I recently had a lovely interview with author and book blogger, Cheryl Holloway. You can read it here. Cheryl’s blog is her way to “pay it forward” on behalf of other authors. She says, “To Pay-It-Forward means that we must serve others in order to lift up ourselves,” and she does just that.
It was great fun talking about all three books in the Clay Series. Book 3, The Clay Sustains, is due for release on September 29, 2017. Amazon pre-sales will begin on September 1.
In her interview, she asked which book was the hardest to write. My answer? It was the upcoming third book, The Clay Sustains, because I had to do a certain amount of world-building, since it was a prehistoric culture and society I was describing. Many of the spiritual and cultural beliefs of the characters were borrowed from the Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s ancestral people, the Yoeme, as well as from the Tohono O’odham Indians, who believe they are direct descendants of the Hohokam. I felt an obligation to treat these beliefs and practices with the utmost respect, while at the same time creating a society that readers should not assume to be factual representations of either culture or tribe. And, because Yoeme spirituality is somewhat complex, I had to work hard to make it accessible to my readers.
Striking a balance between creating a fictional world and honoring the real culture that serves, to some extent, as a model is something that I had to keep in mind with every word, sentence, paragraph, and chapter. I can only hope I succeeded.
She asked a wonderful series of thought-provoking questions that gave me an opportunity to explore my writing experience in depth.
Mosey on over to Cheryl’s blog and catch up with me and my author’s journey.
By the way, I will have a repeat interview with Pat Rullo on Speak Up Talk Radio on Tuesday, September 22. It’s a follow-up to last year’s interview in which I talked about writing the first two books in the Clay Series. Now I get to talk about book 3, The Clay Sustains.