Friday, May 17, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Babble's Getting Pregnant eBook - Best of Blogs Campaign
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| Available for $1.99 here |
I am enormously proud to be included in Babble's latest eBook called "Parenting, Uncensored: Straight Talk from Real Moms and Dads on Getting Pregnant".
I received an e-mail at the beginning of March telling me that I was selected as a finalist. Babble.com is a web-site about parenting. There are some wonderful writers and bloggers writing for them, which is why until yesterday when the book came out I couldn't believe I would be included in it - you know, for real! Along bloggers like Jill Krause, aka Baby Rabies - her post was featured in Babble's previous eBook from the same Best of Blogs campaign about breastfeeding, and Julianna W. Miner, aka Rants From Mommyland, who has been recently featured in "I Just Want to Pee Alone" book.
Without spoiling it for you I want to let you know that there are some incredibly touching and some hilariously funny posts there. It might appear that there is nothing funny about infertility until you read about massages that are supposed to clear your uterus of fear and about vagina steam cleanses. Have you ever thought about the struggles that a lesbian couple has to go through in order to have a child? What about Dad's perspective on finding out you are completely unexpectedly expecting child #5?
I think one of the most fascinating things about the book is that you can read the story that happened in the past and then you can visit the blogger's web-site to check and see what happened next. Not all of the endings are happy, but then again, "everything will be all right in the end... if it's not all right then it's not yet the end."
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Interview With Rachael Herron
Rachael
Herron is the author of four
novels in the Cypress Hollow series, and a memoir Wishes and
Stitches.
Rachael lives with her better half in Oakland, California, where they
have four cats, three dogs, three spinning wheels, and more
instruments than they can count. She has an MFA from Mills College,
and she is a proud member of the San
Francisco Area Romance Writers of America.
She is struggling to learn accordion and can probably play along on
ukulele.
I
met Rachael last September at the Central Coast Writers' Conference.
Out of the four classes I took, hers was the most memorable, mainly
thanks to her vibrant personality. Her enthusiasm was sincere and
infectious and left a lasting impression. When I asked to interview
her, she agreed without hesitation. Rachael is originally a Central
Coast girl - she graduated from Arroyo Grande High School and got her
undergrad degree at Cal Poly.
You
have been knitting and writing since you were a little girl. Do these
two hobbies always get along, or do they sometimes quarrel? How do
they complement each other?
They
complement each other incredibly well, actually. From knitting I
learned that small actions, repeated over time, add up into something
tangible.
Knit a few rows every day and before you know it, you have a whole
sweater. In the same way, write every day and soon enough, the novel
is sitting in front of you. It never feels like you're making forward
progress until you're almost at the end of the piece, and then you
tear along at breakneck speed, barreling downhill to the finish line
(whether that's joining a final seam or writing The End).
Your
Mom taught you how to knit. She also pointed you to Elizabeth
Zimmerman's book Knitting Without Tears. In your books from the
Cypress Hollow series, each chapter starts with a quotation from a
fictional knitting guru, Eliza Carpenter. I suspect the name is
probably not coincidental. Are you the source of all the quotes?
Good
eye, you. It's possible
that Zimmerman means carpenter in German. Ahem.
I love Elizabeth Zimmerman, and her writing voice has influenced me
in many ways. She is my knitting idol, for sure, and Eliza is a
partial tribute to her, but Eliza herself has become an idol for me,
even though I invented her. It's a strange thing. All the quotes are
mine and mine alone, though sometimes I wonder, when editing them,
how they came from my fingers, because Eliza is smarter than I'll
ever be.
I
have come across the term "knit-chick lit". It almost
sounds like a secret club or a spy agency with ninja knitters who use
their needles to fight evil. Do knitting and romance come hand in
hand?
I
love the ninja idea! Knit one, take that.
I wrote a
combination of knitting and romance because I was approaching
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the first time, and knew
I had to write something fun
if I was going to write a novel in a month. What did I love? Love.
And knitting. So I mashed them up. And in the process of writing
faster than I'd ever written before, I also wrote better
than I ever had. It was eye-opening and incredibly exciting. That
ended up being the book I rewrote, polished, and used to find my
agent, who got me my first book deal.
In
your book How To Knit a Heart Back Home, your main female character
likes to compare people to books. What genre do you see yourself as?
Oooh!
I think I'd be light magical realism, Sarah Addison Allen-esque.
Romantic, mostly real, with just a dusting of the fantastic.
You
work full time as a 911 dispatcher. That sounds like an exhausting
job to have. How do you find the time to write?
Yep,
I average about 60 hours a week at my day job (which is an all-hours
job, actually). But it works for me. I don't have kids, so I don't
have to work around anything other than my pets which are usually on
my table or under my desk. I work very long hours (my shifts at the
fire house can be up to 72 hours long), but I have three or four days
off a week because of those long hours, so I have plenty of time to
write on my days off. I write first thing in the morning (usually at
my favorite cafe) until I pound out my word count. Then, in my
best-case scenario, I have the afternoon off for dog walks, lunches
with writing pals, naps… It doesn't always work out that way but
it's great when it does.
One
of the reviews for How To Knit a Love Song calls your writing too
intimate and too graphic. Frankly, I would consider that a
compliment. With that said - how do you handle negative reviews?
Oh,
that's a tough one, isn't it? I've been lucky enough to have great
reviews in prestigious places. But my very first review was a
mediocre one in Publisher's Weekly (I believe the word derivative was
thrown about), and I was crushed.
I think I cried for three days. A few writer friends kept me off the
ledge and poured whiskey down my gullet until I stopped crying (very
essential -- those trusted writer friends), and then I started to get
over it. For the first book, each single negative review was painful.
And could I stop looking? No way.
Do
you have any advice for novice writers on how to best deal with
criticism?
My
advice is to know what you're capable of. If you're thick-skinned,
read all the reviews. If you're thin-skinned and it will affect your
writing to read bad reviews, enlist a friend to watch Google Alerts
and do your best to stay away from Amazon and GoodReads. I
can honestly say now that reviews don't phase me, good or
bad. In fact, the one-star reviews usually end up making me laugh.
I've been accused (for the same book) of being too sexually graphic
and not explicit enough. I write too much about knitting, and not
nearly enough. For my memoir, I've had people blast me for talking
too much about myself and for keeping too much back. The
important part: I get fan mail every day. Every damn day. This floors
me and humbles me and makes me feel very
grateful to my readers. I write for them, not for reviews. In the
end, my goal is not to change the world, but to write a book that
will distract a person who is waiting, worried, in a hospital. When I
got the first email that said, you
made my frightening time in the hospital bearable,
I knew it was all worth it.
I
know you love traveling and one of your favorite places in the world
is Venice. Have you ever thought of sending one of your Cypress
Hollow characters to Italy to knit and find love?
YES!
I have! I'm actually working on completing a short story right now in
which one of my couples goes on a dream trip to Venice and finds
something completely unexpected. It's been a blast to write, and I
hope I convey my love of that city successfully in it.
For
more information about Rachael Herron and her writing, please visit
her web-site http://www.yarnagogo.com/.
This interview first appeared on SLO NightWriters web-site:
Sunday, April 28, 2013
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