Re: My interview with author Carole McDonnell

Excellent interview. Thanks for introducing me to Carole McDonnell.  I'll
be checking out "Wind Follower" myself soon.

regards,
-Lance

> Johne Cook
> 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 |
> --
> dadl-ot mailing list
> http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
> http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot


regards,
-Lance


-- 
dadl-ot mailing list
http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot