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Deborah Grabien |
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Deborah’s 18Q |
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1. Did you choose the writing profession or did it choose you? It chose me - something I think is true of every writer. Like music, writing isn't simply what you do, it's what you are.
I came of age in the seventies, where the motto was "have talent, will travel". See the biography, above; pretty much sums me up.
Oh, I've always written, starting with a very bad, very pretentious novel at age fifteen. In those days, I was concentrating on music, but I did begin to realise that, while I was a competent musician, I was a far better lyricist. All about the words....
Organic and completely character-driven.
No process at all. A writer writes, period.
I wrote my first novel as an adult in the late 1980s. The first agent I sent it to accepted it, and me as a client. Ruth Cavin, editor at St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne, read it and loved my voice (she actually used an excerpt from "Plainsong" as an example of the kind of voice she hopes will walk into her office, in the 1992 edition of Sue Grafton's "Writing Mysteries"). They brought out my first two books.
Right here:
Individual characters suddenly blooming into oddity or taking side paths I never expected them to take.
I don't; the stories are in there, waiting to get out. No external inspiration is needed, not for the core stories.
10. What is your proudest writer moment? The creation of John Peter "JP" Kinkaid, my narrator for "Rock and Roll Never Forgets" and the JP Kinkaid Chronicles. For personal reasons, writing him, first person in that particular voice, took more courage than I ever thought I had; it was recapturing a particular man I knew and loved and lost a long time ago. Bringing that voice to the page after shying away from it for thirty years....well. No comparison.
Honestly? I don't think anyone ever has given me advice about writing. I just - write. And always have.
I don't know about embarrassing, but the most "d-OH!" Homer Simpson moment came halfway through writing the third Haunted Ballad, "Matty Groves". The song/title in question felt very 17th century to me, so decided to set the book's original murder in that century, and I arbitrarily decided on a particular year. My speciality period in European history is much earlier - I'm a Plantagenet era woman - and halfway through writing it, I realised that I'd managed to pick maybe the only year in English history that was dead calm politically.
Trying to market and self-promote with no financial help and virtually no marketing help from my publishers. That's changed a bit recently, with both my publishers (Drollerie and Minotaur), but it's still hard. There's a very limited budget.
Tell me the story. A writer writes; get your butt in your chair, and write. And trust your readers.
Sex and food and rock and roll. Rescuing feral cats.
I don't read much these days. I've been into a massive gusher of writing (since May 2005, I've written six Kinkaids, two Haunted Ballads, a YA which is making the rounds, and too many short stories and articles to count), and when I'm writing this steadily, I don't read a lot. But, Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Peter Straub are generally safe bets.
Best advice? Words to live by: no excuses, butt in chair. If all you do is talk about writing, you aren't writing.
Finishing up the sixth JP Kinkaid, "Uncle John's Band". Finishing up a proposal for a paranormal love story, "These Dreams", in which I turn the incubus trope on its head. Getting ready to (hopefully!) begin a YA crossover about a 12-year-old guitar prodigy, a crossover with the Kinkaids, set in what we call the Kinkaidverse around here. And getting ready to hit the road to tour the first Kinkaid, "Rock and Roll Never Forgets", which hits the street on 8 July. |
