Today we are talking with , the author of Shield of the Palidine.
Tell us something unexpected about yourself!
I am an adopted child and I thank God every day for that fact. Mary and Carroll raised my brother and me as their own and as Mom always said, “A child grows in love in your heart, not in your belly.” She called my brother and me “the gifts of life.”
When my husband and I tried unsuccessfully to get and stay pregnant, we decided to look into adoption. In our search, I discovered a database called BirthQuest that allowed either the child or the parent to put information pertinent to the birth and if the other looked, he/she could find a match. By using BirthQuest, if she (or he) never searched for me, then no harm, no foul, and I wouldn’t pop into her life unannounced.
Before I could put my information into BirthQuest, I became pregnant and birthed our lovely daughter. A few months later, I rediscovered the link to BirthQuest. I filled out the information and forgot about it as the chances of my birth parents looking for me were close to nil. Let’s get real; older folks just didn’t use the internet in 1997. Heck, no one did!
Two weeks later, I came home to a message on my machine that said, “Hello, I think I am your birth mother.” My heart stopped. Could it really be? I tentatively picked up the phone and called the number. At the ripe age of thirty-six, I found my birth mother, Sharon.
Amazingly, Sharon attended a convention the same day I used BirthQuest. She sat at a table with a woman who told a story of her adopted daughter finding her birth mother using this on-line database. Sharon asked her son to get her on this database as soon as she arrived home. It took her two weeks to get up enough courage to call.
We talked until the wee hours of the morning and after we hung up, I called Mom and Dad to tell them all about it. The last thing I said to these two people who meant the world to me was, “Mommy and Daddy, thank you for being the best parents a girl could ever have. I love you.” That was early on a Friday morning. On Monday, my brother called to tell me our dad had died of an aneurism.
I had closure knowing the last words my Dad heard from me were ones of deep, heartfelt love.
What kind of books do you write?
I write whatever the voices in my head tell me to! I have three historical romances, one YA romance, a paranormal, two fantasies in a series (3 more outlined), and a modern mystery coming out this year. I have started a biography.
What inspired you to write?
I have wanted to write since the second grade. I was always coming up with stories to tell my friends at lunch or on the bus rides to/from school. I wrote through high school – on the journalism team, in creative writing class, on the teen page for the city newspaper.
My first story, Of Angels and Orphans, rolled around in my head for nearly thirty years. Life eventually got in the way and writing was shoved to the side. “Someday, I will write…” You know how it goes. Well, that someday came in the most unusual way. I am a retired lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserves, a twenty-two year veteran in our military. And I, like hundreds of thousands before me, was called up by my country to serve in Southwest Asia (SWA) in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
I left behind two small children, aged eight and five, and a husband, who overnight became chief, cook, bottle washer, mom and dad. I bless him every day for the sacrifices he made to keep the home fires burning. He took the brunt of the deployment, not me. I love him with all my being: my heart, my mind, my body, my soul. My love for him is where my ability to write about the love between my two main characters is born.
In SWA, I worked six days a week, twelve to thirteen hour days for twelve straight months. My day off was sometimes a day off, sometimes only six-to-eight hours of work. I lived Groundhog Day for three hundred sixty-five days.
But I had time on my hands. No kids, no responsibilities outside the mission, no cleaning the bathrooms, no cooking or grocery shopping. I just had to make my bunk and take the bus to work. I lived in an open bay barracks with forty-eight of my favorite friends, walking three buildings to a shower/toilet trailer in 115º heat.
When I first arrived, I read voraciously, downing four-five novels in a week. In January 2006, I was able to take a four-day break to Qatar and lay around reading seven novels. I read two romance novels in those four days, a genre I rarely read as I like Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, and their brand of book best.
So there I was, reading a romance novel and wondering why I was reading other people’s books when I had Of Angels and Orphans still wandering around in my mind.
So I started to write. I wrote on my days off. I wrote on my evenings I wasn’t dancing – I taught ballroom and country dance lessons for the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines on my camp. I worked directly for a general and when he wasn’t in, my workload was very light so I wrote when my boss went on leave, I wrote when my boss went on business travel. From the first week in February to the first weekend in June, I wrote that book that I had dreamed up so long ago.
Since I had written it in my head, every activity planned to the nth degree, it flowed very quickly. I wrote the meeting between Nate and Audra first and the two whippings, the wedding day, then the wagon train, then the final sword fight between Audra and her brother as they had been detailed greatly in my mind over the years. The rest filled in fast without problem.
Bottom line, deployment gave me the time I had pushed aside for almost three decades so I guess I have to say, “Thank you, Uncle Sam!” for giving me the chance to actually put the life of Audra Markham and Nathaniel Abbot on paper.
What makes your writing stand out from the crowd?
It's all about the ensemble. I love to write ensemble casts. There are always two main characters but I develop their friends, family, and enemies as fully as I do the protagonists. Fans are always commented on the ensemble characters and what they bring to the table. Many tell me two write their stories as well (Geoff and Catalina from Grays Hill, Sarah from Tressa). In Mara and Of Angels and Orphans, there are two main lovers but all the others find love as well.
Shield of the Palidine was a pain. Try keeping track of seventeen main characters that represent nineteen fantasy races (pixies, fairies, griffons, etc.) plus animals like yale and centicore. I had to refer to a list of characters constantly (included in the book for the reader). I also had to draw a reference of all their heights and sizes compared to each other for sizing. If a pixie had a conversation with a giant, what did that really look like since the pixie was 18 inches tall and the giant 15 feet tall! Also, my beta reader did not think the romance was believable to I tore it apart and revamped the romance. I was never so glad in my life to see a book leave my hands. So I tortured myself by writing a sequel. I need my head examined (especially since I have outlined a prequel and a fourth and fifth in the series!)
What is the hardest part of writing – for you?
Time. I write part, part, part-time. If I get in 1-2 hours a week, I am happy. I also spend 2-3 hours a week on “feeding the beast” – doing all that social networking stuff that is so imperative these days. However, I don't consider that writing, more like marketing, publicity, and promotions. I work on 2-3 books at a time so I never get bored and if I have a block, I simply work on a different one.
Plus, each book has its own difficulties. Of Angels and Orphans flowed in literally days. I wrote on Sundays while deployed and had it done in 16 Sundays. But, it had been drafted in my head for 30 years. Grays Hill had a size problem. It was too short and the publisher sent it back (162 pages was too close to the 150 page-make-no-money mark). So I had to restructure it completely and put in a sub-plot and touched nearly every page. I literally burned down the town with a fire that started at the blacksmith. My illustrator and I laugh now that we need to “burn down the smithy” when something needs a lot of fixing.
Tressa version one was a breeze. I loved researching baking in the late 1700s in Ireland. However, I sent this to a publisher who ripped it apart. I spent the summer of 2013 revamping it and adding nearly 70 pages to meet the publisher’s needs.
The Palidine Series is a tracking issue. Hard to keep it all straight as I am writing it.
For The Tiefling, I had a map of Scotland from around 1500 I use heavily and a dictionary of Scottish words from the 1400s. Talk about a reference nightmare! I use actual words and phrases from hundreds of years ago and have to keep track of the meanings in a glossary. Plus, it is a paranormal, first person male. It took me six year to write as I couldn’t sit down in 20 minutes and write a paragraph or two like I could with the romances. I had to take that long just to reread sections and become Branan Lachlan so I could write from his point of view. I needed large chunks of time to write. I also had to get in touch with my darkest side which doesn’t bubble to the surface easily. I hope I do not have to write a sequel to The Tiefling. I don’t want to go there again.
Where do you like to write – what is your routine?
The woman cave. Actually that is what we call it. My oldest daughter moved away to college and left the finished attic to me. It is now my writing room, sewing room, craft room, and junk storage room. I have an old ASUS eePC which I adore. The battery no longer charges so I am stuck plugged into the wall of the woman cave as I write but that is okay. My ASUS is a tiny laptop connected to a flat screen monitor and normal keyboard on a pressboard desk that we bought for the kid about 10 years ago. I demanded a good chair so we bought a nice black office chair at Staples without arms so I can’t lean on the arms and have poor posture.
The desk is incredibly cluttered with piles of papers, books, notes, and even a Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual. As I read books, if I come across a work or phrase I like, a fold over the page and put them on my pile. I eventually transfer them all to a legal yellow notepad and use them as appropriate. In essence, I collect words. The three cats, Tut, Smudge, and Patches stare at me as I write. I talk to them. They are really good listeners.
HA! What routine. If I have 10 minutes to spare, I run upstairs and use it wisely.
What do you do when you are not writing – do you have a day job?
I don’t tend to do what is customary or normal. I joined the Army in 1980 when only 6% of the military were women and the Vietnam War was still bitter on everyone’s tongue. I got my first degree in law enforcement and went through the police academy at the age of 20 and spent a year on the street as a cop. I found it wasn’t for me, so what do I do? I join the ROTC program at school. I spent 8 years on active duty then 14 in the Reserves retiring with 22 years. At the same time I joined the Reserves, I found a civilian job with the Air Force. I have been at the Air Force Base for over 20 years now. Guess I have military in my blood. It pays the bills while I work at building a career writing. My goal: when my daughter graduates from college, retire and write full time. I would like to have 10 books on my shelf in order to market a body of work.
Do you work with an outline or just write?
ABSOLUTELY! I couldn’t keep track of everything if I didn’t. Now, it is never a complete outline at the start but a framework by which to work. It gets pretty thick by the time I am done.
What advice would you have for other writers?
Just do it. Do what is in your heart. Write the stories that come knocking in your head. Never, ever give up. And as Richard Bach said, “A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.” DON’T EVER QUIT! Hire a professional editor – don’t put anything out there that isn’t as perfect as you can make it. Editing is the beginning of writing. As Ernest Hemingway said, “the first draft of anything is shit.”
How important is marketing and social media for you?
I hate it. Really, I think it is a generational thing. Us “old folks” just don’t get social media. I would rather be reading, writing or sewing than spending time on social media. I believe our social lives are worse off because people us the computer instead of face-to-face interactions. It saddens me to no end to see a couple at a restaurant paying attention to their phones instead of each other. Or to see kids at an amusement park interacting with people in internet-land and not the kids sitting right next to them. I actually call Tweets “Twits” if that tells you anything.
However, I utterly understand the importance so I gird my loins and do it as well as I know how. I Twitter, FB, Pinterest, Goodreads, have an author page and a book page, blog, etc. I am a storyteller, not a marketer. My degree is in robotics and artificial intelligence, not marketing. I know us authors have to do a lot of our own publicity, promotions, and marketing but we generally are not that good at it. Social media marketing is vital to our survival as an entire author species.
What's your next step?
I have my newest book, The Walled Cat, with my editor which will come out in the fall of 2016. I am beginning the marketing for it now on social media.
Book 2 of The Palidine Series, Magic Thief of Gavalos, came out in late 2015 and I am about a quarter the way into #3, Book of the Arionon. However, I just wrote myself into a corner and I many have to publish the prequel first.
I am also developing two new novels: one romance is set in Sweden in the 1600s (researching the 30 Years’ War for background history), and a biography of an amazing woman I know. That biography is by far the hardest book I have written and will probably be the only non-fiction I will ever write. It takes a special kind of writer to do biographies and I don’t think I “have” it.
The ideas for about 12 more novels are outlined and running around in my head. I have plenty to write in the next few years! I plan to keep plugging away at it.
Shield of the Palidine (Book One of the Palidine Series) by Barbara T. Cerny is available here.
If you are interested in book promotion, please visit http://thebookpromoter.com
