Welcome to our spotlight of Karen McCullough
Anita: Hi Karen. Thanks for joining me tonight. To start off with, for our readers, what genre do you write?
Karen: I write several actually -- fantasy, romance, sf, and mystery. Sometimes all in the same book.
Anita: All in the same book? What class would a book like that fall into?
Karen: Cross-genre?
Anita: Cross-cross-cross-genre? :-)
Karen: LTD classifies the two they have under both mystery and romance. One of those two -- SHADOW OF A DOUBT-- has paranormal elements as well.
Anita: How did you get started writing and how old were you?
Karen: I've been making up stories in my head for as long as I can remember, but I didn't start writing seriously until I was 30. That was almost twenty years ago now.
Anita: Did you take any writing classes?
Karen: Not really. But I did take the required writing class when I was an undergraduate at Duke.
Anita: So how long had you been writing before your first sale? What story was it?
Karen: My major was Linguistic Anthropology so I had the tools anyway.
Karen: I made my first nonfiction sale very quickly. It was eight years before I sold my first novel -- a YA mystery romance to Avalon Books. (That was the fifth novel I actually wrote.)
Anita: Was there an author who helped you break into the field?
Karen: Nope. I did it on my own.
Anita: Have you sold the other novels, or are they still waiting?
Karen: A QUESTION OF FIRE, one of the romantic mysteries at LTDBooks, was actually the second novel I wrote, but I revised it several more times before it sold. All the other books I've sold were written afterwards. The first novel I ever wrote is sitting on a shelf in my closet with a note on it to burn it on my death.
Anita: Seriously? Don't you think you'll ever be able to make it marketable
Karen: I doubt it. Good idea, bad execution
Anita: Do you read a lot? What genres? All, I imagine. :-)
Karen: Yes, I read all the time. And, yes, I read across genres. I don't care much for horror other than LKH's books and the occasional Stephen King, and I don't read westerns. Everything else is fair game.
Anita: Do you have a favorite time and place to write?
Karen: Whenever I can, wherever I can. I have a full-time job, so I'm pretty much confined to nights and weekends. I wish I had an average writing day. But maybe then I'd be writing different books.
Anita: Lets talk some about your writing method. Do you plot?
Karen: For my first books, I didn't. Now, though, I'm trying to sell on proposal, so I've had to learn how to plot out a book ahead of time and write a synopsis before I write the book. Of course, even when I do that, the story rarely turns out exactly as I'd planned.
Anita: Do you start at the beginning and write to the end, write randomly, or something else?
Karen: I suppose it's my compulsive personality. I have to start at the beginning and write through to the end. I just can't make it work any other way. It seems that so much of what comes later builds on what happens earlier in the book, so I have to figure that out first.
Anita: What about revisions? Do you revise as you go, or after?
Karen: I usually start a writing time by revising whatever section I did the previous day. That helps me get back into the story. Other than that I try not to revise too much as I go along and concentrate on getting the story down.
Anita: In general, how many revisions does it take?
Karen: It varies widely. I usually let a book sit for a couple of weeks when I've finished, then go back and revise it some. Then I'll send it off. I've had two books where the editors asked for almost no revisions, and other books that I've rewritten three or four times.
Anita: Which come first for you-character or plot?
Karen: Well, they're pretty closely intertwined. I generally have an idea for a character who's in a predicament. With WITCHE'S JOURNEY, a romantic fantasy that will be an ImaJinn book next year, I had this idea for a young witch who has to decide whether to risk death by saving a child with magic, which will reveal that she's a witch in a place where that could mean her death.
Anita: A QUESTION OF FIRE--what was your inspiration for this story? Where did the idea come from, and how long did it take you to develop the story?
Karen: To be honest, I wrote the original version of that story so long ago, I can't really remember the inspiration. Since it was only the 2nd book I'd written, it took a long time, over two years to write the first version. And I've revised it several times since. As I recall I started with an idea for the main character in a scene that is no longer in the book! I only refer to it later. It seems like I have a sort of chain reaction of ideas, once I start putting down what happens after the scene that is the initial inspiration.
Anita: So for your characters-how do you develop them? Are they patterned after any real people? Do you use character sheets or some other tool?
Karen: No character sheets. I guess like most writers I borrow various aspects of people I know for my characters. Often I feel like they're already there fully formed, in my head. I just get to know them as I'm writing the book.
Anita: How do you research for your stories-what tools do you use?
Karen: For the mysteries, I read a lot of law-enforcement-related books and I actually have been through a police academy, years ago. I do occasional ride-alongs, even now, to keep up with changes in police procedures. For the fantasies, pretty much all the research is in my own head.
Anita: Any favorite writing resources-books or web sites-that you'd like to mention?
Karen: I have a significant reference library of crime-related books, folklore books, etc. If I have a procedures question, though, I prefer to try to talk to someone in the field. There is one site I recommend for a lot of facts, refdesk.com. Great information there.
Anita: What do you consider your strongest writing skill? Your weakest?
Karen: Strongest writing skill: characterization. I just tend to see my characters as individuals from the start and I write them that way. Weakest: plotting.
I can do plotting, but it's a struggle, and sometimes I'll get to a point with a book where I just can't figure out what my characters would do next.
Anita: Then what do you do?
Karen: Usually I'll go do something active--rake the leaves, weed the garden, fold the laundry--while I let it simmer in my mind. If I still don't have an answer after that, I'll just say, "Okay, guys, we're going to try this." and then watch what happens when I try to write it that way. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes when it doesn't work, though, I'll see what I should have done.
Anita: Do you work on several projects at a time, or stick to just one?
Karen: I usually have several other story ideas in the mental cooker, waiting for their turn. I tend to have more than one project in progress, although generally only one I'm actually working on at one time. When something really catches fire in a story, I'll write as much as I can on it, usually until it's finished.
Anita: What do you think you need to do to continue to improve as a writer?
Karen: Keep writing. Keep challenging myself to try new things. I don't want to ever write the same book twice. I'm hoping that in a few years I'll be able to retire from the full-time job and be able to devote more time to writing.
Anita: Your current book is A QUESTION OF FIRE. Can you tell us a little of what it is about?
Karen: A QUESTION OF FIRE is now available at LTDBooks. It's a romantic suspense, where my heroine, a newspaper reporter, and a bit of an endearing klutz, becomes the recipient of a dying man's last words. He's trying to tell her where he hid some evidence that would clear his brother of murder charges, but he doesn't quite get it out. But the killer sees that he's
told her something and assumes that she now knows where the evidence against him is. After a couple of attempts on her life, she decides, she'd better
find that evidence if she ever wants to get any peace.
Anita: Any other books planned for the near future?
Karen: Next year ImaJinn Books will publish two of my electronic books that were orphaned when Dreams Unlimited died last March. Both are romantic fantasies. WITCHE'S JOURNEY is scheduled for next fall. WIZARD'S BRIDGE, which is an extensively rewritten version of my Eppie-Award winning fantasy, THE RAINBOW BRIDGE, will be out either late 2002 or early 2003.
Anita: I believe your earlier books were published by a traditional print publisher-Avalon? - while your latest books are electronically published. Critics say epublishers will publish anything, the screening methods are not as tight, etc. As someone who's been on both sides, can you comment? Better or worse, the same?
Karen: We'd need all night. I think epublishing is part of the future, and as such, it won't go away. And epublishing is providing an outlet for some very good stories that don't fit print publisher's marketing categories. That said, I do think e publishers vary widely in the quality of books they accept, the professionalism with which they conduct business, and the ability of the editors.
Anita: Are you still approaching traditional publishers with your work?
Karen: Yes, I have a couple of proposals at some print publishers. I also have a couple of ideas I'm pursuing that will certainly go to an epublisher because no print publisher would even consider them. (Hint: most print pubs get cross-eyed when you start talking cross-genre books.)
Anita: It certainly is nice to be able to write whatever you want-genre wise-and have a chance of getting it published.
Karen: Exactly. I want to build a career as an author, and so I'm staying open to all avenues. Epublishing has made that possible and I think that's probably its greatest strength.
Anita: Besides writing, what else are you passionate about? Do you write this passion into your books?
Karen: I try to write it into my books. I think a book has to have a certain level of passion behind it or it comes off flat and uninteresting. I'm passionate about my family, my friends, Duke basketball (almost too passionate according to my family), and my garden.
Anita: What advice do you have for the aspiring writers out there?
Karen: Advice for aspiring writers: Write, write, write. David Gerrold (a sf writer) once told me no one can write a million words of bad prose. Of course, good prose doesn't guarantee publication! I guess my only other advice would be to keep at it and develop a thick skin. You're going to get lots of rejection in this business and you'd better learn to deal with it. I've had a couple of periods when I've been tempted to quit. Even wanted to quit. But somehow, I just don't seem to be able to stop writing.
Anita: I've heard that's the sure sign of a real writer. :-)Would you do anything differently if you were just starting out?
Karen: I just wish I'd started to write earlier in life.
Anita: Well, Karen, thanks for joining me tonight and good luck with your writing!
Karen: Thank you, Anita!
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