Q. What first inspired you to write?
CB. I’ve loved to tell stories since I was a little girl. My folks separated when I was four years old and my mother, sister and brother (who were younger than me) came from California to Oklahoma to live with my blind grandmother. We didn’t have many toys so I made up stories to keep my younger siblings entertained.
Q. What comes first to you? The Characters or the Situation?
CB. The characters. They create the stories with their situations. I just listen to them tell me what to write next. Shhhh….don’t tell anyone that I have voices in my head! (TS. You’re in good company!)
Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing?
CB. Oh, yes, ma’am. I get so involved with the story and my character’s emotions that I forget about time. Whatever my characters feel, I feel. When they are angry, I’m upset, when they are laughing, I’m giggling. If I don’t have the emotions they do, how could I ever describe them.
Q. Are you working on something now? If so tell us about it.
CB. I’m just starting a brand-new women’s fiction entitled The Hope Chest. It’s set in Blossom, Texas and is the story of three cousins, two women and a man, who have inherited a small house from their grandmother.
Q. When did you begin to write seriously?
CB. When my third child was born and wouldn’t sleep at night, I sharpened a few pencils, got out a spiral notebook and began to write a story that Mr. B and I had been talking about for five years. That book had everything in the world wrong with it, but I was writing…and after too many edits to count…40 years late I sold it with the title The Lilac Bouquet.
Q. Do you think we will see, in our lifetime, the total demise of paper books?
CB. No, I don’t. There are too many readers out there who like to hold a book in their hands and who love to see them on their bookcases.
Q. What makes a writer great?
CB. Keepin’ on even when the goin’ gets tough. Don’t give up and keep writing.
Q. and the all-important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?
CB. No book is a proposal that one of my publisher’s has bought, and now it’s time to drag my writing chair over to the computer, talk to my characters and begin to write. Finished book is saying goodbye to those characters and beginning all over again.
Q. How has your life experiences influenced your writing?
CB. Everything, I see, taste, feel, get emotional about, has affected my writing. Add everything I hear or every experience—being raised by a single mother and a blind grandmother, having a step-father, nine step mothers, siblings, half brothers and sisters and a multitude of step brothers and sisters, raising three children, being married more than fifty years. It all plays a part in my writing.
Q. What’s your down time look like?
CB. What is this down time that you speak of? In all seriousness I love to spend time with my family or just have coffee with Mr. B in the middle of each morning.
Q. Have you or do you want to write in another genre`?
CB. I love writing cowboys and women’s fiction. I live by the rule if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is working for me. When it ceases to work, I’ll move on.
Q. Note to Self: (a life lesson you’ve learned.)
CB. This, too, shall pass. Disappointments and grief pass. Excitement and victories pass. Love and understanding help soften the pain of one and double the joy of the latter.
CB. Thank you for inviting me to Writer at Play and letting me prop my feet up and visit for a while. Happy Reading to everyone!
Did you miss part I of this charming interview?
You can visit Carolyn at www.carolynbrownbooks.com.
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My weekly BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! May: Joram Piatigorsky, June: Mike Maden writing for TOM CLANCY. July: Guest Blogger Desiree Villena, August: Carolyn Brown
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