Welcome, Barbara Quinn!

If I had to name someone as my writing mentor, Barbara Quinn would be she. (Is that grammatically correct, Barb?) She went from being my "boss" at the Rose & Thorn e-Zine to a personal friend to, well, a writing mentor. In the 11 or so years it's taken me to finally sit down and write my novel, she has never once given up on me. 

So, it gives me great pleasure to present to you lucky people my interview with Barb (she lets me call her that) about her fantastically dark book of magic realism, "Speed of Dark," which you should all go buy right now because it is really great and I'm not just saying that because I helped edit it. I wouldn't be pushing it if I didn't think it had value.

You can (SHOULD) buy "Speed of Dark" by clicking here.

Here's an amuse bouche for you:

There are some people you never forget. In the summer of 1964, Luke D’Angelo falls for one of them – a mysterious girl named Celeste. Like Luke, Celeste is an outsider struggling to find her identity, but unlike Luke, Celeste has special powers that have the potential to destroy everything Luke and his friends believe in. 

Luke and his mentally challenged sister become fast friends with this curious girl. Set in upstate New York, in a town that is home to a shrimp cocktail plant that belches a foul-smelling tomato and fish fog, this coming of age tale about a girl with a dream and the teens who want to help her fulfill it, is a balance between the comic and the profound. The story resonates with the message that inside each of us is a light that burns so bright no dark can extinguish it. But at what cost?

Meredith Lopez: "Speed of Dark" has such a rich, unique character – Celeste. What inspired you to create her?

Barbara Quinn:  The book grew out of a discussion with a friend about our frustration with being able to change things. I said we can’t even predict the weather, never mind change it. And that made me think, what if there was someone who could control and change things that we think can’t be changed? What would that person be like? And Celeste immediately came to mind.

ML: Why did you choose to set your novel in the 1960s? What were some of the challenges of writing about the past?

BQ: I grew up in the 60’s and have a fondness for the era. The tunes are constantly in my head, and it’s full of rich language. I did have to stop and make sure that the references I used were correct for 1964, the year it is set. 

ML: The characters in "Speed of Dark" are adolescents, but I wouldn't quite categorize the book as being Young Adult, or YA. I can't imagine the story being told by anyone else. How did you choose the character that you did to be the story's narrator? And how did you manage to cross gender lines so well?

BQ: Like Celeste, the character of Luke was clear to me from the beginning and I didn’t think about having problems crossing gender lines. Over the years I’ve listened a lot and developed an ear for speech patterns and behaviors. I have an older brother and a son, so that helped too with the adolescent feelings, behaviors, and speech.

ML:  You've been self-publishing for years, even before it became this massive "thing" in the writing and publishing worlds. How have you seen the self-publishing world change, for better or for worse?

BQ: It really has changed quite a bit, hasn’t it? You can easily put a book up at Amazon or Barnes and Noble now, though the marketing is still a challenge. While all of my books have small publishers, and none are self-published now, I didn’t start out that way. When agents were unable to place Hard Head and Speed of Dark, I turned to self-publishing. Not long ago a publisher, Eternal Press, acquired them and gave me new covers and editing and marketing. It’s great to have a publisher behind them. After my first venture with self-publishing, the next two novels, 36C and Slings and Arrows, found a home with DiskusPublishing, a small publisher. What a boon to writers this new age is.  

ML: Let's talk about the Rose & Thorn for a while. [The online literary 'zine Barbara co-founded and edited from 1998 to 2008.] Do you think your experience as an editor helps you as a writer?

BQ: Being an editor at the Rose & Thorn honed my writing skills. I learned to see why a story didn’t work, and why another one did. It also exposed me to many different genres and broadened my interest in writing and reading.  

ML: Will you ever go back to R&T, or to the literary magazine world?

BQ: That could easily happen. I enjoy everything about writing and will always have a soft spot for the Rose and Thorn.

ML: How do you find the time to write?

BQ: It isn’t easy to find the time to write but when I don’t write I get grumpy so it’s a good thing for my family when I carve out the time to get some words down. I’m not a morning person, and usually late in the day or late at night, I can find some quiet time to let things flow.

ML: What is your writing process like? Are you a planner, or a "pantser" (flying by the seat of your pants)?

BQ: I’m a combination of both. My natural inclination is to be a planner, but I’ve learned that I have to leave things that aren’t clear alone and they will reveal themselves eventually. That was hard to do at first, but I’ve learned to trust that one night I’ll wake up with the obvious solution to whatever wasn’t working in the novel. A fellow writer once told me to write what you know and fill in the rest later. So that’s what I do.

ML: What other novels do you have in the works that you can tell us about?

BQ: I’ve got a couple in the fire. I can’t say too much since there’s a weird magic that goes along with getting them done and that keeps them out of the spotlight. One is a steampunk. I’ve recently grown interested in steampunk and have an idea that I’m excited about. The other is a contemporary women’s fiction about the adventures of a recently divorced woman. Stay tuned…..

Thanks, Mer!


***
About the author:
Barbara is the author of four novels: Speed of Dark, 36C, Slings and Arrows, and the forthcoming Hard Head. She practiced law for ten years, and held many jobs from lingerie sales clerk to postal worker, cocktail waitress to process server and held many jobs from lingerie sales clerk to postal worker, cocktail waitress to process server. Her love of travel has taken her to four continents and 47 states. She splits her time between Bradley Beach on the Jersey shore and Montebello, New York. She and her husband have one son, Bret, and a grandson, Ammo. Barbara welcomes email at BAQuinn@aol.com  and would love to keep in touch via twitter.com/BarbaraQuinn.  

Welcome, Marlene Dotterer!

I've got a special treat for you all on Grey Skies this week, because that's how I roll: an interview with author Marlene Dotterer! She writes super fun time travel books, but this isn't your average going-back-in-time book. Of course it's not. Do you think I would subject you people to something "average?" In Marlene's book, "Shipbuilder," our intrepid time travelers go back to the Titanic - not as passengers with Jack and Rose, but to the building of the Titanic.

Don't even pretend like I didn't just blow your mind. Here's the blurb to whet your appetite:

Imagine being there before the Titanic set sail.

Now imagine being there before she’s even built.

Sam Altair is a physicist living in Belfast, Ireland. He has spent his career researching time travel and now, in early 2006, he’s finally reached the point where he can send objects backwards through time. The only problem is, he doesn’t know where the objects go. They don’t show up in the past, and no one notices any changes to the present. Are they creating alternate time lines?

To collect more data, Sam tries a clandestine experiment in a public park, late at night. But the experiment goes horribly wrong when Casey Wilson, a student at the university, stumbles into his isolation field. Sam tries to rescue her, but instead, he and Casey are transported back to the year 1906. Stuck in the past, cut off from everyone and everything they know, Sam and Casey work together to help each other survive. Then Casey meets Thomas Andrews, the man who will shortly begin to build the most famous ship since Noah’s Ark. Should they warn him, changing the past and creating unknown consequences for the future?

Or should they let him die?

Marlene was nice enough to stop by on her blog tour to talk about "Shipbuilder," being a lady in the sci-fi genre, and the writing process.

Meredith Lopez:
The subject of time travel is so vast. How did you choose the building of The Titanic as the setting for your first book?

Marlene Dotterer:
Thanks for having me here, Meredith. I’m always happy to talk about my book!

I didn’t really choose Titanic, actually. It was Thomas Andrews who caught my imagination. The truth is, I never planned to write a book. At least, not beyond the “I’d like to write a book someday” thinking we all have. But one day in 2007, I was watching James Cameron’s movie while I exercised. And I started wondering, who was Thomas Andrews? What kind of man builds ships for a living?

So I got on the computer and did a search on him. Wow. Lots of information, all of it talking about what a great man he was, and how kind and generous he was, and how everyone loved him...

And for some reason, every word I read squeezed my heart dry at the loss of this man. I was devastated. That’s a strange thing to feel for someone who’s been dead for a hundred years, but there’s no other word for it. I was as heartbroken as if he’d been a dearly loved relative and I just found out about his death.

I started writing the book. I wanted to give him a second chance at life. That’s crazy, of course, and I know I can’t actually do that. But within the pages of my book, he gets to try again, this time knowing what he faces.





ML: How do you deal with the issue of paradox inherent in the issue of time travel?

MD: My own understanding of time travel is pitiful. I can only go on what feels right to me, instinctually. To me, if we can go back in time, I see no way to not affect things. We’re taking up space, we’re interacting with people... something will be different. But how can the future be different if we already lived through it? Has it happened yet? If it didn’t happen, I as the time traveler, wouldn’t be alive to travel through time.

Oy, it’s enough to make you drink.

So I go with the parallel universe idea. I explain this in some detail on my website on the Journal Entries page, here and here. But I promise, no illustrations in this post! Essentially, when my time travelers go back to 1906, they create a new universe that splits off from the original one. In that new universe, everything is the same as in ours, up until that point. In general, the same things will happen in the new universe that happened in ours, unless the time travelers do something to cause a change. San Francisco has an earthquake, for example. They couldn’t stop an earthquake. But maybe they can keep a ship from sinking.

ML: What research did you do for your book, both the scientific angle and the historical angle?

MD: The scientific research was fun. I’ve always loved science, and in fact, I have a degree in geology. So this was just like being in school. I read up on the current thoughts on time travel, and tried to make sure my story fits with what we knew in 2006. Also, Albert Einstein has a minor, off-screen role in my book, so I read a couple of books about him.

Historical research covered everything from the life of Thomas Andrews and the building of the Titanic, to life in Edwardian Ireland, and the place of women in that society. Also, any story taking place in Ireland runs up against the political and religious issues. There was so much scope to this story, I had a hard time keeping the word count down!





ML: I love that your character doesn't just say, "I'm going to save the Titanic!" and then runs off in time to do that: he copes with the issue of whether or not to do it, and if so, how. Will this be a continuing theme in future "Time Travel Journals" books?

MD: Sam Altair, my fictional physicist, struggles with the question of his responsibility to other people. He didn’t mean to create a new universe, but now that it’s done, he decides to do everything he can to make it a better one.

The next book comes at it from a different angle, but the question of interference is still there. As well as the larger question of “do we have the right to create new universes in the first place?”

ML: As a woman writing sci-fi, or historical fiction with a sci-fi element, do you think you are able to bring a unique perspective to the genre?

MD: Oh, this is a funny one. Not silly funny... disturbing funny. That’s because I wonder how much I, as the author, should project my own interests and concerns into the story. For instance, I can’t imagine being forced to live in the early 20th century as a woman, and not having the right to vote. To be considered either an evil temptress or a weak idiot who must be protected. Restrictions on so many things: clothing, jobs, chaperones. Women were not even allowed into pubs - I’m sorry, but don’t come between me and my pub!

It was necessary to refrain from much of this, or the book would have been a rambling, epic monster. But I do include a few scenes relating to something that’s a huge interest of mine: childbirth.

You’re probably thinking, “OMG, yes. Those poor women had to have their babies at home, and so many of them died, and how awful it all was.” But that’s really more of an urban myth, and I left the subject in the book to deal with that.

ML: How do you find the time to write?

MD: It’s more like how do I find an excuse NOT to write? When I started Shipbuilder in 2007, I was working full-time, running my own business as a personal chef. I wrote in the evenings and on weekends, but I have to say, this book basically wrote itself. The words just poured out of me. I’ve certainly learned it’s not always like that!

Now... I’m almost afraid to admit that I’m semi-retired. I teach childbirth classes one or two evenings a week, but basically, I have lots of time to write. And I get far less written now, than I did while writing Shipbuilder. Go figure.

ML: Are you a planner, or do you just dive in to your stories? What's your pre-writing process like?

MD: Oh, I dive. I have an idea of some kind, day-dream about it for a while, then start writing the scenes I have. There’s no particular order - sometimes I have the ending, or the middle, or the beginning. Mostly I think I have the middle and as I write, I have to figure out how I got to the middle, then figure out how to get to the end.

Usually about halfway through, I step back and make a plan. I love timelines - they really help me put it together.

ML: What can you tell me about "Bridgebuilder," the upcoming sequel to "Shipbuilder?"

MD: It’s completely different from Shipbuilder - it takes place in the future, with space stations, rebel fighters, subversive organizations... all kinds of things!

The premise is that we have two universes: our original universe that we live in, and the second universe created when Sam and Casey went back to 1906. People from the second universe have figured how to get back to the first one, by building a “bridge” between them.

But when they cross over, they are in our world in the year 2080. The planet is suffering the effects of global warming, wars, and famines, and most of the countries have succumbed to restrictive theocracies. The story centers around a brilliant sixteen-year old girl named Moira, and her teacher, Andy, who is trying to help her escape from an abusive, government-protected enclave. In the process, they meet up with the time travelers, and the four of them join forces to defeat all the various bad guys.

ML: Thank you so much for stopping by Grey Skies to chat!

MD: Thank you! I really enjoyed it!


***
About the author:

Marlene Dotterer grew up as a desert rat in Tucson, Arizona. In 1990, she loaded her five children into the family station wagon, and drove north-west to the foggy San Francisco Bay Area. To stay warm, she tackled many enterprises, earning a degree in geology, working for a national laboratory, and running her own business as a personal chef. She’s a frustrated gardener, loves to cook, and teaches natural childbirth classes. She says she writes, “to silence the voices,” obsessed with the possibilities of other worlds and other times.

She is married to The Best Husband in the World, and lives in Pleasant Hill, California.

Her website is http://marlenedotterer.wordpress.com/

And while you're over at her website...

Must Have Give-Aways!

Ships are launched with a bottle of champagne. My book is about a ship, so...

Actually, perhaps it’s best if I don’t try to mail anyone a bottle of champagne. But how about a free book?

Throughout the blog tour, I’ll keep track of everyone who leaves a comment on any of the blogs and enter them into a drawing. At the end of the tour, I’ll pick three winners, each to receive an autographed copy of The Time Travel Journals: Shipbuilder.

So, read on! Comment!