Author Interview: Daniela Norris

Today's interview is with Daniela Norris, author of "A Reason to Go On", a short story in the Never Hit by Lightning anthology. Visit her on the web at www.danielanorris.com.

Jennifer Walker: Tell me about the story you have in Never Hit by Lightning. What is it about, and what inspired it?

Daniela Norris: A Reason to Go On is one of my earlier stories, written about five years ago. At the time, my writing was leaning towards darker tales, and this one is about a young man whose job as a high-earning banker caused him to focus on the wrong things in life. It drove him to a mental institution, where he was able to escape all demands and expectations for a whole year. But as soon as he leaves the institution, he meets someone who gives him a new perspective on life – and on death. It explores such themes as what keeps us going, what drives us on and what switches us off.


Jennifer Walker: Did you have any misgivings about submitting your work? How did you get over them?

Daniela Norris: I love submitting work to new markets and to competitions. Deadlines are important to me as a writer, because they oblige me to focus on a story, finish it, polish it and send it off. Without deadlines, I would be lingering within my tales for years and never sending them out. In fact, A Reason to Go On is one such story – it was hard to part with, and never felt quite finished – until recently.


Jennifer Walker: How did you learn about this anthology, and what made you submit?

Daniela Norris: I’ve submitted a different story to an anthology in the UK. It was accepted, but then the production of the anthology was canceled. That’s when Tucker Lieberman and Andrew Tivey, the editors of Never Hit by Lightning, invited submissions from all those whose work was previously accepted for the original anthology. I submitted three stories, and A Reason to Go On was selected.


Jennifer Walker: Tell me about other writing projects you have--past, present and future.

Daniela Norris: I’ve written dozens of short stories. Some of them have been published in magazines and anthologies; some were shortlisted or won prizes in competitions. Others are still doing the rounds. The most recent success is a short story titled Gathering Storm, now shortlisted for the Bridgeport Prize in the UK.

I love writing short stories, but have recently turned to longer works and I have two books coming out in 2010 – Patient Zero, a political thriller, due out in January 2010 from Mosaic Press, and Crossing Qalandiya, co-authored with my dear friend Shireen Anabtawi, due out from Reportage Press in the UK in March 2010.


Jennifer Walker: What is your educational background and writing experience?

Daniela Norris: I have trained as a political scientist, and am a former diplomat and adviser to one of the Permanent Missions to the United Nations in Geneva. I left my day-job two years ago, in order to write full time – and to spend more time with my two young boys. However, current affairs remain my passion, and inspire much of my writing – both fiction and non-fiction.


Jennifer Walker: What do you do for a living?

Daniela Norris: I read and write – fiction, non-fiction and book reviews. I do book reviews on WRS, Swiss radio in English, for The Short Review website and some other writing related gigs. It is the best job ever – but it does pay less than most jobs, at least for time being.


Jennifer Walker: To what do you attribute your success as a writer so far?

Daniela Norris: I think it is important to realize that writing is a life-long process, and perseverance is the most important attribute that a debut-writer should posses. Your writing can improve with time and dedication – but if you give up upon the first – or even twentieth – rejection, you will never see your work in print. If you are passionate about your writing and willing to work hard at it, you will succeed.


Jennifer Walker: Tell me about your family. Are they supportive of your writing?

Daniela Norris: Yes, they are. I am very lucky to have a husband who carries the main financial burden while I work on becoming a widely published author… and a son who at the age of six already writes his own stories. He hasn’t sold any yet, but he will.


Jennifer Walker: What is your favorite genre of book to read?

Daniela Norris: I read everything – but tend to enjoy non-fiction and current affairs related fiction more than general fiction or romance. I always have a big pile of books on my bedside table, and I know I am behind on my reading when it becomes dangerously wobbly. I read six books a month on average, and wish I had time to read more.


Jennifer Walker: Tell me one thing about yourself that you think most people don't know.

Daniela Norris: I had done many different jobs before the age of thirty, and they all provide constant inspiration years after I gave them up. I worked as a waitress, translator, air-hostess, rode a big motorcycle across the country in an advertising campaign and was even in the army for just over two years. And I’ve always taken copious notes for future use, as I knew that at the end of all that, I will become a writer one day.

Thanks to Daniela for stopping by!

Author Interview: Abigail Stevens

Today's interview is with Abigail Stevens, whose story "At the Hospital" appeared in the Anthology Never Hit by Lightning. Thanks to Abbey for stopping by!

Jennifer Walker: Tell me about the story you have in Never Hit by Lightning. What is it about, and what inspired it?

Abigail Stevens: There was a writing exercise in the book What If that asked the writer to write in the voice of someone you don't like. At one time I worked in Boston at a hospital as an admin assistant and would go to the Children's Hospital cafeteria for their far superior food/menu. It was late afternoon one day and I was on a break. I was walking across the caf eating area. I was the only one walking toward the kitchen and I heard this kid say, "Heh, look at HER. She's so fat she looks like a duck!" I turned and looked this teenaged boy right in the eyes and gave the sternest 'f--- you' glare I could muster. He had his arm around some girl who giggled while he smirked. I was fuming angry and never forgot the incident. When I thought about him, I thought about him being alone --no girl-- and why he might be in the Children's Hospital cafeteria. In my story, "At the Hospital", he was angry at fat people because they seemed relatively healthy but making themselves fat while his brother was up in a hospital bed getting treated for leukemia.



Jennifer Walker: Did you have any misgivings about submitting your work? How did you get over them?

Abigail Stevens: Tucker Lieberman, one of the editors of Never Hit By Lightening, is a good friend of mine. Even so, submitting your work is always nerve-wracking. But I emailed him a bunch of stories and "At the Hospital" fit the theme perfectly so there you go. I am delighted to be included. Next, I would like to submit my work to "The Sun Magazine". I have had a subscription with them since 2003. I am nervous about sending them off but I have nothing to lose. You just need to take a deep breath, print out your stories and submit them.


Jennifer Walker: How did you learn about this anthology, and what made you submit?

Abigail Stevens: Again, Tucker Lieberman is a good friend who told me he was putting together a zine. I really appreciate his encouragement and the tiny editing he did on my story for clarification.


Jennifer Walker: Tell me about other writing projects you have--past, present and future.

Abigail Stevens: I have a novella (78 pages) that I do not know what to do with. It's too long to be a short story and too short to be a novel. I've tried expanding it but a writer knows when their work is done. I have nothing to add or subtract from my novella. I need to search out writing contests that accept novellas I suppose. I even thought of turning it into a screenplay. We'll see...


Jennifer Walker: Tell me about your education and writing background.

Abigail Stevens: I have a BFA in Writing from Emerson College. I have had essays and short stories published in local publications.


Jennifer Walker: What do you do for a living?

Abigail Stevens: I was laid off a couple of years ago. I have been doing temporary administrative assistant jobs. I am currently unemployed and collectiong unemployment. I went on a job interview on Monday the 26th and have the opportunity at a temp job that starts mid-November. I am doing better than a lot of people and I'm grateful. My friends and family have been extremely supportive.


Jennifer Walker: To what do you attribute your success as a writer so far?

Abigail Stevens: Both my parents are the smartest, funniest, coolest people I know. They are intellectuals. They are my greatest teachers. My father is an artist. My mother is a retired librarian.


Jennifer Walker: Tell me about your family. Are they supportive of your writing?

Abigail Stevens: My parents had me when they were 41. You'll be able to figure out my age, but they are 80 now and have been married for 50 years. My parents like my writing and they will tell me when they don't. I appreciate their honesty.


Jennifer Walker: If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go, and who would you take with you?

Abigail Stevens: Honestly, I would love to visit my best friend in Seattle and just stay there for a month hanging out with her. That would be the best. I don't mind rain and I've been to Seattle four times. If I don't live there someday soon, I'll definitely retire there.


Jennifer Walker: Tell me one thing about yourself that you think most people don't know.

Abigail Stevens: I have naturally curly hair that grows out, not down. When I was a kid, I would put a tan, turtle-neck jersey on my head (the turtle-neck would fit tightly like a headband) and walk around my room pretending I had long hair. Then I would stand on my bed and pretend I was Cher on "The Sonny and Cher" show. Yeah, I probably should have been born a gay man...

(Jennifer: LOL! Thanks again, Abbey!)

Book Review: Rimfire: The Barrel Racing Morgan Horse, by Ellen Feld

Rimfire: The Barrel Racing Morgan Horse, by Ellen Feld

Publisher: Willow Bend Publishing; First edition (September 1, 2009)
ISBN-10: 097090021X
Rating (1 to 5 *): *****



Rimfire Book Review

Thanks to her good friend Chauncy, Heather has the privilege of owning and riding several beautiful and talented Morgan horses. After a family vacation to Oklahoma, she decides she must add a barrel racer to her collection. When she gets back home, she finds the perfect one for sale, Rimfire, but her parents won’t let her buy him unless she sells one of the horses she already has.

Unable to part with any of her precious horses, Heather turns to plan B and gets her friend Nicholas to buy Rimfire. He is gracious enough to share Rimfire with her, and the three of them have fun learning to barrel race together—that is, until a poor judgment call on Heather’s part threatens to ruin her friendship with Nicholas forever.

Ellen Feld’s series about Morgan horses continues in Rimfire, where she again tells a fun story filled with action, adventure, conflict and subtle life lessons…and of course, horses. Ms. Feld has a knack for creating realistic characters who have real-life desires and problems. The characters must work through their problems and find solutions, showing young readers that they can do the same thing—and make good things happen for themselves if they work hard enough at it.

Rimfire, like the other books in Feld’s Morgan Horse series (published by Willow Bend Publishing), is well written, entertaining, and a fun read. Each book is well researched, giving the reader a chance to learn about a new riding style—and get to know a new horse—with each story. Although they are written for middle schoolers, Rimfire and the other Morgan Horse books by Ellen Feld are great for horse lovers of all ages!

Guest blog with Tucker Lieberman

Building an Anthology around a Theme: The Making of "Never Hit By Lightning"
by Tucker Lieberman

A literary anthology should have a theme. The theme is its raison d'être. With a coherent subject matter, the project becomes more fulfilling to the authors and editors, and readers are given a reason to buy it.

When my co-editor and I solicited submissions for Never Hit By Lightning, we asked for work that addressed the "meaning of illness, death, loss and destruction in the modern era" or that was, in short, "morbid."

Stories and poems "from the dark side" may sound like a broad topic for an anthology. After all, if we perceive the world as a mixture of light and dark, the dark side is half of everything that happens to us. But since not everyone is comfortable writing about dark topics or having their work categorized as dark, soliciting this material resulted in a fair amount of self-selection. The collective unconscious of our contributors helped determine what would be included in the anthology, and what we received was just what we needed.

The anthology's poems are drawn from various perspectives: one defiant hospital patient, one grieving survivor, and dead soldiers whose number is so vast that they have become statistics. Some of the stories have supernatural elements and they are interesting to consider alone or in pairs. "Lightning" and "High Tide" are, as their titles suggest, elemental. "At the Hospital" and "The Man Who Invented Everything" portray gravely ill patients, one young and one old. "King of the Cocktails" presents alcohol as a creative medium while "A Reason to Go On" refers to alcohol as a symptom of self-destruction.

Readers may find further connections between the characters or the geography and wonder if this could be more than just coincidence. We might even fabricate interpretations of the relationships we perceive between these works although we know the authors did not actually collaborate. Isn't that how we make stories: a few observations linked by a pretend narrative? In this way, we can make stories about stories. Literature that is loosely interwoven, partly by chance and partly by design, can stimulate creativity and wonder. In this regard, the final shape and direction of our "dark" anthology is quite pleasing. We hope you enjoy it too.

----

(back to Jennifer...) As for the last, I know I did! Thank you so much to Tucker Lieberman and Andrew Tivey for stopping by over the past couple of days.

Editor Interview: Tucker Lieberman and Andrew Tivey

Today I interviewed Tucker Lieberman and Andrew Tivey, editors of the anthology Never Hit by Lightning. Come back tomorrow for a guest blog by Tucker!


Jennifer Walker What inspired the anthology Never Hit by Lightning?

Tucker Lieberman: Andrew and I were scheduled to have our work included in a literary anthology that unfortunately was canceled prior to publication. Along with several other contributors, we discussed the idea of self-publishing our own anthology. Andrew and I became the editors and others submitted their work.



Jennifer Walker: How did you choose the work that went into this book?

Tucker Lieberman: Much of the selection was already done for us, given that the contributors were largely re-submitting work that had already been approved for another publication. Never Hit By Lightning just picked up where the other publication left off. The initial entries to Never Hit By Lightning tended to be a bit dark and brooding, so we declared that to be the theme of our anthology, and further entries were solicited on that basis.

Andrew Tivey: The only thing regarding the selection we needed to do was determine who out of the original contributors wanted to contribute to the new anthology we were organizing, which took some time with it being totally organized through email.



Jennifer Walker: Where did the contributors come from?

Tucker Lieberman: The editors and contributors live in Europe and North America. Most are creative writing students or professors or have some background in writing. We found each other through the previous publication.



Jennifer Walker: Do you have any other anthologies planned, or have you done others in the past?

Tucker Lieberman: This is my first anthology. I can imagine doing another one but I'll probably take a break for a while. It's quite labor intensive, and I have many other creative projects in my cauldron.

Andrew Tivey: I'm hopefully going to work on another anthology of sorts in the next few months with the Creative Writing Society I help run here at Portsmouth University, but since term has only just started it's still early days.



Jennifer Walker: Tell me a little about yourselves.

Tucker Lieberman: By day, I'm a beta tester of financial software. As far as my creative work goes, I have degrees in journalism and philosophy and I enjoy writing thoughtful and investigative essays, as well as fiction and poetry. I'm a fact-checker for articles on Helium.com and a co-organizer of a monthly spoken word event in Boston.

Andrew Tivey: As mentioned above, I help run the Creative Writing Society here at Portsmouth University in the UK, and have done for two years now (this being my third year). At the moment, I'm studying my third year in a degree in English Literature. My writing is more of a hobby at the moment, but getting into a more professional interest with it is one of my aims.



Jennifer Walker: You and your co-editor did not contribute to this book. Do you have your own writing projects you'd like to tell us about?

Tucker Lieberman: Currently I'm working on a "choose your own adventure" serial story, Command Pashmina (www.commandpashmina.com). It's about a robot that's been programmed to determine whether God exists. It's called Command Pashmina because the reader has the opportunity to vote on how to command the robot's next move. It's written in 300-word flash segments. For me, part of the amusement is the drawn-out discovery of whether this proof for God will be at all credible, given that it is generated with an element of randomness.

Andrew Tivey: I have a few projects all in their early stages, such as a collection of war poetry, the Creative Writing Society anthology, and possibly writing the story behind an iPhone/iPod Touch game my friend would be programming. Before this I've also been a script-writer/voice actor/editor for a machinima company, Chairleg Productions (www.chairleg-productions.com), though at the moment with all our group at University our work has slowed down somewhat.



Jennifer Walker: What is your favorite genre of books to read?

Tucker Lieberman: Philosophy, pop science and psychology, and arrestingly beautiful novels. I like to learn something that I can integrate into my work or else be transported.

Andrew Tivey: I suppose gothic literature, though that is in itself quite vague - more or less any kind of poetry and any literature with a poetic style to it I can enjoy.



Jennifer Walker: Do you have any guilty pleasures? Tell us about them.

Tucker Lieberman: I bake way too many chocolate chip cookies.

Andrew Tivey: I guess I play too many games? Though I do need something to do where I can just switch off.

Book Review: Never Hit by Lightning, Edited by Tucker Lieberman and Andrew Tivey

Never Hit by Lightning, Edited by Tucker Lieberman and Andrew Tivey

Paperback, 76 pages
Rating (1 to 5 *): *****



Review

It’s not often that I review or even read anthologies, but I seem to always be pleasantly surprised when I do read one. Never Hit by Lightning, edited by Tucker Lieberman and Andrew Tivey, is yet another example of that phenomenon. Though small, it is filled with literary, thought-provoking pieces.

Each of the stories and poems in Never Hit by Lightning is beautifully written.

There’s the title piece, Lightning, written by Kirsty Olliffe, which is about the narrator’s friendship with a boy who has been hit by lightning over and over—in fact, he seeks it and gains strength and vitality from it.

In King of the Cocktails, by Loree Westron, three brothers—particularly Rick—seek to carry on their dead father’s legacy as a master bartender. They struggle with the balance between duty and finding their own way.

High Tide, by Piotr Wesolowski, is the final journey of a sick old man to the sea he loves, piloted by his doting son. Taking place in Cuba, they skirt the law and various hardships to find simple joy.

At the Hospital, by Abigail W. Stevens, is the thoughts of a child whose brother is in the hospital—giving the reader some insight on the effect a sick child has on his siblings.

In The Man who Invented Everything: A Deathbed Confessional, by Mark Robinson, the narrator is chronicling the life of a dying patient. This patient claims to have invented everything, but the credit always went to someone else. However, maybe he is not entirely off his rocker.

A Reason to Go On, by Daniela I. Norris shows us how sometimes what we need more than someone helping us is to help someone else. By saving another, we save ourselves.

There are also three poems in the book: Hallowed Earth, by Gillian Pencavel, which is about the ravages of war. larynx, head, neck, stomach, bladder, kidney, oesophagus and pancreas, by Russell D. Thomas, is a seemingly nonsensical account of life working in a hospital—a place that is nonsensical itself. Finally, Death of a Friend, by Sue Harper, shows in just a few words what it is like to lose a friend.

Editors Tucker Lieberman and Andrew Tivey have assembled a beautiful, eclectic collection of work. Light some candles, pour yourself a glass of wine and snuggle up with your favorite quilt for an hour or two of thoughtful reading.

Check back tomorrow for an interview with the editors!

Guest blog with Jane Doiron

Today, Jane Doiron, author of Make-ahead Meals for Busy Moms, shares her thoughts on the process of getting her book published.

I have always had an interest in food, recipes, and cooking since I was a young girl. I started buying cooking magazines when I was a teenager. I still remember getting my first cookbook from my aunt and uncle before I was married. I loved trying new recipes back then and still do today! Over the years, I thought about writing my own cookbook, but heard so many stories about people being turned down by publishers unless they were a celebrity. In January of 2008, I did a little research on-line and soon discovered "self-publishing." I signed up with a self-publishing company on-line and started writing my manuscript. It took 15 months to write it as I had a full-time teaching job. Testing out recipes was the easy part. Once I submitted my manuscript in April of 2009, that's when things got to be stressful. When you self-publish, you are responsible to catch any typos, grammatical errors, font issues, format problems, etc. Consequently, it took about 15 rounds of editing the book and over 5 months to get published.

I was very fortunate to have my brother, Roger Rivard, take the photos of my food for the book cover. A book designer at the publishing company designed the book cover using Roger's photographs.

Now that my cookbook is published, I'm meeting so many wonderful people on the internet that are reviewing my cookbook, and I enjoy hearing from people who have tried my recipes. I really hope moms and dads find my cookbook useful. I know my dinner time is more relaxing since I started fixing "make-ahead meals." I have just started testing recipes for a second "make-ahead" cookbook. I hope to have it done in another year or so. Sign up for my newsletter at makeaheadmealsforbusymoms.com and you'll receive a new "make-ahead" recipe each month!

Jane Doiron