My interview with author Carole McDonnell

I asked if I could interview Carole McDonnell, author of *Wind Follower*,
and she agreed. She's a delightful person to me because she says what she
thinks, and that can be a little provocative. I found her perspective
challenging, refreshing, and fun:
http://authorculture.blogspot.com/2010/10/walking-borderlands-with-author-carole.html

Walking the Borderlands With Author Carole
McDonnell<http://authorculture.blogspot.com/2010/10/walking-borderlands-with-author-carole.html>
<http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_htui43LvZ0Q/TLu5_k9HPrI/AAAAAAAAAH4/xwpsdgbsJWA/s1600/carole.jpg>
Johne here. I've been looking forward to this interview for a long time. I
discovered Carole McDonnell <http://carolemcdonnell.blogspot.com/> through
friends, through The Lost Genre Guild <http://lostgenreguild.blogspot.com/>,
and through Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000100933837&ref=ts>.
Her book, *Wind Follower*, isn't the kind of thing I'd normally go looking
for, and yet so many people I respect raved about it that I finally tracked
down a copy myself on
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Wind-Follower-Carole-McDonnell/dp/0809557797>.
It is an amazing book.

If you haven't yet read Carole McDonnell, you will.

...............................
Key for this interview - AuthorCulture = *AC:* Carole McDonnell = *CM*

*AC:* *I’ve gotten to know you from a variety of places. You have a unique
perspective. From what I know of you, you don’t strike me as one who walks
the beaten path. How would you say that you came to be the person you are?
What would you consider the most important influences which have molded you?
*

*CM:* Like anyone else who walks the unbeaten path, I pretty much found
myself there. I don't think I'm brave enough to have entered it willingly. I
suppose being an immigrant influenced me. I arrived in the U.S. when I was
eleven. That's the age kids start learning how to deal with the world
outside the family. So, just when I was learning the rules of how to be a
Jamaican, I suddenly had to learn how to be an American. And not only an
American, but a little Black girl whose family had integrated a white Jewish
building in Brooklyn. That was the home front. In school, I ended up in a
white mini-school inside the larger school. I believe anyone who migrates as
a kid gets interested in communication issues and in "belongingness" but
somehow I ended up with a really bad case because alienation was thrown in —
alienation from my own culture and from the culture I was now involved in.
That gets extended to other areas and "cultures."

My friend, Nick Wood, a really great South African speculative Writer, says
that I "walk the borderlands." Which is a nice way of saying it. I just tend
to stand outside of all the groups I belong to. I'm Christian but am always
disagreeing with Black and White Christianity. I'm Black but am generally
not in the African-American or Jamaican camps when it comes to many issues.
On the whole, the folks I get along with are religious oddballs. If someone
really loves God, fights the oppressor, and is emotionally wounded, that
person is going to become a close friend. And I like those people because
they also have had to be brave as they go through the world, they understand
the societal, emotional, and political alienation.

*AC:* *What were your influences as a reader growing up? What are you
reading right now?*

*CM:* My mother was an Anglophile. Most educated Jamaicans her age worshiped
everything English. She grew up poor in the country without money for books
so she had to memorize them. Upshot, she was always repeating long passages
from novels by Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens etc. She read only the
great literary classics, and so did we. Even now, it takes a whole lot to
make me read a contemporary fiction book. When Mama came to the US as a
nurse, she went to college and so our house was filled with her studybooks,
which my sister and I read because they were always in the house — as were
we; Mama never let us out, because she was afraid we would end up coming
home with "the belly" like all the other kids around us. She was into
anthropology, Black history, medicine. So that's what we read. Plus we
watched a whole lot of PBS and cartoons. On PBS, we watched the Janus film
collection of great foreign films and documentaries about archeology,
anthropology, history, and a ton of British period pieces.

What am I reading now: *The Value of
Nothing<http://www.amazon.com/Value-Nothing-Reshape-Redefine-Democracy/dp/031242924X>
* by Raj Patel; *Hard as the Rock Itself: Place and Identity in the American
Mining Town<http://www.amazon.com/Hard-As-Rock-Itself-Identity/dp/0870818503/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1287158944&sr=1-1>
* by David Robertson; *The Bible <http://www.biblegateway.com/>*.

*AC:* *What is your pedigree as an author? How did you come to write novels?
*

*CM:* Pedigree? Oh my! Am not sure if I have a pedigree. I grew up reading a
lot of short stories by great dead authors. I like short stories. But I am
so in love with characterization and worldbuilding that my stories usually
opened so many doors and brought up so many questions. It takes a great
skill to write a good short story and my love of world-building and
character development novels fights against my ability to write anything
short. Actually, that love fights against me writing good novels as well.
Honestly, I get so caught up in exploring the ramifications of a certain
speculative world that if I'm not careful I would roam through the world
utterly forgetting the plot. That is one of the flaws of *Wind Follower*.
(It has quite a few flaws but I love that book dearly.) Its pacing is a bit
off. If I understood my tendency to roam speculative worlds, and to be
affected by the pacing of foreign art films, I probably would've written it
differently. But as it is, I'm glad I didn't know all that about myself.
Because as it is, it's a good little book. And I'm glad for that slow pacing
and those exploratory scenes.

*AC:* *Wind Follower is a unique novel that seems to defy easy genre
identification or labeling. What was the inspiration for this story?*

*CM:* Oh wow, so many things went into that book! It started out as a YA
book. It started out as a story about a Black slave girl who escaped to
Comanche territory and fell in love with a warrior. I did a ton of research
on Native American tribes and decided I loved the Comanche best because they
reminded me of the
Yanomamo<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%CC%A7nomam%C3%B6>(the Fierce
People of the Amazon.) I've always liked fierceness. I'm always
interested in what human nature us and how culture, folklore, and religion
affect so-called human nature. What are people like without the restraint
put on them by religion? How do people play with the religion and
spirituality they inherit?

I also love fairy tales and the Childs Elizabethan and Scottish ballads.
Many of my short stories and poems are based on fairy tales. My story, *Black
is the Color of My True Love's
Hair<http://www.scribd.com/doc/35511442/Black-is-the-Color-of-My-True-Loves-Hair>
* was based on a ballad and had just been published. So I was walking
downtown humming some of my favorite ballads and I started singing, *"The
Trees They Grow
High<http://www.chivalry.com/cantaria/lyrics/trees-grow-high.html>
"* (also known as *He's Young but He's Daily Growing*) and I realized *Wind
Follower* was about a woman who gets betrothed to a rich man's son in order
to pay off a debt.

I have also thought that Christian writers have messed up creatively. There
are so many genres we could have explored or even invented, but because of
denominational issues (such as a distrust of imagination) or political
issues (such as American Christian identification with the American country
and government) or personal issues (such as racism, ethnocentricism,
distrust of sexuality, priggishness) most Christians would never write. I
said to God, "Give me the ideas and I will write them." So I consider myself
a Christian who writes stories other Christians would never write. Something
about being alienated makes one no longer care what people think. The next
thing I knew, *Wind Follower* had appeared in its present guise. It took a
lot of courage to write it because I still worry about what people think.
But I've learned to work against the
fear.<http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_htui43LvZ0Q/TLTWZ3WxTQI/AAAAAAAAAHg/eCq7WEz-ADM/s1600/wind-follower245.jpg>


*AC:* *I was introduced to Wind Follower by strong (and diverse)
word-of-mouth raves from all sides, from people I know and respect, from
total strangers, and from everyone else in between. From my limited vantage,
it appears to be hit across a broad spectrum of readers. When you were
writing the book, did you have any idea it would be as widely embraced
despite the apparent barriers?*

*CM:* It's widely embraced??? Neat! See, I didn't know that. Knowing this
will knock a chip off my shoulder. Or maybe it'll make the chip a little
smaller.

So I thought: White Christians will be offended at it because they believe
the USA was given to them by God; Many Black Speculative Fiction writers
will be offended because they dislike Christianity (the religion of the
white oppressor etc) and would rather a book be about African Spirituality
or totally atheistic or agnostic; Fantasy lovers are accustomed to Wicca,
elves, Norse religion, etc but not Christianity; Christian fantasy lovers
are used to apocalyptic stuff like *Left Behind*, *Narnia*, or *Lord of the
Rings*. I was putting some new world before them that they would have to
accept-- something they would probably be challenged by.

But I also felt that it wasn't typical and if people gave it a chance it
would do well. Some White folks don't want to read Black Fantasy or Sword
and Soul because the world is strange to them. They're used to vampires,
shape-shifters, elves and the like. But they're also afraid they'll be stuck
with accusatory or "meaningful" literature — a burden from college and high
school when Black stories were read to enlighten the white student about
oppression and not really for fun. And few secular fantasy readers won't
pick up fantasy about Christ unless it's something like Philip Pullman's *The
Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel
Christ<http://www.amazon.com/Good-Jesus-Scoundrel-Christ-Myths/dp/080212996X>
*. They're afraid of being preached at. But I thought. . . well, *Wind
Follower* is a little different and one day
Chupacabras<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chupacabra>from Mexican
folklore, Asian spirits, and Arabian djinns
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn>will make fantasy more multicultural. And
one day having a Christian worldview in a fantasy story (written by someone
who actually believes in the Bible and Jesus) might be acceptable.

*AC:* *Writing a daring novel is one thing. Selling it is another. Wind
Follower strikes me as Fantasy but almost seems to be a genre unto itself.
How did you find a home for Wind Follower?*

*CM:* Total grace of God kinda thing. I network with a lot of people so I
was told there was a new publisher — Juno Books — looking for manuscripts.
Since it was a new publisher, Juno hadn't quite decided what kind of fantasy
it would do. They've since decided to do urban fantasy so shape-shifters,
demons, vampires now abound. I sent another WIP, *The Daughters of Men*,
because I thought *Wind Follower* was too religious and they wouldn't accept
it. The editor, Paula Guran, said it needed a lot of work. I had been
working on *Daughters of Men* for ages and I hadn't touched it in two years
or so. Then I said in passing, well I have this other
WIP<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_in_progress_%28disambiguation%29>that
I just started. It's called
*Wind Follower*. She looked at it and immediately accepted it (much to my
surprise). She later said she wouldn't have accepted it at another time, but
it came in at the right time.

*AC:* *You’ve said strange things happen if you’re a writer who happens to
be cross-genre. I presume some of those things are negative or challenging,
but have there also been unexpected or wonderful things as well?*

*CM:* True. The first review was from a reviewer in Malaysia. She was a
reviewer of romances and didn't usually review speculative fiction. She
loved *Wind Follower*. I took that as a sign from God that the book would be
loved in the rest of the world, possibly receiving more honor in other
countries than in the US. I also got a great compliment from someone from
Africa. And have gotten fans from The Philippines and Taiwan. The book
speaks to people and Christians who understand the kind of folkloric
spirituality that deals with demons, dreams, and the like. So it turns out
all that anthropology reading has helped me write a book that really speaks
to folks in Asia, Indonesia, India, Africa, and Latin America.

*AC:* *I’ve enjoyed following you on Facebook where it appears that your
day-to-day life is an adventure. How do you navigate a full personal life
with the realities of life as an author?*

*CM:* With God's help. I am not too happy about the adventure at times and
I'm a bit of a whiner, as you know. On the practical level, I can navigate
because I have a sweet husband who treats me like a queen. So I get away
with a lot. And I have learned to take advantage of his sweetness. On a
creative level, having a son labeled disabled and dealing with my own health
issues affect my stories. I can't imagine what kinds of stories I would
write if I were well with a well child. As it is, all my stories deal with
illnesses, have disabled or ill characters (usually young boys), and have
characters at war with the clans to which they belong.

*AC:* *What are you working on currently? How are those projects going?*

*CM:* I'm working on *Constant Tower*, a novel. This was hard going because
I couldn't quite get the narrative voice right. I always have trouble with
that. If I'm not careful, I end up with a kind of knee-jerk highfalutin'
pseudo King James Version speak. I have to be careful of that. It's uneven
right now. Some parts have a contemporary modern sound and some parts are
high fantasy. So I have to work on that. In addition, my two beta readers
told me they loved it more than *Wind Follower* and that it's better written
but that it is too bleak. They especially objected to the killing off of a
character. So I had to remove the last 100 or so pages and find a new
ending. This revision put me off schedule but it feels as if I've found the
right path. Although this one is not as religious as *Wind Follower*,
there's a bit of courage involved in writing it as well. My young male
warriors are so touchy-feely wounded types in a world of machismo that I'm
afraid readers will want to slap some manhood into them. Takes a lot to
write such easygoing almost feminine male heterosexual characters in
fantasy. There's also the way marriage is done. Two men and a woman form a
marriage bond. So that will bother a few folks.

There's also a YA novel called *My Life as an Onion*. Another novel where I
have a voice issue and which is also religious. It's about a girl with the
gifts of discerning of spirits. So yeah, she sees demons and generational
curses on families. Plus she's in love with a rich guy and she's quite
mercenary because this guy and his money is the key to her future happiness.
Hard to write because I believe in her cause, and I know feminists will
utterly want to slap her . . . and me. But it's a book I want to write. And
I truly believe one should write for one's self.

Am also working on a Christian demonic succubus erotic story called *The
Night Wife*. I always laugh whenever I see folks romanticize demons and
demon lovers. I figured I'd write an urban fantasy story from a Christian
viewpoint. Erotic and utterly religious in one book, something to make folks
who think they know demons see the truth of the way-too-romanticized
situation.


*AC:* *What advice would you give to up-and-coming authors about making it
as a novelist?*

*CM:* I'd say to join one or two critique groups. They should also buy a lot
of books about writing or study from the internet. So many new writers
aren't humble and simply won't take advice. Humility brings you a long way.
They should network and always be ready to learn. They should also choose if
they want to write for fame and simply want to be published, or if they want
to write the book they want to read.

Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |

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