Interview with novelist Candi Sary

Today’s special guest is Candi Sary and we’re talking about her new adult-YA crossover novel, Black Crow White Lie.

During her virtual book tour, Candi will be awarding a $15 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:

Candi Sary graduated from the University of California, Irvine. Her awards for Black Crow White Lie include 1st Place in the Dante Rossetti Awards, winner of the Reader Views Literary Award for the West-Pacific, and first runner-up in the Eric Hoffer Award for fiction. The novel has also been made into a short film. Sary lives in Southern California with her husband and two children.

Welcome, Candi. Please tell us about your current release.

Young Carson has a rare and magical gift of healing. He lives in Hollywood motels with his mom, Juliette, who is a psychic and an alcoholic. She has nothing of value to offer her son so she lavishes him with lies. Carson befriends Faris, a tattoo shop owner, and Casper, a cashier at a head shop. These two unlikely mentors help this troubled yet extraordinary boy find his way to the truth.

What inspired you to write this book?
I was always drawn to stories about miraculous healings, especially being raised Catholic. No matter what terrible illness or disease I heard about, I always wanted to believe there was a possible miracle out there for it. Stories like the blessed waters where the Virgin Mary cured people gave me hope that if someone in my family ever got sick, we would have a solution. When I read Eat Pray Love as an adult, for some reason my intrigue with the healer in the book brought out all those old feelings I’d had as a kid. They stayed heavily on my mind and I knew I needed to explore them.

As a novelist, I get to escape into stories that feed my own fantasies. While I had to open up to gritty elements in Carson’s life as I considered what it would take for someone like him to become a healer, the overall feel I had while writing was wondrous and empowering. Wearing Carson’s shoes during all those years I wrote the novel, I felt the magic inside of me, as if his power were mine. And so it was the intrigue as well as the fantasy of healing that inspired the novel.

Here is an excerpt of the first scene Carson heals his mother’s hangover:

I set the remote back on the dresser and went to my mom’s chair. Putting my hands over her head I felt the tiny stars that always came. It felt like thousands of them came pouring out of my hands. I couldn’t see them with my eyes; I could only see them with my eyes closed. But I could feel them. They filled my hands with heat, and when I shared them with my mom, they made her feel better.

I don’t remember the first time I used the stars, just like I don’t remember the first time I used my voice. When I asked my mom how I got them, she said I just knew I had them in me—the same way I knew I had words in me.

What exciting story are you working on next?
My next novel is somewhat of a ghost story set in a secluded Northern Californian town. It made the finals of the William Faulkner William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition novel-in-progress category and so I feel I’m on the right track. What’s interesting about this novel is that one of the main characters felt really familiar to me the entire time I was writing. As the story unfolded, I came to recognize this girl was Juliette’s daughter, and Carson’s sister. Carson took her to live with his estranged grandmother in this ghost town because his own mother was not prepared to raise another child. Without having even thought about this story while writing Black Crow White Lie, it was amazing to find all the elements that were already set up in the novel to support this second novel. While the stories are very different, the characters’ relationships tie them together. It’s been a magical journey so far and I can’t wait to share it with readers!

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

As a kid, my favorite way to spend alone time was with my typewriter, creating books in my room. Even at a very young age, I already felt the longing to escape into stories through writing. At seven, I proudly called myself a writer.

Ironically, when I seriously started writing at twenty-five, I was too intimidated to call myself a real writer. I knew I was not very good at first and needed years of practice to improve. I wrote six “practice novels” that were not published, and during those years, I didn’t tell many people that I wrote. Then Black Crow White Lie came out and I started getting reviews and winning some awards. A filmmaker also approached me about adapting the story into a short film. People were actually connecting with what I’d written! That was when I felt the confidence to finally call myself a writer again.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
While raising my kids, I tried to treat writing like a full time job. I would drop them off at school, go down to the beach and surf for an hour to clear my head, and then spend the rest of the day writing until I had to pick the kids up at three. Of course life often got in the way, and I wasn’t overly strict about my schedule, but I did complete seven novels while raising my children.

Now that they are away at college, I do spend most of my days writing as well as working on my new venture, Blue Mary Books. My love of storytelling does not end with my own writing. I have started a small publishing company to publish other authors and bring their stories to life.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
When I am stuck on something, I go for a long walk with my iPod and look for clues to my writing dilemma in the lyrics of the songs. It may sound strange, but I really have come up with answers from music!

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

All that time I spent on my typewriter creating books, I clearly wanted to be a writer. But as I think back, I had another dream job… I used to visit my teenage sister who was a waitress at Cocoa’s and I thought she had the coolest job ever. I really wanted to be a waitress! That dream came true while I was in college and I supported myself by waitressing.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

It was really exciting to see my novel adapted into a short film. Watching an actor and actress bring Carson and Juliette to life—after years of those characters only living inside of my head—was such a thrill. I’d love to share the video trailer with you.

And thank you, Lisa, for having me on your wonderful blog!!

Links:

Website | Amazon

Thank you for being here today, Candi!

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