Yes friends, Romans, countrymen, this author and I had so much fun talking, I’m doing a two part series.  Today and tomorrow, me and Marne Ann Kirk.  Today is Part I.  I used a Roman numeral for one.  Because I’m classy like that.

And poetic.  This blog post has real like poetry on it.  You lucky people.

Marne Ann Kirk and I are both Crescent Moon Press writers and we wrote together one weekend, and I’ll never forget how stately she looked in a rumpled old chair, leaning back, typing on her computer. She looked positively regal. Me? I type. I rage. I type some more. I hate the words, like I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. Helpless to stop, I pound more sentences down to spite the shattered pieces of my own misbegotten, hopeful genius. And Marne, stately, works.

At least that’s what I saw. But then, she is the Vice President of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, she has 9 brothers and 2 sisters, and she is raising a gaggle of her own kids. And she has dogs, including several puppies who get themselves into a variety of messes. With all of that going on, her serenity is humbling. As is her kindness. Am I eulogizing? Don’t let me eulogize. To learn more, and come up with high praise of your own, click here.

Marne has a series with Crescent Moon Press. The Fae Dragon Chronicles: Love Chosen is already out, and she has a paranormal romance set to launch this summer. We’ll talk about both. And Montana. And woodpiles. And how romantic fiction might have saved her life, though when she started writing, she wanted to write hardcore, thought-provoking literary fiction.

Here is the Amazon.com link for Love Chosen, not literary, but a fantasy romance. This is the skinny:

For millennia, dragon and fae have peacefully co-existed, but the fae themselves have lived segregated and very different lives. Now a malevolence threatens to separate them all permanently. Can a Queen’s guard and a rebellious outlaw join forces to defeat this common enemy?

So we talked, it was fun, and here it is:

AARON: So, Marne, tell us about the woodpile people in Montana. Everyone loves to hear stories about woodpile people.

Marne: True story: I was a weird child. I know, I know, so hard to believe, right? But, like most writers, my imagination began as this raging beast within my psyche, battling with the child I was for supreme control over my life. Luckily, I beat it back enough to fool others into believing I’m normal; but there for a while in my early development, it was touch and go. I was afraid of absolutely everything (and a few of my brothers might have preyed on those fears, just a titch).

When I was eight, I lived on a beautiful piece of land bordering the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Preserve in Montana. On this amazing property we lived what you might call a rustic life…I believe it would be more accurate, though, to say dirt had more monetary value than we did. Anyway, poor was an understatement. We lived in a run down, two-and-a-half bedroom, no bathroom, no electricity, no water or plumbing, cozy trailer home for seven, with one more on the way. At eight, though, I saw it as an adventure. Seriously, best camping trip EVER.

The only downside…I was afraid of the dark. And without electricity, it was a dark winter indeed. One of my chores was getting wood, but it seemed I always had to get it at night. Always. In the pitch black of the darkest night. And for the longest time, I remember standing against the trailer with my eyes scrunched shut, just praying my daddy would magically forget he needed that wood. I was pretty sure if the bears or mountain lions didn’t eat me, the deer and bunnies would (thanks to said brothers).

And then the woodpile people came to my rescue. At first there were two, a brother and sister, who convinced me to come over to the woodpile. They kept me company and performed silly antics while I got wood. If they had a problem, I’d help them resolve it. Once they trusted me, their parents came out of the woodpile to meet me; and as I gained their trust by solving issues or keeping secrets, they brought friends out to meet me until I had an entire small village of woodpile people, complete with a little mayor and officer, for friends.

Crazy, I know, but isn’t there a bit of crazy in us all? Please, Aaron, for the love of all I hold dear, say it’s so.

AARON: Okay, so in high school, I wrote bad suicide poetry. A lot of bad suicide poetry. You want a sample? No, I couldn’t…okay…if you insist…

Darkness lives like a beast in my soul,
Life has no happiness for a mongrel like me
I slip the razorblade under my flesh and bleed my truth:
I was never meant to live.

Hey, that was pretty good. Okay, my bad suicide poetry from high school had more angsty, less poetry.

Now, Marne, what kind of poems did you write in high school? And Marne, on the phone, we agreed, you’d give us a sample.

Marne: It’s kind of funny to me, how time distorts one’s memory. When we spoke, I told you I wrote poetry (very bad poetry, I might add) about nature and God, and not really angsty stuff at all… Boy, was I wrong. I pulled out an old journal and, lo and behold, I was a pretty typically angst-ridden kid. Ick. But I promised you some bad…er, I mean fantastic, amazing, poetry. So…

Raindrops
Tickle the tongue
Soft, tiny; slow drowning
Life, hanging by its perfection
Raindrops

That one wasn’t too angst-filled. And, because I actually like this one…

Tell me
Why do we die?
Just to make room for more?
Death mocks mankind’s every success.
Ironic

Why, yes… I do know they’re terrible. But I was a teenager. You should read the angsty stuff. Horrible. Depressing. And did I mention horrible? I hope fiction was the right path…

AARON: From your bio, you are child of the west. So am I. I was born with the soul of a coyote and a love for the wind. In Love Chosen, though, you include more exotic settings. However, in the sequel, you bring it all home. Tell us a little bit about how your life in the west has colored the settings of your novels.

Marne: “The soul of a coyote and a love for the wind,” I like that… Personally, I hate the wind—strong winds make me so cranky and I don’t know why (yet Delta has many wind-filled Spring days. Ick). I think I’ll put a horrific wind storm in the black moment of my next book. Thanks for the idea, Aaron!

Anyway, when it comes to setting, I write what I know or I write what I’d love to know about. First, to set things up a bit, I wrote LOVE CHOSEN, book one in the Fae Dragon Chronicles, after I wrote LOVE DARED, book two in the Fae Dragon Chronicles. Why? Because I wrote LOVE DARED as a stand-alone story and then realized there was so much more story I could tell, so I wrote LOVE CHOSEN.

So, we’ll start with LOVE DARED, which takes place in coniferous mountains, in desert canyon lands, in cliff-dwelling homes…all of these areas are places I’m intimately familiar with. I spent a great portion of my youth living on oil rigs with my family, all over the hills, plateaus, and canyons of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. We found cliff dwellings, old homesteads, caved-in mines, all kinds of amazing artifacts, and those things influence a young mind. I think this comes out in the imagery of LOVE DARED.

By the time I’d written LOVE CHOSEN, I’d had a chance to travel a bit more and I’d even seen an ocean or two. The internet had also become a much more significant resource. So I felt comfortable placing LOVE CHOSEN in a seaport kingdom. The funny thing about that, though, is the Ierocks mountain range separates the fae from the humans, and it is present in both books. Why? Because I guess I never got too far away from home after all… Ierocks= Rockies…

Just to be clear, it’s like a love\hate thing with the wind.  But thanks Marne.  Part I ends here, but part II begins tomorrow!  It’s all Marne, all week! Or at least Thursday and Friday.

Talk to you cats tomorrow.