One side of the street in my little hometown.
A few years ago a local reporter for my hometown newspaper that comes out once a week just the way I had the newspapers coming out in my Hollyhill and Hidden Springs stories. I do seem to like having a newspaper in some of my stories. Anyway, when I was rummaging around for something to post tonight, I came across the questions. I thought you might like to get a hometown view of me and my writing. I left out some questions and updated a few answers. So what question did you think the reporter should have added?
1) You’ve been writing since age 10. What is your earliest memory of writing? Do you remember what you wrote about?
I remember well my first attempt at writing. I loved the Hardy Boy mysteries and decided I’d like to solve a mystery the way they did. Since at that time, Anderson County was a very peaceful place, I didn’t have much chance to stumble across any real bad guys. Thank goodness! So I started writing a mystery story starring a cuter and smarter and much less shy me. My sidekicks were my sister and a cousin. We got into some messes in that story, the last one so difficult that I left my characters trapped in a cave and never caught the bad guys. But best I can remember, I had a dynamite ending in mind. No doubt, I as the character Jo was going to do something fantastic.
2) What was your favorite book as a child?
Black Beauty. I loved that story and probably cried buckets.
3) What is one of your favorite memories about high school?
One favorite high school memory was when the principal would dismiss classes and give us a kind of recess. I remember sitting in the shade of one of the big trees in the front of the school and talking about all the cute boys with my girlfriends.
4) Did you go to college? Where? What did you major in?
I married very young and was busy being a mom when others my age were in college. College wasn’t necessarily an automatic expectation for high school graduates then. Many of us were ready to get jobs and start families after high school instead of going on to college. Of course, some of my fellow classmates did both. Got the jobs and had the families and still went to college. It just wasn’t an expectation in my family then, but by the time my children graduated from high school, things had changed. There was never any question about them going on to college.
5) Do you consider yourself a full-time writer?
I have been a fulltime writer since 2007. When I started writing years ago, I was a mom and a farm wife along with writing. Then when my children got older, I did temporary secretarial work and for several years worked a part time job for the school system arranging substitutes for teachers. After my second Hollyhill book, Orchard of Hope, was accepted for publication, I quit my other jobs and started writing fulltime. But I always worked writing time in no matter what else I was doing.
6) What is the first piece you had published?
The very first piece published was a little poem in Home Life magazine many years ago. I was paid three dollars, I think. I had several more personal experience pieces published in that magazine and some stories in Sunday school leaflets before I started writing novels. My first novel, A Forbidden Yearning, about pioneer days in Kentucky was published by Warner Books in 1978. So I’ve been at this writing thing a long time. My first inspirational novel, Scent of Lilacs, came out in 2005.
7) What process did you go through to get published?
The “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” process.
8) Where do you write? And, when? Do you have a routine you follow?
I want to write every weekday, but sometimes life intrudes. And sometimes, even though I want to write, I sharpen pencils instead. That is, I put off the hard work of creating by checking e-mails, Facebook or gosh, my birdfeeder is empty. I mean who can work when the birdfeeder is empty. But once I get the delaying tactics out of the way, I settle in to work. I treat my writing like a job and spend a lot of hours at my desk. I do like to set goals, but instead of words I usually think in pages. That’s because I started writing on a typewriter and not a word processor. Back then, you watched the pile of pages grow. I have written books in six months but I’m more comfortable doing a book a year. My novels are usually around 100,000 words although the mysteries are shorter than that. And there’s that history to research for my historical novels.
9) How many books have you had published?
Along a Storied Trail is my thirty-seventh published book. I have three more books contracted with the next story, When the Meadow Blooms, due out in 2022.
10) How would you classify your work?
My last twenty-two books are published in the inspirational field. I’ve written eight historical fiction books set in my fictional Shaker village of Harmony Hill but the physical setting is based on Pleasant Hill Shaker Village in Mercer County. My Heart of Hollyhill series is set in the Sixties and Hollyhill is much like I remember my hometown being when I was a kid. Then my Rosey Corner books go back to when my mother was growing up in a little community out in the county. I based the background of Angel Sister on the memories Mom and her sisters shared about their life during the Great Depression. The story is completely fiction, but Mom’s memories are threaded through the story. My Hidden Springs mysteries are set in a small town, again like my hometown or how my hometown might be if the big box stores hadn’t moved in and put most of the small local stores out of business. I’ve enjoyed going to the Appalachian region of Kentucky for several of my recent stories. I love a story where I can drop my characters down into some interesting historical times.
While I don’t think I can classify my work, I do sometimes say I write small town stories about people you might like to meet in real life. Of course, except the murderers in my Hidden Spring mysteries.
11) When did the latest book come out?
Along a Storied Trail was released in June 2021. It’s set in the 1930’s and has history of the Packhorse Libraries, a Depression era work program that had women carrying books up into the hills like a bookmobile on mule or horseback.
12) Why did you use a pen name with your mysteries?
My publishers asked if I would use a variation of my name for the Hidden Springs mysteries since these stories are quite a bit different from my previous books. They thought readers who had liked my Hollyhill, Rosey Corner or Shaker books might be upset if they got the mysteries without realizing they were getting a different kind of story. So the initials instead of my first name are a kind of signal to readers. “Hey, take notice. She’s doing something different here.”
It really wasn’t much of a stumbling block for readers since I had published a variety of different types of books before I did the mysteries. In fact, I dedicated one of my books to my readers who had followed me from Hollyhill through Harmony Hill to Rosey Corner, back to 1855 Louisville for Words Spoken True and now I can add on the little town of Hidden Springs for some mysteries, to Springfield, KY for a cholera era story and up to the Appalachian Mountains for three more. Many of my faithful readers always seem to be willing to try some “doing something different” stories.
13) What advice would you have for aspiring writers?
Read a lot. Write a lot. If you’re serious about writing don’t let rejections discourage you. Just realize that everything you write is practice and practice is how we get better at doing things.
Of course, the writing world has changed since I published my first books in the 1970’s. Back then, publishing your own books with a vanity press, as they were called then, was frowned on and very expensive. These days it’s not that difficult to self-publish your books without going through the submission and rejection or acceptance stages with a traditional publisher. While I still work with a traditional publisher, Revell Books, many writers prefer the independence of publishing on their own.
Thanks for reading this Q & A.
So, now it’s your turn. Why don’t you answer question 2 or 3 for fun? Your favorite book as a child? Or your favorite memory from high school?
Love it when you stop by.
Ann
