Interview Linda Wallace

by

Robert Nugent

1) What prompted you to become a writer?

I was thrilled when I learned to read. I thought I’d been granted a magical key to bewitching, mysterious kingdoms. I had a similar eureka! experience in my twenties when I realised I could write. It had never occurred to me before then that ordinary mortals could produce a book.

2) What type of writing schedule do you follow? Do you work on the structure of a novel first or just let the pen flow?

I aspire to a regular schedule but rarely achieve it. I work best in the early morning, especially if I’ve gone on a long walk first to pump oxygen into the brain cells and generate new ideas and solutions to problems. When I begin a new project, I always have the beginning and the end of the novel determined along with several in-between plot points, then I fill in the gaps as I work day by day, starting on page one and writing straight through to “The End.”

3) How often do you write? Is it a daily pursuit?

If you count e-mail, writing is a daily pursuit. I take a break between novels to promote the books that are already published. When I’m in the middle of a novel, I intend to write six days a week but usually only manage an average of around four. There are so many other parts of life that interfere. Family and friends are even more important than writing, though, so I don’t beat myself up too badly if they interrupt my work. Cleaning, marketing, bill paying, etc. are different. I get mad at myself if I let them steal writing time. I’ve learned you have to do the priority first, or the day will seep away without accomplishing what you most wanted to have done.

4) What was the inspiration for Big Bad Wolfe?

A friend of mine struggled for years to have a child. I wanted to portray that longing for family and the consequences of being unable to conceive. I needed a very strong, opinionated man with children of his own to contrast with the childless Corey. I compared the child-rearing attitudes and personalities of a man who has children to a woman who does not.

5) Do you base your characters on people you know, or are they purely a creation of your imagination?

Little bits of people I know creep into the characters. I don’t copy in entirety any one person. I put a lot of myself into the individuals, both male and female, in my books. Hopefully, the traits are so thoroughly mixed up no one would ever recognise themselves or me. However, I am going to reproduce the voice of a real person in my next book. A neighbour who was born in Vietnam visits me twice a week to practice her English to improve her employment skills. I’m taking notes on her pronunciation and word and phrase choices to give to a character.

6) You have another novel published with Wings. Tell us a little about that.

Special Delivery is a romantic adventure, while Big Bad Wolfe is a more traditional romance primarily about family and, of course, love. In Special Delivery the heroine is a Seattle bicycle courier who craves adventure. She and an uptight resort developer are kidnapped to the San Juan Islands and must use their very different skills and strengths to escape from the criminals without killing one another in the process. It’s a light-hearted story which combines humour, romance and adventure.

7) What was it that drew you to Wings in the first place?

I had read about the burgeoning e-publishing industry and thought it made sense for the future, though I hadn’t read an e-book myself at that time. I found a Web list of e-publishers and researched several of them. Wings seemed like one of the best. (Actually, I just fell in love with their gorgeous butterfly logo and slogan!)

8) What are your views on e-publishing? Where do you see it going?

Ah, the big question. I gave a workshop on e-publishing at the Emerald City Writers Conference last October. While gathering information for my talk, I discovered so many fascinating things that are going on now. Last fall Empire High School in Vail, Arizona, became one of the first U.S. public schools to discontinue printed textbooks. All of its 340 students were issued iBooks, laptop computers by Apple Computer. The Japanese are reading e-books a few lines at a time on their cell phones. Amazon is selling e-stories for forty-nine cents each. Sony has a new e-reading device. Traditional print publishers sell e-books. There are so many advantages to e-books in terms of ecology, portability, longevity--it’s a long list, but a large majority of readers still seem to prefer print books. Revenue generated by sales of e-books is growing at a faster rate than that of print books, so maybe e-books will become dominant in time. I don’t think anyone can predict what the future of publishing will be; we’ll all have to wait and see.

9) From your author’s bio, I see that you have travelled a great deal. How has this had an influence on your writing?

I try to observe and absorb the culture everywhere I go. People are endlessly entertaining and enlightening. In my writing I want to get the details right. Travelling allows you to collect more details.

10) What’s up next for Linda Wallace? Any other books in the pipeline?

I just completed the first in a series of mysteries set in Washington’s Skagit Valley tulip fields. The main character is a Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter who gives up her newspaper career to grow herbs and vegetable and open a gourmet restaurant. But someone doesn’t want her to succeed.

11) What do you think makes a writer successful?

Well, genius helps! Other than that, I think persistence may be the most important trait a writer can have. It often seems to make the difference between those who succeed and those who do not.

Thank you, Robert, for this opportunity to talk about my work. It was a great pleasure to chat with you.