The Healer’s Daughters blog tour: A Fountain of Books review and interview

[image error]“Steep in tradition and wonderful written. This thriller has me on the edge of my seat and turning pages as fast as they would go.… This is a novel that was scary because it could actually happen to any of us.”

Thank you to Destiny of A Fountain of Books for her review of The Healer’s Daughters. There’s also an interview with me, posted here and below.

Q: Where do you like to travel?

A: My favorite city is Paris, but over the years I’ve become much more enamored of the beauty of the natural world. I especially like shorelines; I feel a deep sense of peace along any seacoast. While writing The Healer’s Daughters, I fell in love with the Aegean area.

Q: Where do you get ideas for your stories?

A: My ideas for stories emerge. They may start with an image or a response to a current issue or a thought about some historical event. Some of the ideas fizzle, but others percolate. The characters then gather, gradually becoming as real to me as the people around me. The place, the setting, becomes clear as well.

Then, the work begins.

Q: Do you write on paper or on a computer?

A: I invariably write first drafts on legal pads. My mind works better when I can have arrows swirling around the page and can include marginal notes that have their own additional marginal notes. Flipping back and forth among pages and being able to see multiple pages strewn in some semblance of order on a desk also keep my brain in gear.

As I then type everything on the computer, I’m already reforming and adding and deleting material. Further editing features a mishmash of paper copies and digital versions.

Q: Do you have another profession?

A: From about third grade on, I knew that all I wanted to do in my life was to teach and write. (I didn’t, of course, have any idea about how to go about learning to do either.) I am one of those lucky people who has actually spent my professional life doing what I loved doing.

Q: What are your easiest and hardest characters to write?

A: It’s not so much that any particular character is easy or hard to write. It takes time for me to get to know each of my characters. I can’t rush the process. I have to come to understand that there are certain things a character would never do and other things he or she would inevitably do. I have to follow that knowledge. I can’t have characters doing things they simply wouldn’t do. It took me a while, for instance, to realize that in The Healer’s Daughters Elif was capable of doing what she does.