Why North Dakota? And Other Reader Questions

I’ve been lining up book signings and speaking gigs lately, and some of the same questions come up. As promised, here’s a roundup of the answers:

How long did it take to write Dakota Blues?

Ten years (gasp!) In the early years, my part-time job would intrude, or some kind of life challenge like surgery, and I’d stop writing for months at a time. Also, I was learning to write as I wrote, so a lot of it went in the trash. Picture a potter’s wheel, and a grey lump of clay getting fat, then skinny, then fat again as the wheel spins. That was Dakota Blues in the early days.

Another trial-and-error aspect that ate up a lot of time: I did not have a good idea of how a novel should be structured, or how (and whether) to outline it. I went through several different systems and ended up using the one by Larry Brooks (StoryFix.com) called “Story Structure.” I recommend that if you’re inclined to outlining.

Do you write every day? What’s your schedule?

I write as many days in sequence as I can, because if I skip a day or two, I forget details. But I had to find that out the hard way.

DAKOTA BLUES is a love letter to North Dakota before the oil boom

Your descriptions seem so real. Are they fictional?

Mostly real. When I visited Dickinson, North Dakota with Mom in 2008, I knew in my heart it had to be based there. As we drove from Denver to Dickinson and back again, and all during the visit, I recorded my observations into an audio recorder. I also took pictures. It was the trip of a lifetime. Mom and I still talk about it, and I had a photo album printed for her as a memoir.

This was the farm’s chicken house, where Mom as a 5-year-old collected eggs.

Much of my story is really Mom’s story. The anecdotes about the ancestors coming to America, and the hardships they faced to give their children a better life, are all true. So is this quote from my people, Germans from the Banat region of Europe:

To the first generation is death, to the second generation is suffering, to the third, success.

North Dakota yard art

Dakota Blues describes Dickinson before the oil boom hit. That lovely small town has changed, with the building of new hotels and houses, and big rigs rumbling through town 24/7. Also, the house where my main character, “Karen,” grew up was actually that of my grandmother’s. Mom took us four kids back to Dickinson every summer on the Union Pacific out of Los Angeles. We stayed at Grandma’s house at 119 First Ave. SW. Which is now gone. Only the trees remain on a vacant lot, but some of the planks, partly buried now, remain from her vegetable garden out back.

This is all that remains of my Grandmother’s property in Dickinson. The house burned down in the early 2000s.

Are you going to write a sequel?

I don’t think so. I’m not sure I could do justice to Karen’s dream life, where she **SPOILER ALERT** goes off to live life on her own terms. I have so many other stories in my head! But Dakota Blues will always be more to me than just a novel and first book. It’s a record of my family’s history and my love for North Dakota.

I see that, having included pictures, I don’t have room for more Q & A, but this was a fun reminiscence. Thanks for asking, and we’ll come back to it another time. Enjoy your summer.