Fiction Scribe

Today I have a bonus interview with the very interesting Nan Hawthorne.

I got the chance to ask her a little bit about everything from her novel to what her feelings are about self-publishing. Please take a moment to welcome her to Fiction Scribe, and enjoy the wonderful interview I had with her.

Hello and thank you for stopping at Fiction Scribe, Ms. Hawthorne. Tell the readers a bit about yourself.

Oh dear, where do I start? How about with the “vital statistics”? I live in the greater Seattle area with my husband and our beloved cats. I am 56 now. I grew up in Southern California and Southeast Alaska, and I have lived in other parts of the US.

I graduated from Northern Michigan University — see what I mean? English major, of course. I’ve had at least two careers besides the typical office drudge jobs. I was a big fish for a while in the little pond of non-profit management before I became a professional writer. Oh, and I am legally blind. No central vision at all.

What brought you into the world of writing? When did you start?

I was reading early, and at seven I announced to the world that when I grew up I was going to be “an authoress”! I wrote my first story about then, then in my teens I met my writing partner for “The Story” which my first novel is based on. I mostly let the writing go for years and years. I started writing for a “living” only about ten years ago. The web was the impetus.

You’ve mentioned your first published book, Loving the Goddess Within: Sex Magick for Women. Could you tell us a bit about the book?

I believe that what are often called patriarchal religions have had a vested interest in controlling what women do with and feel about their bodies. The only way to control how we did was by restricting us, and when that did not keep working, making us feel bad about our bodies and sexuality. I see the “matriarchal” religions like neo-paganism or just the mythology from matriarchal societies to be a source of healing.

That’s what my book is all about. Ideas for women to heal their sense of themselves specifically their bodies and sexuality.

Right now you’re working on a novel with the word ‘novel’ purposely in quotes. Can you tell us why that is and what the book is about?

I mentioned my friend from when I was a teenager. She and I created some characters and proceeded first to write to each other as those and then to write stories about them. We were both nuts about the Middle Ages, so the characters predictably were a king (me) and a queen (her). We wrote together for at least five years. It was the most significant aspect of my young life. I added a lot of characters to our stories, and the combined characters were my friends as much as my creations.

When I was planning to rejoin a Yahoogroup I started more than ten years ago, Ghostletters, I was trying to decide who I would “play” on it. (On Ghostletters www.ghostletters.net everyone posts to the Yahoogroup as a historical or fictional character. I had done Robin Hood and Dr. Beckett from Quantum Leap in the past.) Jim, my husband, suggested I do my old characters from “The Story”.

I did, started writing as them, then about them, then lo and behold discovered I still had it in me to write well about them. I decided I needed to immortalize these folks. To answer your question finally, the book is a novel that would stand on its own, but I also talk about how “The Story” came to be and include the letters and stories I still have from 40 years ago.

You’re planning on publishing that book with Lulu. How do you find the self-publishing industry? Have you/do you receiving negative responses when you tell others you’re planning to self publish?

To me the choice is as valid as any other for producing a book. After all, no one questions the legitimacy of indie music production and indie filmmaking. Why should indie book publishing be any different? For some reason we see indie publishing in the light of vanity publishing, but you don’t think of an indie musician putting out her album in a drug store recording booth, and you don’t think of an indie filmmaker as some kid with a video camera.

People do say, “You will get higher status with a ‘real’ publisher.” More likely I will get nothing. My book won’t sit at the checkout stand luring people in with garish colors and shocking images. And are those books any better than indie books? The only thing I really lose by not going through the “literary industrial complex” is the marketing they would do I will have to do myself. The world has changed. The Internet has put power in the hands of individuals.

The Blue Lady Tavern. What a title. Could you tell us a little about what that is and how it came to be?

The Blue Lady Tavern is a fictional blog starring my Anglo-Saxon era alter ego, Leofwen Taverner. She is the tacit writer, telling stories of the town where she lives and the people in it. It happens to be the same time and place as my first novel, and frankly I set it up to develop a readership who would want to buy my book. It’s also useful for research since I have to find out how things were done in the late 8th century in England, like how ale was made, how salt was harvested, what children’s daily lives were like. I’ve gone from basically no knowledge of the era to a completely new and different understanding, and it shows in the first drafts of my novel.

You’ve also mentioned you’ve developed an Internet radio show that ties in with the blog and novel. How does it tie in and why Internet radio?

This is similar to indie publishing. Internet radio is accessible to more people that broadcast media. As it happens, I was a big fan of a show on the station run by an Arizona community college. I was invited to do a Celtic music show. The station’s faculty advisor is an English teacher so he was interested in the idea of my reading stories on the show. So I named it the Shannon O’Neill memorial Celtic Music Hour after Shannon, one of the main characters and a special favourite of mine from “The Story”. Most shows have an episode in his life. And it’s just way fun.

What are your dreams for your writing?

First of all, I want everyone in the world to get to know the characters in my first novel and come to love them as close to as much as I do as possible. Then I want people to follow them in later books, mysteries, and also to read any other books I read. I want the Independent Authors Guild to succeed in showing the reading public that indie books serve them extremely well by, for instance, increasing the number of good books in genres like historical fiction. I hope people enjoy reading my books, but it is the indie publishing future I dream about.

All this and you also write ghost letters. How do you find time to write?

I didn’t say I keep up with it all! It is what I do. And I’m a restless fidgeter so I have to be busy all the time I am not actually sleeping.

As a person with a severe visual disability I have found new life and energy through the Internet makes the world a more level playing ground, as they say. My computer is equipped to help overcome the barriers. I adore it.

Do you have any advice for writers?

Believe in yourself, do the research as best you can, never say die.

Thank you very much for your time.

It was delightful — thank you!

The Story: A Medieval Tale and How It came To Be http://crislicland.blogspot.com