Interview with business writer David A. Fields

In today’s hot seat is David A. Fields and he’s chatting with me about his new business book, The Irresistible Consultant’s Guide to Winning Clients.

Bio:

Best-selling author and acclaimed speaker, consultant, and mentor David A. Fields works with individual consultants and consulting firms across the globe that are eager to accelerate growth, increase profit and create lucrative, lifestyle-friendly practices. He has guided consultancies ranging from one-person startups to the consulting divisions of some of the world’s largest companies.

David still advises corporate clients too. After climbing the ranks to become a partner at a prestigious consulting firm in Connecticut, David co-founded Ascendant Consulting, where he has attracted clients such as Abbott Laboratories, Church & Dwight, FMC, Warner Home Video, and many others.

He also leads the Ascendant Consortium, a unique, “general contractor” model in which David acts as both a client and consultant on the same project. The consortium now includes more than 150 consultants whose clients are a Who’s Who of the global business world. The Ascendant Consortium was a breakthrough for David professionally, and in this model high-dollar, high-margin projects are the norm.

David received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon. (Go plaid!) He is a hockey fanatic and eats egregious amounts of chocolate.

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

The Irresistible Consultant’s Guide to Winning Clients demystifies the process of creating a sustainable, reliable, lucrative new-business engine. While the book was written for consultants, other service professionals and salespeople have found it to be an invaluable resource.

Many sales-related books sound good in theory, but somehow the techniques don’t work for the average reader. Especially if the reader doesn’t view himself as a salesperson. My goal with this book was to pack it with practical techniques that every consultant could successfully implement to build their own practice.

Importantly, the book also distinguishes between selling and winning business. Classic sales gambits have little place in the world of building long-term client relationships. On the other hand, there’s a proven, six-step process to attracting clients who will pay handsomely and stay for a lifetime. That process is detailed in The Irresistible Consultant’s Guide to Winning Clients.

What inspired you to write this book?

Independent consulting—be it in solo shops or boutique firms—is a fabulous profession. I believe independent consultants are an extraordinary resource for businesses of all sizes and I have a passion for helping those who choose to lead small firms.

My expertise is the business of consulting and how to create high-value projects. I built a business around that expertise, and for years I sold projects for other independent consultants in my role as leader of the Ascendant Consortium. However, there’s a limit to the number of projects I could sell for others consultants, so I started teaching other professionals to win large, high-value projects on their own.

If the principles I taught hadn’t resonated or worked for other consultants, I would have dropped the coaching piece and continued focusing 100% on my own, successful practice. That exact opposite happened. My writing, coaching and mentoring helped other consultants break through the limits of their practices and achieve their aspirations. With that backdrop, I wrote The Irresistible Consultant’s Guide to Winning Clients so that far more practitioners can experience the success that those I’ve worked with directly have enjoyed.

What exciting story are you working on next?

My next book is Same Rain, Bigger Drops. After you learn how to win projects, also called “making rain,” the next step is to learn how to make every project you win more lucrative and higher value

My intention is to follow Same Rain, Bigger Drops with a book called Discovery. One of the underpinnings of my approach to business is that we are successful only to the extent we attend to other people and strive to understand them. To understand others, you must master the art of “discovery,” and I believe that deserves a book of its own.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

Am I a writer? (jesting) I was a consultant who writes until I found I had produced a fresh, enjoyable article every week for over two years. At that point, looking back, I realized that perhaps I’m not simply a consultant who writes; perhaps I am a writer.

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?

Gosh no! I’m a full-time consultant, coach, and mentor. I do write quite a lot, though. I have to write a certain amount every week because my “tribe” expects a new article weekly, and the only way to get a new book out is to treat writing like a precious client.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

For a “serious” business writer, I’m fairly irreverent. I like to pepper my articles with puns, silly food references, and my hand-drawn illustrations. (If you can call stick-figures illustrations)

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

I don’t recall wanting to grow up. The entrepreneurial spirit was alive in me pretty early though, and I happily sold homemade cookies from a roadside stand with my sister.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

Let’s see.

Two, core principles I teach my clients may be surprising to your readers who aren’t business-oriented. The first is that business isn’t about you, it’s about them. The second is that wealth isn’t a function of how much money you have, it’s a function of how many rich, vibrant relationships you enjoy.

Links:

Website | Twitter | Book site

Thanks for being here today, David!

Interview with author dhtreichler

Author dhtreichler helps me kick off a new week and new month by chatting with me about his new historical love story, Rik’s.

Bio: 

dhtreichler toured the global garden spots as a defense contractor executive for fifteen years. His assignments covered intelligence, training and battlefield systems, integrating state of the art technology to keep Americans safe. During this time, he authored multiple novels exploring the role of increasingly sophisticated technology in transforming our lives, and how men and women establish relationships in a mediated world.

Welcome! Please tell us about your current release.

It’s September 2001. Rik Bogart has built the ‘In’ club in lower Manhattan with his separation check from the CIA and the anguish of a lost true love. At least that was in his mind.

Ingrid Johanssen, an international news correspondent living in Baghdad, did not show up at the airport to accompany Rik when Saddam Hussein instructed him to leave years earlier, in 1991, just before Desert Storm.

Rik consequently spent nineteen months in prison after going back in a failed attempt to get Ingrid out safely.

But on a September evening 10 years later, she walks into his club seeking his help. Understanding he cannot resurrect the love that has haunted him, Rik refuses, but comes face-to-face with his continuing love for her.

He must overcome that decade of emptiness, and feelings of betrayal, to react when he realizes she is in the New York World Trade Towers on the morning of the terrorist attack. Then, that night, he finally learns what happened back in Baghdad and why.

In a hair-raising finish to the book, he decides to undertake a dangerous mission that will not bring her back to him, but, as a consequence, will make their reunion impossible. Rik draws on relationships and talents unused for more than a decade to tackle his task, knowing that, even if he’s successful, he must let her go.

What inspired you to write this book?

I was fascinated by the movie Casablanca and the novel Dr. Zhivago. Both told the story of how far someone would go for their one true love, even when they knew it was not going to end with them being together.

What exciting story are you working on next?

World Without Work will be available on Amazon later this month. It is the story of a world where half of the people can’t get a job because of automation. It traces the story of a young woman who has a job, but loses it. She must overcome impossible odds and a corporate predator who does not want to see her succeed, to triumph in the new reality with a little help from her friends and family.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

In elementary school when I was named the editor of the school newspaper.

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?

I am a corporate executive who develops strategies and works technology integration for a major corporation. I used to travel globally much of the time. Many of my novels were written in airplanes and in hotel rooms. I now find the time on weekends and evenings, often writing from sunup to sundown when the story begins to flow.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

After writing from airplane seats for many years, I now write at a standup desk.

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

An astronaut or fighter pilot.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I hope you have as much fun reading my novels as I had writing them.

Links:

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Thanks for being here today! All the best with your writing.

Interview with YA author Gene Scott

Author Gene Scott joins me today and we’re talking about his YA literary fiction book Jellybeaners.

Bio:

Gene Scott, a retired English and reading teacher, was born and raised on the prairie of Western Illinois, and has lived in Johnson City, Tennessee for thirty years with his much better half, Lana.

Welcome, Gene. Please tell us about your current release.
Here’s the blurb that describes the topic:

“The scourge of opiate addiction is deeply woven throughout world history, and the U.S. Civil War alone created roughly 200,000 addicts who spent their remaining years navigating shattered limbs and unstable minds.

…Fast-forward a century-and-a-half.

A 2014 report in in the American Society of Addiction Medicine revealed that 1.9 million Americans were addicted to prescription opioids, and that 18,893 lost their lives to opium-based pill prescription that single calendar year. Fifty-one American lives are lost each day.

Jellybeaners is a contemporary novel set in the heart of Appalachia, revealing the money ties, political corruption, wasted lives, and overall cash-churning nature of the prescription pill culture from perspectives spanning both sides of the law.”

The audience? Young adult readers with a literary bent and a thirst for knowledge about the intricacies of the pill mill trade.

What inspired you to write this book?
First, I’m an avid motorcyclist attempted to ride the TAT – the Trans America Trail – running from Tellico Plains, Tennessee to Portland, Oregon. The one trail supposedly composed of dirt roads cutting clear across America.

Two buddies and I took off on this adventure in the spring of 2013 thinking we’d cover Tennessee and Mississippi first and then would decide if we wanted to continue.

But the East Tennessee section is mostly crumbling asphalt country roads.

I rode a 650cc Honda dirt bike with knobby tires – thinking we’d be on dirt -- and while dropping down a steep asphalt stretch near Estill Springs, Tennessee I touched the rear brake (the road was slick after a light rain on the oily tarmac) and went down, shattering my left knee replacement. The accident occurred on the same day as the Boston Marathon Bombing, so I felt little sympathy for myself as I watched people with missing limbs successfully rebuild their lives as I rehabbed. Inspiration!

This was my first serious motorcycle accident in forty-five years of riding, but it taught me a valuable lesson.

Anyway, I fell in love with the Cherohala Parkway and Tellico Plains, which became the setting for Jellybeaners (“Kituwah Falls”) due to its natural beauty and proximity to Knoxville, the pill mill epicenter of East Tennessee.

Secondly, during the evolution of this novel, our family lost two friends to opioid addiction, both in their early twenties, both brilliant, handsome, career-minded men who would have contributed much to society. One was an artist, the other a just-graduated aeronautical engineer.

That sealed the deal.

If I could research this issue, put out the facts, and help people cope with the situation through the experience of these characters, it would be worth the effort.

Then a bizarre thing happened.

Two imaginary antagonists – Odessa Blankenship, the Knoxville pill mill queen, and her minion, the Falstaffian Lucinda Hornback – literally uncloaked and fell headlong out onto the front page of the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Real-life Sylvia Hofstetter was arrested and indicted in March of 2015 – exactly two years after I began researching opioids – for running a $12 million dollar prescription pill operation, which ended up taking at least nine lives.

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/november-trial-set-for-hofstetter-in-federal-pill-mill-case/145301689

Dilemma.

But since I’d started the book in 2013 and Sylvia’s evil empire emerged two years later – and was significantly different in several ways – I went ahead and published. Most of my research came from Georgia and Chattanooga newspapers reporting on a Dalton, Georgia bust before the pill mills actually migrated north into database-free pill-hungry East Tennessee.

Hofstetter sits in jail awaiting trial; Odessa, smarter and savvier, escaped to Cuba with her drug patróns, husband, and miniature Chihuahua Buladeen. There are many differences between the real and the imagined in this novel, but it makes my hackles rise whenever I think about how writers often conjure what’s really happening out there through interviewing people, digging through libraries, and reading regional newspapers.

For example, the government investigated Tom Clancy – a bored insurance salesman who cranked a blank piece of paper into his office typewriter for kicks and started writing The Hunt for Red October – because it appeared he held access to unauthorized information. But they dropped all charges when he proved to them that he’d pulled it all together at the library.

Which is possible due to the openness of American society and the Freedom of Information Act. May the current assault on our free access to information die a natural death; these are scary times, indeed. Fake news! Once Hitler controlled the media, it was over for Europe. We must remain vigilant.

Unfortunately, Jellybeaners will remain topical for years because opioid addiction is now being treated with: opioids. Which is quite controversial in Johnson City, where I live, as methadone and suboxone clinics are popping up like spring mushrooms.

Excerpt from Jellybeaners:
The bent, rundown shack, patched and cobbled with gray pieces of crating and splintering brown pallet board, windows covered with ripped opaque plastic, squats in a heap off Stout Street, coal smoke twisting out its chimney like vapor from an ebony nostril.

Three children wail hysterically, run in circles, pull their hair, and scream at their father, resting on his knees beside the dilapidated rust-brown ’92 Plymouth Horizon, the driver’s door flung open.

A school bus squeaks to a halt and four children bounce off, stop in their tracks, and stare open-mouthed at the scene.

Vane Sarge Walker pulls up in his beat-brown 2001 Chevrolet pickup. A trained emergency medical technician, volunteer firefighter, long-retired military serviceman, and recently retired Forest Service ranger, he lives nearby on a fourth-generation family farm.

The Mount Vernon Volunteer Fire Department’s red-light-flashing, chartreuse EMS vehicle approaches, the wail of its siren whining faintly, building in slow crescendo as it roars down the twisting mountain valley cut by the ancient Tellico River, which falls down the mountain grade toward the village of Kituwah Falls.

The dirt driveway, strewn with clinkers— cindery particulate chunks of burnt coal dragged out of the leaky furnace and tossed into the potholed driveway— steal Sarge's attention.

A homemade doll mother Sizer crafted and gifted her three-year-old Ashley the previous Christmas sits with its broken neck propped against the largest clinker, the head mashed flat.

Jumping out of his pickup, Sarge purposefully fixates on the doll, briefly ignoring the cacophony, takes a few seconds to collect his wits, and then slowly turns to face the inevitable.

The toy’s face, black-button eyes fixed on eternity, glistens wet-red in the short March dusk, staring directly into a gunmetal sky. A dirty-black tire track ends at its chin.

Sarge can neither swallow the sob nor fight back the wave of salt water cascading down the stubble on his cheeks before he turns to face the disemboweled heap lying in the driveway beside the driver, wrapping, then unwrapping his arms across his chest, choking between screams.

Poor Ashley. One more notch on the pill mill tree of shame, thought Sarge.

This couldn’t go on. Someone had to put a stop to this…

We’re going to pull those sonsabitches out by the roots, come Memorial Day.

Studying a raven circling high over the ridgeline to the east, he swore to himself:

Or die trying.

 

What exciting story are you working on next?
A novel based on a true story titled, Packages.

An East Tennessee high school kid (who just happens to love motorcycles) grows up in a wonderful small town where life is good and expectations are high. He enjoys excellent parents and a spiritually sensitive sister.

However, packages start arriving addressed to his friends in the neighborhood, packages mailed from Thailand holding return addresses from the older boys in the neighborhood – brothers, cousins, and friends -- now stationed in Vietnam.

Suddenly, the landscape changes and readers are taken for a ride through the late Sixties that will make their hair stand on end.

Think “Born of the Fourth of July” meets “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
When I tore the meniscus in my left knee back in high school, I couldn’t play sports my senior year, so I covered local events for the local hometown paper.
 

My basketball coach – magnanimously -- encouraged me to write.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I’m a retired English teacher. Wanted to be a journalist, but the school I attended – a regional university – sported a weekly newspaper and a journalism faculty riddled with dementia, poor geezers with cigarettes twitching in their lips and ancient coffee stains on their shirts.

The English faculty was at least twenty years younger and hot-to-teach, so I gravitated into their arms. One professor, from Estonia, knew six languages. One time I was in his office, and while he looked at my work, his children would wander in one-at-a-time and he’d address them – each in a different language, while he explained the Greek derivation of words I was using. We take our public education for granted, I think.

So I ended up teaching English and reading for nearly three decades, and now spend about a third of my free time putting words on paper. Volunteer work, motorcycling, photography, and travel eat up the remainder.

I write with a pen in the morning to slow my brain down, and then expand upon those ideas with the keyboard in the afternoon.

The first draft then undergoes massive editing. Jellybeaners was originally 90k words, but I cut it to 65k before sending it to Vince Dickinson, my editor, who cut it to 60k. By the time the second editor, Zee Mondee was finished, we published at 52,000 words.

Personally, I believe a lot of Indie novels dilute the market because they are not professionally edited.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I’m not sure how to answer that, so I’ll speak to what I believe is a common rookie mistake for beginning novelists like myself. Once you get into the groove as a writer, and the words flow with ease, you realize you’re a little mini-god -- small g-- and immediately your pages become overcrowded with characters and backstory. It’s a temptation that most novelists have to tame.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A policeman. Motorcycles! Guns! Chases!

But when the reality of the profession struck home -- especially after I read The Onion Field by Joseph Wambaugh -- I decided that reading and writing about motorcycles, guns, and car crashes might be more pragmatic.

Not that I don’t admire people who put themselves in the line of fire for our safety. God bless the great majority of these peacekeepers, who are highly professional and responsible. Like always, it only takes one turd to mess up the whole punch bowl.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I’m sixty-years old and still dreaming, still looking for the next adventure. The only limit to what you can do lies between your ears.

Links:

Website | Twitter | Facebook

Thank you for being here today, Gene!

Interview with children's author Rene Cournoyer

Children’s author Rene Cournoyer joins me today and we’re chatting about The Fantastic Adventures of Sticky.

Welcome, Rene. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am blessed to have two wonderful children and five beautiful grandchildren. They have kept me young at heart.

Writing a book has been a lifelong dream. Science fiction and fantasy are what I love to read and wanted to write about. However, I could never get the book out of my head and onto paper. My grandchildren have always told me I’m a big kid at heart and suggested I write a children’s book. It resonated at once, the children’s genre is where my book belonged. The next day I started typing and never stopped. As a result, Sticky was born and grows in time.

You’re all invited to come take this journey with Sticky and his friends.

What do you enjoy most about writing short stories?

Each of my characters are a part of me and I feel like I am living the adventure with them. If there’s comedy, suspense or even pain from injury, I feel it all when I write. Even though my characters are a part of me. I feel a stronger connection with each one of them. I find writing to be very therapeutic. When I find myself laughing out loud while writing, I know something is going right, because it feels so right.

Can you give us a little insight into a few of your short stories – perhaps some of your favorites?

This is my first book. I do have more planned after this 4-book series. I have another 3-book series that continues where this one leaves off. There’s an ongoing story built into all the adventures that happen throughout the series. Sticky has a way of finding trouble and trouble almost always finds him. He can go from total klutz to hero of the day.

One of my favorites is when Sticky cracked the Liberty Bell with his head and another is when he saved a little girl from a fire in the barn. Klutz to hero, that’s my Sticky.

What genre are you inspired to write in the most? Why?

Children’s fiction. There is not a doubt in my mind that I belong in this Genre. I am a kid at heart and I have so much fun creating adventures, suspense and comedy.

Because my book has Sticky going from the fantasy world and into the real world in Philadelphia – 1776. I get to teach kids some of our history and they can have fun while they learn it. To be honest, I learned a few things myself. I have Sticky reliving the events and then I put footnotes that teach the real history. The second series, ‘Sticky and the Magical Portals’ is a trip to Boston in 1777. They make a trip from Springfield to Boston and have many adventures along the way.

What exciting story are you working on next?

I have 10 other books in their 1^st stage of writing. They are all adding to Sticky’s adventures for Sticky. These 10 books create 3 more series You get to read about how these characters grow in many ways. There are also many life lessons for the kids as Sticky does a good deed and is commended for it. He is also told when he is doing something wrong and is corrected by Robyn, the leader of the group.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I have always wanted to write a Science Fiction novel like Enders Game or Lord of the Rings. I wanted to create different worlds and have continuing stories about them. I always wanted a continuing series. I have that kind of imagination.

The problem was getting the book out of my head. I started many novels and stopped after a few chapters. It just didn’t click. Back in 2011, I was sharing this story with my grandkids. They suggested that I write a children’s book. Because I am a kid at heart, I should be writing for kids. That was all I needed to hear. It hit me like a brick.

The next day when I was driving to work, I had to pull over and take notes. A massive volume got downloaded into my head. The ideas were floating around in my head and needed to come out. And come out they did. I typed for months, morning, noon and night. When it stopped and I went back to see what I wrote. I couldn’t believe it. Hundreds of pages, mostly in 1 paragraph. I had my work cut out for me. So, I divided and conquered the manuscript. I knew nothing of how to properly format a children’s’ book. I had so much to learn. It was overwhelming and thoroughly exciting at the same time. I loved the whole journey and continue to love it today.

How do you research markets for your work, perhaps as some advice for writers?

Google is everyone’s best friend, no matter what you’re doing. I go from one writers site to another. I don’t leave a site until I have learned something new. When you write, you must keep reading. It’s probably your best teacher. I read books at home and listen to audio tapes when I’m driving. I don’t listen to music or news stations on the radio. It’s all about the books.

Believe it or not, writing your book is the easy part. It gets difficult after that. There is so much to learn. Never give up your dream.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I would have to say that the character flaws of my characters, are my own. They are truly a part of me.

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

I wanted to be an astronaut. Soaring to the stars on an endless adventure. I do get to enjoy the endless adventure. It’s here on earth and not in the stars. However, you never know what the future may bring for Sticky. Anything is possible with this crazy little elf.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I have found that my books are good for all ages. I read them weekly to my grandchildren when they couldn’t read. They couldn’t wait for the next part of the ongoing story. My brother and sister read them and loved every bit of them. My father, who is 90, read the series. When he finished, he came up to me and hugged me. He thanked me for letting him feel young again for a brief moment in time.

Thanks for being here today, Rene.

Interview with historical fiction author Katherine Stillerman

Historical fiction author Katherine Stillerman joins me today and we’re chatting about In the Fullness of Time: One Woman’s Story of Growth and Empowerment.

Bio:

After thirty fruitful years as a public school educator in North Carolina, Katherine Stillerman retired to take up writing as a second career. When she’s not writing, she’s reading or relaxing with husband Bill in their empty-but-cozy nest in Winston-Salem, or spending time with one of their nine delightful grandchildren, who keep her young and on her toes.

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

Set in South Carolina in the early 1900’s, In the Fullness of Time is the story of Hattie Barton’s struggle to reconcile her life as a wife and mother with her passion for women’s suffrage. The book, a sequel to Hattie’s Place, is loosely based on the life of my grandmother, who graduated from Greenville Female Academy in 1906, got a teaching job in a neighboring community, and ended up marrying the man in whose home she was boarding, after his wife tragically died and left four young sons behind. Those were the circumstances around which the plot revolves in Hattie’s Place, the coming of age of a young woman into adulthood and independence.

In the Fullness of Time continues the story, with Hattie now married to Charles Barton, widowed father of four young sons and twenty-three years her senior. Hattie loves the boys unconditionally, though she longs to have a baby of her own. To complicate matters, her lingering feelings for Will Kendrick, to whom she was once engaged, resurface and threaten to undermine her relationship to Charles, when Will unexpectedly comes to town. As she struggles to keep her marriage on course and pursue her work for women’s suffrage, Hattie embarks on a second coming of age journey in which she searches for a way to have it all.

What inspired you to write this book?

When I began writing In the Fullness of Time, I wanted to thrust Hattie into the women’s suffrage movement, aware of the constraints that would have been imposed on her by the southern social order. I wanted to explore the quotation attributed to Cary Chapman Catt, who said, “No stronger characters did the long struggle produce than those great-soul southern suffragists. They had need to be great of soul.”

Excerpt from In the Fullness of Time: One Woman’s Story of Growth and Empowerment:

The following excerpt from Chapter 1 expresses it in Hattie’s words:

Hattie knew that woman suffrage was an uphill battle in her male-dominated state. Their politicians consistently praised the virtue of their women as keepers of the hearth and home, as well as guardians of all that is pure and good. They elevated their women up on pedestals, as high as the woman depicted in the Statue of Freedom that crowned the top of the Capitol dome—pedestals that were lofty enough to serve as prisons without bars.

Hattie thought that such an atmosphere was why strong southern women, such as Alice Barton Rivers and Lila Givens, became so pushy and aggressive. Their intellects and organizational abilities far exceeded those of most men. Forced up onto their pedestals, they were kept far from the reach of public decision-making, politics, and commerce. With their spheres of influence severely limited to “women’s work,” they had to satisfy their ambitions with trivial and mundane tasks.

Thus, they elevated the trivial and the mundane to the highest level of importance. They became obsessed with the running of their homes, organizing political events for their husbands, setting the most elegant banquet, and fretting over every detail—the color of the napkins and the arrangement of the flowers—as though the turning of the world upon its axis depended upon it. If these women had been born men, they would have inherited fortunes, been groomed to attend the finest colleges, managed vast resources, run local and state governments, waged wars, and made important decisions that could have truly impacted the outcomes and lives of others.

The denial of equal rights placed a restriction on all women, and of course it was devastating to poor and colored women. But Hattie thought it had a unique disadvantage for women of means like Lila and Alice. For the first time, as she compared them to these liberated women at the suffrage headquarters, she had a new respect for how they carried on anyway and how they operated within the constraints of the social order imposed upon them to get things done. She definitely wanted to be counted among them. Somehow, she would find a way to manage all of her marital duties and still make time for this all-important cause.

What exciting story are you working on next?

I’m working on the 50,000-word draft I finished during National Novel Writing Month (Na-No-Wri-Mo). The working title is Mountain Brook Memories: 1961-1963. It’s about a preacher's kid whose family moves to Birmingham, Alabama, into the affluent and highly segregated neighborhood of Mountain Brook. The main character, Harriet Elizabeth Oechsner, the granddaughter of the protagonist in my first two novels, is faced with the challenge of being an outsider and of finding her place in a society steeped in tradition and staunchly resistant to change. The story is played out against the backdrop of the Cold War and the American Civil Rights movement. My goal is to publish the novel at the end of the year or early in 2018.

This book would be the third in the series of the Hattie novels, only it skips a generation. Ultimately, I envision filling in the gap with one or maybe two more novels, taking Hattie through the Great Depression and World II, and then following her into her later life, in the 1970’s when she develops into a quirky and impulsive older adult, who learns to drive at 76, and is plagued with the onset of dementia.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I’ve thought of myself as a writer for most of my adult life, having taught writing as a language arts teacher and having written numerous curriculum materials and guides during my career as an educator, as well as publishing articles based on my doctoral dissertation. What I wrote then was for very specific, limited, and sometimes captive audiences. It was not until I published my first novel in 2015, that I began to view myself as an author, with a much broader audience, none of which is captive and all of which is dependent for success upon my ability to engage and entertain my readership. And the scariest part in this writer-turned-author process is the potential to be critiqued, rejected, and worst of all ignored. Sometimes I think I’d be content to drop the author part and just be a writer, but then what would be the challenge in that? I’m in it now for the long haul.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I’m fortunate to have the luxury of being retired on a generous pension from the state of North Carolina, so I can pretty much write whenever I choose to. There are very few days when I don’t spend at least six hours at my computer, either writing, editing, researching, or working on a blog for my website. When I’m not actively working on a novel, I try to read and review as many books as I can.  

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

As a writer of historical fiction, I love reading newspapers from the era of the book I’m working on. The community columns are my favorite. One in the Keowee Courier in 1908 told of a church bake sale where each cook put a sticker with her weight attached to the bottom of the baked item she donated. Each item was priced according to that number, e.g. if the cook weighed 110 pounds, the pie would sell for $1.10.

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

I wanted to be a veterinarian or a ballet dancer. Instead, I got a dog and taught school.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

Thanks for allowing me to share my work with you today.

Links:

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Thank you for joining me today, Katherine.