Ask the Author: Bonnie Blaylock
Answered Questions (8)
Bonnie Blaylock
Hi, Belinda! Thanks for the question. I found the tapeworm tidbit through reading some of the Foxfire series. It's a collection of Appalachian folklore, remedies, and anecdotes from interviews of the people who live there. Also, twice now, in book groups I've attended since the novel was released, I've had readers comment they'd actually seen this exact thing happen themselves, having grown up in poor, rural areas! So there's at least anecdotal evidence. Since I was part of a veterinary practice for decades, I've seen my share of tapeworms, and this is definitely not how they usually presented (ick), but apparently in areas without ready access to western medicine, the method used with Hiccup was was one folk remedy to address it.
Bonnie Blaylock
Ooh--I've been working on the plot for this one for years! One side of my family has a couple of murders in its history. I'd like to unravel those and the generational ripple effects some time. Might need to wait for a few descendants to go the Great Beyond first, tho.
Bonnie Blaylock
Having someone say that something you wrote touched them in some way. Being able to do that with complete strangers is surreal and lovely, and not something to take for granted.
Bonnie Blaylock
Writer is an action vocation. What I mean is, get rid of the word "aspiring," buckle down and do the thing. Write. If you write, you're a writer. Allow yourself to say that out loud: I'm a writer. Then, make it so. Exercise that muscle every day. READ everything you can in genres you like and by authors you admire. Study their craft. You can take classes, attend workshops and get a degree, but it comes down to the 10,000 hours of work/practice making you an expert (Malcom Gladwell's book, Outliers). At some point, if you want others to read your writing, you have to be brave and start submitting your work.
There's a big learning curve to the "getting published" concept, and it took me several years and lots of failure to figure out what worked. Do your research and be patient. Don't stop. Remember, you're not "aspiring" any longer; you're a writer.
There's a big learning curve to the "getting published" concept, and it took me several years and lots of failure to figure out what worked. Do your research and be patient. Don't stop. Remember, you're not "aspiring" any longer; you're a writer.
Bonnie Blaylock
Ugh, not very well! It's best to sometimes let the land lie fallow and give it a rest. I give myself space to not even think about it for a week or more and to do other things I enjoy--garden, work on the bees, read. If I don't put pressure on my brain, it tends to get freer and start being creative again on its own.
Bonnie Blaylock
A novel about mothers & daughters and the things we put on our children to bear. It's historical fiction about three generations of women in Italy and essentially how the way we react to our own experiences can either liberate or shackle our kids.
Bonnie Blaylock
I'm curious, and often it's only a tidbit of information that makes me want to dig in--like a tweet or a blurb about some obscure bit of history or an unknown (to me) person. My mind starts working from there, asking questions: what would their life be like? What would they struggle with? Would it make a good story? From there, it's a matter of daily discipline to sit and make the words add up, page after page.
Bonnie Blaylock
Around 2016, I ran across a tweet that mentioned the packhorse librarians and immediately Sass McInteer came to mind. I grew up in the South and my mother was born in Alabama girl and grew up through the Depression. In college, I was drawn to Southern lit and read Faulkner, O'Connor, Welty, Percy, and anything new: Cathie Pelletier, Lee Smith, Olive Ann Burns, and TR Pearson. After I got married, I listened to the language, accents, and stories from my father-in-law in Tennessee. All these experiences and the notes of the language in my head formed the novel.
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