Four Sisters, All Queens (76 page)

I have written all my life. In school, as I mentioned, I wrote poems and short stories. When I was eighteen and still in college, I began reporting and writing for the Kinston, N.C.,
Free Press.
I worked as a journalist at newspapers and for magazines for thirty years. All that work delayed my college degree, but I was determined to get one. In 2002, I was casting about for a topic for a story or novella to submit to the University of Montana’s Davidson Honors College for my honors thesis, and I ran across the interesting fact that the Muslim prophet Muhammad had a
harem with twelve wives and concubines in all. This fascinated me, and as I read more I discovered A’isha, his youngest and favorite wife and the most famous and influential woman in Islam. I would have liked to know this feisty, witty, tender-hearted gal. I think we would have been friends. She’s long gone, though, so I wrote a novel about her, instead. Actually, I wrote two of them.

Do you have any advice to share with aspiring novelists?

1. The first draft, as Hemingway famously said, is always shit. Don’t let writing badly discourage you. Just keep going, finish, and then revise. In revision is where the real writing starts.

2. Read, read, read. Read everything you can, of the highest quality possible.

3. Don’t publish too soon. Find, and pay, a good freelance editor to critique your book, then revise again. Don’t be in a hurry. Be patient. Musicians study and practice for years before playing Carnegie Hall. Olympic athletes train hard before reaching their level of achievement. Writing novels takes exactly as much hard work and dedication.

4. Don’t give up. Be stubborn. Believe in yourself. If you write something truly good, someone will publish it.

5. Get a literary agent. Be prepared for this to take a year or more. Make sure your work is as good as it can be before you send it out. Expect rejection, and more rejection. Cry if you must, then get back up and query again. If your work is good, someone will represent you. A literary agent is the single most valuable asset to your career. I dedicated
Four Sisters, All Queens
to mine, and with good reason.

Your first career was in journalism and you continue to be a freelance reporter. How does your background in journalism impact your novel writing?

Writing for a living meant I wrote every single day, on deadline. As a result, I’m a prolific writer, and I never suffer from writer’s block. Journalism taught me to observe details; it gave me an ear for dialogue; it taught me how to do research and it gave me lots
of experience working with editors. Also, reporters are usually the generators of their own story ideas. I’m such an idea person now that I will never run out of books to write.

When the four sisters are young, they talk about which historical queens they are most like. Is there a queen of the past you would compare yourself to? What traits do you share?

I’d be Eléonore, the second sister in
Four Sisters, All Queens.
Bold, outspoken, competitive, ambitious, devoted to her family, fanciful, interested in fashion, a lover of literature and a patron of the arts—these are the traits we share in common (many of which Eléonore also shares with Jo, the second sister in
Little Women
). Unlike Eléonore, however, I’m a peacenik, while she seems not to have hesitated to send troops into battle. Indeed, she may have preferred war to negotiation. “Love is a verb.”

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