I'm pleased to finally announce that Take to the Air completes the Devereux Cousins trilogy. I'm now working on a completely different story.
The Devereux Cousins trilogy was written over a span of five years during one of the most tumultuous periods in my life.
From the Chrysalis and Feeling for the Air were my first novels, Book 1 and Book 2 of this trilogy, but I've always written. People ask me if I started out to write a trilogy, but my answer is no. They also ask me what's real in my novels and what's not, but I'm no longer sure. Some people--myself included--would like to know the absolute truth about my cousin Brian "Bo" Lesley Beaucage, but I never found it. Unlike my fictional character D'Arcy "Dace" James Devereux, Brian didn't make it past age forty-three. Of course we all wish he had. My characters evolved and changed over time and so did I.
If I had known I would end up being my own copy editor and publisher and that I'd need to learn all sorts of technical matters, I might have changed my mind about publishing, but it's too late now. Viceroy Power Press was born of this need. The beauty of having your own press and using a free tool like Kindle Direct Publishing (formerly Createspace) to upload your manuscripts is that you can quickly and easily make minor corrections which I have done on the odd occasion ever since I published my first book in 2012.
Now that I'm older, I see patterns everywhere. Bits and pieces turn into stories that are just bursting to get out. I don't look for my stories. They come to me.
The story I'm currently working on is about the resistance movement in post World War II Latvia. My working title is The Forest Brothers.
Some people are hard to get into and there are some people you don't want to get into, but my job as a novelist is to try to understand my characters and make them come alive. If I can write a tribute to somebody I loved, so be it and if I can also make my words sound a bit pretty, I'm thrilled.
If I could, I would spend all my time writing and reading, but besides being a certified genealogist, I've been blessed with a large, complicated and ever expanding family.
The family is the birthplace of most stories, but it's my university education and my former employment as a reference librarian that enabled me to research and enrich the settings in my books From the Chrysalis and Feeling for the Air. My first two books are set in the seventies, my third in the nineties. Who remembers exactly what happened in the seventies or in the nineties? I gave birth to children in both those decades, but I don't. The availability of historical newspaper databases such as the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail in so many public libraries, has been a real boon to me too.
Whether you want to or not, you've got to stop reading and rereading your own writing, so family members have read my unpublished stories too. My husband is always my first reader. I cherish his input and his male point of view, but I've also been fortunate enough to hire the top-notch services of two fiction writers and professional editors. Genevieve Graham edited my first book From the Chrysalis, but when she was too busy with her own burgeoning career in 2014, the prolific Diane Schoemperlen stepped in. Both these women helped me polish my work and keep my own voice. When I found out that Diane's book This is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison and Other Complications was already at her publisher's, I knew she was going to understand my characters.
Please visit my Amazon author homepage, too.
Thanks again for stopping by!
The Devereux Cousins trilogy was written over a span of five years during one of the most tumultuous periods in my life.
From the Chrysalis and Feeling for the Air were my first novels, Book 1 and Book 2 of this trilogy, but I've always written. People ask me if I started out to write a trilogy, but my answer is no. They also ask me what's real in my novels and what's not, but I'm no longer sure. Some people--myself included--would like to know the absolute truth about my cousin Brian "Bo" Lesley Beaucage, but I never found it. Unlike my fictional character D'Arcy "Dace" James Devereux, Brian didn't make it past age forty-three. Of course we all wish he had. My characters evolved and changed over time and so did I.
If I had known I would end up being my own copy editor and publisher and that I'd need to learn all sorts of technical matters, I might have changed my mind about publishing, but it's too late now. Viceroy Power Press was born of this need. The beauty of having your own press and using a free tool like Kindle Direct Publishing (formerly Createspace) to upload your manuscripts is that you can quickly and easily make minor corrections which I have done on the odd occasion ever since I published my first book in 2012.
Now that I'm older, I see patterns everywhere. Bits and pieces turn into stories that are just bursting to get out. I don't look for my stories. They come to me.
The story I'm currently working on is about the resistance movement in post World War II Latvia. My working title is The Forest Brothers.
Some people are hard to get into and there are some people you don't want to get into, but my job as a novelist is to try to understand my characters and make them come alive. If I can write a tribute to somebody I loved, so be it and if I can also make my words sound a bit pretty, I'm thrilled.
If I could, I would spend all my time writing and reading, but besides being a certified genealogist, I've been blessed with a large, complicated and ever expanding family.
The family is the birthplace of most stories, but it's my university education and my former employment as a reference librarian that enabled me to research and enrich the settings in my books From the Chrysalis and Feeling for the Air. My first two books are set in the seventies, my third in the nineties. Who remembers exactly what happened in the seventies or in the nineties? I gave birth to children in both those decades, but I don't. The availability of historical newspaper databases such as the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail in so many public libraries, has been a real boon to me too.
Whether you want to or not, you've got to stop reading and rereading your own writing, so family members have read my unpublished stories too. My husband is always my first reader. I cherish his input and his male point of view, but I've also been fortunate enough to hire the top-notch services of two fiction writers and professional editors. Genevieve Graham edited my first book From the Chrysalis, but when she was too busy with her own burgeoning career in 2014, the prolific Diane Schoemperlen stepped in. Both these women helped me polish my work and keep my own voice. When I found out that Diane's book This is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison and Other Complications was already at her publisher's, I knew she was going to understand my characters.
Please visit my Amazon author homepage, too.
Thanks again for stopping by!