Featured Interview With Sorchia DuBois
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I grew up in southern Missouri, living waaaaaaay back in the woods near a little trickle of water named the Jacks Fork River. I’ve lived in the area for most of my life and now write from a place equally waaaaaay back in the woods.
While I love it here because of the beautiful scenery and opportunities for long, quiet walks or leisurely floats on clear, bubbling streams, the seclusion can be hard to deal with. The closest town of any size is an hour away and the closest airport is over 100 miles away. I worked for most of my life as a teacher in public schools, community colleges, and online. At the moment, I work part time as an online editor for professional development documents fora virtual education provider. Don’t tell them, but I write or think about writing nearly all the time.
I have nine cats, two fish, two kids (now grown and out in the world) and one husband.
I write paranormal and Gothic romance and adventure. My stories are often set in Scotland and they include legends and creatures from Celtic culture. Magic realism sneaks into nearly all of my stories–supernatural phenomena, alternate realities, fantastical settings and events–all taking place in a modern world. How we deal with the oddities of existence fascinates me and I try to infuse my work with that fascination. I don’t pretend to know how it works, but I do enjoy watching it unfold.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I grew up in the boonies, but my folks were readers. Shelves and shelves of books lined the walls of various rooms. I don’t ever remember my mom hesitating to give me money for books, though she did take exception to records (those things we used to listen to music before tapes, disks, or itunes), Barbie dolls, and Mad Magazine. She read to me until I could read to myself, an event which was greeted with much celebration and relief.
I started writing early and tapped out a monthly Interplanetary newspaper on the manual typewriter in elementary school. I made notepaper books and pasted them together and I wrote a teenage angst-filled novel in high school. Then I had to make a living and my college counselor, may he rot in a hot part of Hades, told me I would be wasting my time if I got a degree in writing. So I went into teaching instead. While teaching was enjoyable for the most part, writing kept eating away on the mushy part of my brain. Finally, I just jumped in and did it and wrote Just Like Gravity.
I feel like I have to make up for lost time, now, and write for hours each day at the expense of the day job. I love it and will never stop. So my advice to anyone who tells themselves, “I’ll write a book someday” is to get up and get cracking. The longer you wait, the more daylight you burn.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
There is no one like P.G. Wodehouse to cheer you up. Douglas Adams is a close second. I still read Shakespeare and other classics. Tolkein and Asimov are favorites as well. Among modern writers, I am fond of M.C. Beaton, Barbara Kingsolver, Nelson DeMille. I have been disappointed with many modern authors who don’t take the time to tell the story, but seem to be writing screenplays or dashing out books at a frantic rate.
I read a great many books that need just a little more time–one more revision–one more set of critical eyes. The plot is there. The characters are developed. But the author did not take the time to tell the story as it deserves to be told–and this takes time. Good storytelling is a thing of beauty like a fine wine, a classic painting, a single-malt whisky. Savor the experience and produce something you can be proud of. I am suspicious of an author who poops out 4 or 5 or more books in a year. It is easier than ever to get published, but the art of telling a story still takes time.
As for the craft of writing, Stephen King’s On Writing, William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style have been particularly helpful.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Ah–I’m glad you asked. Just Like Gravity was published in November of 2014 by Oghma Creative Media. It is about a reluctant fortuneteller who travels to Scotland seeking the source of bad dreams. The book peeks into three reincarnations and tells a story of love, betrayal, hidden treasure, murder, and Karma.
The ideas of reincarnation and divination fascinate me so when I decided to get real with the writing thing, those topics were the first I wanted to explore. While I don’t pretend to understand how the Cosmos works, putting together a book about three lifetimes allowed me to explore those ideas and my own beliefs about them. I wondered what would happen if you found yourself repeating the same thing over and over–always ending in death and blood. How could you work your way out of that and change the outcome? That is what the main character asks herself, but she’s flying blind–unaware of the past lives and unaware of the way those past events are manifesting themselves in her current life. I think we are all in the same boat as we try to make sense of the lessons we’ve learned and the challenges we face.
Anna, Mariel, and Beathag are three incarnations of the same woman. Mariel, a child in seventeenth century Scotland, is born with the curse of second-sight, but she can’t see her own danger until it’s too late. Beathag, the daughter of a ne’er do well in early twentieth century Scotland, heals her father and produces a son who bears the weight of past tragedies. Anna, a reluctant fortuneteller in modern America, is frightened by nightmares of murder and betrayal. The answer is in Scotland but until she meets Davy MacKintosh she knows nothing of fear–or of love.
It took me over a year to write the book and another year to get it edited and to revise it repeatedly. I could have done it more quickly, but I was feeling my way. I was fortunate to find some fantastic people to help and the book is so much better because of their efforts. I learned a mountain of information about writing and publishing–some by good experiences and some by bad.
Right now I am working on a three-book series about witches in Scotland. Zoraida Grey and the Family Stones should be out and about by the end of the year. I also blog about legends, creatures, and culture –mostly scary stuff, Scottish stuff, whisky stuff, witchy stuff.
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