Libby Grandy Interview Re Desert Soliloquy

Hi readers and writers,
Libby Grandy has recently published a suspense novel, Desert Soliloquy.  Here is an interview with her about this new book, which I highly enjoyed.  Cheers,
  Laura

LH: How did you become a writer, Libby?

LG: I loved English in school, but most of my writing was in the area of journalism. I didn’t attempt fiction until I was in my forties. I took a creative writing class and began writing short stories. One of those short stories became a novel, because I fell in love with the main character—Lydia, an eighty-year-old woman. 

LH: What is your favorite thing you’ve written?

LG: I have to choose my novel, Lydia, the second book in my women’s fiction trilogy. The character is a compilation of all the wonderful women in my life. I also loved writing the sequel to Lydia—True Abundance. I plan to publish the first book of the trilogy, Promises to Keep, a ghost story, in the spring of 2013.

LH: You blog about writing a great deal. What kinds of resources will writers find on your blog?

LG: Writers will find suggestions about writing and marketing in my blogs, but I have full-length articles on my website. They cover subjects such as researching agents, critique groups, guidelines for first-time writers, self-publishing, writing tips, etc. Several of the articles have been published in Writers’ Journal, so I have to assume editors found them helpful. 

LH; In your novel, Desert Soliloquy, you keep the story grounded in the characters but at the same time, you weave in a lot of very current ideas about mining, industry, finances. How did you get up to speed on these topics?

LG: My husband and Google. My two best friends. My husband has worked in both law enforcement and aerospace and really helped with the central plot in Desert Soliloquy. 

LH: Do you outline your novel before you start or do you write in part to find out what’s going to happen in the story line?

LG: I write from “the seat of my pants,” and hope that the next chapter will come. It might not be comfortable for some writers, but I love not knowing for sure what is going to happen next. Sometimes it surprises me, and that’s always exciting. I worry about plot details after I’ve gotten the main story down. My weekly critique group often has invaluable suggestions.

LH: The setting for the story is in the desert, and I wonder if you used specific locales and buildings that you researched in the story?

LG: There is a renovated silver mining “ghost town” in the high desert of California. I fell in love with Calico the first time my husband and I visited the town. I incorporated the historical facts in regard to Calico into the novel. Anyone visiting the ghost town will recognize the locations from Desert Soliloquy.

I remember sitting in the town’s old cemetery around noontime, leaning against a tombstone, typing on my laptop. I suddenly realized a woman was staring down at me. She said, “Are you from LA?” I had to laugh. Apparently if you are sitting in the middle of the desert in a cemetery in the hot sun, on a laptop, you must be from LA. I explained I was from a small town thirty miles east of LA. I believe she was a bit disappointed.

LH: A part of the novel hinges on development of a love triangle involving the heroine. She is not a twenty-something but a mature woman. Did you encounter resistance to using a mature woman in this plot?

LG: Since the main character is a mature woman, the love triangle simply developed naturally. Young readers need to know that mature love can be just as emotionally and physically passionate as young love. The relationships between the two young characters and the older characters provide a window into both worlds.

LH: As in most suspense novels, sophisticated medical knowledge and weapons know-how were required to write the book. How did you learn about these topics?

LG: I wish I could say that I interviewed prominent doctors and military men, but the truth is, again, my resources were basically Google and my husband.

LH: Did you have an agent? Tell us about publishing this book.

LG: I have had two agents over the past few years, one for my ghost story, Promises to Keep, the first book of my women’s fiction trilogy and the other for my mystery, Desert Soliloquy. Both had been agents for many years and were sure that they would have no trouble selling the stories. Unfortunately, it was when the economy began to go downhill, and neither could get anyone to read the manuscripts. My agent for Desert Soliloquy was basically told that the companies she had successfully sold manuscripts to in the past were not reading work from new writers. Both agents have semi-retired, in the sense that they still represent their old clients but are not taking on new ones.

I have to say, however, it was a wonderful experience working with them. They were so helpful and supportive of my writing and my stories. The last agent pointed out a flaw in one part of the Desert Soliloquy plot, which was easily fixable. She also taught me to lose the unnecessary adverbs. I will always be grateful to her for that. I just recently talked to both of them, and they are thrilled that I’ve published Desert Soliloquy. 

Last year, I began researching self-publishing, using Mark Levine’s book, The Fine Print of Self-Publishing, as my guide. I finally decided on CreateSpace, and it has been a wonderful experience. I plan to publish one book a year with them for the next four years—my trilogy and the manuscript I’m presently working on.

LH: What tips do you have for the blog readers about marketing?

LG: I believe it is very important for writers to begin building their platform and brand long before their first book is published. Having a website and/or blog is essential. Join Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all social media venues possible. Brand your name, not your book. Who is going to remember the word “soliloquy,” let alone be able to spell it? Hopefully, they will remember Libby Grandy when my other books become available.

Most of all, focus on the word “social” when you begin marketing your book through the social media. Use the venues to support other writers. Enjoy meeting new people through your marketing. 

This is a very exciting time for writers but don’t get so caught up in the marketing process that you forget to do what you love to do best—write!

AMAZON URL TO ORDER BOOK: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=libby+grandy
WEBSITE URL: http://www.libbygrandy.com 

Interview with Gillian Bagwell about Darling Strumpet

LH: Hi Gillian. Your writing follows a real person, Nell Gwynn. How did you get interested in her?

GB: Quite a long time ago, an actor friend got a lot of notice for a one-man show he was performing. I was very much pursuing an acting career at the time, and thought that writing a one-woman show for myself seemed like a great idea. My father suggested Nell Gwynn as a character, and I started researching her. The more I learned, the more charmed and intrigued I was with her personality and her story. I wrote some of the script and couldn't do justice to her very eventful life. So she sat in my mind and heart for quite a long time until I decided to write her story as a novel instead.

LH: What kind of research did you do? Did you get any grants to help you pay for your research?

GB: Grants! That would be great, wouldn't it? No, no grants. And I have spent A LOT of time and money researching this book.

When I first started researching Nell, I read several bioghraphies of her, one or two of Charles, and other general material about the period. When I started writing the novel, I was in London, so fortunatly I was able to go in person to some of the places associated with her life. And also fortunately there were a couple of new biographies out about her.

From there, the ripples spread. There is really such a huge amount of information out there, in print and on line. I have biographies of many of Nell's friends and contemporaries. I'd always enjoyed Samuel Pepys's diaries, which mention Nell several times and are a great source of information about daily life in the 1660s. There's a site that is publishing the diary entries daily, with annotation (http://www.pepysdiary.com ).

One area that took a lot of research was the theatre of the day. The playhouses had been closed under Cromwell, and one of the first things Charles II did when he was restored to the throne in 1660 was to authorize two acting companies and playhouses, and soon after, he approved the idea of women appearing on stage for the first time in England.

I had to track down the plays that Nell appeared in, and most of them are pretty obscure. I found some on Project Guttenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org ) but I couldn't find many until I discovered the Clark Library (http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/clarklib ) associated with UCLA, which has a huge collection of material from the 17th and 18th centuries, much of it available on line. A really miraculous source is The London Stage, 1660-1800, a multi-volumne set that provides a day-by-day account of performances, who was in them, etc. I also read a lot on Restoration and Carolinian theatre in general.

And in 2008, I spent six week in London doing more research, following in Nell's footsteps, finding the sites of old theatres, and so on.

LH: Yes, I remember reading your online comments from some of the sites you visited in 2008. I could tell that you had her locales down cold! How long has it taken you to write this first novel?

GB: I started writing it in Feburary, 2005, but there were many periods of weeks at a time when I wasn't working on it at all. When I came home from London in June 2006, I decided to make it a priority to finish it and sell it, and after that I worked on it as much and as regularly as aI could, given the need to make money and other interruptions of real life. I went through a couple of drafts, and in July 2009 I had a draft I was happy enough with to send to the agent who had been working with me informally.

LH: How did you find an agent?

GB: I went to a writers' conference and paid $100 extra to have two different agents read my first 20 pages. One of them liked it but thought it was too early to be showing it to anyone. The other one wanted to see the first 100 pages. She liked that well enough to pass it on to a colleague, Kevan Lyon, who had a particular interest in historical fiction, and it was Kevan who ultimately became my agent. So I had a pretty easy time of it, which is not typical.

LH: Did your agent or your editor actually ask you to edit the book?

GB: Before she was officially my agent, Kevan helped me with about three sets of rewrites of my first 100 pages before I had even completed a draft. Finally I told her I thought I needed to get through a first draft before I did any mroe rewriting. When I sent her the completed manuscript, she emailed me when she was halfway through to tell me that she wanted to represent me officially. She did make a few suggestions, and once I had incorporated those, she submitted it to editors. My editor, Kate Seaver at Berkley Publishing Group, only asked for two fairly minor revisions.

LH: You are signed for two books. Did you sell both of them at once?

GB: Yes! when Kevan was submitting Darling Strumpet to editors, I wrote three or four short synposes of ideas I had for my next project. And miraculously, when Kevan sold Darling Strumpet she also sold my second book, as yet completely unwritten, on the basis of a brief outline and what I had done with the first book.

LH: Are the two novels related to each other?

GB: They are related in that they both involve Charles II and significant events during his life, but he isn't the protagonist of either book, and they're not intended to be sequels or prequels of each other. While I was researching Nell Gwynn, I came across the story of Jane Lane, who had helped Charles escape after the disastrous Battle of Worcester in 1651, when the Royalist cause was lost. So my second novel, The Royal Miracle takes place in 1651, when they were traveling together. There is a bit about the years during which Jane was in exile after she was found out and when she went home to England when Charles was restored in 1660, and there there is a bit of story that takes place after that. Nell's story, The Darling Strumpet, starts on May 29,1660, the day Charles returned to London. It follows the course of Nell's life to 1687, and takes place mostly in London. So Nell knew Charles at a completely different time and under vastly different circumstancs than Jane Lane did, and their stories didn't intersect.

LH: Were you a polished writer when you started your novel? Did anyone help you?

GB: I wouldn't say I was polished. All my life I have worked on bits and pieces of creative writing, but for most of my adult life until a few years ago I was focused on the theatre. I've done quite a lot of what I guess I could call utilitarian writing--press releases, subscription brochures, newsletters, editing scripts, etc. And for many years I've made a living off and on summarizing deposition transcripts for attorneys. It's not exciting, but it is very good practice at clear, concise writing that conveys essential information economically. I took a few writing workshops and classes over the years. When I took Kerry Madden's class at Vroman's bookstore in the fall of 2006, that was the first time I'd shown any of the Darling Strumpet manuscript or gotten feedback on it, and Kerry's critique and that of the class was very helpful.

LH: What's the most surprising thing you've learned about the process of publishing a book, as your book nears publication?

GB: I guess one thing that I don't quite understand is why it takes as long as it does to get a

book published once a deal is made. The second thing that surprised me is the somewhat liquid timetables that things seem to operate on in the publishing world. I didn't get rewrite notes from my editor until about three months after she had said she would get them to me. I guess that's just the way it works when editors are swamped handling many books. But in theatre, if a show is scheduled on open on May 1 and 8 PM, it does. The curtain might go up ten minutes late, but the show must go on!

LH: What are your plans to generate publicity for the book? It's coming out in January, 2011, right?

GB: Believe it or not, I'm already deep into those efforts. In January I took a really great class on line called "Buzz your book" taught by MJ Rose. It helped me develop some really good ideas for publicity, including a series of articles hosted by different blogs or website for each month from now until the book is published in January 2011 about the corresponding months in 1660 and 1661. The first of those article actually just went up May 5, on the Hoydens and Firebrands blog: (http://hoydensandfirebrands.blogspot.com/2010/05may-1660-by-gillian-bagwell.html )

You can track all of the posts through different sites from my own web site, http://www.gillianbagwell.com , which has clickable links to all of the historical postings.

LH: Do you have a critique group?

GB:Regular critique from other writers has been invaluable. My first experience was in Kerry Madden's classes. After that, one of my classmates invited me to join a small writing group that she had. It was great, but it only met once a month. So I began meeting with a couple of the women from that group and one or two others. Initially we met every two weeks, but these days we usually meet every week. The Darling Strumpet would not be nearly as good without their input.

LH: Did you have to overcome any disappointments along the way?

GB: One thing that was very frustrating and disappointing was that although when I started working on my novel, and certainly when I first began researching Nell, there were no other novels about her. Then suddenly in 2007, just when I was trying to finish the book and find an agent and publisher, TWO of them were published. I was afraid it might mean that mine wouldn't get bought, but fortunately that wasn't the case. I've just learned of another novel about Nell that will be published the same month as mine.

LH: Do you have any advice for aspiring novelists?

GB: Work at it. Write a lot. Figure out what works and what doesn't. Some of that comes from classes and outside critique, and some of it just from lots of writing. I've learned a lot and become a much more efficient writer as I worked on The Darling Strumpet. I've also learned a lot by reading. I've always been a ferocious reader, and I think part of what I've tried to do with this first novel is write something that I would love to read. Read about writing. Become knowledgeable about the publishing business. Write something that might actually interest a publisher, if you want to sell your book. Once you're going to show it to anyone like an agent or editor, be meticulous about technical things like spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. I guess maybe the most important thing is to write what you're passionate about. I've been thinking about Nell and carrying her in my heart for so long that this novel was clawing to get out.

LH : Thanks so much, Gillian!