's it. In a few rare cases authors are collaborators, but most of the time authors just cash the check and keep writing. That's fine with me. Overall I think BET did a good job with After All. They made changes, but that is to be expected. Holly Robinson Peete did a great job as the female lead (Michelle Toussaint, ace investigative TV reporter, LOL).


W: How long have you been writing?

LE: I've been writing since I was ten or eleven, published since 1995.

W: Was your road to publication a difficult one?

LE: Not really. Night Magic was the first manuscript I started and it sold, so I have no stories of stinging rejections before that. But I've been rejected since then. Ouch!

W: Tell us about your awards.

LE: Night Magic was recognized for Excellence in Romance Fiction in 1996 by Romantic Times Magazine. In 2004 my HarperCollins novel Kiss Lonely Goodbye won three Emma Awards at Romance Slam Jam, the only conference that celebrates Black romance authors and novels. The award is named in honor of Emma Rodgers who founded one of the most influential black bookstores in the US, Black Images Book Bazaar in Dallas, Texas. Sadly she closed the store after over 20 years of helping black authors and readers connect.

W: What special books do you remember most from your childhood?

LE: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Reading that book when I was eleven made me want to write murder mysteries.

W: Who are your favourite writers?

LE: Ernest Gaines and Gloria Naylor are on my long list of favorite authors. I have eclectic taste in reading - I love Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes collection, Shakespeare, Walter Mosely, Paula Woods, and on and on. I love so many romance authors I've really stopped trying to pick favorites. You really don't want to get me started! LOL



W: You have a full time job as a mental health professional. How do you find time to write?

LE: Easy, I have no social life! Seriously though I make sacrifices, which is why I don't watch on-going TV series like Lost. And why I'm terribly behind in watching movies. But thanks to Netflix I'm catching up on movies slowly but surely :o)

W: What, to you, is the very best part of this writing business? ...Apart from the royalty cheques, that is... :)

LE: Writing is the best part, the excitement of coming up with the plot or characters and starting chapter one. Getting "in the zone" when the story is coming together the way I like it.


W: Lynn, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. It's been a pleasure.

LE: Thanks for the honor of being interviewed for your blog. Tell Monica I said a big "Hello!"

W: I'll be sure to!


Lynn's bibliography: Night Magic, After All, Sweet Mystery, A Time To Love, One Love, Tender Touch, Merry Christmas, Baby (novella in an anthology) were all Arabesque titles. For HarperCollins: Gotta Get Next To You, Tell Me Something Good, All I Want is Forever, Kiss Lonely Goodbye, Good Woman Blues and Soulful Strut. For Penguin/Putnam: The Lipstick Chronicles (novella in an anthology)

Her website: www.lynnemery.com
Her blogs: As I Was Saying, A Darker Shade of Midnight, and Be Encouraged

On the trail...

Another Google Alert just in.......... Café au Lait is now online at Target, the second store thus far. The release date in September is still five months away; I had no idea that the stores got their act together this far in advance. I'll continue to post sightings as they come in - ad nauseam, in fact.

In other news (clears throat to herald momentous announcement) - I'll be interviewing none other than author Lynn Emery in April. She'll need no introduction to anyone who's into multicultural romance, especially African-American romance. Those who aren't familiar with the name will just have to wait until next month to learn all about this remarkable lady!

Of puppy memes, oranges and movie rights

I found the puppy meme on Patricia Wood's blog. You remember her, right? I posted last year about the stellar launch of her novel, Lottery. Well, I hoofed it over there to congratulate her on two new triumphs in what has been a breathtaking authorial debut: she has been long listed for the Orange Prize for fiction (YEAH!) and... and... This is too much. Let me take another deep breath: Sarah Michelle Gellar has bought the movie rights to her book!

How about that, eh??!!

Congratulations, Patricia. You done good.

And now for the meme... What breed of puppy are you? I'm a German shepherd, they say. Seems I'm a bit more - um - assertive than I imagined.

You Are a German Shepherd Puppy

Intelligent, quick witted, and a bit aggressive. You've got the jaw power to take a bite out of anyone you choose.

What Breed of Puppy Are You?

Author interview: Sandra Cormier!

I first saw Sandra on the blog of that famous anonymous agent, Miss Snark, commenting under the moniker Chumplet. That was two years ago! When I started a blog of my own last June I looked up a few of the regulars I remembered from Snark's, Sandra among them, and discovered that her first novel, The Space Between, was published last year, and Bad Ice is due out in July 2008.

Sandra, I know that you're Canadian, and that you spent part of your childhood in Trinidad.

My father was a payroll accountant for a company that did large construction projects all over the world. We traveled extensively while I was growing up. His company placed our family in Trinidad when I was three years old. I remember the little cat that stockpiled hummingbirds under my mother's bed, and the neighbourhood dog that visited every home for handouts. We called him Brownie.

Along with Trinidad, we moved all over the Eastern part of Canada, mostly through the Maritimes. I love the rough beauty of the Atlantic and I'd like to move back there someday.

When I was a teenager, we spent a year in Mallorca, Spain. What a change from Canada! The atmosphere was so vibrant and stimulating for an impressionable sixteen-year-old. I returned to Canada with a whole new outlook on life.

We finally settled just north of Toronto. I met my husband while working in a camera store and immediately fell in love with his big brown eyes. We bought my parents' first home in Newmarket, and there we remain with our two teenagers, Chester the dog, and Ridley the grey retriever kitty.

What books do you remember most from your childhood? Were there any special favorites that you read more than once?

I loved Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry books. I think I've read J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings about ten times since I was a teenager. I loved to trace the lineage of the Elves and marveled at the different worlds the hobbits visited. I think LOTR sparked my interest in genealogy, prompting me to share my father's research into our Acadian roots.

What are some of your favourite novels?

I'll read anything - romance, science fiction, fantasy, historical and mainstream fiction. Wonderful works by new authors such as John Elder Robison, Patricia Wood and Therese Fowler have exposed me to new voices and experiences. I like to read many of my children's books, such as the Harry Potter series and Philip Pullman's Dark Materials. What great new worlds our kids can visit!

Of course, being a horse lover, I read almost every Dick Francis novel. Some of them twice! I love his characters' understated heroism.

When did you start writing, and what prompted you to begin?

After I finished college, I used my skills in art and photography, finally becoming a graphic designer for a newspaper. Writing had always been a passion, but until the kids were teenagers I just didn't have the time to give to it. Then one day, quite out of the blue, my lovely, supportive husband surprised me with a refurbished laptop. That day changed my life.

I couldn't wait to get started. Since I'm an incurable romantic I began with romance writing. For as long as I can remember, I've woven stories in my head while waiting to fall asleep, and now I had the opportunity to share them with others.

While writing, I bought used books on writing and set to work. I cruised the internet and discovered jewels such as Miss Snark and Evil Editor. The forums on Absolute Write gave me tons of advice. I joined a wonderful online writer's group and posted chapters for critique. Boy, I had a lot to learn.

When I thought my first book was ready, I queried like crazy. I wasn't ready. The rejections piled up, and I was disappointed. But I kept at it, learning as I went. My writing partners taught me a lot, and blogging editors like Evil Editor kept me going with advice and humour.


Tell us about The Space Between.

The Space Between is like an old friend. It is the story of Margaret, a woman who had endured a twenty year marriage marred with jealousy and mistrust. In an attempt to save their marriage, she and her husband embark on a once in a lifetime trip to New Zealand.

However, the plane crashes, leaving our heroine alone on a South Pacific island (can you believe it?) with David, a mature actor who is having his own doubts about his union with a much younger woman who had elected to skip this trip. Along with David and Margaret, we have Mitch, a used car salesman. He's a bit of a cad, and causes a heap of trouble.

Margaret and David must decide whether their attraction for each other is real, or just a result of the allure of the island.

I'm looking forward to reading it. It certainly does not sound like the cookie-cutter boy-meets-girl romance. I've noticed that your writing journey mirrors mine in some ways. Our first books were romance. Now we've written/are writing romantic suspense and mainstream women's fiction. I've dabbled in other genres. Are there others you'd like to explore?

I considered romance to be a great place to start. It might be the genre I stick with, but because of my eclectic taste I'd like to dabble in different genres. My second novel Bad Ice is romantic suspense, slated for publication in July 2008. I have two more in the works - another romantic suspense and a women's fiction.

I also have plans to write mainstream fiction with a large cast of characters, along the lines of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

Was your road to publication a difficult one?

It wasn't easy. I experienced many stops and starts and turns down the wrong road, but with the help of the aforementioned blogging agents, editors and fellow writers, I managed to attract two excellent e-publishers.

Present day writers are fortunate to have so many avenues open to them - electronic publishing, small presses and of course the larger publishing houses. Not to mention the vast wealth of information and support on the internet.

Family is important, too. My parents were thrilled to learn that I was writing, and were fantastic beta readers. When The Space Between was released in print, my cousins and aunts and uncles (I have a lot of them) cleaned out the stock at Canada's Amazon site.

This is just the beginning for me. I plan to finish two more books, get an agent and a place with one of the larger publishing houses. I have a few more ideas simmering on the back burner, so this writing gig could go on for a long time. I'm enjoying every minute.

You love ice hockey, ride horses, and paint beautiful portraits. You also have a young family. How do you fit writing into what must be a hectic schedule?

I always have time to watch a hockey game. Phone calls go straight to the answering machine when there's a game on, particularly during the playoffs. I had the occasional ride when the kids were small and my mom lived at home, but it fell to the wayside when she moved away. I still like to ride when I have the time, or can rope anybody into letting me ride for free!

Watercolour painting allows a flexible schedule, and I can paint whenever and wherever I wish. It's okay to put it down for a few days, and then pick it up during a quiet moment.

Now that the kids are older, I have time to pursue all the activities I love (and can afford).

I just want to say that I really appreciate the opportunity you've given me, Liane. I enjoy your blog and can't wait until your novel is released. This was fun!

Sandra, it was lovely having you as my guest! Thank you, and I wish you all the best in your publishing career!

The Space Between on Amazon
Bad Ice will be available July 2008 from Champagne Books
Sandra's website: www.sandracormier.com
Her blog: Chumplet Writes

January writer: Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1969. Because her parents immigrated to New York when she was very young, Danticat was raised by an aunt. Danticat says that the memories of Haiti are still extremely vivid in her mind, and that her love of Haiti and things Haitian deeply influences her writing.

At the age of twelve, Danticat joined her parents in Brooklyn. She later earned a degree in French Literature from Barnard College, where she won the 1995 Woman of Achievement Award, and later an MFA from Brown University where, as her thesis, she wrote Breath, Eyes, Memory (Soho Press, 1994). This novel tells of four generations of Haitian women who struggle to overcome their poverty and powerlessness.

Krik? Krak! (1995) was a National Book Award finalist. In this collection of short stories Danticat explores Haitian identity, culture, and tradition. Many of her stories address the island's political state of affairs.

The Farming of Bones (1998), was an American Book Award winner. Other works include Behind the Mountains (2002), The Dew Breaker (2004), Anacaona: Golden Flower, Haiti, 1490 (2005), and Brother, I'm Dying (2007). She is also the editor of The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures.

Danticat's short stories have appeared in over twenty-five periodicals and have been anthologized several times. Her work has been translated into French, Korean, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and other languages, and she has won many prestigious awards and prizes for her writing.

In her article We Are Ugly, But We Are Here we find a distillation of the ethos that drives the writing of Edwidge Danticat.

Writer of the month: Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid asserts that "I was always being told I should be something, and then my whole upbringing was something I was not: it was English." Our education system here in the English-speaking Caribbean is based on the English system, and many of our sensibilities are linked to that culture. As a child I was more familiar with imaginary crows and jackdaws than with the local bananaquits and kiskadees; my mental landscape consisted of bogs, heaths, and the grimy streets of Victorian London; tulips, daffodils and primroses populated the gardens of my imagination, rather than the heliconias and hibiscus in the hedges all around me.

I fully understand Ms. Kincaid's ideological dilemma.

Jamaica Kincaid was born in 1949 as Elaine Potter Richardson on the island of Antigua. In 1965 she migrated to New York, and attended Franconia College in New Hampshire for a year. Her first writing was a series of articles for Ingenue magazine. In 1973, she changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid because her family disapproved of her writing. For twenty years (1976 - 1995) she was a regular contributor to the New Yorker magazine.

In the novel A Small Place Kincaid expresses her anger both at the colonists (England) and at the Antiguans for failing to fully achieve their independence. In many ways, the identity Kincaid has developed is a result of English upbringing and the lack of a native culture due to colonialism.

In her other novels, Kincaid explores the mother-daughter relationship and the phenomenon of female bonding. Annie John, Autobiography of My Mother, and At the Bottom of the River provide the opportunity to explore Kincaid's relationship with her own mother as well as her development of identity.

A visiting professor and teacher of creative writing at Harvard University, Jamaica Kincaid has this to say about writing: "I'm someone who writes to save her life. I mean, I can't imagine what I would do if I didn't write. I would be dead or I would be in jail because - what else could I do? I can't really do anything but write. All the things that were available to someone in my position involved being a subject person. And I'm very bad at being a subject person."

What I'm reading right now...

My sister brought Angela's Ashes home some time last year but I did not read it for one very good reason: I wasn't in the mood to read about anyone's miserable childhood in Ireland. At the time I did not know several important things, such as that the author had written the book in his sixties after teaching high school in New York for 30 years, nor that he had won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award for the book, his first. I also haven't read 'Tis, Frank McCourt's account of his early years in the USA. Now that I'm reading Teacher Man, however, I can't wait to get my hands on everything he has written, to fill in the rest of this remarkable man's life - or rather, to enjoy his masterful recounting of it.

I know that Teacher Man will remain my favourite, though. Having taught high school English for twenty-two years, there isn't a single character, situation or emotion with which I cannot identify. This book should be essential reading for every teacher - maybe for everyone. I think it's the most honest and penetrating, unsentimental and profound analysis of the teaching life that I've ever read.

August writer: Rosa Guy

Rosa Guy was born in Trinidad in 1925. When she was seven her family migrated to the United States, and she grew up in New York City’s Harlem. Orphaned as a teen, Rosa and her sister lived in many foster homes and other institutions. She quit school at age 14 and took a job to support them. During World War II she became active in the American Negro Theatre. She attended New York University where she studied theater and writing. A number of her works deal with the realities of life in the urban American ghetto, the realities of life in the West Indies, family conflicts and the responsibility of family members to look after and love one another.

Ms. Guy is the author of fifteen novels, and has edited and translated several volumes. Along with with John Oliver Killens, she co-founded the Harlem Writer’s Guild, a writing workshop for aspiring black writers. Her work has received the Coretta Scott King Award, The New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year citation, and the American Library Association’s Best Book Award. In July 2005, Rosa was honored for her great body of literary work with the Phyllis Wheatley Award, given by the Harlem Book Fair. She lives in New York.

Bird at My Window (1966) is her debut novel. "Its brave examination of a loving, yet painful, relationship between a black mother and her son is even more important today. Rosa Guy is a fine writer and she continually gives us new issues to contemplate." - Maya Angelou

Other novels include: The Friends (1973), Ruby (1976), The Disappearance (1979), A Measure of Time (1983), and New Guys Around the Block (1983). My Love, My Love, or The Peasant Girl (1985) was adapted into the highly successful Broadway musical Once on This Island which was nominated for eight Tony Awards.