FAQ's
(Frequently Asked Questions from my fans)
Where do you get your ideas?
This is the question authors are most often asked. A book idea can come from anywhere: from reading, from listening, from observing. Writers are very curious by nature. We always want to know details about topics that interest us. I think the questions that always make me want to delve deeper into subjects are Why? and How? For Abenaki Captive I wanted to know why John Stark was foolish enough to hunt on land that was not open to him. For the Sarah Hale biography, I wanted to know how a woman who lived during the 1800s, remained so important to us today?
Other times, my topics are assigned by a publishing company. I still love writing books other people have hired me to do because once again, I’ll learn something new!
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When I’m researching a book, I often get to go to interesting places and talk to fascinating people.
Can you give us some examples of the places you visited and the people you talked with when researching a book?
Sure! When I was writing the John Stark book, I met an elderly Abenaki man whose father had written a dictionary of Abenaki/English words in the 1800s. He even gave me a copy of his father’s book to use. It helped me add authenticity to the names and words I used in my novel. I visited the village in Canada where Stark had been taken after he was captured.
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I spent a long weekend in Philadelphia, where Sarah Hale spent most of her later years, working as the editor of the most famous lady’s magazine of the 19th century: Godey’s Lady’s Book. I walked in the neighborhood where she’d lived and read personal letters she had written. At the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., I poured through preserved copies of that magazine. Sarah’s editorials gave me insight into the way women lived in the 1800s.
As I researched Fly Home, I met people who raised and raced pigeons. I interviewed “pigeoneers” –men who had actually spent time in World War II working with birds in the U.S. Army Signal Corp. I went to New Jersey and visited the home of the U.S. Army’s pigeoneers.
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I love learning about something I never knew before and sharing it with kids and young adults.
How and when do you write?
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I am always writing. Writing not only goes on when you are at the keyboard or have pen in hand. Writing is thinking. Writing is reading. Research is writing. Interviewing is writing. Writing is imagining what you’re going to say.
When I actually sit down at the keyboard, it can be any time of day. I don’t spend long hours at the computer. I get up and do other things while I think about what I will say next.
What is the hardest part of writing?
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For me, it’s the first draft. I get very excited about new ideas but have a difficult time getting started. I don’t always write in sequence. I may work on different parts of the book. Once I do get the first version written however, I love the next part: revision. Now I have something to arrange and rearrange into a story.
What’s your favorite book that you’ve written?
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The next one. Always the next one.
