Interview with Donna Thorland

 From now until the end of the month, enter the March Mayhem contest sponsored by Joanne Renaud, Kat Laurange, Donna Thorland, Lynne Connelly and Kat Parrish. Details and entry form here.

Author Donna Thorland earned an MFA in film production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, has been a Disney/ABC Television Writing Fellow and a WGA Writer's Access Project Honoree, and has written for the TV shows Cupid and Tron: Uprising. The director of several award-winning short films, her most recent project aired on WNET Channel 13. Her fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Her Revolutionary War novels are published by Penguin NAL and she writers urban fantasy for Pocket under the name D.L. McDermott. Donna is married with two cats and splits her time between Salem and Los Angeles.

Her latest novel, the Dutch Girl, is available here and in bookstores natiowide. It is part of her "Renegades of the American Revolution" series of historical fiction.

You have a degree in classics and art history. Why the American Revolutionary period rather than ancient Greece or Rome?

I wanted to write swashbucklers and it seemed to me that the American Revolution was crying out for stories like that, particularly with a female protagonist.

If you could live during any era in any place, where would it be, and what is it about that time/place that attracts you?

Kitchen Magic and Paranormal Fiction

In The Truth Cookie by Fiona Dunbar., the young heroine falls heir to a very unusual recipe book and hijinks ensue. I write a lot of food-related articles and have written and ghost-written a number of cookbooks in my career. And I have always thought there was something magical about the alchemy that occurs when you put ingredients together in a certain order. (And as any baker knows, if you get certain ingredients out of order, instead of something delicious, you're often left with a mess.)
here's a delightful middle grade book called

Kitchen Witchery. I haven't really seen any paranormals that feature heroines whose power is domestic. there's Annette Blair's "Accidental Witch" trilogy that begins with The Kitchen Witch. And there's ... not much else. At least that I can find. Even GoodReads, which has lists for EVERYTHING wasn't much help on this one. I find myself intrigued by the possibility of writing a paranormal story where the witch's magic is based in herbcraft and plants and ingredients that go into everyday food. What if you had a (literal) magician in the kitchen of your restaurant? What if you ran a catering company and your food could literally work miracles? What if you were the "lunch lady" at a school where kids were committing suicide and you could help them? What if you volunteered at Meals on Wheels and your bag lunches and hot entrees could cure?  And of course there's all kinds of malevolent magic that can be worked through food. There was a reason rulers used to employ food tasters!
Yet another thought to add to the potential plot file.

Artists Who Write/Writers Who Art

Ambrose Bierce by J.H.E. Partington

I actually know a lot of artists who write. In addition to Joanne Renaud and Kat Laurange, I can name friends--John Donald Carlucci, Mark Satchwill, Jefferson Moore--as well as inspirations--Edward Gorey, Beatrix Potter, Maurice Sendak, Janell Cannon (writer/illustrator of the lovely Stellaluna), and misanthropic writer.artist Ambrose Bierce.

I first encountered Bierce as an illustrator. I thought his King Arthur illustrations were fantastic. (To see a portfolio of his illustrations for Oscar Wilde's Salome. go here.)

Beardsley's illustrations were lush and detailed and for me, as much as Alphonse Mucha, defined Art Nouveau.

He had a very distinct style, and even for a kid, instantly recognizable.

I then stumbled across The Devil's Dictionary (formerly known as The Cynic's Word Book), a dark satire that was snarky and satisfying. For example: 

Lawyer 

(n.) One skilled in circumvention of the law.




I then read a number of his short story collections, which tended toward the fantastical and speculative. I liked his short fiction a lot--especially his writing on war--and wondered why he was so often eclipsed by Mark Twain in English classes. 

Here's an interesting article on whether Ambrose Bierce was a better writer than Mark Twain. I don't think he was--I took a whole semester of Twain when I was in college and read pretty much everything he wrote, including "War Prayer" and Gilded Age. I think Twain had more range. But if you're stacking up short stories, I'll take Ambrose Pierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" over "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Kurt Vonnegut considered the Bierce story to be the greatest short story ever written.

Friday Freebie: Wild-Born by Adrian Howell

This novel sounds like it's something different in paranormal although it is a little weird that the author of the book has named the protagonist after himself. ("Adrian Howell" is actually the author's pen name and you can learn more about him and his books on his website.) I'm fascinated by "psy war" books ever since I discovered that the now-deceased police officer Pat Price  was a "remote viewer" and used to teach Learning Tree classes in the skill. (I SO wanted to take one of those classes but they were never offered at a good time for me.)

Interview with author/artist Kat Laurange

 From now until the end of the month, enter the March Mayhem contest sponsored by Joanne Renaud, Kat Laurange, Donna Thorland, Lynne Connelly and Kat Parrish. Details and entry form here.

 Introducing Kat Laurange, author of Somebody Brave, published this week.

I am in awe of what you get accomplished. I’m connected to you on Good Reads and every time I log on, you have read two or three more books and reviewed them. With a freelance career and a young son, and other commitments—how do you do it? Do you ever sleep? (I am totally onboard with your petition to have the day extended to 72 hours).

Wow, thanks! I've gotten pretty good at wedging things like reading into the interstices of daily life and responsibility--you can get a surprising amount of reading done in little five minute bites.

Do you listen to music as you work and if so, what was in your playlist for this book?

I try to find music that suits the mood of whatever I'm working on. A lot of writers use movie soundtracks, but I can't do that--that music already belongs to a different story, you know? My playlists usually end up a weird mix of Japanese rock (I love Gackt), bluegrass, and indie music.

AP or Chicago Manual of Style?

AP ALL THE WAY. And yes, I deplore the Oxford comma (but I'll still use it if it's truly, absolutely and entirely necessary)!

If you could live during any era in any place, where would it be, and what is it about that time/place that attracts you?

I'd like to be a pioneer: so I guess either back in the 1800s when the American frontier was being explored, or else sometime in the future when we start colonizing other planets. The adventure and the hard work really appeal to me, as well as the idea of both being far away from the parent civilization and starting something new. Interplanetary colonies probably don't need artists, though, so I'll probably have to learn a new skill before they let me go to Mars. :D

Which came first, the pictures or the words? Or did you always write and illustrate your own stories?

Pretty much for as long as I can remember! When I was about 7, my parents gave me a laptop (this was in the mid-80's, so you can imagine this little kid pecking out stories on a huge brick of a machine), and I wrote stories about my stuffed animals and their adventures, and drew pictures to go along. When I get stuck for an idea in my writing, I can usually turn to my sketchbook and knock some things loose from my backbrain--often, things I hadn't even considered in the forefront of my mind! So the drawing informs the writing and vice versa.

Cemetery fiction

Source: Wikipedia

When I was a kid, you could--if for some reason you wanted to--picnic at Arlington National Cemetery. For me, this was not as bizarre a concept as it might have been to some people because in the South, there's a tradition of "visiting relatives" in graveyards, cleaning up around tombstones and memorial markers, and generally "keeping in touch." There are some truly beautiful cemeteries in the South, from the above-ground vaults in New Orleans' Saint Louis No. 1 to Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah. (If you've seen the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, you've seen one of the cemetery monuments from Bonaventure.)

I'm not alone in my appreciation of a beautiful cemetery. Life's Business Insider once ran a pictorial called "20 of the World's Most Stunning Cemeteries." (Find it here.) Cemeteries from all over the globe were photographed, and the US still had some of the most beautiful. Some of my favorite fantasy books are set in cemeteries. They are:

For the TBR Pile: Teriyaki Samurai

I'm always a bit skeptical of books that are billed as "hilarious" and "zany." (I'm also deeply suspicious of "whimsical. In general, I have found, I am not a fan of whimsy.") But this book caught my eye today as I skimmed through the daily avalanche of emails offering free (and not-so-free) ebooks. I love road trip novels. (Handling Sin is one of my all-time favorite novels) and I'm always willing to give them a try. the Teriyaki Samurai.  Watch this space!