Another self-interview

In the tradition of Shawn Lea at Everything and Nothing, I’m using questions that were asked of author Camika C. Spencer in a 2003 interview by The Sistah Circle Book Club and answering them myself. I invite any of you other writers to do the same.

Where are you from?

North Alabama, although I lived in several Southeastern states as well as Colorado and Texas.

Tell us your latest news.

I’m working on my second Coventry novel as well as a first novel in a new genre that will be published pseudonymously, and I’m doing some contract work in “the corporate world” to make extra money for a few home improvements–and because that raw dog food isn’t cheap.

When and why did you begin writing?

Although I loved to play and use my imagination, I never particularly liked other kids as a child (“they’re so childish” I told my mother). I preferred the company of adults. In the South, conversation is a major pastime and can be quite fascinating. A quiet child who doesn’t draw attention to herself will hear stories she shouldn’t. Because of that, and because I began reading very young and my reading was never censored, I had a fearsome vocabulary and a passion for good stories. As a shy person, I was never going to be one of those people who held a room spellbound as so many of my relatives did. I had to do something with my lively imagination, though, and writing became the more comfortable form for me.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I think probably in 2002. I may have said it long, long before then, but in 2002, I believed it.

What inspired you to pen your first novel?

My first novel? Was the result of being a starstruck teenager and having a best friend. She helped me develop characters and a story of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I wrote it, but she was half the driving force behind it. There were actually three of those novels written, with one other planned. They weren’t my best writing, but they were excellent training in the basics. I also learned that I could finish something, be done with it, move on to something else.

If you mean the first novel I had published, it was also a collaboration, but with three men friends. The narrator was first introduced by one of them, but the event that helped me develop that character was the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. That novel was a labor of love and friendship and we had no idea it would end up published.

Who or what has influenced your writing, and in what way?

There’s simply no way I can name all the great books and writers that have influenced me. I do think my writing partner Timothy J. Lambert is a huge influence on how I write.

My parents and my uncle Gerald helped me see that I had the ability to write when I was very young. Their encouragement can never be emphasized enough, and they are the reason I tell adults that how they encourage children’s dreams matters. A lot.

I very much enjoy, in any genre, a writer who creates a world that I can return to in more than one book. I always wanted to do that: be a world maker. Whereas many of the books I loved when I was young drew on world events as background for their storylines, it seems logical for stories set in present day to be influenced by the public’s fascination with pop culture. Maybe that means what I write will be too dated in decades to come, but I enjoy connecting those universal themes of love and family and friendship and loss to the times we live in.

How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?

A friend made a sound file for me from the TV show Dharma and Greg. Greg was pretending to be a Southerner and he says, “I was being Southern! We’re a storytelling people.”

There are so many great storytellers from the South. A reviewer chided THREE FORTUNES IN ONE COOKIE for having too many characters sitting around talking too much. For a few months of the year, sitting around talking is about all Southerners can stand to do.

Southerners are very social. Put a group of us together, and the conversation eventually turns to storytelling. That’s who we are. In fact, my tendency to lock myself within the walls of The Compound is not typical Southern behavior. But now that I’ve been thirty-five a few times, I’m too tired for all that conversation. I let my characters do it for me.

On a more serious note, for me to become associated with the HIV/AIDS community and through it–this was back in the early 1990s–gay men–these were stories I wanted to tell. This was a world that I was watching die, and within that world, I witnessed some of the most powerful beauty and cruelty of humanity. I believe that’s when my true voice was born, though I didn’t know it at the time. No matter what relationships I’m writing about–between men and men or men and women or women and women–those times and relationships continue to be the source of my drive and inspiration.

Do you have a specific writing style?

I have to confess that this is something I never consciously think about. I know I use a lot of dialog and a lot of a character’s interior. Not so much action. When I read my work out loud to myself, I like to hear the humor and tears in it, and hope that my readers hear that, too, without my having to overuse the words “laughed” and “cried.”

What genre are you most comfortable writing?

Contemporary fiction. I enjoy the romance part of what I write, but I enjoy the friendships I write about even more. In fact, I think one feature of my love relationships in all my novels, whether about straight or gay couples, is that if they didn’t fall in love, they’d still be friends with each other, even though they might be very dissimilar in background and temperament.

How did you come up with the title for your book(s)?

The only title with a personal story is THREE FORTUNES IN ONE COOKIE. That came from a conversation with Timothy back in ’97 or ’98, in which he told me he’d picked up Chinese food and “I got three fortunes in one cookie!” “That’s a great book title,” I said and wrote it down so we wouldn’t forget it. It took us years to use it. THE DEAL–well, that’s what inspired the story: a deal between friends.

IT HAD TO BE YOU, I’M YOUR MAN, and WHEN YOU DON’T SEE ME are song titles. We didn’t have those titles in mind when we began the novels, but once we felt we had an overall theme, we chose titles that fit. Our agent came up with the title for HE’S THE ONE. One of the characters gave us the title for SOMEONE LIKE YOU.

A COVENTRY CHRISTMAS–“Coventry Carol” is one of my favorite Christmas songs, but it’s actually about a horrific event (the slaughter of the innocents by Herod). It gave me the name of my town (in Texas). Later, for my town’s history, I drew on what I knew about Coventry, England, which had the hell bombed out of it in World War Two. Maybe the writer of “Coventry Carol” felt as I do–it’s gratifying to create something positive out of an event or place that may have been previously associated with horrible images.

Is there a message in your novels that you want readers to grasp?

People are more alike than they are different. Kindness and compassion are essential.

How much of your novels are realistic? Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your life?

I hope they are completely realistic. I draw from my life to create something entirely fictitious. I don’t write memoirs, biography, or autobiography, but probably the best and worst of who I am is woven into everything I write. And I lift conversations from life and find ways to use them in books. Especially if a line has amused or touched me. There’s a phrase in HE’S THE ONE that was one of the most heartbreaking ever used against me. I think using it there was a way to get past it.

What books have most influenced your life?

My LIFE? I suppose if my life has a defining moment from a book, it’s when Huckleberry Finn refuses to betray Jim though he knows the world he lives in will condemn him to hell for that. “All right, then, I’ll GO to hell,” Huck says. That’s powerful. That’s choosing what one KNOWS is right over what “the virtuous” teach is right, and it never fails to bring tears to my eyes when I read it.

I know the exact moment when I made that choice in my life. Was it hard? NOT AT ALL. It was just important to me that I make the choice and say it out loud to myself. Hard has to be living with yourself if you deny another person’s humanity and dignity, particularly based on some artificial, unjust criteria.

If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

Harper Lee. I don’t write like her; who could? Her writing has integrity. It’s something I strive for.

How does your family and/or friends feel about your book or writing venture in general?

I’ve gotten a ton of encouragement from most of my friends and some of my family. Sometimes their support has been emotional, and sometimes even financial. I feel fortunate, as I know so many writers who receive NONE of that kind of encouragement.

But it’s not ALL good. I’m not making a fortune, so if people measure success by money and fame, they aren’t too impressed with me. And of course, there’ll always be some people who bemoan the fact that there are gay characters in my novels. That doesn’t even register on my radar. I write what I want to write.

Do you see writing as a long- or short-term career?

I won’t stop writing. I hope I’ll continue to be published.

If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything?

Definitely. If you haven’t screwed up in some of the most abysmal ways, you haven’t lived.

Is there anything additional you would like to share with your readers?

Read more!

I’d tell readers the same thing I tell writers or anyone else. Dream big. Succumb to your own creative needs. Engage yourself with the world, but withdraw from it sometimes, too. Don’t let your self-image come from the praise or criticism of others. Either one can cripple you. (The doctor is IN! Five cents.)