POE GIRL: What or who inspired you to be a writer?

 

AUTHOR: Back in the fifth grade, we had to write a poem. I turned mine in. The teacher, Mrs. MacGregor, called me up to her desk a few days later. I thought I was in trouble. Instead, she praised my attempt and told me to keep writing. And so, I did.

 

POE GIRL: What gave you the idea of your latest book?

 

AUTHOR:  I've been working on Owyhee Days for years. It's changed quite a bit from a woman arriving in Jordan Valley, Oregon, with the ghost of her best friend riding shotgun, to just a woman struggling all her life to fit in, be able to pay her bills, find a spot she didn't have to leave to start over yet again. I just let the story go where it wanted.

 

POE GIRL: Who is your favourite writer and why?

 

AUTHOR: I think it's L. M. Montgomery, who wrote the Anne of Green Gables series, among other fare. She could reveal character in a single sentence. Yes, she could be maudlin and overly long in descriptions of landscape at times, but when she was on, she was on. I'm also a fan of Louisa May Alcott, Barbara Kingslover, Stephen King, Robin McKinley, Isabel Allende, Ray Bradbury, Farley Mowat, Jack London.

 

POE GIRL: What's your favourite book?

 

AUTHOR: I don't know anymore. Books I've read over and over? A book I read once and still remember? I should put something by Proust but it's more the Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery, if I'm honest. A simple story about a mix up that profoundly changes a young woman's life...I return to it again and again, with real satisfaction at the main character, Valancy, finding her gumption and backbone to stand against her family when she thinks her time on earth is limited. She also manages to fall in love, take care of a friend no one else will and lives each day as fully as she can.

I find in these modern days I don't want something grim and gritty. I want softness and light and humor.

 

 

POE GIRL: Do you read a lot? If so, what are you reading right now?

 

AUTHOR:  I've been revisiting short stories. From Poe to Lovecraft to Chekhov to Shirley Jackson to Bradbury to...yeah. Reading them at work on my lunch break on my phone. I work in Special Education for right now, which is exhausting and depleting. I have a stack of books waiting, of course. Doesn't everyone?

 

POE GIRL: What writing projects are you working on?

 

AUTHOR: I'm reading through a novel of mine called Malheur Baby, about a Middle School age girl finding a newborn baby on the banks of a river. She gets it home to her grandmother, who decides the baby is now hers. It's set in Vale, my hometown. I'm also working on a sci-fi story called Frangi and Beep. It's not quite right yet, so yet another version and probably another one after that. Going to rewrite a tale about a girl who's had to live beneath the basement of her own father's house. Generally, short story writing at present.

 

POE GIRL: What do you like most about writing?

 

AUTHOR:  The escapism, if I'm honest. Going into other worlds, even off to other planets, is fun. It's fun. I get to make up people, I get to create new worlds and even new words. I attempt to get that story rattling about in my head into some form on the page-- they are never the same version. It's fun and I enjoy it. Lately it feels like pulling teeth but mostly, it's a comfort slipping into the worlds I invent, revisiting them or scratching them into life from the mud of my imagination.

 

POE GIRL: Where do you see yourself and your writing in five years’ time?

 

AUTHOR:  I have no idea. I want to give up every day. It's been a real slog, with seemingly very little to show for all my efforts. Hopefully, I'll be...I don't know. Probably still slinging out stuff to the writing gods, waiting to hear if I got an acceptance or not. Or telling people I've written several novels as I check them out at the local supermarket. I try to be funny and find myself sobbing instead.

 

POE GIRL: What one writing tip would you share?

 

AUTHOR:   Get it finished. Whatever you're working on, finish it. No matter how bad it is or if it's gibberish on steroids. Get it finished. You can work on the piece or discard it as hopeless, but you finished it. Writing can overwhelm you and convince you nothing you write is worth getting done.

 

POE GIRL: What would you say to educate and inspire young writers?

 

AUTHOR: It's your experience. It's your eyes noticing what's happening and your words capturing whatever you saw or heard or found out. How you tell a story is unique. You filter that story or experience or witnessing through you and what you've gone through. Little Red Riding Hood can have infinite varieties because those telling the story have something to add to it or take away from it or retell it completely. Lift your voices might seem cliched and obvious but it's true, nonetheless. How many have been silenced through the years that never got a chance to say their piece or heard at all?

 

 If you want to write, write. It's as simple and hard as that. It fits with what Red Smith, a sportswriter, is attributed to have said about writing-- “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”

 

 

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