Tag: creative writing

Inside the Writer's Studio with Martha Carr

It’s been a while since I’ve hosted another writer here as part of the Writer’s Studio but I’m delighted to feature an interview with Martha Randolph Carr, author of Wired. She’s the author of three books and has a weekly, nationally syndicated column through the Cagle Cartoon syndicate on politics, national interest topics and life in general. Martha is also a melanoma survivor, Chi runner, occasional rower and skydiver and mother to Louie. She resides near her son in Chicago, IL, where everyone is always welcome to stay for dinner.

Wired traces the story of Mary Elizabeth and Charlie’s marriage as it fading away. Charlie tries to just get along and Mary Elizabeth struggles not to disappear completely. A murdered teenager is discovered at the local teenage hangout on a bluff high above main street bringing back memories to Mary Elizabeth that she would rather forget but may hold the key to saving an entire town. But when the bodies keep popping up everyone must struggle with feelings of guilt, shame and redemption.

1. How did you get started as a writer?

I was a newly single Mom with a one year old who had always wanted to be a writer and finally found the courage to start. That was 23 years ago and Wired was the book that came out of that first experience.

2. What was the hardest part of writing your/this book?

I was writing about things that I had wanted to say for years but was too afraid to do it and so it felt like the first act of defiance on a lot of levels to say, I’m a writer and then take on such potentially tough topics.

3. Was there an easy part or any part of writing the book that surprised you?

I was a little surprised at how quickly I wrote the sex scenes and how much readers have loved them! I was also very surprised at the gut reaction readers have always had to Wired and how, for many, it’s made it possible for them to share a deeply held secret. For others it’s gotten them to reconsider how they judge others. That’s powerful stuff from a thriller.

4. What advice would you give you aspiring or first time novelists?

Pick a genre and run with it. Develop the craft of that genre so that you become a master in it and then branch out. Be open to taking advice and willing to take direction and just keep writing. Hang around other writers and go hear them read so you can be reminded on a regular basis why you wanted to write in the first place.

5. Anything else you want to tell readers?

Martha loves feedback from readers so let her know what you thought of Wired at martha@marthacarr.com.  Also, look for her newest book, The List sometime next year.

 

EXCERPT

From a distance, particularly in the headlights that night, she looked as if she were sleeping with her knees curled up to meet her elbows. A guy honked his horn a few times before getting agitated and throwing his car into park. Told his girlfriend in the seat next to him to wait as he pushed the door open and stomped over to tell the girl to get out of the way, sleep it off at home. Later, he’d shake and cry as he called the police, trying to explain what he knew, who he saw. Tell them that the girl was in his class at school, that he had seen her earlier that day, that her skin was so cold to the touch. He’d have nightmares about it for years to come, each time snapping awake before he touched the body and felt the skin slacken under his fingers.
The summer was about to take an ugly turn for the worse, for everyone.

………………..
Charlie heard something through the ceiling, too faint for Matthew but he thought he knew what it was. Why was she doing that? Was it the paper? He looked at the front page and saw nothing unusual except for the murder but they didn’t know the girl and they certainly never went near the bluff. Was it last night? He waited until after lunch and when he put Matthew down for his nap he looked in on Mary Elizabeth to see if she was sleeping. She was in the middle of the bed snoring softly with her arms out to the sides, her fingers hanging over. God, it had sounded like a dog moaning. What did that to her? Mary Elizabeth and Charlie had stopped talking to each other about anything that mattered a long time ago. He turned to go back downstairs to read. Better just leave it alone.

Tour Notes:

Enter to win 1 of 3 free paperback copies of this novel on the official Wired blog tour page. The winner of the give-away will be announced on Wednesday, October 26 – be sure to enter before then! Just can’t wait to read Wired? Pick up your copy in the Kindle, Nook, or iTunes stores or visit Smashwords with the coupon code AK95A to receive a discounted price (just $2)!

Don’t forget to vote for my blog in the traffic-breaker poll for this tour. The blogger with the most votes wins an Amazon gift card and a special winner’s badge. I want that to be me! You can vote in the poll by visiting the official Wired blog tour page and scrolling all the way to the bottom.

Learn more about this author by visiting her website, Facebook or GoodReads pages or by connecting with her on Twitter. You’ll definitely want to check out Martha’s Mystery Blog–each week a new short thriller is serialized Monday through Friday. The entries are nice and short, easy to read via smart phone or tablet. It’s all at www.MarthaCarr.com.

#Ren3: Post One

For the next month I’ll be participating in the Rule of Three: a month-long fiction blogfest, where the sponsors have created a ‘world’, the town of Renaissance, and challenged participating writers to create a story that takes place there. The story will feature 3 characters of my creation, who will be showcased on this blog on 3 different Wednesdays, following the Rule of Three. The 4th Wednesday, will have the culminating scene.
Here’s the beginning of Sen’s story. You can still enter as posts have to be up by October 6th. So get to writing — 500 words is the limit — and join us in thickening plot of life in Renaissance.

———————————

As the sun slid across the horizon and over the top of the tent, the Roundeli Mountains shimmered in the distance. The leaves on the trees remained still. Who do these foreigners think they are? Her father’s question rang in the air. Instead of answering him, Sen swallowed, trying to rid her mouth of the dust of the Schiavonan desert. She tried to push away thoughts of the long limbed leader of the scouts she had passed while searching for the logan berry that kept her father’s cough at bay. Filling our heads with the hope of better lands when we know rain is coming. Here a wracking cough punctured his diatribe. She thumped his back. Help, that’s all Sen seemed to do these days, whether her father, or the older members of their tribe. There was no more time for lingering against the trunk of a tree, rolling down hills deep in the forest, seeking out the Sawtee – a bird with a sweet cry, it reminded her of earlier days.

“None of our people has made it across that river since the days of our fathers’ fathers,” she murmured, saving him the exertion. She pressed his right shoulder so he reclined against the tent’s central pole. He sipped from a wooden spoon filled with a homemade remedy of red berries and leaves. As his eyes closed, Sen rubbed the spoon in a small pile of sand. It would have to do. There wasn’t enough water to drink, much less clean their implements, not to mention their bodies.

Her father’s breath rattled in his chest, sounding like a loose pebble at the bottom of a harvesting bag. But it had been months since a harvest of any kind. Instead of replenishing itself for planting, without rain the earth was drying up; even the verdant Culdees, in whose vales she had played as a child, were diminishing. Trees drooped their branches in surrender to the encroaching desert.

Sen needn’t dread the bittersweet feeling of a Sawtee’s cry because the blue and yellow bird was a rare sight. Wondering where all the birds, even wildlife had wandered to, she felt a fool for not feeling the tall one’s gaze. She had no way of knowing how long he had been watching her. As she crouched low, preparing to run on all fours where she would be fastest; he hadn’t spoken a word, remaining very still, and kept watching her. Instead of lunging for her, he extended a hand. She retreated a few steps. His vine like fingers unfurled, revealing a small oval disk, painted into the likeness of a woman’s face. It was unlike anything she had ever seen.

She drew closer, picked up the flat disk, attached to a rope of delicate, linked metal. He didn’t twitch a hair. The face smiling up at Sen was a dim memory from another life full of laughter; when they ate meat regularly, and she didn’t flatten her chest by winding long strips across it under her tunics. That smile could belong to one other person, the only other person in the tribe to have brown eyes. Sen shook her head, fingers involuntarily closing around the disk. When she looked up again the tall one was
gone.
Her back to the tent, she sat a few feet away against a tree, dangling the disk in the remaining rays of sunlight. There was no doubt who was winking back at her. Her father had told her mother was dead. How then, or why, did a tall one have an engraving of her likeness?

The One Where I Self-Publish an Ebook

 

I’m a writer. It took me nearly ten years from my first creative writing course during my Masters program at North Carolina State University to say this with any degree of confidence or understanding what being a writer meant. It doesn’t mean that I make a living from writing (though one day in the not too distant future I hope it will). What it does mean is that I write every day, something: an article for a journal or magazine, edit an academic piece, fiddle with parts of a story, or pitch up to this blog to say something. Anything.

The truth is that publishing is undergoing a seismic shift and has been feeling the reverberations of technology in the ten years since I finished my first short story collection. Perhaps they became as the rumbles of blogs turned into books; here were people with a demonstrated audience of a few thousand. With help of a major publishing house to catapult their small audience onto the national or international stage and perhaps become bestsellers or even movies like the Julie and Julia cooking blog. These Cinderella like stories about bloggers turned writers may have been the logical step to another intervention that rocked publishing: the e-book.

Self publishing has existed for a long time; but these ‘vanity’ presses as they were known would charge a writer to provide several hundred copies of a book that likely languished in a garage — for those lucky enough to have space — or found themselves spilled on in the family den. Often this type of book didn’t work because it didn’t have the heft of the big publishers to market, distribute, and reach a wider audience. Nonetheless a few intrepid storytellers went the self published route as the budgets of major houses tightened and fewer marketing departments were willing to take a risk on new writers. These soldiers were the tail wagging the dog and one of the most famous examples is The Lace Reader which eventually went to an auction (where multiple publishers bid on a book) and then onto the bestsellers list.

The e-book is challenging the step-child nature of self publishing in relation to the commercial market. Because now readers can find new authors and new authors are often much cheaper than the established ones. As the John Locke — not of the LOST t.v. series fame — the first writer to sell a million copies on Amazon.com is (in)famous for saying: “When famous authors sell at $9.95 and my books are at 99c, I no longer have to prove my books are as good as theirs. They have to prove their books are ten times better than mine!” Royalties are also much better for authors in digital sales than on print books, mainly because digital books are significantly less expensive to produce.

After hearing about this for years, this summer I decided to think about all the content I’ve had piling up since that very first class in 2002. Many of the pieces have been placed in literary magazines around the United States but were turned away by agents for one reason or another. The collection seemed the perfect place to start an experiment on whether or not the e-book hype was something to get excited about.

Download a copy of Coloured and Other Stories and see for yourself. Do I deserve to be in print?

What are your thoughts on the self publishing industry? Have you read other self published authors or are you considering either print or digital self publishing?