Fiction Scribe

I recently had the honour of interviewing award winning Australian author Wendy J. Dunn. In this interview, she tells us a bit about her life, her love for historical fiction, and her advice for writers.

Enjoy.

Hello and welcome to Fiction Scribe. Tell us a little about yourself.

Thank you so much for this opportunity, Jaime! I really enjoy your site. I’m delighted you asked me for an interview! BTW – big congrats on your recent wedding!

Thank you very much. How did you get into writing? Did you always want to be a writer?

I wanted to write since I was eight. Over the many years since then, I’ve gathered that eight to ten seems the age a lot of people feel the tug of their life’s calling. I won a poetry prize at ten, but it was a long, long time before anything like that happened again. When I was sixteen, I had a go at a fantasy novel. According to my family, I went into my bedroom at the beginning of the school holiday and didn’t emerge until school started again. While the novel was terrible, it pushed my love affair with writing into a lifelong obsession.

But my life’s journey hasn’t involved just writing. I married at eighteen and had my first child at nineteen. By twenty-four, I was the mother of three young children and studying for my Bachelor of Arts. At the end of that, I decided to go into teaching. Because I have a great passion for creativity in all its forms, I added another diploma to my Diploma of Education – a Graduate Diploma in Arts Education. That happened in my early 30’s. It was a wonderful, two year course that really encouraged my own creativity and provided the push I needed to get on with writing my first novel. By the end of the course, I had completed the first draft. Of course – I was such an innocent then - I didn’t realise how much work is still needed after completing the first draft! But even in its early life publishers looked at Dear Heart with interest.

I could only bear sending it out twice a year, so it took ten years to find a publisher. Every summer holiday I would re-edit it and lift the sections pulling it down. I’m very thankful now for those ten years. If I regret anything it is not working on something else at the same time. But I needed to prove to myself I could get a book published before imposing living through a second novel on my family.

I love the act of creating a world from words. For me, it is the best magic there is.

What is it about historical fiction that you love?

The unexpected journeys it takes you on and its universal themes; history reveals to us that the essence of humanity flows down the centuries unchanging – we love, hate, suffer and experience joy in the same way no matter what period forms the backdrop for our life’s stage.

Anything about it you hate?

Hate is a very strong word…I dislike the deliberate rewriting of history just to cause controversy or to sell books. In my own writing, I try my best to respect the lives of people who were once living and suffering human beings. For instance, Anne Boleyn was innocent of the crimes that robbed her of her life. Surely she suffered enough in her final days without fiction writers blackening her name without true substance? While I write fiction, it is very much drawn from historical records and what I learn about the personalities of my characters through my research. Once I know my characters and the events happening in their world, the story takes care of itself.

What is it about Tudor history specifically that draws you?

Tudor history speaks to me – don’t ask me why, it just does. Sometimes I wonder if I had a past life then.

What was it like winning an award for your writing? Was winning an award ever a personal writing goal for you?

Winning awards a personal goal? Not really. If I enter contests it is because I believe they do offer an opportunity to hone a piece of writing for a purpose and test it amongst your peers. I’ve been a reader for a few contests in my time. It taught me that there is a lot talent “out there,� and you must be “up there� to even gain a short-listing.

My writing goals are to finish projects I start. Without my knowledge, my publisher put Dear Heart into two awards. I felt so humble that he had such belief in my work, and even more humble at gaining the awards. I still can’t believe it, but it was great affirmation that I should keep writing!

Tell us about your award-winning book “Dear Heart, How You Like This?�

Dear Heart is very much a story of love, loss and letting go. Told through the voice of Sir Thomas Wyatt, a poet who knew Anne Boleyn, it recounts the tragic story of Anne Boleyn.

You’re married, have four children, are a University graduate, teach, blog, research – heavily by the sounds of it – for your books… How did you and how do you have time to write?

Big smile. My blog is very much neglected. I’m on paid Long Service Leave at the moment, feeling this how I want my life to be, not too worried about money, able to write to my heart’s content. But few writers earn enough to support themselves purely through their writing.
Three of my children are no longer children, and two no longer live at home. The house is beginning to feel somewhat large for four people. It is still difficult to balance my roles as a wife and mother of a child and three young adults with my vocation as a writer. Often, parenting my young adults, discovering their own paths in life, is far harder than parenting my ten-years-old son. Perhaps because I am now watching them fly without the safety net of the family nest. I have to trust them to make the right decisions for themselves.

Like so many women, I’m a juggler trying hard to keep all my balls in motion, willing to pick them up when they drop to the floor. Talking about floors…I am not good housekeeper; good cook, yes, but I rather write than wash floors and keep a spotless house. I have also discovered the great benefit of a slow cooker in winter. Prepare a meal in the morning, put it in the cooker and forget it for the rest of the day. If you cook a good evening meal it generally lets you off about the unswept floors. Well, that’s my theory!

What are you currently working on?

My current work, Falling Pomegranate Seeds, narrates the early years of Katherine of Aragon through the voice of her kinswoman and best friend, Maria de Salinas, her fellow exile in England. I’m reading the book through today before saying it is ready for the next step and I can start on my next novel. I did plan for FPS to be the first book in a series about Katherine’s life. But the muse has been nattering loud about another subject. As FPS has been a painful book to write and the first book can be read as a stand alone, I thought I would give Katherine’s story a rest for a time and work on another subject with more hope of a happy ending.

Are there any authors who inspired/inspire you in your writing?

To be a good writer you need to read good books. Lots of good books. I’m indebted to all the writers of all the good books I have read over the years. Personal favourites…I still read my Rosemary Sutcliffe books, Elizabeth Goudge’s Child from the Sea, Mary Renault, Winston Graham, Dorothy Dunnett and new writers like C.W. Gortner, Sandra Worth and Brian Wainwright.

Do you have a muse? If so, who or what is it?

LOL. Thomas Wyatt…I ignore his annoyance that my name is on Dear Heart, and not his.

Do you have any guilty pleasures when it comes to writing?

At the moment, I’m warm in bed with my laptop, while my husband works in a cold factory…Oh dear, that isn’t guilty pleasure, that’s just plain and simple guilt.

Dark chocolate???

What are your dreams for your writing?

To no longer need my day job and possess the freedom to allow loose all the stories in my head.

Any advice for historical fiction writers?

Whilst respecting known history, remember we are first and foremost storytellers. Let history be the key to the past, but don’t let it lock the story into stalemate. You know, I am really reminding myself here. In my new work, I could only find the barest, albeit fascinating bones about a woman I wanted as an important character in my novel. Because I wanted to be so certain of her history, the problem of Beatriz stopped the novel moving forward for months. Then I decided the bones were enough for my imagination to flesh out. I gave Beatriz her head, and she just took charge of her story. I just love that!

Any advice for writers in general?

Persevere, persevere, and persevere. Believe in yourself. Feed your muse by reading good books. Join a writing group. Enter writing contests; learn to love using the red pen. And don’t forget family and friends!

Thank you for your time.

My pleasure!