Interview with Author Maureen Morrissey
Welcome Readers toanother installment of our author interview series. Today we have the pleasureof chatting with Maureen Morrissey, author of two historical fiction books.
JMR-Welcome to theBooks Delight, Maureen. Tell our readers where you live, what you do for funand what does the perfect day look like?
MM-I live in a smalltown just north of New York City, where I was born. I get the best of allworlds here, because I can be in the middle of and mayhem in forty-five minutes and then wake up in my quietsolitude in the woods. I love both, so I’m very fortunate.
My husband and I justreturned from a three-week, six-thousand-mile road trip that covered fifteenU.S. states, and traveling is something we do as much as possible. The world istruly incredible and full of stories, and I want to experience them all! Theother thing I love to do is spend time with our kids and grandkids. I writearticles about things like babysitting and being the mother of adult children.
My perfect day is : I write for most of the morning, takinga break to run 5-7 miles every day that I can. I love to cook something gourmetfor dinner and then we become couch potatoes and binge on some series. Duringthe summer, I’ll do a treading-water workout in the pool and read novels.
JMR-What’s yourfavorite historical ? Why?
MM- The World War II has so many achingly heart wrenchingstories that we know of, and so many that we don’t. It directly affected myfamily, as I am the child of holocaust survivors and refugees. I love Herman Wouk’s books that show differentpoints of view of the period leading up to WWII and during the war itself. Thenovel I’m sharing here today features some fictionalized versions of my familyhistory during and after the war.
I taught history duringmy thirty-seven years as an educator, and I loved learning more about theAmerican Revolutionary war and the Native American history before Europeansarrived to this continent. It’s hard to choose a “favorite!”
JMR-Who is yourfavorite historical figure? Why? If you could ask them one question, what wouldit be?
MM- Hands down, I’dlove to be in the same room with Benjamin Franklin. He was a brilliant humanbeing who did not feel beholden to societal expectations. He was the originalmulti-tasker and self-actualized person who undiagnosed ADD. I’d ask him to tell me the most outrageous thing heever did that people did not know about. I think there would probably be a lot.
JMR- How did you cometo be a writer of historical fiction?
MM- I grew up hearingstories about my own family and the families of my many immigrant friends, notunusual for 1960’s-70’s in NYC. I became intrigued very early on with the waypeople survive and thrive through adversity. I loved reading historical fiction,which helped me learn facts and their effects on ordinary people in a personalway. When I was trying to figure out how to tell my family stories, I realizedI didn’t have enough information to write a memoir, so I began to research tofill in the gaps and wrote historical fiction to give myself creative licenseand make the stories interesting to others.
JMR- Did you visitanyone of the places in your book? Where did you feel closest to yourcharacters?
MM- Because I was afirst-generation American, I had close family in the Netherlands through myfather, and Colombia, South America through my mother. We traveled to and spenta lot of time in both, and I connected deeply to the language, culture, peopleand history of both. It helps that I speak Spanish and Dutch fluently!
JMR- Maureen, tell usabout your book, Woven.
MM- The day after Iretired from teaching, just as the pandemic started, I sat down to finallywrite the book that had been nagging me for ten years. I wrote and researchedfive to six hours each day and had a first draft in four months.
Woven: Six Stories, OneEpic Journey went through so many iterations, withthe support and suggestions of beta readers and patient family members. One ofmy biggest struggles was how to put all the different characters and theirstories into a cohesive novel. The idea to keep each character’s story as aunique novella that intertwined to form the whole story was the last missingpiece of the puzzle. I’d always thought history should be taught as the storyof what happened and how it affected the lives of people who lived through it,and that’s how I wanted to tell my story. The early part of the novel covers150 years and is more like a timeline of lives; the second and third parts slowdown and zoom in on a more current period of history.
I wanted to portray theintertwining of lives as well, so I wrote the novel in three parts: “His”,“Hers”, “Theirs”, to show how the characters came together.
JMR- Tell our readershow to find you on social media and the web.
MM- I am on ALL thesocial media!
Instagram/Threads: https://www.instagram.com/maureenmorrisseyauthor.com
TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@momoauthor
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mmorrisseyauthor
Medium: www.medium.com/@mobility61
My author website: www.maureenmorrissey.com
My Amazon Authorwebsite https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B08NFCT89C/about
JMR- What question wereyou hoping I’d ask but didn’t?
MM- “What’s thecraziest thing you secretly wish you have done but never will?” I loveexperiencing thrills like roller coasters and jumping off 30-foot-highplatforms into lakes, and I have always thought skydiving would be amazing. Butthen two things happened: When I was a teenager, I saw a girl my age wrapped inbandages from head to toe like a mummy being pushed around in a wheelchair, andwhen we asked, her mother said it was a skydiving accident. I stillconsidered doing it, but then our son got a job at a skydiving company. He waseighteen years old, and his job was packing parachutes and when he told me whatwent on behind the scenes, that was it for me!
Let’s keep it betweenus, but I still might change my mind.
JMR- Thank you,Maureen, for stopping by. Your books look really great! Readers, I’ve includeda link to Maureen’s books below. Please be sure to check them out.
I will add a button andlink to the book.
