1: What is the most productive
time of the day for you to write?
Years
past I would have instantly said early morning, late at night. Now I know that I can open the spigot
to a good block of writing if I get an opening line in my head and it triggers writer’s
excitement. As an example: in “Daughters” I had the death of a
child to write and I knew it would be more emotional if I kept the writing
factual. “The twenty-ninth verse
of the Gospel according to Matthew depicts a God who is capriciously cruel.” Once I had that opening, I knew I could
sit down and write the entire scene.
How do I court a good opening line? I go for a walk or wash dishes or do any chore that allows a
contemplative mood
2: Do you start your projects
writing with paper and pen or is it all on the computer?
I
wrote my first book: Report From The Heart, on a Royal manual typewriter with a
missing N. When I got the contract to write “Best Friends” I bought an electric
typewriter. When I began the
historical “Daughters” I bought one of the early word processors. I have not written with paper and pen
since that time. I do however
always carry a notebook and jot down thoughts that I think I will need. By the way, I am an avid reader of
the Paris Review Author Interviews.
I love to know how other writers do it. Hemingway began writing at 6 a.m, each morning. He wrote standing up, with pencil and
paper on the top of a bureau
3: What do you draw inspiration
from?
It’s
always a person whose story I want to tell. And I need to get the tone of voice right before I can have
faith in the project. I think if you get the “voice” right in the story, the
reader will trust you enough to stay with the book. Also, I’m very economical so I use my life experience to
pick a setting for a novel. If the setting is interesting enough, it becomes an
important character. I used to be a copywriter for the Macy Corporation Chain
of Department Stores and I set my novel, Nothing To Lose, in a department
store. Although the story is about
the heroine’s physical transformation, it’s nice to be able to place her behind
the scenes of a bustling department store. Plus, she gets the young president of the chain to fall in
love with her.
4: Do you set goals for yourself
when you sit down to write such as word count?
I
am not a disciplined person. I am
capricious and probably have adult ADD because I find it hard to stick to a
daily routine. The best way for me
to set a goal is to have a contract for a book. Then, being a good convent school graduate, I am honor bound
to have that book finished by contract date. Left to my own devices, I would be like Joseph Heller who
took eleven years between Catch 22 and Something Happened. That said, my recent entry into the
self-publishing field has given me new ambition and I’m writing daily but still
with no set word count.
5: Are you a published or a self
published author and how do you come up with your cover art?
Most
of my books were traditionally published by Simon & Schuster, Bantam/Dell
and Putnam’s. Many of them had
foreign sales and were translated into other languages. The rights to those books reverted to
me and I have published them as Kindle editions and Smashwords editions. I also
have two books that are Kindle originals and plan to do a few more. Having done both, I love the freedom of
self-publishing. Knowing I can
publish what I write without the agony of going through traditional publishing
has been tremendously liberating.
I am eager to write now.
That was not the case before.
Traditional publishing can crush a writer’s spirit. It takes too long to get the book to
the public and once it is out there, they take it back in about ten
minutes. As for my cover art, two
of those aforementioned wonderful children are very generous and do my cover
art.
6: What drives you to choose the
career of being a writer?
Most
writers can’t help being writers and many (myself included) wish they didn’t
have the “writing monkey” on their backs because they don’t feel good unless
they are writing. From ages four
through seven, I lived in three countries and ended up in boarding school at a
very early age. The loneliness and
displacement anxiety created a child who lived mostly in her head. I still live in my head. Although I’ve raised three great children
and worked for ten years at a film festival here in East Hampton, I am most
comfortable when I am alone.
7: Do you own an ebook reading
device?
I
just got a hand-me-down Kindle from my oldest son who upgraded.
8: Who are some of your favorite
authors and What are you reading now?
My
favorite author for language is F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love John Cheever’s Short Stories. I loved Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth
Strout. I like Sue Grafton’s
Kinsey Milhone series. I like much
of Anne Tyler. Right now I have a
Sara Paretskey book, a Janet Evanovich book and Ellen Degeneres’ book on my
desk. I picked them up at a garage sale.
9: What do you think of book
trailers and do you have any plans to have any?
I
have a friend in the e-book business and he showed me a beautiful trailer his
company did of Pat Conroy for his e-books. It made me realize how powerful a trailer can be to connect
the author with the reader. I am
not particularly tech savvy but I will probably get a device pretty soon to
help me make trailers.
10: How did you come up with the
title of your latest book?
I
titled my latest book One Hundred Open Houses because I love to go to Open
Houses and I think for a while now, real estate, has been the new drug of
choice. We all love real estate
talk and the heroine in OHOH
becomes addicted to looking at apartments in New York City, certain she will
find one that will change her life.
11: What are you working on now
that you can talk about?
Right
now I am finishing three novels that have been waiting for me to get my act
writing act together. Faith and
Hope: another historical set at
the time of the robber barons, when J.P. Morgan played solitaire and locked up
the bankers until they devised a plan to save the banking system from collapsing. Almost Fifty: a reclaimed housewife leaves a twenty year marriage and
re-enters the workforce and a new life.
Tough As Nails: a mystery starring a crazy, ADD muddled woman detective
who is barely able to function.
Thanks for the nice interview. Consuelo, I like that you've been able to adapt to writing when you want to write instead of trying to stick to a schedule. Sometimes it's hard to break habits such as thinking we can only write during our "writing time."
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