Interview Billie A. Williams

by

Pat McCain

1) Billie, according to your web site and your bio, you are a very busy lady! How do you manage to fit all your activities in with your writing?

Actually, I don’t feel very busy compared to those with day jobs and growing families. Now it’s all writing and promotion mostly. I have web sites and blogs and journals I write in. But since I don’t work outside the home, my children are all grown and gone my time is pretty much my own. I write daily and do marketing and promotion every Friday.

2) Do you have a schedule for writing each day or a goal you set?

I write everyday. I usually try for three sections of each of my current WIPs and I normally have at least two going at a time--keeps me motivated. But I write in a journal, three long hand pages daily, plus I do affirmations and writing ten-minute prompts. Currently I’m working through another book everyday too--it’s called One Year To Success--so I do that every morning to before I start writing on my WIP.

3) What first inspired you to begin writing?

I think reading inspired me to write--I love words, I even love doing crossword puzzles. I think my appreciation for the authors I’ve read and have had the good fortune to get know has just fueled the flame started so long ago. Yes, love of words and a good book--that was my inspiration.

4) Do you outline your story before actually beginning to write, or do you take the plot and go with it?

This is a sticky wicket because it actually depends on the story. Sometimes a Character will happen along and I will just sit down and write. Sometimes I have an idea, but I grab Evan Marshall’s book The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing and get to work creating a detailed summary outline. As for Watch For The Raven--My mother gave me the first line of the Prologue and the story just flowed from that sentence. “…back when turkeys chewed tobaccy”, I never outlined or decided where I was going. Josh Avery (my young protagonist) and my mother’s sentence took me there.

5) Can you tell us where you find ideas for your stories?

I love this question--ideas are every where from cereal boxes and commercials to billboards and book club catalogues; crossword puzzles to newspaper articles. The Candlelight series--Death by Candlelight and Candlelight and Shadows all began from a young girl I spotted walking across a weed-strewn field between businesses and apartments. Skull Music started with a three-word prompt. The Pink Lady Slipper and Bed And Breakfast Murders (also a series) stemmed from a sprawling log cabin I saw on a drive to upper Michigan--my sister later sent me pictures of the building after the roof collapsed from snow weight and some pink lady slippers growing by it--it had been a stage coach stop and a brothel--Story was born. I could go on and on about where to find story ideas--even song lyrics. Actually, I could write a book about it.

6) Do you find it difficult to write in several different genres? Some writers (me included) tend to stick with only one.

The biggest reason I write in a new genre is that the story dictates how it should be told. I have one story about Bloodhounds my brother raised and trained as Search and Rescue dogs that first was accepted as a true article for a young adult magazine (Guide Magazine), but later it decided it needed to be a novel--a suspense novel titled Tracker and it is one of my current WIPs. I also write non-fiction and poetry and I’m working on a screenplay of one of my earlier novels. It’s all so fascinating I have to, no; I want to try it all. I’m a lifetime learner--I need to grow and expand my abilities. I love trying new genres

7) Considering the amount of successful writing you have published, can you tell us what works best for you in promoting your books?

I honestly think if it wasn’t for the confidence I’ve gained by being accepted by Wings and being part of the Wings family of authors, staff and editors, I may never have overcome my shyness enough to do any promoting. So first it’s Wings that works for me, and then it’s my post card campaign. The best turn around so far has been by sending out postcards to a mailing list that has grown to 153 people, bookstores, newspapers, radio stations and libraries that has garnered the most buyers for my books. I send things for other authors’ promotions, and for charities where ever and whenever I can--and I hold my own contests.

But I think the post cards and my web sites are probably the best bang for the buck so far. Now I’ve just hired Janet Elaine Smith with her Personal Marketing and Promotional services (www.janetelainesmith.com) and I’m sure my sales will soar. She has so many innovative and creative ideas, I’m busy trying all her suggestions so we’ll see over the next month or so how that works. Maybe next time I will have a new favorite promotional tool.

8) Have you ever written something then had no idea where the idea came from?

Yes, yes I have and it’s a wonderful experience when I re-read it and wonder how I ever managed that. I wrote an essay that wound up my first published piece in “Thema,” a literary magazine. It was about my second daughter’s amazing/miracle birth titled “Dandelion With Angel Wings”. That is still my pride and joy and that wrote itself I just typed what was fed to me.

9) If you have a bout of writers block, how do you manage it?

I’m one of those people that think there is no such thing as writer’s block. I think it’s a type of fear. Be it’s fear of the blank screen or page, or that you might write junk--or some other excuse or fear. If you sit down and write yourself through the fear, on the other side something will begin to emerge on the page, something you can begin with.To me writer’s block is something that you need to write through, clear from your mind and then you will know what it was that was stopping you from writing--why you thought you were blocked. Perhaps you need to take a long walk, vacuum your house, scrub a floor, work in the garden, shovel snow--something that doesn’t involve thinking to let your mind just wander before the writing will flow again. What you really need to do is relax, however you can make that happen for you.

10) Because this has happened to me, I’m wondering if you’ve ever had a seed for a story, written the story then because it was such an unbelievable occurrence, not wanted to disclose where the idea originated.

No I can’t say I’ve been that lucky or insightful. Usually, I have some mundane thing that sparked the idea--nothing profound, nothing embarrassing or unbelievable--I’m pretty generic and boring in my idea finding.