1. What literary pilgrimages have you gone on? – When I was a teenager we went on a family vacation throughout New England. That was the first time I visited Salem, Massachusetts, the primary setting of my books. But before we went to Salem for lunch, we did a quick literary pilgrimagein Concord. There are four American literature titans buried on the same hill in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery: Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. It’s actually called Author’s Ridge because of that. They all lived and wrote in the Boston/Concord/Salem area. I have a family connection to Hawthorne. My eighth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Ingersoll Burrows Hinche (one of the characters in my third book – EIBH for short), died in Concord as well and her great-niece, Susannah Ingersoll, was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s cousin.He got the name for the House of the Seven Gables from a storySusannah told him about her house once having seven gables. Hawthorne was a descendant of Judge John Hathorne, one of the magistrates who presided over the Salem Witch Trials, and Susannah was a distant great-niece of Deacon Nathaniel Ingersoll (my eleventh great-uncle), one of the primary accusers of Elizabeth Proctor.
2. What is the first book that made you cry? – The first thing that comes to mind is Jane Eyre. I’m a sucker for a good gothic novel. I remember being rather emotional about Mill on the Floss, too, but when I tried reading it years later I had a hard time getting into it again.
3. Does writing energize or exhaust you? – Completely energizes me, so much so that I can get lost in it very easily. Hours can go by and I’ve forgotten to eat, which probably isn’t a good thing. There’s nothing better than the felling of piecing together a complex plot and having everything fit just perfect.
4. What is your writing Kryptonite? – Being tired. Sometimes it’s just impossible to work on things in the evening. Having a full-time job and a family while trying to write a book series is tough. I reallyneed a three-day weekend every week to get enough sleep.
5. Did you ever consider writing under a pseudonym? – I guess I kind of do already. S. and A. are my first two initials. I started using that when I was in college writing plays and it just stuck. It’s a kind of non-binary way of being me. I don’t shy from using my first name in interviews. I’m not trying to hide who I am. My initials just became my writing identity.
6. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? – I work in themed entertainment, and I have a theater background, so I have a lot of writer friends. I live with a writer, too. My wife has an MFA in screenwriting from AFI. I think that’s helpful because when I’ve got my head buried in my laptop she knows to just leave me alone and let me work. I love getting critiques from my writer friends because they tend not to sugar coat things. I need real, solid advice and feedback. All writers go a bit blind to what they are working on. If you’re good, you know in your gut when something isn’t right, but sometimes you need a fellow writer to give you that confirmation that you should fix it and make it better.
7. Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book? – Right now, I’m working on the Beckett Coven series. Each book picks up right where the last one left off as a continuous story, but I’m trying to write them so that they can eachstand on their own, as well. I’m having a couple of people read book two without reading book one first, just to test and see if they can follow along without being confused. So far so good. Ideally you will read them one right after the other in order. I think it will be harder to get the full experience if you accidentally jump in at book three. It’s something I have to constantly keep in mind while I’m writing each one. Where am I in the arc of this book, but also where am I in the arc of the entire story, and am I feeding both accordingly?
8. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into?–When I was in school, we read the Scarlet Letter. I liked the overall story, but I had a hard time reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s prose. I just find him difficult because he’s more verbose than visual for me.Maybe I just didn’t really care for what he referred to as his “romances”. I’ve been trying to read him more now because of his connection to my family, the Ingersolls. I guess that’s forcing me to grow into him. His latershort stories like, “The Birth Mark”, “Ethan Brand”, and “Wakefield” are haunting and super creepy, so I really like them, of course.The fun part is that some of my family’s surnames pop up in his characters periodically, like the Wakefields (my direct ancestors) and the Walcotts (our cousins out in Salem Village.) The “Wakefield” story might be a nod to my eighth great-grandmother (EIBH) who was abandoned by both of her husbands and managed to successfully raise four children on her own. Her mother was Elizabeth Wakefield Ingersoll. It’s likely Susannah Ingersoll shared EIBH’s incredible story with Hawthorne during one of their sitting room chats.
9. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? – The Tell-Tale Heart by Edger Allen Poe. I don’t hear much about it anymore. That has and always will be one of the most terrifying things I have ever read. It explores someone, who’s probably a sociopath, trying to convince themselves and others that the horrible thing they did was justified. People are scarier than monsters, and I definitely lean into that concept in Whispers of the Pale Witch.
10. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? – I have two and I put both of them into the Beckett Coven series!Baldrick is a big black German Shepherd who is fiercely protective of his owner, Elizabeth Ingersoll. He basically is her familiar in a lot of ways and totally in tune with her. I love that he is kind of a big goofball around his family but to anyone else he can be super frightening. The other animal in the Beckett Coven series is Solstice, Hester Beckett’s cat.But when Hester dies, her great-niece Kylie begins caring for Solstice. She’s a grey and white tabby who’s a fantastic mouser and very sensitive about the spirits who whisper throughout Hester’s house. Most of the time she just wants to sit in her cat tower and wait for someone to feed her. (I probably just totally described myself with both of these animal characters!)
11. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? – I’ve written and had several plays produced locally in Southern California, and I’m a full member of the Dramatists Guild of America. None of my full-length plays are published, but I did self-publish two of my one-acts, Black Mary and Sadeness. I also have a bunch of teleplay and film scripts that I’d like to do something with. That’s where Whispers of the Pale Witch came from. Part of it was originally a TV pilot that I wrote about twenty years ago.
12. What did you edit out of this book?–Part of the challenge of writing a continuous book series is trying to figure out what should go where, especially if you are jumping back and forth in time. The first scene of book two at one point was the first scene of book one, but I decided it made more sense to move it to the second book. Since Whispers was originally something else, a teleplay, I did make some changes along the way. Kylie was originally Native American and European descent, which is more in line with my heritage and ancestry. Her Aunt Hester was always Black, but at some point I leaned into Kylie having more of a tri-racial background, thereby allowing her to embodyall the different people who resided in Salem during the witch trials era. That’s not really an edit out. It’s more of an edit in.
13. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? – What I do now for my day job is my dream line of work outside of writing. I feel very lucky that I get to do both. As a themed entertainment professional, Iwork with some crazy talented people, and we get to build things that make people happy. Then at night when I get home, I open my personal laptop and dive into my writing world. By night I scare people and during the day I make them smile.What could be better than that?
14. Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find? – Oh my gosh, there are so many. I think you can experience my books on a surface-level and still enjoy the fun ride. But there are so many things that go deeper, which I hope leaves you thinking about them long after you read the last sentence. When you finish book two, you are going to want to read book one again to get some of the little treats I’ve left for you. Also, there are nods to other witchy books, films, and TV shows throughout Whispers of the Pale Witch. Some of my personal experiences have been dropped here and there, as well. My mother suffered from mental illness, so there are things about my childhood with her that I’ve woven into the book, secretively. There are wonderful little anecdotes about my distant family and many of my characters’ names and surnames are derived straight from my Salem ancestors. I’m going to include a genealogy chart in books two and three that will be a mix of my actual ancestors and my made-up characters.
15. What is your favorite childhood book?–Why Mosquitos Buzz in People’s Ears by Verna Aardema came out in the 1970s. It’s a retelling of a West African folktale about Mosquito. A chain reaction of events leads one thing to another and in the end it explains why mosquitos must buzz your ears, even today. I got it at a scholastic book fair when I was in first or second grade. It came with a small record that you could play while you were reading it. Between the beautiful African-inspired, textilelike illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon and Pearl Primus’s amazingly delightful narration, I was hooked. It was very reminiscent of Native American myth tales about animal spirits, which is probably one of the reasons I liked it so much.
No comments:
Post a Comment