Is your novel about you?

Is it about you or someone you know? 
Is my book about me is one of the first questions people ask me after they've read it. No, it's not about me or someone I know.

view from the kitchen window in Fox Harbour

I know the outport of Fox Harbour as a context/setting. I know how it smells, how it sounds, how people talked to each other back when I was a child, and I know Newfoundland culture. I also know the nuances of growing up with sisters, but my novel Worthy is a made-up story, though, I'm sure it happened all over Newfoundland and other small towns across Canada.

Readers are fascinated by encountering writers. 
I always knew that about famous writers: Stephen King, John Irving, J.K. Rowling, Kelley Armstrong. Who wouldn't be intrigued by meeting the writers who produced characters like Christine, Owen Meany or Harry Potter?

But the average, unknown author may feel less of a draw from readers. On the contrary, it turns out that readers DO want to hear from writers even if they aren't famous, and especially if those readers enjoy that author's work.

I have recently found that since I published my novel "Worthy" in November 2015, people are fascinated by the fact that they know or are speaking to someone who has published a book. A couple of other questions I've experienced the most since November have been:

1. How did you come up with this whole story?
2. How did you write all those words?

How did you come up with this story?

I came up with an idea of a young girl in Toronto of about university age who finds herself wondering, once again, why she has felt so out of place, growing up in her own family. Sure, she could have been adopted; that would have been an easy explanation, but what if she still resembled members of her family too much for that? 

So, the story was supposed to be about her quest to find out her true story. which was what I had in mind when I started the 3-Day-Novel Writing Contest in Sept. 2009. When the clock started ticking on my 3-day creative challenge (which I now do every year), suddenly I was writing about this women's mother. My brain automatically flipped back by one generation and the story just fell out of my head for three days. That was the front end of the book or the first 25,000 words. The second half of the book came from another year's work during the 3-Day-Novel Writing Contest. 

How did you write all those words?

When you have an idea to explore, a passion to write, a need to get words down, a fridge full of the right food and 3 solid days of writing, I find, I can do it. Not everyone can do it that way. Other writers putter away at it everyday for an hour or so. Either way, it takes lots of persistence because of the many revisions required to make it readable and it takes a willingness to let go of the stuff that doesn't work. That's very hard to do when some words come at a painstakingly-slow pace.

Do you have questions for me? 

Let me know and I'll do my best to answer them. To receive insider info about my writing and advance sample chapters before the public, join my Readers' Group. You'll also receive a free short story from an upcoming collection.