Category Archives: Interviews/Guests

My Completely UNAUTHORIZED Interview With Donald Maass

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So, I won’t go into the biography of literary agent Donald Maass, but I will say this–the man is a light shining in the darkness of this hard, old world. He loves books, writers, and story. And I have a little heterosexual-mancrush on him. He is open, giving, and kind.
And I interviewed him, kind of.

 

We talked for a minute at the 2012 Pikes Peak Writers Conference and I asked him how I could better handle the ups and downs of the writer’s life.

And he said what many have said. Networking. If we can build a network of friends and comrades-in-arms, we’ll better be able to handle the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Because the writer’s life is full of slings and arrows and outrageous fortune.

Then he went on, and he didn’t talk about the emotional pits of despair or the lofty heights of blazing praise, but he went back to the idea of revision. And this is interesting because on the surface, dealing with the highs and lows of writing isn’t about revision.

He said that most manuscripts get stuck at the 90% finished phase and writers give up without doing that last 10% of revision. But if we have friends and critique groups to help us, we can better survive the storm and get the manuscript so that it gleams like Excalibur in British sunshine.
So for Mr. Maass, it goes back to the book, always back to the book, the story, the fire in fiction.

Maybe he meant that managing our emotions is easier if our book is the best we can make it, and yes, it might not get picked up, but at least we know that our novel rocks, and what a feeling that is, to be in love with your book.

I am so glad that I debuted with The Never Prayer. I am so proud of the story, the characters, the themes in that book, that when all else fails, when I tremble on the precipice of absolute despair, I can go back to the book I wrote and be glad.

Thank you, Mr. Maass, for our conversation and allowing me to publish this COMPLETELY UNAUTHORIZED interview. The world is better because of your work. Even with all the rejections. Or maybe because of them.

 

More about Donald Maass here.

Heavenly Fridays – Angel in a Corner – J.D. Watts Presents!

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So, here I am, looking for cool people to follow on Twitter, and I come across a woman, J.D. Watts, who is writing angel books. And I pause. Oh yes, I pause. And I realize, I should ask her to guest blog. But she doesn’t know me. I could be Lucifer, trying to tempt her (who says I’m not, bwa-ha-ha), but I want to live a life of courage and risk, so I emailed and asked her to guest blog. She agreed. And the rest is this blog right here, right now.

J.D. has always been a writer, always dreaming and thinking of ideas for stories or plotlines, she just never sat down and put pen to paper until the fall of 2008. Eventually she gathered her courage to enter the first part of her original novel into the 2010 Original Fiction Contest at The Writer’s Coffee Shop. That story won the young adult category and led to her contract for the first novel in her Children of Creation series: Convergence.

I was raised in church and reading the Bible, so I was always curious about angels. To be honest though, what really piqued my interest was an event that happened when I was young. It’s practically family legend now. I’ve heard the story so many times that I feel like I remember it, but I don’t have a first-hand memory of the event since I was only two. The little details of the story, however, are at the heart and soul of the concepts of angels, fallen angels, and guardian angels that I used in my Children of Creation book series.

Even to this day, 31 years later, my mom still shivers a little when she tells the story.

When I was little, my dad was an over-the-road truck driver and was gone more than he was home. Mom and I got used to being on our own and handling most situations. One day, we were getting ready to run errands. Mom was rushing me to put on my shoes and head out when I stopped. I kept staring at this one corner of our living room. There was nothing of interest there to stare at, and yet I seemed spellbound.

My mom called for me to stop messing around and get in the car, but I wouldn’t budge. Finally, she walked over to me and asked me what I was staring at and I pointed and said, “The man in the corner.”

My Mom looked in the corner and saw nothing. “What are you talking about? There’s nothing there, baby.”

As serious as could be, I looked up at her and said. “Yes there is, Mommy. Can’t you see him? He’s all white.”

Mom said chills went down her spine and she just couldn’t really deal with what I was saying. She just sort of made a joke of it. She told me to stop being so silly and pulled me by the hand out the door, but it really disturbed her. She kept thinking about everything that happened and how serious I was, and yet I wasn’t frightened at all. We really don’t know for sure, especially since I don’t remember it happening at all, but we’ve often wondered if I wasn’t seeing an angel in our midst. Every night in our prayers, Mom always asked God to send his angels to watch over us. Maybe, just maybe, he’d answered her…

With a story like this in my history, not to mention my upbringing, I don’t think it’s all that surprising that once I sat down to write a story of my own design it ended up being about a teenager who could see angels when others couldn’t. I really enjoyed making my lead character, Dani, an embodiment of that little girl who saw someone in our house that nobody else could see…only, unlike two-year-old me, she was charged with a mission.

 

J.D’s website
On twitter
On Goodreads
Buy Convergence on Amazon

My Completely UNAUTHORIZED Interview With Charlaine Harris

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To steal from Wikipedia: Charlaine Harris is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing mysteries for over twenty years.

She is big time.

If you don’t know who Charlaine Harris is, either you’ve been in prison, in the hole, for years on end ala Papillion, or you only watch PBS documentaries on badgers. Not even the honey badger, just badgers.

 

Charlaine Harris penned the Sookie Stackhouse series of wonderful, southern vampire books that HBO turned into the True Blood series. But even before Sookie hit like a tsunami, Charlaine was writing books and books and books.

I talked with her at the 2012 Romantic Times Book Lovers Convention and she was wonderful and kind and supportive. This was the question:

Aaron: Charlaine, how do I as a writer handle the emotional storms of writing? How can I handle the ups and downs?

And her answer changed my life. It took a little while to sink in, but when it sunk in, it hardened into concrete. Quick-dry cemented, right down into the cracks and crevices of my soul. Charlaine said you have to believe in your story and your characters and you have to share that with the world.

It is my job to write my story and to share it. Not sell books, not get a huge publisher and make millions, though that certainly would be nice, but that’s not what this game is about. My job is to write a quality story with memorable characters and share it with the world.

I know what you are thinking. Duh. But it’s not just duh, nope. When the fear hits, when the rejections all dump on us like acid rain, if I can remember my primary purpose, I can weather those storms.

Because this adventure is not about me. It’s not about Aaron Ritchey. It’s about my story and my voice and my characters. I’m not here to sell me. Selling me is frightening because, dude, I am damaged goods. I’m the 1978 Dodge Dart rusted out.

But my story, my characters, Lena Marquez, the heroine of The Never Prayer, she’s tough, she’s fragile, she’s forced into impossible situations, and yet she emerges strong and healed and good. I’m here to share her story with as many people as I can. Not everyone will be interested, and that’s fine. But those that do connect with her, they will emerge from my book, hopefully a little more strong, a little more healed, a little better.

Thank you so much, Charlaine, for talking with me. And here is a link to her Amazon page. She is a woman with a generous heart.