Leslie Karst’s

Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and today Leslie talks about Murder from Scratch, the fourth book in what she calls her “snarky cozies.”

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Where to find Leslie Karst:

Website: http://lesliekarstauthor.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lesliekarstauthor/

 Twitter: @ljkarst

What

Jenny: Hello

Leslie: Hi,

Jenny: That’s

Leslie: Exactly.

Jenny: Look, was

Leslie: You know,

And in my angst ridden 20’s, I moved over to writing songs for a couple of bands. I had a new wave band in the 80’s and then later in the 1990’s, I had a country rock band called Electric Range that I formed with my sister.

And then after that, I went on to law school and I became a lawyer. And I spent 20 years writing research, memory memos and appellate briefs. So there it was. At the time I was ready to retire as a lawyer, I realized writing must be in my blood. So I said, I’m going to have to continue writing. But at that point, I decided I wanted to do something new. And that’s why I decided to go to fiction. Completely different from legal briefs, certainly.

Jenny: So you’ve

Leslie: Well, as

 So that’s why I went

And so when I decided to try my hand at writing a mystery

Jenny: Yeah,

Leslie: Well,

I mean, we have these glorious coastlines and redwood forests and we have this rich history of agriculture and fishing and and and now a really vibrant visual and performing arts culture. Not to mention, of course, fabulous farmer’s markets and charcuterie and cheese makers and bakeries and breweries and distilleries and restaurants.

Perfect for me. You can tell I love Santa Cruz. And so I think of the books as sort of a love letter to my town. And I also think of the town as another character. So when I set out to write the books, I knew they had to take place in Santa Cruz and I didn’t want to make it a fictional town. I wanted to make it real because I love the city so much.

Sometimes it causes problems, but mostly it’s fun, you know, walking around and getting inspired to use places in it. There’s a little story of how I came to use the town in the series. I’d come up with this idea to write this culinary series set in Santa Cruz. And when I first moved here in the 70’s, it was still kind of a sleepy little town.

The university was new. There were a lot of Italian

And one day I was wandering down our historical Fisherman’s Wharf. And I had this idea. What would happen if, a local Santa Cruz gal who was from one of these traditional Italian fishing families, found herself caught between that old world and the newly arrived politically correct food movement.

And I thought, yes, that would be the perfect backdrop for a culinary mystery, because it’s always good to have a little bit of tension in the background. So that’s where I came up with that.

Jenny: And that’s

Leslie: Yes.

But the food movement, and this conflict is still a big part of our of the dynamics of our town. And so I did my best. I wanted to include it. I wanted to make the book realistic. But I did my best to make sure that aspect of the story didn’t overwhelm it, That it’s more of spice, if you will. Yes. A glimpse into the real life conflicts, but without coming across too heavy handed. I’m happy to say that in general, actually across the board, the reaction has been positive. I’ve never had anybody criticize the books on that basis. So I guess I succeeded.

Jenny: That’s

Leslie: No, but alas, no.I  can see why you think that, because I just recently posted the CD we recorded on my author web site, www.lesliekarst.com. There is a page of me being a songwriter and there’s a link to a place where you can listen to a part of that album that we recorded in the 1990’s. And you can buy the CD if you like.

Which is fun, because I want to get it out there. I’m very

It’s fun to sing the great masterworks like Beethoven. And

Jenny: In the

Leslie:  I retired from a law about 10 years ago and I

Jenny: Yes. What

Leslie: You know, I’d just say I like writing dialogue the most, which I know a lot of people find very difficult, but it comes easily to me. As I said earlier, I have been obsessed with language my whole life. I’ve studied foreign languages. I love grammar. And so I love listening to people’s conversations around me. And I pay attention to their phrasing and their accents, their use of vocabulary. And when I’m writing dialogue, I just imagine that person and what they would sound like and how they would speak. And for me, that’s just a great joy. I love that. Unlike plotting, which is very, very difficult. That’s the hardest part..

Jenny:  Do you do a full outline before you begin

Leslie: I try to. Often they change on me. I once even had my murderer change on me midway through the book, which was rather disturbing. But yes, I try to plot out as much as I can. I’m an organized kind of a brain and doing the seat-of-the-pants thing I would find very stressful.

Jenny: I saw

Leslie: Oh, I

Jenny: That’s

Leslie: Yes, I had to. So what happened I was spending an afternoon with a blind friend several years ago, and I was struck by how easily he was able to locate whatever he needed.  You know, ajar of marmalade in the fridge and so forth. He wanted to play a CD for me and he had all these CDs lined up against  his wall and he ran his finger down them and he pulled one out and he put it on the CD player.

It was exactly the one he wanted to play for me. It was a Tchaikovsky piece and I was amazed. I asked how did you do that? He said, well, you know, I’m just organized. And it immediately hit me. Oh, my goodness. First of all, how much more reliant on their other senses a blind person has to be to get along in the world. And I’d never really thought about it in that way before.

How organized you’d have to be in your life, compared to somebody like me who can we just rely on their vision to get by? And then I realized what a perfect setup that would be for a murder mystery, to have a blind character who by virtue of her heightened sense of touch knew things the others didn’t. I’m glad you focused in on the touch, because that was part of it. But how that person would be able to maybe discover clues that the sighted sleuth would miss.

And so that’s why I created Evelyn. She helps Sally with solving her mother’s murder. I’m going to add something here. You might you probably never notice this unless I told you. But for me, it’s fun. Each of my books, in addition to being mostly about food and murder, go together so well.

But they each have one of the different senses is a backdrop for them. And so the first one is obviously taste. And then the second one where she joins the chorus, is hearing.The third one, where Sally becomes interested in painting because the restaurant she’s inherited is named after Paul Gaugin, is sight.  And then this most recent one it’s the sense of touch. So Evelyn’s sense of touch helps Sally solve the murder. So it’s just kind of a fun thing for me to play with.

Jenny: So what

Leslie: Book Five

And so it’s actually a lot about the lack of this sense rather than the sense itself. It’s a background to the novel. Yes, I’m more than halfway through writing that book. Anyway, getting back to the research for the blind character. So once I decided to do this, I called this guy up and I said, can I come and spend a couple of days with you and just tag you around? I want to write this book and I want to have a blind character. And he said, yeah, that’d be great. He was really excited. And he lives in Ohio.

So I flew out to Ohio and spent a couple of days with them.

And the gal who lives downstairs, in fact, she wanted to cook dinner for me and I got to watch her cooking. So you’ll see in the book that Evelyn loves to cook and that’s based on actually watching this gal do that. I could never have written the book if it weren’t for their generosity and the generosity of other people that I would call up and say, can I ask you questions about what it’s like to be blind? And then I had those people also read the book. So I really wanted to get it right. I didn’t want to blow it. And I’m happy to say that people generally been very pleased with my portrayal of Evelyn.

Jenny: Yes, it’s lovely. I was impressed about the cooking too, because I’ve never thought about that side of things, to be honest. So I did wonder, have you got any plans for a Sally Solari cookbook? Because every book does also give some wonderful recipes for those who might be interested in having a little additional bonus to the story.

Leslie: Yes. Each book has four or five different recipes that are drawn from the books themselves. And that pasta recipe is in Book Five. And it’s based on an Italian grandmother of an Italian friend of mine, that’s where I got that recipe from. I’ve got what, four books now with about 20 recipes. So I don’t have enough for a book at this point. But you know, if somebody said they want me to write a recipe book. Give me a call. It would be fun. But no, there’s nothing in the works – but I’m open to it!

Jenny: And I

Leslie: Oh, absolutely. Well, all the ones that I wrote recipes for, because I have to. I mean, you have to measure. I’m not somebody who measures, you know. I’m not a pantser for writing, but I’m definitely a pantser for cooking. I just add things and taste and go. And so when I have to come up with the recipes, I have to sit down  and measure everything and write it down and then redo it if it’s wrong until like it.

Because, you know, you can’t write a recipe like that. Oh just add a little of this till it tastes right. You can’t do that. But yeah, it’s fun. Coming up with the recipes is really fun. And as I write the book, each book, they each are in a different season. And so I have lists of seasonal vegetables and seafood and things like that.

And I’ll get inspired. I’ll read it and go, oh, these are in season and I’ll come up with recipes in my head. And then have them be the recipes that she serves at the restaurant. And then of course, then once I’m come up with the recipe, then I have to settle down and really make it. I love that part of it. It’s really fun.

Jenny: And you really do make your own pasta?

Leslie: Oh, Yes.

Jenny: Oh, that’s

Leslie: Well, I worked as a research and appellate attorney, which means you spend all your days in the law library researching the case and facts and the law and then writing briefs. So I read a lot of appellate briefs and I read a lot of research memos. It’s kind of like writing a term paper every day of your life. And in it, actually, you know, it’s funny, I hadn’t originally thought this, but the more I thought about it, I realized that it really was a good preparation for becoming a mystery writer, because one of the most important components of writing a good mystery, obviously, is the story. Right?

How you set it up, how you place your clues and your red herrings, how you characterize your protagonist and your suspects. And your villain, of course. And the same is true in the law. So, like in a mystery story, in the law how you set forth the facts of your case in a legal brief is really important. You have to decide which facts to include and which to leave out.

Obviously, you can’t leave out really important facts. There’s an ethical component to consider. And so you can’t leave out a fact just because it might be harmful to your client. But how you present the facts, you’ve got a certain amount of leeway with that. And that’s obviously true in a mystery novel. It’s unfair to leave out information for the resolution of your mystery just because it might make it easier to guess.

And so they are similar. And then also  another important part of a legal case is how you tell the story. Which elements do you emphasize and what do you play down, which obviously is similar to how you employ red herrings, in a mystery. And then there’s your voice and your readability. But then, as with any great novel, an attorney drafting a brief wants the judge to be drawn to the story until you care about it. So it ended up that it actually was, I think, a really good preparation.

I would have never thought that. But, you know, I’m very organized and detail oriented. And of course, like me, my character Sally is an ex-attorney. So I get to use a little bit of that law in the books, too She’s able to use her knowledge of wills and probate and trust sometimes in helping solve the cases. So I actually I think being a lawyer really was a great preparation for being a mystery novelist. I’m not saying go to law school is preparation for that because it puts a lot of work and effort. But it helped me. Definitely.

Jenny: Were any

Leslie: The  firm I worked for was a civil firm. And so I

Jenny: Yes.

I think perseverance is the number one thing that I’ve done. There are there are  so many people out there that are write beautiful manuscripts. That are great writers and have great talent. But a lot of people, they get to a certain point in their manuscript and they get stuck and they can’t finish it. You just have to keep going and work your way through it and finish the darn book.

And then once you’ve got this manuscript, you have to hone it and rewrite it. And then, if you do the route I did, which is to try to get a traditional publisher, you have to shop it to agents and publishers and keep going after dozens or maybe hundreds of rejections. And so I know, that I do have perseverance and follow through. And so I kept going. I had over 100 reactions from agents before I finally got signed with one. And I just kept going. I got discouraged, but I just kept going. And I think, yes, that’s it. That’s my advice to people. If you truly believe in yourself, keep going. Keep doing it.

Jenny: I guess

Leslie: Yeah, I

So having somebody else do that for me was wonderful. And that’s the main thing. I think actually these days you make more money if you publish independently because you get a bigger cut of your book. But no, I’m glad I went the traditional route.

Jenny: It is a

Leslie: Well, you know, I guess I’m kind of old school because my favorite mysteries are those from the Golden Age. People like Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie and Josephine Tey. Because that’s who I was reading when I was a teenager in college. But I also adore Sue Grafton, her series actually was kind of an inspiration for me to start writing  because it was sort of a blend of traditional series, like I was saying, like Agatha Christie. But they’re also a little more hard edged, a little more snarky, shall I say. So she inspired me.

I thought I want to write a character like Kinsey, so she definitely was an inspiration. But as for current writers? Well,OK. I’m going to give a shout out for my fellow gals in Chicks On The Case. I have a group blog. with these wonderful people,and I adore all of their books and I recommend them to everybody. They are:

Ellen Byron, Becky Clark, Marla Cooper. Vickie  Fee. Kellye Garrett. Cynthia Kuhn.Lisa Q. Mathews. and Kathleen Valenti. They are all just fabulous writers.

All of them have series. Every time they have a book, and there’s a lot of them, I read their book. So I spend a lot of time reading those. The blogs called Chicks on the Case. They’re all mystery writers. Between cozy and traditional and they all have a certain amount of humor in them. And the blog is really fun. We post three times a week. We take turns doing our own blogs and then we have guest authors as bloggers. And then we also have guests who are involved in the mystery writing community, such as editors and and other bloggers. And we’ve had agents. So, yes, it’s pretty fun. I like it a lot.

Jenny: Well,

Leslie: Absolutely.

Jenny:  We’re starting to come to the end of our time

Leslie: You know,

Jenny: No, it’s

Leslie: I do. I

I had the good fortune about a little over 10 years ago to cook dinner for a Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was a colleague of my father’s who was a law professor back in the 60’s. And then they remained friends and colleagues over the years.

And so I actually ended up writing a memoir of that experience, which is called Cooking for Ruth. And my agent is currently shopping that memoir. So I hope to get that published sometime in the not too distant future. I’m really excited. It’s about the law, and obviously about Justice Ginsburg, but it’s also very much about cooking. And so it’s kind of combining my different interests. So I’m very excited about that.

Jenny: That’s

Leslie: Is she known down in New Zealand? Is she as well known there as she is in the United States?

Jenny: Perhaps

Leslie: Right.

Leslie: You split

Leslie: Well, My wife and I started going to Hawaii back in the early 90’s because my mother and father loved the Big Island of Hawaii. They spent a lot of time there and we started visiting them there. And we ended up buying a house together on the Big Island. And now that I’m retired from being a lawyer and Robin retired from her job, we started spending half the year there.

So we spend our our winters and spring – or late fall through to early spring in Hawaii because we have such cold and miserable weather here in the winter in California.

I know you all feel really sorry for me. And the rest of the

Jenny: It’s

Leslie: Exactly.

Jenny: So it’s

I do. Yes, a lot.  I blog with The Chicks on the Case. And it’s really fun when people post comments and we can comment when you interact that way. And I also have a web site. www.lesliekarstauthor.com There’s a contact form on the website.

If you type a message in the contact I get that as an email and I love corresponding with people. If anybody ever wants to write me an email, I always will write you back. And I’m on Facebook, of course, which is a lot of fun. So, you know, I know a lot of people hate the social media stuff, but I actually think it’s quite fun. I like posting pictures and chatting with people.

Jenny: What kind

Leslie: You know,

Jenny: That’s

Leslie: I don’t

Jenny: And of

Leslie: Well, you

Jenny: I love

Leslie: Isn’t

Jenny: Exactly

Leslie: Yes I

Jenny: Okay.

Leslie: Thank you

Jenny: That’s

Leslie: All right. Bye bye.

If you enjoyed Leslie, you might enjoy her fellow blogger, Becky Clark’s masterful mysteries, also on The Joys of Binge Reading podcast.

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20

Tammy Robinson’s emotional stories are heart-warming and heart-breaking in equal measure and will appeal to readers of Jojo Moyes and Nicholas Sparks. Initially indie published, she’s now signed with an international publishing house and is set for world-wide distribution.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Tammy talks about the personal tragedy she had to overcome to keep writing and tells how living through her characters helped her overcome tough times.

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Where to find Tammy Robinson:

Facebook: @TammyRobinsonAuthor

Instagram: @TammyRobinsonAuthor

 Twitter: @TammyRobinson76

What

Jenny: But now, here’s Tammy  Hello there Tammy and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Tammy: Thank you

Jenny: Yes, it’s fun to chat to another Kiwi. In an interview that you did on National Radio last year you spoke of a series of personal tragedies tyou had to overcome. Enough to  fell a team of oxen, in my opinion. I’m amazed that you’ve risen so magnificently over the challenges you had and you’ve published all these books. Can you tell us if there was a catalyst that took you from that position of being emotionally low to the point where you could reach out and start writing

Tammy: Yes, for sure. I actually I wrote my first book before it all started to happen. My husband and I got married in 2007 and then about three years later or so we thought ‘well it’s time to start a family. We’ll have a baby.’ So we got pregnant and then we lost that baby. And then it just kept happening. We had no problems getting pregnant but staying pregnant was a bit of an issue. My body never let me go naturally. I always had to have hospital intervention to assist with getting my body back to normal.

That was quite hard. So I think it was the third one, we actually saw the baby’s heartbeat at about eight and a half or nine weeks we had a scan and we saw the heartbeat and we thought ‘yes, we’ve got at this time.’ And then we went along for the twelve week scan and took my parents. I’ll never forget. She put the sensor on my tummy and then she said ‘I need to get someone else’ and she left the room and straight away we knew something’s wrong.

She came back with the other person and they had a look and they said ‘We’re really sorry but the baby passed away at about nine and a half weeks. So you’ll need to go again to hospital to have a medication to bring on labor.’

It hadn’t worked for me in the past but this time a few hours later it started working. I started losing the baby but this time I hemorrhaged and wouldn’t stop bleeding. It was the middle of the night and the nurse couldn’t get hold of a doctor and I was bleeding everywhere and she was getting quite worried and so in the end she went over everyone’s head and gave me the injection to stop the bleeding – which worked. I still had to go and have surgery as well and clear out the uterus and so I handled that.

And then I hit a bit of a low point. It was really a time  of soul searching. I was looking for spiritual strength. I’m not a religious person, but that’s when I started to look into a few things and seek something, because I just couldn’t understand why this keep happening to us.

We went to stay at my husband’s parents up in the Coromandel for a couple of days to get away from it, and came back and our house had been completely burgled and trashed. They’d just demolished everything. So again it was like ‘why does this keep happening?’  I’d started a book. Charlie and Pearl, So I carried on with it and while I was writing, not long after that, two of our closest friends were diagnosed with bowel cancer. My husband’s friend died within about six months.

And then Kathryn, who had been a huge support for me through all the miscarriages and everything, she was fighting actually for a long time. Actually, I shouldn’t say fighting, because it’s not a battle, but she was doing her best to come through this. And I got pregnant again after about a year. I got pregnant and this one stuck. And just after my daughter Holly was born Kathryn passed away, leaving her eight year old daughter behind.

And so that was pretty devastating and in the meantime I had finished my first book, Charlie and Pearl and I had sent it off to  – I think there was two or three New Zealand publishers at the time. So I sent it off. Back in those days it was ‘snail mail submissions.’ You printed off your first three chapters and a letter and you put a stamped self-addressed envelope in with it. And then it got rejected. So it had just been sitting in a drawer and then I got busy with Holly and then in April 2013 my mother passed away. She was only 58 and Holly was only five months old. I was texting her. She was at home. We finished our texting and about  20 or 30 minutes after, my sister got home and found our Mum collapsed.

Well the final coroner’s report they guessed she had like a

And that was pretty much the end of my world at that point. But I had a baby so I had to keep going and it made me think the cliches are right. It made me realize none of us know how long we’ve got. We can go at any point in time. The abruptness of having her here one minute.larger than life and texting me, and then being completely gone the next was hard to take.

Completely gone and no chance of a good bye or to tell her all the things that you always think you’ll have time to say. Yes, so that just spurred me on to think – cause she had always been the biggest believer in my writing – so I thought ‘I’m going to do this for her.’

So that’s when I got Charlie and Pearl, I pulled the manuscript out of the drawer and dusted it off . My husband – who’d worked in graphic design – made a cover and I got some close friends to edit it for me and then I uploaded it onto Kindle. I self published my first book.  And then it went from there.

I wrote another one very quickly afterwards. That was kind of therapy for me. I got a lot of the emotions from losing my mother into that book, When the Stars Collide. So then I started and I didn’t stop. I wrote six books over the next four years or so and just kept going.

Jenny: So you’ve now published nine books that have been compared to publishing household names like Jojo Moyes and Nicholas Sparks. The books take readers on an emotional journey. They’ve got a romance underlying them but they are strongly laced with loss and tragedy.

I was struck by a review from a male reader who said ‘heart breaking and heart warming in equal measure. He went on to say: ‘As long as you don’t mind having your heart squeezed at the pain the characters go through, you’ll love this book.’ So how do your readers do respond? You set up some hard situations, don’t you?

Tammy: I do yes, quite unintentionally sometimes. It just seems to work out that way. They’re not traditional romance in that there’s not always a ‘Happy Ever After.’ So as far as I understand it, to classify it as a romance genre there’s a happy ever after ending. And my books don’t always have that. So I think because of what I was going through with the babies and Kathryn and then my Mum and all that, I was in this head space of ‘life isn’t fair.’

You know? It doesn’t always work out? That came through in my writing quite a lot. So I was very realistic with the story lines because sometimes people get sick and they do die. So Yes. It’s definitely what I’ve put in all my writing, is that realism.

I’ve tried to give some happy parts as well, as I’ve gone on. And there’s a lot  of love and happiness, and humor in my books as well. But yes, there is usually an underlying darkness or some kind of thing that the character has to go through.

Jenny: Yeah but there is also something uplifting to it, as well, isn’t there?

Tammy: Definitely. Yes. I will try and always have an uplift somewhere, some hope – at the end there is always hope. I’ve had some amazing response from readers, too. Like the review that you were talking about. that came from a man named Mark and he’s in America and he reached out to me after he read Charlie and Pearl. He loved it. We’re still in touch now as Facebook friends and Instagram friends and we Message occasionally. He writes as well. I’ve met some wonderful people through writing – reviews  from Spain and all over the world.

Jenny: Yes, it’s fantastic. And while you were doing these books you also were making some huge changes in your life. You went on to have three children and your husband relocated his job and you had big changes there. I wondered if the writing actually helped to keep you sane – if it helped you through the tough stuff?

Tammy: You know

The way we moved – it all happened very quickly. My husband had been doing an office job for 17 years and he’d always been interested in farming. But it was taking that leap and then we found out his job was potentially going to be outsourced to the Philippines.

And so this job came up in Otorohanga, a little little town in the Waikato about hour and half away from where we were in a big city. And yes he went for it. We sold our house and we moved here all within about three or four weeks. It was very quick, but it’s been good.

Two years we’ve been here now, and settling in. Our oldest Holly is now at school. It was the right time to do it. We were pushed into it, but probably that was what my husband needed. He works on a dairy farm, for some wonderful people down the road. He goes off on his bike in the morning, and the kids wave and then they’re here when he comes back at night.

Jenny: Did you grow up on a farm yourself or were you a city girl?

Tammy: I grew up in the city. Not a huge city. I’d say more of a town because I don’t really do cities either. Cities drive me nuts, but I wasn’t a country girl.

Jenny: All of your books are set in New Zealand but you keep the details vague, so I’m not sure if your readers even necessarily know they are in New Zealand. You’ve also mentioned that you deliberately never specify ages or some details of appearance, that kind of thing, because you like your readers to be able to fill in the picture in their own minds. I that how it goes?

Tammy: Yes. Absolutely yes. With the first six books that I self-published. Yes. I never specify locations, and I don’t give place names or country names. And again, yes, with the characters I never mentioned ages. I would be very vague about appearance. I might mention  an eye color or hair color. Maybe. But I would never be specific and I don’t know if I did it on purpose from the start but then that’s just the way it went through all my books and I think it did help because people can pick it up in any country and it’s about a beach and they are picturing a beach from their local place.

Because we all do picture characters differently in our heads, when we’re reading books and I think if I’m vague about the descriptions then people quite happily do their own picturing. It’s quite interesting you know, people compare them to celebrities or something and I think ‘oh, can you give me a break!’

But then when I got the publisher, they wanted me to give the characters ages and more of a description. So I’ve started to do that now. But as I said, I had women of all ages – from early teens right through to 50s and 60s – and men – all reading and loving the books and I think the fact that there was no age mentioned they were timeless.

Jenny: Yes. Now you’ve mentioned about the publisher and there’s been a lot of very positive publicity for you because you’ve been taken up by an international publisher and you’re now having your books published in a lot of different countries. You’ve got a two book deal?  The most recent one was Photos Of You which we’ll get onto in a moment, but how did you get noticed in this way and where will you be published?

Tammy: Right. Yes. So I think it was 2016 or maybe the end of 2015. I got that fire in me again, to see if I could go a little bit further. I was happy self publishing I wasn’t making a great deal of money or anything like that from it. It was more about the reviews, but I’ve had that dream in my head since I was a little girl to see my books in bookshops, and it’s hard from New Zealand to approach agents overseas.

We are at a huge disadvantage being away from it all, but it was an agent called Vicki Marsden who I’d heard about both Greg Fowler who’s an author in Wellington and Michelle Vernal. They both recommended her and she worked for a company that was dual in New Zealand and the US.. So I approached her with a book that I had just finished at the time called The Insignificance of You.

She read that and she requested Charlie and Pearl  and Lessons from Ducks. And she read those and she liked them. She liked my writing, she liked the books. She wasn’t taking on anybody at that point because she was off to the UK for their  summer. So she was sitting over there for about four months or so for work, approaching publishers and things. She said she’d keep me in mind, but she didn’t sign me  And in the meantime I kept writing the next one which was Differently Normal.  So I just kept working on that.

When I finished it and sent it to her and not long after that she said she had some interest. She signed me. She loved that book. So she decided to sign me officially and I got onto her books and then not long after that she approached the right publisher which was Piatkus, which is an imprint of Little, Brown in the UK.

So yes, they loved it. And then we had a very nervous period of time where it’s going to acquisitions meetings, you know. You’re just waiting. There’s a lot of waiting and positive feedback but still it’s got to get across the line and  you try not to get your hopes up, but you’re also hopeful and then I think it was one morning I woke up to a text from Vicki at 6:00 a.m. saying ‘check your e-mail’ and I opened my email and I had a two book offer. So that was good.

And then I’ve gone on to sell in Slovakia and Czech and Poland and it’s coming out in Germany in December and also in the UK obviously, in Australia, New Zealand and then also Photos of You is being picked up by a huge US publisher. So it’s coming out February next year in the US which is quite an improvement. It’s very hard to get into the US market.

Jenny: So that is wonderful. So let’s talk a little bit about Photos of You. It’s the story of a young woman who was diagnosed with a terminal illness and whose main bucket list item is that she’d like to have a wedding instead of a funeral. And right at the start of the book she’s planning this wedding without even having any groom in mind, which you know for a start is such a poignant idea –  half funny and half sad. We’ve said you manage to lace dark stories with humor. So tell us where did the idea for that story come from?

Tammy: So for

So it was all her. She did it.  She had her hair and makeup done and she was wearing all these beautiful dresses and it was just a spectacular photo shoot. It just got me thinking. Rather than just shoot a fashion spread, the whole wedding idea came to me. What if that’s what you dreaming of your whole life? This big wedding day and something like that happens. So it came from that. I wrote three or four paragraphs of a blurb idea and they took it. And then of course I had to turn it into a book, which I did.

Jenny: So that

Tammy: Yes. A character or a scene. Charlie and Pearl came to me as  part of a dream. I remember having a dream and I couldn’t remember the whole dream but I remembered there was a woman that had fallen asleep in a bookshop and a guy had found her and for him it was love at first sight said Charlie and Pearl came from that. The rest of them all come from just a little something that I see or hear or think of.

Jenny: And so to Differently Normal.  You have Maddy, a full time carer for her autistic sister Bee, and she’s very committed to her sister and supporting her family. She has no time or thoughts of falling in love but of course life intervenes. And I understand that one was partly sparked off by another friendship that you developed with one of your readers.

Tammy: Yes, for Differently Normal, I had Maddy, that character was in my head first,  she was going to be this strong hugely caring character..  I had read something about young carers which I didn’t know a lot about before that. And it’s heartbreaking the number of people that care for someone and don’t have a lot of time for their own lives. Yes. So I had this character Maddy in my head. So she had a sister and I’ve got a friend in the UK, Lorraine and Kevin Tippany.

Lorraine actually contacted me when Charlie and Pearl came out. She loved Charlie and Pearl and she had spent some time in New Zealand as a youngster, so she knew the Kiwi parts of the book.  I think it was five or six years, ago, and we Message one another almost daily still. Morning and night. Yes. She’s become like a sort of a surrogate aunt for me. Not Mum, but an aunt. She’s been there for me through  like my labors and pregnancies and when Mum died and all that sort of thing.

So her daughter Rachel has just turned 30 and she is autistic and she has cerebral palsy and epilepsy and it’s just incredible. Lorraine and Kevin they’re approaching their 60’s. Rachel is completely dependent on them. They have all these worries about what’s going to happen to her when they eventually go and all that sort of stuff. She can’t do anything for herself.

They’re incredible, so selfless. They’ve given their lives

Jenny: And I

Tammy: She reads all my books as I write them. She is my number one Beta Reader. . She gives me feedback, and she’s brutally honest. If she doesn’t like something, she’ll say so and occasionally we’ll fall out and then I’ll get over it. She’s been a wonderful friend.

Jenny: So yes, you can be sure that the parts of the book that apply to that situation are pretty true to life.

Tammy: Very much so. So I would have a scene in my head  and I would say to her ‘okay we’re gonna put Bee or Rachel into this situation, what would she say, how would she react? And she would tell me and then I would write the scene.

Jenny: Finding an international publisher, has that changed your writing life and what does it mean for you long term, do you think?

Tammy: Yes that has changed my writing quite a bit. Before I would just have an idea and I would write the whole book and then I would either self publish it or send it to Vicki. So now, they want to know they’re going to love the whole idea and the whole story before you write it? 

I’ve had a year of coming up with ideas and coming up with sample chapters and they love them or they want some changes and it’s all about getting it across the line and getting it through the acquisitions process. It’s hugely frustrating for me, because I’m just used to writing it and to not be able to do that is a little bit hard.

It’s hard, but hopefully we’re close now to getting it across and then I’ll be able to just actually write the books which is what I need to do here.

Jenny: You might end up being a hybrid author doing both. I mean with your experience you might still be able to use some of those ideas and go back to them. I know a lot of writers find that’s a very good way to go, to have both things happening if they can.

Tammy: And it’s amazing some of the ones that do. The big name ones. I’m in an amazing group of Facebook and some of these huge authors I’ve read all my life and looked up to – some a lot of them are hybrids and they had the same struggles.

Jenny: Yes, that’s right. Moving away from discussing the specific books to your wider career. Before you settled on your New Zealand farm you spent quite a few years working overseas in what sound like dream jobs to outsiders like on cruise ships and in the Whitsundays. Tell us about those years and how have they influenced you as a writer. Are there things from those years that appear in your books?

Tammy: Oh absolutely yes. When I was 17 or 18 in my final year of high school I got sick as well. I got depression and bulimia and then I had that ongoing for about the next twelve years so a lot of those times when I was overseas and doing all those dream jobs and things I was actually quite ill as well.

Jenny: That sounds like a fairly high performing vulnerable person if you could describe it that way.

Tammy: Yes and no. At times I was, but there was always a potential for problems. There was a lot of self harming that was hidden, I overdosed on my second cruise ship, I was medically disembarked after an overdose.  But I had always been fascinated with large ships and shipwrecks.

So yes a job came up with Princess Cruises. I went and had an interview in Auckland and I got a phone call two weeks later saying ‘you’re off to Mexico, you’re off to Acapulco, get on a plane’ and I was I think 20 or 21. Very young. I look back now and I don’t know how my mother ever let me get on a plane to Mexico at that age and the way I was. But she did because she knew it was something that I’d always wanted to do.

So you know, I joined the ships and we went to the Caribbean and Alaska and the Mediterranean and all those places. And it was wonderful. And then I was back in New Zealand because my grandmother was ill and I was due to go back on a cruise ship when I read an article about Club Med.  So I applied for that and got the job on Lindeman Island in the Whitsundays. 

I went over there for about three or four years. Normally what happens is you go to Club Med as a GO ( Gentil Organiseur) and you spend six months in one place and then you get transferred to other resorts around the world. But because I joined as a receptionist but then I was quickly promoted to an HR. assistant and then a HR manager and they localized all the HR. manager jobs, I got stuck on the island.

Basically I wasn’t going to be able to transfer anywhere else and after about three and a half years on this island where there’s nothing else but the resort I got a bit of cabin fever. So I ended up coming back home and I was due to go back on another cruise ship when I met my husband. I was   nearly 30 and I thought ‘I’ll see what happens. I’ll stay and see what happens.’ And he proposed after about two months and we bought a house after four, and we’re still together 14 years later.

Jenny: So turning

Tammy: Yes. No I’ve been reader all my life, since I was a little girl. I was always the girl with her head buried in a book. On family occasions or anything like that. I got told off in class. ‘Get your nose out of the book.’  If I was walking I had my nose in a book.  And it’s quite funny because Holly my daughter is just the same. We’ve just been to a funeral and at the wake she got my husband to go to the car and get a book out so she could sit at a table and read a book and I was looking at her thinking ‘oh it’s just like me’ and it was really sweet.

And she loves to write as well. Yes I’m an avid reader of a lot of authors. When I go into a shop I’m not always looking for a particular author. I do get drawn to covers but mostly I go for things are a bit quirky or character driven. One author  I’ve always loved is Terry Pratchett since I was a teenager and quite conveniently his books always came out in November which is my birthday.

So I always knew I was going to get his new book for my birthday. I’ve still got all his books  – I’ve got a lot of boxes of books out in the garage since the move. I’ve only got one big shelf inside which is my favorites and the rest are unfortunately go in containers.

At the moment I’m reading The First Time I Saw You which is by Emma Cooper and that’s an amazing one that’s coming out soon. And I’ve got the latest David Nicholls. I love David Nicholls. His new one, Sweet Sorrow is coming out soon –  I’ve got that.  And I just finished The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary. I always love discovering new authors.

Jenny: You’ve probably now at the stage when you’re asked to write cover lines for other authors.

Tammy: Yes My

Jenny: Lovely. Is

Tammy: I would just say never giving up. I know there are authors who are so dead set on the traditional route they can’t see it any other way. Once I had a Kindle and not a Mum I thought ‘No no I’m going to do this, I can do this myself.’ And I did and that was it. I just didn’t let it stop me. The fact that I couldn’t get that traditional deal and even if I had, even still if I still didn’t have that traditional deal, I would still be churning out books and self publishing for the rest of my life because it’s just what I love doing. I love to write and I have to write.

And that’s just the way it is really. So yes it’s good. It’s not giving up and it’s not letting external things take that joy away from me. I channel it daily stuff into my writing.

Jenny: How do you make time with the family life?

Tammy: Oh yes – well writing it’s impossible now (laughs) The more kids I’ve had. the  harder it is! When we were in Rotorua I could write every weekend when my husband was not at work. Now that he’s farming and he gets one weekend off a fortnight and when it’s calfing he doesn’t get any weekends off, so  it’s snatched moments, really at the moment.

Holly’s at school and Willow is going to start school in July. Leo, he’ll be three in August, so potentially he’ll be looking at kindergarten next year and then I might actually get some days to write. I’m looking forward to it, I won’t know myself. I’ve never had days where I can just sit down and write. It’s always had to be like ‘Okay you got an hour, go.’

But bonus of it is because I’ve had so much time with it in my head, usually if I can if I get a couple of hours like that then I can bang out two three four thousand words, because it’s there. Yes. So at the moment it’s hard, but I know that it’s just a temporary thing. And as time goes on it’s going to get easier.

Jenny: Yes. So what are you working on at the moment? What are your projects for say the next twelve months?

Tammy: I’ve got two on the go. The first one is called Back To You. And again it’s got that hardship element, but it’s uplifting, it’s very uplifting. It’s about a young woman Zoe, who’s a teacher. She’s got a great life in the city. She meets this wonderful man, Finn.

They meet on New Year’s Eve and they have this incredible night in the city walking, getting to know each other. And then they had a few weeks together as well.

But then he’s off overseas for five or six months for a fundraising hike to raise funds for a cancer hospice because he lost his sister, years and years and years ago when she was little, and she had cancer.

So they have three or four weeks together and then he’s heading off. But they decide they’re going to keep in touch they’re going to Skype and they going to email and pick up when he gets back. But while he’s away she has an accident and it’s a life changing accident and she’s forced to go back to her parent’s house at a coastal settlement four hours away.

She struggles to accept that everything’s changed, that she’s lost that life that she had, so she can’t actually bring it herself to tell Finn. She maintains the pretense through emails and things for a few months until he’s due to come back.

And then she completely cuts off all contact with him. So it’s all about her learning that just because her life is different, it’s not over. She has to get to that place herself.

There’s this wonderful character, a woman who swims in the sea everyday come rain or shine, winter or summer and they’re going to meet. And the older woman is going to help Zoe learn to live again. And so in the meantime Finn’s back and he’s  been trying to find her but he can’t and it’ll be about how she needs to get better before she can find her way back to him,

And then the second one is something completely different. Something I’ve never done before, which is a Christmas book. So yes, it’s a really quirky sort of character, a wonderful character, a young widower Noel, and a woman Harriet. It’s going be set in a European winter with snow . .  here in NZ that’s what we always dream of and think about. So I want to write about a winter there.

Jenny: So that will be Christmas 2020?

Tammy: Yes I guess. . . When books come out play a huge role in this success. I found that with the last two books.  When they need to bring them out is important. To give them their best chance.

Jenny: Well

Tammy: Yes. Differently Normal. They brought that out at the end of January in New Zealand and so it was right at the end of summer holidays, right at the end of Christmas. Nobody’s got any money and all the kids are going back to schools they’ve got all the costs of stationery and uniforms.

And then Photos of You they brought out right at the start of the holidays and you had  people going on holiday, looking for the beach read and all the Christmas presents and all that and the difference between how they sell was just considerable. Really amazing.

Jenny: That’s

Tammy: Yes, absolutely. I get a lot of messages through Facebook and Instagram. So on Facebook I’m under @TammyRobinsonAuthor and I love getting posted messages and on Instagram. Again I’m @TammyRobinson Author. It’s quite neat. I’m getting a lot of messages and tags from Polish people through Instagram. Yes it’s really neat. And you know with my book Photos Of You, they take all these amazing photos with my book and all these incredibly sort of staged things, so I do get a lot of messages from Instagram and Facebook.

I am on Twitter at @Tammy Robinson76 but I don’t really interact a lot because I don’t understand Twitter, excuse me, to be honest. It seems scary so yes, I main ones would be Facebook and Instagram.

Jenny: I’m a bit like you, I don’t feel I understand Twitter. Somebody described it to me as like a virtual cocktail party. Maybe that’s why I don’t quite know how to do it because I’ve hardly ever go to a cocktail parties! Anyway Tammy  Wonderful to talk,  Thank you so much for your time and all the very best with your new projects.

Tammy: Thank you

If you enjoyed Tammy’s emotional stories you might like Kate Hewitt’s Intensely Emotional Reads.

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Alissa Callen’s wide-open-space romances – whether set in the Australian outback or Montana mountains – give a bright lift to the darkest day. That’s what her readers tell her, and she couldn’t hope for a more rewarding response.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today USA Today Best Selling author Alissa talks about what she loves most about writing rural and small-town fiction, and why she’s thrilled her books are in school libraries.

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Where to find Alissa Callen:

Website: www.alissacallen.com

Facebook: @AlissaCallenAuthor

What

Jenny:  And now

Alissa:  It’s such a

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning, was there a Once Upon a Time moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction, as distinct from other things you might have written. And if so what was the catalyst for it.

Alissa: I think I’m that stereotypical writer who was that childhood reader. And if I look back I probably read too many books and probably needed to get another life. But I was a very avid reader as a child/bookworm. And then I did English at university because that was my thing. And I’ve always wanted to write and I dabbled at writing but it wasn’t a definitive decision that I needed to do this.

I have four children and somehow I had time amongst raising

 I have also lived in

And it’s really interesting because I come from a family of

Jenny: You

Alissa: They are.

Rural fiction has such a wide spectrum. You can have small

But then for the American market they don’t have the term ‘rural

But I also do have a thread of something else in it. My current book that I’m working on I actually have a missing person thread in that book. The book that came out in February, it had World War II thread and surprisingly there’s a book called Red Dirt Road that has a DNA thread.

Alissa: So I do find they are sweet romances but I do try

Jenny: Quite often I’ve noticed that your protagonist is

Alissa: I think so and I hope so, because I live in the

I’ve got beautiful skies. There’s no one around me. So there

Jenny: Yes. Certainly there’s been a real burgeoning of

Alissa: Yes. Re the rural setting – there’s lots of very interesting theories about why there’s rush on right now, in particular in Australia. It has such a strong fan base. And one theory is that it came out of the Global Financial Crisis.  Chick lit was very popular at that time. All the shopping and having cocktails and a lighter side of life. Readers didn’t want you to read that. People were hurting and the economy was tight.

They wanted to read about times when  things more predictable and more stable and where community was actually really important. So that’s one theory that readers were drawn to because it goes right back to the basics of having a community. Having people rally around you. It’s not all about shopping and champagne. I think it’s just been wonderful that the genre has lasted for so long and there are a lot of authors – male and female  – doing it. Sometimes they will deviate into another genre but then they come back to rural and I think that hopefully the rural genre will have a lot of longevity.

I find when I go to libraries that the librarians are always

Jenny: Yes, it’s

Alissa: Yes

There are obviously other explanations as well but that’s

Jenny: Yes. From

Alissa: Yes, well I think basically I write following that old adage ‘write what you know.’ So that’s basically what my books are. Outback Dust was actually my very first book and it didn’t start out as a series. It was my very first published ‘print rural.’ I live outside Dubbo on a small farm now, but at the time of writing that book I actually lived two hours further west where it’s very flat. We were in the middle of a drought. So that story – and it is a drought story – that was my first accepted rural.  

Then when they asked for another one, I just love series and I think that readers do as well, and so I then wrote a second story in that same world in that same town.

Meanwhile I was also writing for my American publisher and

So my first book in the US was part of their rodeo series

I really loved that series and I’m going to be writing a

For some of the books we would have an author loop and we

Then for my Australian print publisher, HarperCollins, I

I’m just writing the last book now which will be my sixth. So that’s four full length standalones and two novellas. I think I could call myself a ‘hybrid’ in terms of the way I write. In terms of the old debate about whether you are a “plotter or a “pantser.’ I do plot but I do also go by the seat of my pants sometimes. So the first story I just threw in all these random characters hoping that they would have this story one day as I progressed into my series I realized I actually had to write these character stories and I made one a doctor and one a vet, and I didn’t know really what their stories were but luckily it’s all worked out so.

So Outback Dust is my first one. It’s a two book series set for the West. My sixth book is in the Montana series and I have lived in the Rocky Mountains so I really enjoyed writing that.

Hopefully there might be an historical series attached to it

But because I like writing series, I think that’s quite

Jenny: Yes, I agree. In Town of Windmills they had this intriguing

Alissa: I write what I know and it’s funny because when I research I don’t actually make lots of notes. It’s almost like I just absorb everything and then when I’m writing suddenly something pops into my head. So there is actually a little town half an hour from Dubbo called Gilgandra and it’s called the Town of Windmills. So that’s sort of where I had the story set. I loved that concept that there was a town of windmills. The name Woodlea  I made up…  I hadn’t realised that there’s a beautiful property on the way to Canberra called Woodlea.

And it has the most lovely ornate gates but the driveway looks

In terms of the yarn bombing, it is actually a worldwide phenomenon. Sometimes they’re called guerrilla knitters or there are underground knitting clubs. So actually it’s almost like graffiti-ing the landscape and it actually started in London when someone knitted and crocheted some things and put them on a post or something and it’s just spread everywhere. If you Google ‘yarn bombing’ there’s some of the most incredible pictures.

Because I live in a town that’s associated with a zoo, the

So I took some photos and I just thought this is just so

I think probably not so much nowadays but definitely if you Google

In the various stories I write the yarn bombing actually

Jenny: It’s amazing. I have never heard of it before. So you learn something every day. Turning to another aspect of your work, and that’s the his growing movement of what they call ‘clean romance.’ There seems to be a bit of a backlash probably against the Fifty Shades of Grey S and M type romance. There’s been a swing to character and emotion-driven romance that stays out of the bedroom. Your books would fit into this category.  The emotional and relational aspects are very strong, but generally speaking there’s very little active sex.

Is that something that you obviously have made as a choice

Alissa: I think again, I am that stereotypical, very

I’m just very thankful that the market actually has embraced

I think I’m all about the journey, not so much about the

 I do have teenagers

So I think it’s who I am intrinsically, that I’m just

Jenny: Yes. You mentioned about the collaboration on

Alissa: Yes I really love that.

It’s been really good because working with my American

And I think also what’s very interesting in America is things like Netflix and Hallmark.

There is a shift towards putting romances into film and they particularly like their holiday stories. So that’s sort of like an untapped market and one that’s only growing so my American publisher has been very proactive about having a Christmas story submitted actively marketing them and some of them I think there’s four of them have been actually turned into Christmas movies which is really good.

So it was really nice to know that on my home front back in Australia that my print publisher is also aware of the popularity of Christmas stories. And so last year they asked whether or not I wanted to write one and I just thought it was such a great idea.

So it’s really interesting because in that book, three of them were already published as e-books and my story and Victoria Purman story were new stories but they were also sort of loosely connected to our series.   So it was a really good concept by our print publisher. It came out as a print book and then they’ve actually done the same this year Our Country Christmas I think it’s called. It’s just such a lovely concept because at Christmas people do want to read stories and they’re short.

If when time is limited around Christmas you can get into

Jenny: Turning to your wider career away from talking

Alissa: It seems so long ago now so.  I have I have been to university I’ve got two

In my other life before marriage and children I also did a

So I think my life before writing. it was actually quite a

So I just yes, university was a plan B and I had my family

Jenny: Is there

Alissa: Yes, I think I’m because I’m a very quiet person,

I’m not a natural risk taker and our public should have backed myself instead of sort of settling for things that I knew would not be good for me. I just wanted to publishing security. I really enjoy my writing where I am at now.

But hindsight’s always a wonderful thing and there’s probably a few different turns I would have made at the beginning. Who’s to say that I would have not ended up in the same place I am now but I think I think writing there’s so much more to a writing career than just putting fingers to the keyboard and being that storyteller that is inside you. I think there’s so many other business hats and if you’re not naturally that way inclined it can be a very steep learning curve.

Jenny: Yes I heard somewhere I read somewhere the other

Alissa: Yes,

I do find that I have to limit social media though. I just

Jenny: Yes. What’s your favorite way to relax and unwind?

Alissa: I wish I could say I would read more. I’ve got a

Now I’ve become a writer it’s not so easy to relax that way,

I do walk every day. I have my animals, and I just I just lead

Jenny:  Turning

Alissa: I do love binge reading, I went through a Louis L’Amour Western phase when I was at university and I still to this day have every single book that he wrote. I do like to find a series. I love it. My bookshelves are full of series. I’m quite eclectic now because I think I write rural I still love reading other rural authors, but I find that I’m drawn to more historicals at the moment.

Allison  Butler  writes beautiful medieval historicals (Scottish romances)  and she has a series. I also like Anne Gracie  (Regency romance) and Anna Campbell. (passionate historical romance.) I also have so many writing friends that write the most beautiful books, a lot of them are published with my publisher which is some HarperCollins and under the Mira or the HQ imprint. Rachel Johns   is another.  I love her books as well, so I think I’m quite diverse and eclectic at the moment because I think that there’s so many great books out there.

I’m in a historical phase and in a couple of months I might change to something else I won’t probably change to crime because I’m one of those people that has to know the ending and if it’s too frightening or scary I won’t be reading it. My husband and my mother-in-law love crime books. But that’s probably a genre that I probably won’t be turning to.

Jenny: Looking at your life from where you’re standing

Alissa: I think I

But I think one of the things that I’m really thankful that

That way I would have that support. If anyone ever has a

So I think it’s that community and everyone is just so helpful and supportive. I wrote in isolation for a long time. I think the first book I wrote I didn’t even really know about   Point of View and so I wrote this whole book “head hopping.”  

Probably I was writing because I just loved writing, so I probably should have had a bit more of a business head on, and been a bit more savvy. When I had decisions to make, I probably should have backed myself a bit more and waited instead of jumping in really early.  But I’ve got no complaints. I love where I am and I’m very thankful that I have can write full time.

But I guess hindsight’s always wonderful you always think oh

Jenny: Yes sure. Romance Writers I must say they’re very

Alissa: I think that’s the key thing because the

Conferences give you the opportunity to meet people and to

Jenny: Sure. So

Alissa: So for today I’ve got my “to do list.” I have my fifth story in my current Town of Windmills series. It’s a novella and I am to do my final read through and press “send” to send it to my publisher. So when it’s gone, I never have to think about it again.

Then I have a 100,000 word single title book to complete by

There is a bison farm at Dubbo so I’m having a lot of fun

Jenny: Where can readers find you online anddo you enjoy interacting with your

Alissa: I love interacting

On that website you can also follow me on Bookbub or Amazon

I’ve had some incredible letters or emails and also messages

Jenny: What’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to

Alissa: I think there was a reader that was going through a very difficult time in her life. And the reason why I write and why I mentioned before about the uplifting feel good stories is said I’d like to I suppose it’s my counselling head. I like to help somebody and she had been going through incredibly difficult time and she wrote to me she said she picked up one of my books and she just read it from cover to cover and that it actually gave her a respite, and it took her away from her problems.

It made her feel happy. So I think that’s something that’s really powerful. And I think that’s something that is just so lovely. To know that I’ve actually helped somebody.  Yes, that was one of my special letters.

Jenny: That’s a

Alissa: Yes I have. And I love it. And thank you so much for inviting me to chat.

If you enjoy Alissa Callen’s small town romance you may also enjoy Annie Seaton’s Eco-Adventure Romance or Sarah Barrie’s Australian Rural Mysteries.

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20

Danielle

Hi there

And for fans – or people who’d like to be fans – we’ve got a great Giveaway: two paperback copies of Danielle’s latest book, when it all went to custard to give away in a draw. One each week, for the next two weeks, so enter the draw here or on Facebook.  Entries close July 20, so get in now your own copy of Danielle’s latest funny romcom.

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Where you can find Danielle Hawkins:

Facebook: @DanielleHawkinsAuthor

What

Jenny: But now, here’s Danielle. .  Hello there Danielle and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Danielle: Hi

Jenny: Look, you’re a qualified veterinarian, and a farmer’s wife living on a sheep and beef farm, raising two children. And you decide one day that you want to be a romance author. Is that how it happened? And was there a Once Upon A Time moment when you decided; I’ve just got to write a book?

Danielle: Oh well, not exactly. I never decided to be a romance writer and I was rather surprised when this was how I was labeled, because you just think that you’ve written a book. You don’t put it in any particular box. But I started writing. I was at home with a baby and I wasn’t working full time. Actually I wasn’t working at all, apart from being at home with a baby ,and I was bored. I just I wanted a project.

Jenny: It’s that simple? You wanted a project? There’s a million people who would like a project, but they don’t choose to write a book.

Danielle: Oh, I painted the house first. And then I wrote a book.

Jenny: I painted the house first! That sounds so Kiwi. Your books have been described as a cross between Doc Martin, the TV series and the stories of James Herriott. I’ve gathered that when you were a teenager you wanted to be James Herriott. So it must be quite cool for you, is it?

Danielle: Absolutely. That’s a wonderful compliment. No one has ever done, I don’t think, what James Herriott has done. His books  appeal to people who know nothing about veterinary medicine and yet they’re not patronising and boring to people who do know all about it. That’s such a skill. I’m so impressed.

Jenny: It’s lovely. You’ve now written four very well-received novels that can be best described as distinctly rural New Zealand romantic comedies. Was it a matter of ‘write what you know?’ You say you didn’t start out writing romance. So how did you come to be put in that slot in the end?

Danielle: Oh well I started writing, and the first thing I wrote was rubbish. Even I could tell it was rubbish. And then I wrote something else, and then something else. The one that I submitted to a publisher was Number Four or Number Five, I think. It was a dystopian story, set in New Zealand, where we’d been overtaken by this group of religious fundamentalists and we’d all been plunged back into the age of  horses and carts and long skirts and that sort of thing.

And I submitted it and I got back quite possibly the nicest rejection letter ever. They said ‘quite nicely written but terrible idea. Why don’t you try rural romance fiction? That stuff sells well.’ So I did.

Jenny:  The other one sounds a bit like Amish in New

Danielle: Yes. Probably it wasn’t a very good idea.

Jenny: And your first book, when you got on this streak of finding your niche, was called Dinner at Rose’s. It sold well and it was translated into German and Italian.  It must have been wonderful to have such success with your first book. Why do you think that it appealed to international readers?

Danielle: I think that Germans do quite like New Zealand fiction. I know that Mary Scott, who wrote the same sort of thing, but 50 years before I did. She was always translated into German because the Germans liked stories about New Zealand. I think that’s all it was.

Jenny: Yes. Even

Danielle: Well

Jenny: The heroines in your stories are very much ordinary women. In Dinner At Rose’s the central character gets dumped by her boyfriend in Melbourne and she comes home to New Zealand to gather herself together again. And in Chocolate Cake For Breakfast the heroine somehow scores an All Black boyfriend who at the beginning. she doesn’t even recognise is an All Black. They are characters woman can very much identify with. I wonder if that’s part of their charm?

Danielle: Oh but I hope so. Yeah. You always have to start if you write – or rather I have to start – I write in the first person, with somebody a bit like me, who thinks a bit like me about most things, and you know that’s my life. So it just works out like that

Jenny:  Do you get emails from readers saying that

Danielle: Yes. Yes I do. I get really nice e-mails actually.

Jenny: I think I

Danielle: Yeah I

Jenny: And you also had quite a bit of the visionary science comes into it. And I was amused that in Chocolate Cake For Breakfast there must be the most unromantic first date that ever has ever happened. The vet takes the All Black along on an emergency call-out to birth of a calf which turned out to be a stillborn calf. It’s a very detailed account, and I think some readers have commented it gave them just a little bit Too Much Information. Do you think that your veterinary aspect got carried away there?

Danielle: Well

Jenny: Fantastic.

Danielle: Well

Jenny: That’s a really lovely story. In the most recent one – when it all went to custard – there’s a memorable opening line. It starts: “I wasn’t enjoying the afternoon of  February 23 even before I learned that my husband was having an affair.” What a great way to start a book where the central character is struggling to hold her life together. We have mentioned this already, but there is a distinctly anti-romantic thread in your work, isn’t there?

Danielle: Absolutely. I do like things to end happily and I love love stories but I really don’t like mushy ones, so perhaps I sabotage them a little bit. You know, as soon as something sweet and touching happens I have to make it silly or funny.

Jenny: Yes. And I’m amused also that book title –  none of the words are in capitals. They’re all in lowercase. And I wondered again if that’s another way of saying ‘I’m not pretentious.’ Obviously your publishers see that as part of the branding as well to to allow you to do it that way or for them to decide to do it that way.

Danielle: I don’t know actually. I don’t get any say in what they’re going to do with covers and titles, which is sometimes a little bit scary because you worry that they’re not going to get the right idea. But I do think they did that one really nicely.

Jenny: There

Danielle: Oh, you

Jenny: Yes sure. And one of the things that makes them so truly Kiwi is the humor. Very much understated. How would you define Kiwi humor and how do you manage to nail it so well?

Danielle: Well

Jenny: I think

Danielle: Yes.

Jenny: Yes. And the other thing is the relationships. There’s a nice authentic quality about them. The women and the men see and accept each other, warts and all. Sometimes they don’t have any choice in the matter. And the worst thing is to be a pretentious person like Chris, Harry’s boyfriend in the most recent book. And it  struck me that one of the things you also do is answer some deep hope every woman has that she’s going to be appreciated for who she is rather than because she’s got lipstick on.

Danielle: Oh

Jenny: Do you

Danielle: I don’t

Jenny: In our world women are always being pushed into something that they’re not to win the approval of others. And your women never do that.

Danielle: Do you

Jenny: Yes. And then when we’re older we worry about what we’re going to look like and whether so-and-so is going to like that the way we look. That kind of thing. You know, you’re too fat or you’re too thin. You’re too tall or you’re too noisy or you’re too talkative or something or other.

Danielle: Yes. Isn’t a great relief not to be a teenager anymore?

Jenny: Totally. So I wondered . . .

Is there one thing you’ve done more than any other that you’d see as being the secret to your success as a writer? We’re talking now more about the general writing career than  specific books. (Editor Note: The week we published this podcast interview, Danielle’s book was in the NZ Best Seller lists.)

Danielle: Goodness. I don’t actually know that I have had a great deal of success Jenny. I mean, a book in New Zealand doesn’t have to sell very many copies before it’s called a bestseller. And you know it’s very easy to say that sort of stuff  and not have huge sales and great international contracts or anything like that behind it. I think any success I’ve had is very moderate. You know I wish that the writing was enough to pay the mortgage but it definitely isn’t.

Jenny: Yes, I can understand what you’re saying. But it’s all relative isn’t it? I mean four books published by a trad publisher for starters. That’s one notch on your belt. And I can tell you from experience that when I was trying to order your books through the Auckland Public Library I was like about number 40 on a list of about 80 people wanting it. They were incredibly popular in the library.

Danielle: Oh that’s lovely to hear.

Jenny: Perhaps

Danielle: Well I

Jenny: All

Danielle: I must

Jenny: You would look to many as if you – to use the old cliche –  ‘have it all.’ You work two days a week at something that you love. You keep a garden and raise kids and farm, etc. But I was interested to see in one of the interviews that you said “Sure, a woman can have it all –  for about a week.” Your advice to other women was “don’t be too hard on yourself.” And that seemed to be very good advice. How do you manage that whole thing of keeping it in perspective?

Danielle: It gets easier and easier and better and better. Yes. It’s just reminding yourself that you don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to have a clean house and wonderful children and the international book deal. But we all struggle with it, don’t we? That’s such a girl thing. We’re so hard on ourselves.

Jenny: Yes that’s

Danielle: I don’t think so. I think probably 10 years ago I really felt like that, a bit inadequate. And then you know, the older you get, the more you realize that that incredibly trendy, pulled together person that you see down at the school bus, has got issues too. Yes. That just makes it better.

Jenny: The farm that you are on now, I think has been in the family for four generations and your  grandfather Arthur Cowan was a renowned conservationist. I understand the family has continued in that tradition and certainly the idea of retaining the family farm was part of the central story in this most recent book. So I assume that is was also something that you value highly?

Danielle: I do. I’m so lucky that this farm has always been my favorite place in the world. To get to marry someone who loves it and has fitted in – Yes, it’s amazing. And you know, you don’t just wander out and buy a farm these days, you can’t do it without family support. There’s just so many lucky things that have happened, to allow us to be here.

Jenny: Yes. So

Danielle: A little I guess. My grandfather was pretty visionary. You know he bought the place in 1951 I think. And the first thing he did, almost, was put a fence around the remaining bush. So we’ve got this beautiful big 150 acre block right through the middle, and some smaller blocks. And my husband mostly does the work, but I help out. He runs trap lines and bait stations and stuff all the way through it. He’s got up to 500 now. Yes. And it’s really, really cool.

You know before Grandpa died a few years ago he’d got to see already the results of doing all that intensive trapping. Because they didn’t used to realize that that was a thing and you needed to do it. But it was so cool that Grandpa had got to see that tomtits had come back and that we had robins now. That’s really special.

Jenny: It’s wonderful, you know. Tell us a bit about the farm. How big is it and what do you run there?

Danielle: We have 350 ha effective. And about another 100 ha in bush. We’ve got 1200 ewes and the cattle are all dairy grazers that are just  growing up to go home at two years old to be milked.

Jenny: And your work in the vet practice? You’ve kept that up partly because you love to be a vet. Is that right?

Danielle: Yes I do. I love being home and having this part time work lifestyle so that I get to cruise around and do garden stuff and kids stuff. But I don’t think I’d be a very good fulltime stay-at-home Mum. So it’s really nice to get off and be a professional just occasionally.

Jenny: Now you

Danielle: I avoid horses like the plague, whenever I possibly can. I’m terrified of the damn things.  I’m very fond of cows. and I do  sheep and beef  consultancy advice. That’s my particular interest.

Jenny: Do you

Danielle: A few yes. Alpacas are lovely. And  I get to do the Kiwi House in Otorohanga, which is very cool.

Jenny: So what

Danielle: The

Jenny: So what’s

Danielle: I have none. It’s to not stress the tuatara. That’s  my only suggestion to date. That’s it. It’s good for me, doing this wildlife medicine stuff. Because you know after nearly 20 years it’s not that I’m a fabulous expert, but you know most of the things that are going to go wrong with cows and sheep. And then to get these totally different species, where you don’t even know what normal is. Oh it’s great.

Jenny: Yes  Equestrian veterinary work is probably a very

Danielle: It

Jenny: That’s

Danielle: Oh. I

Jenny: And what

Danielle: Oh the garden is fairly new. We’ve lived here twelve years so it’s only that old and it’s quite big. We’ve got a big lawn and just to really make everybody hate me  my dad comes up the road on his ride on and mows it for me. So I don’t have to mow my lawn. Isn’t that amazing?.

It’s very much like grandma’s which is just down the road. She was a fabulous gardener. She had four acres with bush all around and a very sort of English country garden feel. So I’ve got lots and lots of things from her and from all my gardening aunts and my mum.

Jenny: Wonderful. And do you do vegetables as well?. Do you grow for your food?

Danielle: Oh, I’m not a great vegetable gardener actually. I’m afraid most of my vegetable garden at the moment is cosmos and chicory. I’m trying to create a wildflower bed but the pigs broke in yesterday so my wildflower bed is not looking great.

Jenny: True ‘Country Life.’

Danielle: Absolutely. I do good rhubarb, but it’s not hard.

Jenny: That’s lovely. Look the show is called The Joys of Binge Reading because it has become an age where people tend to binge read digital books. So turning to Danielle as reader. Tell us a bit about what you like to read and who are you reading at the moment?

Danielle: All right. Well, I am a real binge reader. I love to find an author that I really like and read all of their stuff. So Terry Pratchett is one of the authors I  read “on a loop.” And Georgette Heyer is another. I love her books. And at the moment I’ve just discovered that on Amazon you can download old D.E. Stevenson books for only about a dollar each. So I’ve got a whole lot of those and I’m loving them.

Jenny: I’ve never heard of D.E. Stevenson. Tell me about him or her.

Danielle: You have such a treat in store. She was a Scottish writer and she wrote in probably the 30’s through to the 60’s. She was very prolific. So some of her books are merely pleasant but the good ones are wonderful. You want to start with Miss Buncles Book . You must read it. Miss Buncle decides that she needs to write a book, because she’s poorer than she expected to be with the world downturn. And so she writes this book all about everybody in her village and then it becomes a fabulous runaway success and they’re all hunting desperately for the author so that they can run them out of town. It’s very funny.

Jenny: So what

Danielle: Perhaps country village life stories? They’re  very gentle and very pleasant. They’re certainly not bodice rippers. Often people do get together in the end but sometimes not. Yes. They’re really  relaxed and easy. I tend not to read “gripping sagas of our time” that are going to keep me awake at night. I’m not very good at those.. .

Jenny: And who

Danielle: Oh Yes, lots.  Philip Pullman. I’m very fond of and I’ve been reading his books to the kids lately. So we’ve just gone through all of those ones again. What else? I’m having a blank. Even though there are plenty of nice things.

Jenny: Did you get into The Hunger Games with the kids?

Danielle: I did. Actually I love the Hunger Games. Yes. I really liked Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. It’s really nice. I sort of avoided it because it was such a runaway success. Which is a bit silly really. But it’s lovely. And a Swedish author called Fredrik Backman  (A Man Called Ove and other New York Times best sellers. ) He has been translated to English and they are gorgeous. They just uplifting and and happy and funny and clever and awesome.

Jenny: That’s great. It’s definitely a theme coming through here that you don’t like anything that’s grim and too navel gazing perhaps?

Danielle: Oh no, although I read The Narrow Road To The Deep North (Richard Flanagan) a few years ago and I’m glad I did. But I’m still not over it.

Jenny: Circling

Danielle: I don’t think I would change anything. Yes, which is very nice to realize.

Jenny: Good. Is there anything that you would like to try your hand at that you haven’t had time for yet? I mean in the area of your writing; is there an area that you feel you’d like to go back to  – say dystopia  or YA for example?

Danielle: Yes I would like to do that. I’d like to create a really awesome fantasy series. You know a really clever alternate reality. LIkePhilip Pullman or Ursula Le Guin or one of those people. They’re just so perfect, the alternate universes they’ve created.  There’s nothing in them to trip you up  – no little inconsistencies that I can find anyway. I would very much like to do that. I don’t think I’m clever enough. But I’ll try.

Jenny: Well that

Danielle: Maybe. I have a feeling that publishers hate it when you leave your genre after they’ve built you up in it.

Jenny: You might use a different publisher or something. Heaven forbid that I’d suggest that you should do that. But you know there might come a day when you feel like ‘I just really need to do something to refresh me.’  A lot of writers do those things in parallel. Like they still continue with the things that they’ve made their name at, but they do something on the side over a longer period. That’s maybe something you could consider.

Danielle: Yes.  In fact the book that I’m writing at the moment is a young adult fairy tale thing. So yes. And I don’t know if anyone will ever want to publish it. But trying to write things just to get published is probably pretty self-defeating, I think. It’s much better to write something because you think it’s fun.

Jenny: Yes, because that comes through doesn’t it?.

Danielle: Yes absolutely. And you know it’s hard writing a book. You get sick of it and you’re sure it’s never going to be any good.  If you’re not really excited by the whole thing and it’s not so much fun that you’d rather do it than anything else, I don’t think that you’d get there.

Jenny: That’s right. Tell us a bit about your work habits. How do you organize your day? Do you have a definite period in the morning? A block of time that you put aside for writing? How do you do it?

Danielle: I try to get up early. So 5:30 or 6 am  – something like that  – and write for an hour or two before everyone else gets up. I’m finding it at the moment even though I’m doing that I’m making terribly slow progress and I’ll look at my mornings haul and go “a hundred words. Great.” But never mind. Because the rest of the day does tend to vanish. Writing is something that it’s never urgent to do it right now. You know, it can always be put off, because of something else or you’re needed  down the farm or you could you go and get a new tractor battery or something.

Jenny: Yes!. So what is next for Danielle the writer in terms of the next twelve months or so? Have you got things that are in the cooker that your publisher is expecting? Where are you going with all of that?

Danielle: No no. This book that’s just come out – when it all went to custard – that was the second of the two book deal. So I’m unemployed and fancy free. So I’ll carry on with my fairy tale and see how it goes.

Jenny: Good. You

Danielle: Yes, I

Jenny: Yes. I must say, it is a huge amount of work. I think somebody used an expression which I hated when I heard it. But they said it’s a bit like building a house where you think that when you’ve got the walls and the roof on and the floor in, that you’ve got like 80 percent done. And it’s only really about 40 percent because of all the unseen stuff, the plumbing, the wiring etc.. Well apparently they say that when you self publish a book, writing the book is only 40 percent of it and 60 per cent is the marketing and all the rest of the stuff that you have to do.

Danielle: Oh yes that’s right. And I mean, I just don’t think it’s worth it. I don’t have very much time and I certainly don’t want to devote to something that’s probably going to make me feel not very good about myself and I don’t enjoy doing.

Jenny: It is hard. I’m sure that you can you’ll be able to find a way around it. And we’ll be very interested in seeing the outcome of it. Where can readers find you online? You do interact with your readers, don’t you? Where can they find you online, Danielle?

Danielle: My only online presence is a Facebook page, called Danielle Hawkins Author. (@DanielleHawkinsAuthor) I’m pretty good at responding when people write to me there. I’m not very good at doing the media stuff and I have found that I take it all far too seriously and lose all perspective. So I’m much better to stay not doing much of it.

Jenny: Do you mean that if people say something unflattering, you take it to heart too much?

Danielle: No, not that so much. You don’t get very much negative comment. But just that the whole thing of “Oh my gosh I’ve got to craft my image.” I hate having to think of some new post on Instagram and what if it doesn’t get a hundred likes or a thousand likes and the last one got more . . .. Oh, I would just prefer not to engage with it.

Jenny: Yes. I can

Danielle: Some people do it so well and I really admire them, but I don’t seem to be able to.

Jenny: So am I

Danielle: Oh no, not at all. I like writing that sort of thing. But that’s not what I’m doing at the moment.

Jenny: That’s good. Well look it’s been wonderful talking to you . We’ve gone over our 30 minutes, so I’ll let you go get back to the farm or the writing. What have you got going for the rest of the day?

Danielle: Oh I was going to go and pick up some silage wrap at the bottom of the  hill and shovel up some dags  and then we’ve got netball after school, so it’s not very glamorous today.

Jenny: That’s

Danielle: Thanks Jenny.

If you’ve enjoyed Danielle’s rural rom coms you might also enjoy Sarah Barrie’s Australian rural mysteries or NZ author Brynn Kelly’s romantic suspense set in exotic locations.

Thanks To Our Technical Support:

The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical

Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20

Sharon Maas celebrates the diversity of publishing today because she’s been one the writers who has challenged the old formula.  Her early 20th century Quint family series set in her homeland of Guyana and based on her own family story of a white woman marrying a black man was not seen as “commercial.’

Hi, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Sharon talks about how the decade of rejection she faced before she won through made her a better writer, and tells us about a magical day she spent with Muhammad Ali in Peru.

Six

Where to find Sharon Maas:

Website: https://www.sharonmaas.com/

Facebook: @sharonmaasauthor

 Twitter: @sharon_maas

What

Jenny: But now, here’s Sharon.  Hello there Sharon and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Sharon: Good morning Jenny. Good to be with you.

Jenny: And I think you’re speaking from Germany are you?

Sharon: No, no. I moved to Ireland a year ago. I’m in Ireland now.

Jenny: Oh sorry I am not up to date. Perhaps there maybe a bit out of date information on the web. I’m not sure.

Sharon: Oh yes, Ireland’s been a wonderful place to live.

Jenny: Okay. that’s lovely. How did you get started writing in fiction? Was there a ‘Once Upon a Time’ moment for you when you felt you needed to write fiction or you wouldn’t have achieved your purpose in life, so to speak.

Sharon: [00:00:51] Well I’ve always been a voracious reader and I always had this idea that maybe I could write something one day, but I just thought it just too much. I just can’t do it. You know  it’s too hard to figure out a plan and I can’t do it.  I didn’t feel up to it. 

I was writing when I was about eight or nine. I used to write children’s stories about children with horses and dogs and having adventures. Enid Blyton was my favorite writer as a child. So I had this idea at the back of my mind but I just didn’t feel have the confidence to get into it and to actually start. And so I was late in my late forties when I began thinking ‘Oh maybe I could do it. Maybe I can write something myself.’ I’ve read a book called Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brand.

And she says the stories you want to tell are in us already. Deep down. They’re made by the subconscious mind and we can access them if we make the effort. And that was like a ‘light bulb’ moment for me, because you know I meditate and I knew that there is something inside me which I can access. So that really kind of lifted me up and got me fired up. So I started when I was about 48.

Jenny: And how did you choose what you were going to write. And I gather that you are more of a ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ writer?

Sharon: Oh absolutely.

Jenny: Did you approach it in that way with your first book, or how did you start off?

Sharon: I knew I wanted to write a book set in Guyana, which is the country I grew up in. It used to be British Guyana and I really knew I had to write a story set there because when I was growing up there was nothing published about our own culture.

All of the books I read as a child about England and English people. English children and strawberries and cream and all those very English things. Daisies and tulips and things we don’t have in Guyana. So I wanted to have a really authentic Guyanese setting with Guyanese people who are Indian and African, you know, very very diverse.

So I knew that was what I wanted to write. I didn’t know exactly what else. So I just sat down and began writing and it just came as I wrote. So it was kind of for me it was like a miracle, that I could actually write a story just out of nothing. You know it was really a light bulb moment then.

Jenny: Yes we shared a very similar experience I guess, both being in British colonies So  I really loved Enid Blyton, but I also didn’t feel as if the sorts of stories she wrote could happen in my own country, You knew it was a removed environment. 

Sharon: Yes exactly.

Jenny: Now the Quint series that you’ve done – three or four books -set in early 20th century Guyana, traced the life of Winnie Cox who is a rich plantation owner’s daughter and a white woman who marries a poor black postman.

Jenny: That’s quite a big challenge for a beginning writer to tackle in the first place isn’t it, because there’s a certain level of disbelief that that could really happen?

Sharon: Well it wasn’t actually my first. My first book was Of Marriageable Age which was published by HarperCollins in 1999. So I had some experience with writing and when I said thing I don’t know what I’m going to write in advance, but with the Quint series that’s not quite true, because I had seen this photo of my grandmother’s wedding. My grandmother was a white woman and she married a black man. And I thought this is extraordinary for the time. I mean my father was born in 1912 so she must have married in about 1910.

There were these very well-dressed, very cultivated people in this wedding photo. She was wearing a beautiful white dress, and he’s wearing a tuxedo, a black tie and is very elegant looking, very dapper.

So I thought this would make a great story. And I had an aunt who told me some of the details of her background. So I did have an idea of how that story would go, vaguely.  I didn’t stick to her real life But I took the details of her life and went from there.

Jenny: It’s lovely that you did have that, an actual real event that you could hang something on. So it’s really very special.

Sharon: Yes exactly. And you know I’ve heard people say ‘oh that could never have happened to a white woman marrying a black man he would have been lynched he’d have been you know she’d have been killed’ or whatever and it wouldn’t happen. It wasn’t legal in those days.

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But these are all Americans and I think there are they’re assuming that Guyana who was like America, but it wasn’t. And it was possible because it happened. So you know and that is what I wanted to. I wanted to write a story about that. I thought it was extraordinary and I thought it must have been very difficult for her and very brave as well.

Because I know that there was racism even in my day in Guyana. So I knew back then in her time it must have been even worse. And she made that step. So I thought it was a great story.

Jenny: Yes it certainly is. And so your first book was Of Marriageable Age. Tell us a little bit about it.

Sharon: Yeah. Well I had been living in India for some time as a young woman and I love India. I had a great experience there. And so I wanted to get to bring out the beauty. You know we have lots of cliches about India in the West. And there is also a different side to India.  India has all the  extremes. So I wanted to write a story which would bring out the beauty and the depth of Indian culture as well as the atrocities that happened. Of Marriageable Age covers both sides of India: the terrible things that happened, to tap into the main character, as well as some of the depth of Indian life. 

[00:07:37] And it also jumps from India to Guyana. It’s got three storylines in that book which are all woven together. So three different characters and their lives working together. And at the beginning you don’t know what they have in common because they’re quite different. Different eras, different continents, even. So the reader is a bit confused at the beginning. A few reviewers have said they were confused after the jump from India to South America and then to England.  But in the end it all comes together. And yes, it was my first book and it was immediately taken up by an agent and a publisher and I had a lot of foreign  translations so it was a successful book. I’d say.

Jenny: [00:08:27]  I’m impressed that with a book that set in unusual locations that you did find a traditional publisher who snapped it up. It’s a real tribute to your writing that that was the case. Did you find some difficulty with the fact that your locations were bit out of the ordinary. 

Sharon: [Yes of course. I mean India is fine. India was like a very trendy at the time and it is even today a little bit trendy. Everyone, well almost everyone knows India. India has a great history and great stories and you have Gandhi and all these things. So everyone knows India. India has this kind of exotic feel to it, but Guyana? Nobody’s heard you of Guyana? What most people have heard in connection with Guyana is the Jim Jones mass suicide in 1978. that’s when Guyana made the headlines and that’s all people know about Guyana. These people in England or in America or in Canada or wherever as all they know about is Jim Jones and the Jonestown mass suicide.

So I wanted to just get back there and show what a normal life was in Guyana when I was growing up and yeah that kind of had a connection to the Indian story. So I was able to connect them –  weave it into the Indian story which gave people an entry into Guyana. 

Jenny: And I think you’ve said that the publishers were quite happy, but when you started to write books that were focused solely in Guyana they were less enthusiastic.

Sharon: [00:10:10] Oh yes very much so. I mean I got rejection after rejection for ten years when I wrote these books. But I really had to write them.  It was like an urge to write books set in Guyana and to tell my grandmother’s story in a different format. But I really had to write them.

Jenny: So what happened in the end? You managed to find a publisher?

Sharon:Yes. Well I wrote on. I kept writing these books and putting them aside and  trying to get them published and failing to get them published, and starting again. And then in 2000 and around 2012, 2013, 2014  . . .  That’s when the digital age came into being and people who were publishers were publishing digital books.

Digital first books which are less risky for the publisher. So that’s when I submitted my first book Of Marrigeable Age for re-publication to Bookouture, (owned by Hachette UK) because it was out of print. By that time it was like ten years had passed since it was first published. So they snapped it up and then they went ahead and published all the other Quint Books which was of course fantastic.

Jenny: Yes. Now your most recent book which will spend a bit of time on is The Violin Maker’s Daughter and it is a step away from the other ones that you’ve done. It’s set in Germany and it’s once again a slightly ‘forbidden love’ type of story between an English woman and a German man. During the Second World War. And once again I thought to myself ‘I wonder if that kind of thing really did happen?’ I guess it must have done because we’re all human, but it was something that I’d never really thought about before, I must admit.

So this is once again the attraction of a relationship that is very high risk. Did you have any other evidence that these liaisons did take place?

Sharon: Well I think Forbidden Love is an ongoing trope in literature because you need to have conflict in a story and a love story especially needs conflict. So that is one of the main conflicts you find. Whether it’s race or nationality or something like that. Or class of course, a poor woman and a rich man or vice versa. I mean it’s in many books – like Nicholas Sparks books like The Notebook  – that’s rich woman poor man, it’s the same  trope isn’t it.

Jenny: [00:12:57] I was going to say you did one The Soldier’s Girl, before The Violin Maker’s Daughter which had a similar setting. So you’ve done a lot of research on the topical really haven’t you?

Sharon: [00:13:07] Yes I had already done the research for The Soldiers Girl. It was a totally new genre for me at the time, so I had plunged into that very detailed research for particular time just at the end of the war. 

So I already knew a bit of the background for The Violin Maker’s Daughter. For that reason it didn’t require too much new research which was good.

Jenny: [00:13:36] And were you influenced at all by the

Sharon: [00:13:45] Yes of course. But the book is the actually set in Alsace which is on the border in France.  I had lived in Alsace, It is quite near to the German state of Baden, and it is quite near to the town of Freiburg. And I had lived in Freiburg during my studies for four years. It’s a beautiful town and it’s quite near Alsace. So I was very happy to bring this beautiful town into the story. And I set part of the story  in Freiburg. I lived  for 43 years in Germany and I actually I am German. I have a German passport. So it I was able to get that side of it covered pretty well. .

Jenny: [00:14:40] When you were doing your research, Did you find anything that you hadn’t expected to find?

Sharon: [00:14:44] Oh very much so. Because I knew that Alsace had been significantly impacted by the war. But I didn’t know the details. So what really struck me was that Alsace was actually the last province of France to be liberated and there was this area around Colmar which is the city where this novel is mostly set. That was the very last area in France to be liberated and it was a scene of extreme fighting.

It saw a lot of death, a lot of violence at the very end of the war. In January, February 1945. Colmar was the very last town in France to be liberated. So I mean, you can imagine when Colmar was finally liberated, that was the end of the war for France. Colmar has gone, the Germans have gone. Everyone is singing ‘The Marseilles’ and this were really a joyous time.

[00:15:53] So that was what I discovered about stars and of course the whole background. So it’s a beautiful. A traditional kind of area with beautiful villages you know a half timbered houses and cobblers cobbled streets and it’s beautiful hilly area with beautiful sunlit hills covered in vines. It’s really a fantastic area. And I loved it when I used to go there quite frequently. So it was just this contrast with this beautiful fairy-tale country and war and you know having it devastated by war and villages razed to the ground. And so that was an interesting setting for me.

Jenny: Mm hmm. You must be heartened by the fact that diversity has become a bit of a hot topic right through writing world these days. I think particularly in romance, there’s this real feeling that we need more diversity. You’ve been just at the right place for that, to really be able to take advantage of that, haven’t you?

Sharon: Yes. I come from a country which has six different races, three different official religions, and everybody, somehow, has had to learn to get along get along with each other.

So coming to the West, and particularly coming to Germany where at the beginning I encountered a lot of racism and being an ‘outsider’ and people not knowing how to really meet me and how to talk to me and being treated like I’m somehow ‘less.’ So I’m very happy that now even in Germany it’s really ‘In’ to be different. That’s a big change and I’m glad that this also in literature as well in books and it’s coming out more and more in books. If you have main characters who are not English and not white, it’s different you know. And so that’s a big change from when I first began writing.

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Jenny:Yes. So now you have been published and you have to leave it down. I don’t know if you’ve ever done indie publishing but we do sit now on the spectrum I guess you’d be a hybrid or would you do some trade publishing and some more indies. How does that work.

Sharon: No, it’s I mostly I’m almost completely with Bookouture now, all my books are published by Bookouture. This is my ninth book coming out now. I’ve only done one. I’ve only published one book which is actually very close to my heart. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Mahabharata from the Indian epic.

Jenny: Oh yes. Yes I had heard of it I think I did yes into it many many years ago but yet. 

Sharon: Yes. And while I love this book I read this when I first went to India as a 23 year old and I just love this story. It’s the original – a long saga in Sanskrit. It’s about 18 volumes long and very convoluted with lots of side stories and lots of different, quite boring expeditions. It’s very long, but it has a central theme, a central story which blew me away and I thought if it could just get this central story into a really good format and bring it out to that it shines like a diamond because it’s really beautiful. A wonderful story.

And on the versions I read of this central story they didn’t satisfy me because they were some of them are written like a bit like a soap opera or I d they didn’t get the real message of this book or the real central story of it.

So I made up my mind I would write this rewrite it in a different version.

And I started that book when I was in India in the 1970’s. I started it on a typewriter and I just kept on writing and rewriting it over the years and putting it away for a year or two and start bringing it to me writing it improving it and then in the end I thought well I might as well self publish this book. It’s the Mahabharata it’s known people will know the Mahabharata.

So if people are searching on Amazon, they’ll find it somehow and they might read it. So I did that. I never tried to in any way to promote it. I just let it linger on Amazon. So it gets like three or four sales a month and it’s got has had really good reviews and maybe one day it will find a publisher but I’m really happy that it’s out there and people can read it if they want to.

Jenny: That’s lovely. That’s a nice place to turn to talk about your wider career. Because you’ve had a very freewheeling adventuresome life before you settle into your writing. And I read somewhere online that you’d even ended up in a Colombian jail overnight at one stage. Tell us a little bit about those days.

Sharon: Yeah well I got my first job in Guyana was as a journalist and I got a bit bored after a year or two. So I said look I’m going off to Brazil and two my friends said we will come with you. So we just took off. We had some savings and I saw that I had a motorbike which I sold for the money and we just set off with backpacks and nothing much else.

Not much wisdom I have to say. We just plunged off into the vast continent up the Amazon and into Peru ended up hitchhiking through the Andes and and sleeping here and there, anywhere we found a place to lay out our heads practically speaking. Living on a hippie commune for a while.

And yes, I ended up in this Colombian jail which was just a story in itself. I’m not going to tell you right here. It would take too long!

Jenny: Didn’t you also bump into Muhammed Ali at some stage? You must tell us what happened.

Sharon: Oh that’s right. That was in Lima and I was with these two friends. We were just walking down a road and I saw this huge crowd of people outside a hotel and I didn’t know what was going on. They were all local people – Peruvians. Peruvian men are all quite short and they have all this shiny black hair and towering above them was this big black man. And I recognized him as Muhammad Ali. So I said ‘Hey brother.’ and he said ‘Oh my sister.’ And he said ‘Come here come here’

So he called me to him and he said ‘Do you speak Spanish?’ And I said yes I did. So he said ‘Could you talk to these people and tell them something for me? So I said a few words on his behalf and but he said you’re coming up to my room and let’s have a chat. So he took me up to his suite which was right up under the penthouse. He was amazing and he was so lovely. He had me in tears of laughter the whole morning. There were two other people there who were like me. He picked up off off the street practically.

He said this is my interpreter some woman and this is my translator some man. She said I just happened to run into him and it was like the three of us were his friends for that day. It was amazing. It was quite quite extraordinary. And we had lunch with him and and he said, OK, come on. He had an invitation to go to the Gold Museum which is a private museum with all the Inca artifacts in Lima. He said I’ll be going there and you’re cooing with me.

So we had this getaway. Know going through the center of the hotel in a getaway car so that the press wouldn’t follow us. It was quite an adventure. So yeah it was. He was so funny you wouldn’t believe it. You wouldn’t believe how funny he was and he talked and talked. Boasting about himself. But you know, when he’s boasting, you just have to laugh, because you know he’s just being funny. Yeah. He was such a great guy.

Jenny: It sounds really fun. Is there one thing that you’ve done more than any other in your career that’s been the secret of your success?

Sharon: Well I said I go to India regularly. Well, in India I learned to meditate. And I think that is the secret of my being able to tell stories quite easily. I mean I like I believe that there is a sense of creativity in each of us. And meditation helps me to get into this space. It’s in the subconscious mind. It’s quite deep inside and meditation helps me to get into there and let these stories speak for themselves. And that is my personal thing. It’s a secret which is actually everybody’s secret.

And that’s I think. Some people have it automatically. They have it naturally. They don’t need to meditate and they just can tell stories. And I think that’s because they have this special access. And musicians who are composers without knowing how and often don’t. They can just compose beautiful songs or a beautiful music without knowing how they do it or even being taught to do it. I think that is there is a source of creativity within all of us and some of us can access it naturally. I needed to learn to meditate to be able to make the effort to find that and to be able to write stories. And that is my my own little secret.

Jenny: This is called The Joys of Binge Reading and it’s partly predicated on the idea that people these days when they discover a writer they like to keep reading their work. As a reader yourself who have been the people that you’d like to binge read and who are you reading today?

Sharon: Well, as a child it was Enid Blyton and later on as an adult I would read everything written by John Le Carre, all these spy stories which I think is now coming out a little bit in me, with the espionage in my books! I really loved his work. and done various authors over the years. More recently Lucinda Riley. I love her Seven Sisters series I’ve been reading all of those one after the other when they come out.

I love anything set in India, like Renita d’Silva, I’ve read all her books and also I have favorite historical fiction writers. Lizzie Page is one of them. Debbie Rix is another one of them. They write beautiful books. Yeah that’s those are the ones I’ve mostly read recently.

Jenny: That sounds wonderful. So mainly it’s historical that you read. Would you branch out into other areas mostly historical.

Sharon: Mostly historical I really like to get back into the past and past and relive the past. History fascinates me, but I’ve really found history lessons – just reading the facts – quite boring. So historical fiction allows me to relive history with the character. However, it has to be authentic. It’s like to feel what’s happened. So I can feel what it was like to be a woman living through a war in England and during the Blitz or in France. You know I really want be able to experience it. And literature helped me to do that.

I’m not I’m not so keen on contemporary fiction because I’m here now. I know what’s going on here. So I don’t really need to read about it.

Jenny: I see. Yes we’re starting to come to the end of our time together. So when you circle around you look back over your writing career at this stage if you were going to do it all again. Is there anything you would change.

Sharon: I think if I had known when I started to write my Guyana series that every single one of them would get rejected for ten years. If I’d known I’d be writing books that would only get rejected for ten years, I think I might think ‘No Way’ I’m going to just write what you want me to write. So I don’t know if I would give that advice to everyone else because having that experience of rejection, it’s really built me as a writer. So I think it was a good thing I did, but if I had known beforehand I wouldn’t have done it.

Jenny: Yes, I was going to ask you what advice you’d give to a writer just starting out and that sort of fits rather nicely into that.

Sharon: Yes. I think just stick with what you love. With what’s in your heart. I think in the end that is the best place to go. I mean you can always write commercial stories. You know. You can write what’s a trend? But if you don’t love it. If you don’t really love it and it doesn’t come from your heart it won’t have that spark of energy that will entice a reader to love it as well. I think there’s something that goes over into your writing which is that you can’t define. And that is what the reader feels. And because I love historical fiction I write it as well. And I think that’s what comes through. Yeah. And so I would say go with your heart.

Jenny: What did your publishers want you to do at that time? Do you remember what they were saying they would like you to do?

Sharon: I know that my editor really likes me really likes or even loves my work. So she is very keen on everything I’ve put forward, everything I’ve suggested. She’s been very keen. She suggested I try World War II fiction and because I love it myself I said OK I’ll do it. Yeah. But the impulse came from her. I didn’t think of writing it myself because I didn’t know enough detail about the period. So I had to do the research. But I’m I’m really glad I got that impulse from her because I love writing it as well.

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Jenny: So what that brings us very nicely to that question of what is next for Sharon the writer. What projects you got on, say, over the next twelve months?

Sharon: Well I’ve just got a new two-book contract from Bookouture. Again it’s fiction. It’s a World War II fiction. One is again, a third book set in Alsace which I have just started. A different story, but also in Alsace because I love it and I know this area. And then the second book in that contract will be something also World War II but it may leave Alsace and do something quite different. I haven’t thought about it in detail yet. I’m letting it just simmer inside me and see what comes up.

Jenny: You mentioned that you weren’t going to tell us the Columbia jail story tonight, but you do have a thought of doing a memoir sometime?

Sharon: I actually have written a memoir. I did it yes because when I got back to Guyana after that travel I wrote a series of articles about my experiences. And I was very fortunate because I would have forgotten them but my mother saved all these articles and they’re quite good. So I wrote them all into a book a few years ago but I haven’t tried to get it published yet. So I could work on that. That would be a memoir and that tells the story of the Colombian jail.

Jenny: So that’s something that readers could perhaps look forward to. It’s quite an adventure story. We haven’t mentioned the Ecuadorian fisherman who wanted to marry you either..

Sharon: Oh yes that’s another one yes. Yes yes. That’s another fraught adventure. 

Jenny: Sharon, it’s been wonderful talking. Where can your readers find you online?

Sharon: I’ve got a website. It’s www.sharonmaas.com  Just Googling my name, they’ll find my different things there. I’m on Facebook at SharonMaasbooks.

I’m on Twitter but I don’t go there very often because I don’t really like Twitter very much. I think it’s a bit of a strange place. On my website, there’s a contact form if they want to write me and  have questions they want to ask. They can contact me. I’m very happy to answer everything direct with your readers. Oh yes yes. I love readers.

Jenny: It’s wonderful. thank you so much for your time. It’s been fabulous to talk. The details about the website and your Twitter handle and all that kind of thing will be put in the show notes for this episode so people will be able to very easily find you. It’s been wonderful talking and thank you so so much for being part of the program.

Sharon: Thank you. Thank you for giving me this time to talk to you. It was lovely. Very interesting questions and I’m very happy to have been here.

Jenny: Thanks so much, Sharon.

If you enjoyed Sharon’s historical fiction you might also enjoy Soraya M. Lane’s’ World War II mysteries.

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The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical

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