Trial by Fire question

Interview with Author Penny Fletcher
Hosted By Accredited Author Ken Donaldson

1.I have seen you, as I am sure many other readers are familiar with you from the self-publishing forums, give us a little insight into your background as a writer. ( as far as I can, it’s a short 300-word)

Penny Fletcher began her writing career with the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey and has continued her writing through many genres since 1965.
In the last 35 years, after moving to Tampa Bay, she has had approximately 15,000 news, features, fiction stories and columns published in both local and national magazines and newspapers and has written for several large news organizations in Tampa Bay, including Sunbelt Newspapers, Media General Communications, and The Tampa Tribune for which she worked as a Special Sections Bureau Chief.
Before that she freelanced fiction for McFadden Enterprises, based in New York City, that were published in True Story, True Confessions and True Romance. She also wrote profiles and features for Today’s Christian Woman and Gulf Coast Fisherman.
Over the years she has gleaned more than 50 writing awards from Florida Press, Community Papers of Florida, and international contests sponsored by Writer’s Digest magazine and others.
Acting as an outsource editor for Amazon’s BookSurge self-publishing division prior to its Kindle, she learned to toggle from Associated Press to Chicago (manuscript) editing styles and opened her own editing service in 2000. This was followed by her founding SOARING EAGLE BOOKS publishing in January 2014.
Having had four books published both traditionally and POD under her own name and a trilogy for Secret Cravings Publishing under the name of Indigo Fantasia, she began SOARING EAGLE with what she calls “her own finest work,” TRIAL BY FIRE. Immediately following the learning curve from editing to publishing, SOARING EAGLE published two new fiction authors and also opened a new division to help those who self-publish with a la carte services including cover design, editing and even publicity.
Seminars, online and in-person classes, speaking engagements and coaching about writing and the industry surrounding it are her favorite pursuits.

2.Tell me what other authors do you enjoy, who inspired you or influenced you the most to become a writer?

I started with Harold Robbins in high school. He was rough but he was real. Then Grace Metalious changed the face of fiction with Peyton Place. She talked about real things that happened in a real world; like rape incest and murder. Then I went to Mario Puzo, and his Godfather book; Dr. Robin Cook started his “what if” medical fiction with Coma and I don’t think I missed a book he wrote. Then I went on to legqal fiction with John Grisham. I especially enjoyed the DaVinci Code recently- and two reviewers have already likened my TRIAL BY FIRE to it, saying “The thunder of the DaVinci Code only with sex.”


3.What made you decide upon the genre you are currently pursuing?

I have more than 15,000 news, features, editorials, commentaries and magazine fiction behind me. The people I have met range from multi-millionaires to homeless, where I have sat on tires and drank coffee with them out of a corn can. I write tough and I write real. The world is full of tough choices and hurting people often shown best by fiction. Where would we be if Chrales Dickens had never written Oliver Twist.


4.What is special about how you write. Do you have any set routine of method you follow?

I “free-write” the first 100 pages and then see where I have gone. A character or characters form in my mind and I follow them. Then after about 100 pages of TRIAL BY FIRE I knew I must sit down and figure out how to tie plots and subplots together and start doing it from that point on. I never know my endings. My characters write them with their unique personalities.


5.What is the future plans you see for your writing next?

I am in the middle of CONFIDENTIAL CLIENTELE. Take a look at www.pennyfletcher.com Coming in 2015. It is based on truth but fictionalized. If you check Amazon, you will see my first book, published by Rainbow House (now defunct) was called If I Should Die Before I Wake, a story of escape from domestic abuse. (‘Nuff said.)

6.Do you have any brief thoughts in passing you would like to share with the readers?

“Write from the heart. Don’t say what you think will sell. Say what you feel is a truth that needs to be told. And don’t hold back on the dialogue. I used to try and “clean up my characters mouths” but then I realized that was ridiculous. Be real. Just open a vein and bleed everything that’s in your heart.”

Thank you Penny, certainly has a real pleasure to talk with you and I do wish you all the very best in the future too. To all the readers whom have enjoyed getting to know Penny better make your reading pleasures always be memorial. Now we have reached the end and must conclude this Interview. Thank you one and all.