Interview with… Sarah R.Yoffa
I "met" Sarah on Creative Reviews, like I mentioned when I reviewed her book, and she kindly replied to my questions. This is the last of my series of interviews at the moment – I hope to have more authors soon. In the meanwhile, ladies and gents, please welcome Sarah R.Yoffa!
Where do you live and write from?
Raleigh, No. Carolina which is in the middle of the Atlantic Coast of the USA.
When did you start writing?
When I was about nine, I finally wrote down my first story. I started making them up in my head earlier, though. My first character, Joshua Andrew Caine, was conceived in my mind, fully-blown, when I was about five (in first grade). It was a little scary to have a fully-grown man in my head but my eldest sister once told me she thinks Joshua was actually my Guardian Angel. He was certainly very present in my mind at my most painful moments of childhood and he's stayed with me all my life. He's not only a major character in my Science Fiction Thriller series (the Phoenician Series) but also an archetype for my heroes—alpha but flawed. He's a little more pompous now than he was when I first imagined him as an overly-romanticized Hero, like Dudley Do-Right. I did have a big crush on Dudley Do-Right when I was a kid.
What genre(s) do you write?
I used to say I write science fiction action/adventure but in 2005, someone read the book I was working on editing (CONDITIONED RESPONSE of the Phoenician Series) and told me I actually write Romantic Suspense. I think they were right—so I promptly got myself researching what exactly a makes a romance novel (read 300 books in 2 months spanning 20 years of the genre from the 80s to the 2000s) and sure enough, I really wanted to write that stuff.
My first Romantic Suspsense novel (working title Lacey / Rainey Story) was drafted in 2006 (ironically, it was influenced by and "redshirts" several science fiction fans I met at Baen's Bar, the online forum for SF/F Book Publisher, Baen Books). It's been set aside more times than I can count, but is still about 75% done and should be coming out in 2012. More on that below.
Where do you find your inspiration? Do you put yourself in your stories?
Well, that's really two separate questions. To the first, all of life is story fodder. I don't think I get "inspired" by anything in particular. My characters come to me fully-formed and they bring their own stories with them. Essentially, I "watch" them (in my mind's eye) for a while and learn about them and their lives then snatch out the essence of a story that I think will be good to tell. It's sort of like watching a movie for me, and taking dictation.
Then there's the rare stroke of luck or good fortune where a character just jumps off the page—or takes over the page and story. That happens more often when I consciously "design" a character for a specific purpose. I rarely do that. My head is crowded enough with characters that come to me on their own that creating characters on purpose is something of a chore. I have to make everyone else shut up so I can think for a minute.
I'm kidding with all of that—I don't hear voices in my head but I do have a continual "run" of stories in my head. I never stop thinking about one or another story.
When I make choices about what a character will or won't do, I generally choose based on their history and where I know they have to end up. I do, however, end up recognizing a lot of my own personality traits in several of my characters after the fact. I wouldn't say I put myself into the story, though. People who know me don't recognize me in my characters—or not unless I point something out to them.
The only thing I think my characters definitely get from somewhere not me is the sense of humor. I can't believe how funny they are sometimes! I'm nowhere near that funny in real life. I honestly don't know where they get it from!
Do you have a specific writing routine?
Nope. Nor have I ever been "blocked" or otherwise unable to write. I don't usually sit down to write unless I have time for it though. When I have a "to do" list in my head, I can't think of anything else. I'm a very task-focused person.
I only sit down to write when I have time "for me." Writing is definitely a reward I give to myself. I quit working power jobs in the corporate world back in September of 2005 to try my hand at writing full-time. I had to completely redesign my lifestyle, overhaul my value system and stabilize all of the external factors before I could "escape" into the writing full-time. Then I indulged in it. I was writing 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for a few months in December 2005, January 2006 – well, editing more than writing but since I type 100 wpm, and writing is never a problem for me, I find it a lot easier to simply delete huge chunks of text and rewrite them from scratch with the correct idea in mind. It's not easy to edit existing material and make it work. It's simple (for me) to write and rewrite something until it works. Some people might call it editing but most writers I know are aghast at the idea I would literally delete 30,000 words without blinking an eye—or trash 95,000 words of a book and start again, calling it easier. That's precisely what I had to do with the Lacey / Rainey Story though.
I drafted it for Nanowrimo 2006 (November, 2006) and passed the 50k word mark (finished nanowrimo) on November 12th. By Thanksgiving I had 68k words and knew I was approaching The End of a book I never set out to write. By January, 2007, I had 95k words and felt it'd be so much easier to just keep the characters in my head and throw away all 95,000 words. So I did. I completely horrified almost everyone who'd been reading along or helping with it. Ah well.
Outliner or improviser? Fast or slow writer?
I think I already answered the second part of this. Oops. I definitely don't call what I do "improvising" but until 2006, I never considered outlining. Now I find outlining is great for those occasions when I get interrupted and have to set a manuscript aside for weeks or months. Life does intervene, alas.
Tell us about your latest book (add link if published)
The first book I'm putting out and marketing is one of the SciFi thriller series books. CONDITIONED RESPONSE is actually Book 2 of the Phoenician Series and will be published under the pen name Marjorie F. Baldwin (or "Friday" for short). CONDITIONED RESPONSE is scheduled for release in eBook format by December 31, 2011 and then in paperback by March of 2012. I'm in the midst of editing (about 70% done) and taking reader feedback via the Harper Collins site, Authonomy, so if any of your readers would like to chime in, they can sample the chapters here, and leave comments. "Friday" will reply within a day or two.
I wrote the series back in the 1980s (read more about the series here) and submitted it, one book at a time, to an editor at Del Rey Books. He loved the characters, the concepts and ideas but he had issues with my execution. In reading the books over in 2005, I have to say, I have no idea how he managed to force himself through those manuscripts, let alone found anything to love. Just goes to show you how skilled a talent spotter some people are!
Back in the 80s, he'd given me detailed critiques of each of the four books and I had set them aside, my 20-something ego unable to face the idea my books were less than perfect. I reviewed his notes and that's what I was trying to edit in the December 2005/January 2006 time period. It did not go well. I didn't know why or how to fix it. I just knew it was going to be a massive job of editing that was beyond my skills at that time, so I set the project aside temporarily.
While I was trying, however, one trick I tried was to deliberately design and create a new character (Raif), who'd be a tossaway secondary character that could provide the "every man's" view of the story. Hah. Little did I know Raif was to be one of those "jump off the page and take over the story" kinds of characters. He remains one of the first and most-popular elements of CONDITIONED RESPONSE and in fact, needs his own book. In February, 2006, I started drafting a prequel to the series and that's when I realized I needed to change the setting to make the entire thing work. I write character-centered stories, but people in my stories (like in real life) are absolutely influenced by their surroundings, so I knew I'd need to completely rewrite all four of the existing books in the series if I changed the setting to move it off-Earth and I thought (back in 2006) I'd start with Raif's Story, since it will be Book 1 in the Phoenician Series but I decided to finish the edits to CONDITIONED RESPONSE first, since it was nearer completion. Raif's Story will be the second book to come out, sometime in late 2012.
Under my own name, I have a Romantic Suspense series I've already started. The first book to come out in the Banbha Series will be finished and released in early 2012 (right after CONDITIONED RESPONSE is done). It, too, lacks a real title for the moment but I call it the Lacey / Rainey Story and I've been snippeting it for some time. Industrious investigators will find it online in various blogspots.
Lacey and Rainey are both world class assassins who share certain elements in their childhoods. Both were orphaned through violent circumstances at the age of five. Both were sexually molested as children and essentially, child sex slaves. The thing I wanted to accomplish with the Lacey / Rainey Story – besides telling a romance – was to get the message out about how severe and real the sex slave trade industry still is today. Here in the US, I think people don't realize how often children are stolen (or have their childhood stolen from them). I was not, personally, ever sexually molested as a child. I was, however, exposed to quite a bit of it around me growing up, especially in my teenage years.
Human trafficking is a theme in all of my writing—Raif and the other Proctors in the Phoenician Series are, essentially, slaves, produced for the purpose of being slaves. The violence we humans do against each other is a theme I hope to shed light on with my writing gift.
Indie publishing or traditional publishing – and why?
Indie for now. Partly it's a control issue and partly it's an impatience issue. As noted, I got editorial feedback on the entire Phoenician Series from a Del Rey editor back in the 1980s. He solicited, reviewed and critiqued not only all four of those books but also two others I had written back then (one military adventure novel, one time travel novella). I didn't handle the negative critiques well. I still struggle with negative criticism of my writing but nowadays, I have completely faith in the fact that I am a good writer. People really enjoy reading my books—and they read them more than once. I think that's the mark of a good book, when it gets read more than once. I think the key is that I write characters so well and people like character-centered stories because the reader can actually connect with the story when it's centered around someone instead of something.
Although I want my books to make enough money that I can live off the income, I'm into this business as much for the art—the pleasure I get from creating it—as I am for the money. Handing over artistic license or writing whatever a publisher thinks will sell is not appealing to me in the least, never has been. I write what I feel, what my characters need, then I find the market to whom to sell it, the people who want to read it. There are readers out there for nearly everything. You just have to find them.
I think once I have a following, I'll be in a position to approach a traditional publisher for some of my books. I would like to be traditionally published also, if nothing else, just for the experience. I plan to approach Kensington Books with some of the Banbha Series books but I'll definitely release the first one myself. We'll see how it goes after that. The SciFi books I'm maintaining control over, no question though I really do wish I could afford a Michael Whelan cover (haha).
Any other projects in the pipeline?
I think I already answered this too. Ooops again.
What is your goal as a writer and what are you doing to achieve it?
Umm, oops a third time? Didn't I already answer this with my plan for releases over the next few months or year and financial objectives to make my writing habit support itself—and me? That's pretty much it. I just want to write. I love to write. It's what I was designed to do; it's what I do better than anything else I've tried in my life (and I've done a lot of things). I cannot imagine a better end to my life than to be a successful writer. It's how I began (children have no concept of unsuccessful storytelling as all stories are magical to a child's mind), and I do so love symmetry in my storytelling. Here's to recapturing my childhood magic before I die!
Indeed, and I think you're doing great, Sarah! We have many things in common… and others not so in common, which is the beauty of it all! Thank you for playing along and best wishes for everything!
