Ask the Author: Faith A. Colburn
Answered Questions (11)
Faith A. Colburn
She shot her little boy, but first she dressed him up in his little suit so he'd look good for the funeral. Then she drowned herself in the cattle tank.
Faith A. Colburn
I love the natural world of Edward Abbey's novel Black Sun. He seems to consider those environments very dangerous to women, but I've been comfortable in those kinds of places. I would love to spend time caring for those environments, as does Abbey's Gatlin--and as I did for a large portion of my professional life as a public information officer for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. My care, though, was directed into support services for the people who did the actual environmental care.
Faith A. Colburn
Right now I'm reading The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow and I just finished Alice Walker's In Love and Trouble. I've got Joyce Carol Oates' A Garden of Earthly Delights in the cue and I think Patricia Cornwell has a new Kay Scarpetta novel out. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd is on my wish list and then there's Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego (The Things that We Lost in the Fire). I want to read the Spanish edition because I'm losing my Spanish. Given that loss, that book will probably take the rest of the summer.
Faith A. Colburn
My mother told me a story about my "maiden" aunt Nina--my father's sister. We all lived in rural Nebraska and Nina had barely left the farm--in her whole life.
It seems that Nina earned a private detectives license and then looked up some guy in Chicago. She wanted to meet with him, so she asked Mom to go along with her. The two women went to an address in Chicago where a woman answered the door. A man was coming down the stairs behind her. Nina looked up at the man, then back at the woman. "I'm sorry," she said. "I have the wrong house." They walked back to the car, got in, and drove off. Nina never looked again.
It seems that Nina earned a private detectives license and then looked up some guy in Chicago. She wanted to meet with him, so she asked Mom to go along with her. The two women went to an address in Chicago where a woman answered the door. A man was coming down the stairs behind her. Nina looked up at the man, then back at the woman. "I'm sorry," she said. "I have the wrong house." They walked back to the car, got in, and drove off. Nina never looked again.
Faith A. Colburn
Wow! Your question really set me back. I didn't know why, but I had no answer for you. I went to my library and scanned my books--there are more than a thousand of them--and still had no answer--for you or for me.
Then it dawned on me. I really don't often think of characters in couples. Oh, I'm aware of Rochester and Jane Eyre. I've written papers on Catherine and Heathcliff, Leopold and Molly. But gee, I've never thought of them so much as couples as individuals interacting in often dysfunctional ways.
So after a couple of days' thought, I have to say I really do like Lady Chatterly and the gamekeeper because of the energy, honesty, and just plain LIFE in their relationship. I love the relationship between Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggert in Atlas Shrugged, even though Ayn Rand preferred John Galt. I love that relationship because of Rearden's belief that we choose the people we love as "an expression of our mind's highest values."
Then it dawned on me. I really don't often think of characters in couples. Oh, I'm aware of Rochester and Jane Eyre. I've written papers on Catherine and Heathcliff, Leopold and Molly. But gee, I've never thought of them so much as couples as individuals interacting in often dysfunctional ways.
So after a couple of days' thought, I have to say I really do like Lady Chatterly and the gamekeeper because of the energy, honesty, and just plain LIFE in their relationship. I love the relationship between Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggert in Atlas Shrugged, even though Ayn Rand preferred John Galt. I love that relationship because of Rearden's belief that we choose the people we love as "an expression of our mind's highest values."
Faith A. Colburn
Charles, I think a guest interview about your book would fit very well into my blogging plans. I'm thinking about a families theme in March, maybe something about how extended families help us get through disasters. I have some stories of my own to tell about that, but nothing like what the people of Japan suffered during the tsunami and its aftermath. I would need to read your book to develop a series of questions, so I will need some time to get organized. I'm doing a ton of reading right now as research for my novel-in-progress. Thanks for asking and I look forward to working with you.
Faith A. Colburn
I actually don't get it very often. If I get stuck on one project, I work on another, or go to another part of the project. If I get really, really stuck, I read a very bloody thriller/mystery.
Faith A. Colburn
1. Sit down and get started. 2. Read, read read--other writers of the same kind of thing you want to write, advice from successful authors, books on writing, even your guilty pleasure kind of reading. There's almost always something to be learned--even if it's how NOT to do something. 3. Find a group, other writers who can help you get over the rough spots, teach you a thing or two, give you advice, hold your hand and remember you do all of those things for the other members of your group.4. Don't give up.
Faith A. Colburn
I'm working on that novel mentioned before about the big band singer and the combat veteran. Here's my elevator pitch: Maggie’s singing career pits her against a serial killer, a mob boss, a rapist and near starvation, but safely married into the nation’s breadbasket, she barely survives a doctor’s sadistic experiment.
Faith A. Colburn
I don't know really. I guess I can't help myself, just like my mother couldn't help singing. I hear a story and think it would make a good novel or short story. Something happens to me that I think might be interesting to other people. I have a wealth of old family stories that my grandmother told me and they all seem to say something about the "human condition." Sometimes it's just a line, for example, "She stood in the dark alley and knocked three times on the beat-up old door, then waited."
Faith A. Colburn
Well, I knew that my mother used to sing with the big bands and that my dad was a combat veteran during World War II, but Dad died when I was quite young and, by the time it occurred to me to ask Mom about her singing career, she was suffering from Alzheimer's and couldn't tell me much. So, I've taken the skeleton of my parents' story to write a novel. I call it "It's All Gravy."
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