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I'm pleased to welcome another awesome author to the blog today who talks a little about their journey to publication so far! Here we go...  Eva was born in Jacksonville, Florida. She left that humidity pit at the age of three and spent the next twenty-one years in California, Idaho, Kentucky, and Washington before ending up in Oregon, where she now lives on a homestead in the western foothills with her husband and five children, two of whom are human. Eva cannot remember a time when she couldn’t read, and has spent her life devouring books. In her early childhood years, she read and re-read The Boxcar Children, The Trumpet of the Swan, anything by Johanna Spyri or A A Milne, and any issues of National Geographic with illustrated articles about mummified, skeletonised, and otherwise no-longer-viable people. As a teenager she was a huge fan of Louisa May Alcott and Jane Eyre. As an adult she enjoys primarily historical fiction (adult or YA) and nonfiction on a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to, history, disaster, survival, dead people, and the reasons people become dead. Audiobooks are her jam, and the era of World War One is her historical pet. Eva began writing stories when very young and wrote almost constantly until she was 25, after which she took a years-long break before coming back to pursue her old dream of becoming a published author for real. She loves crafting historical fiction that brings humanity to real times and events that otherwise might seem impersonal and distant, and making doodles to go with them. When Eva is not writing, she is teaching her human children, eating chocolate, cooking or baking, wasting time on Twitter, and making weird shrieky noises every time she sees her non-human children.  France, 1916: Estelle Graham faces a nightmare. Expecting to meet her beloved husband and bring their newly adopted daughter home to Scotland, she instead finds him gravely injured and unconscious in a casualty station. As she fights for his care, she takes solace in his journals and letters. In a farmhouse in Somme, Captain Jamie Graham is forever changed when he meets young Aveline Perrault. Both of them broken and walled off from the cruel and cold world around them—made even crueler and colder by the Great War—the pair form an unlikely bond. She finds in him the father she never had, and with her love, he faces the pain from his own childhood. Discover the depth of love and faith in the face of brutality and neglect as they learn to live while surviving World War I. Grab your copy here! Paperback: Amazon BN Powell’s Book Depository Ebook: Kindle Nook Apple Kobo Scribd Audio: Scribd Libro.fm The Interview... Who are you and what do you write?
On my Twitter bio, it says: “#HurricaneWriter. Self-DXed #Autistic. her/she. I go spelunking down historical rabbit holes and emerge with stories.” I’ll break that down a bit: -My writing style is fast and furious and all-consuming. I completed The War in Our Hearts from first words written to query-ready in nine months, which is about average for me, although I’ve had extra time to work on two others whilst I’ve been cooling my heels looking for an agent. (I found one!) -I don’t have an official diagnosis, but I don’t think there’s any question, really. I think my autistic-ness is largely what enables me to focus so obsessively. One of my WIPs has a couple of autistic characters in a historical setting, which poses challenges because nobody understood autism then. (Who are we kidding, most people STILL don’t understand.) -Research is one of my favourite things. It can be overwhelming, and a lot of times I end up down completely irrelevant tunnels in the rabbit hole, but I just LOVE IT SO MUCH. I never know when one of those facts will come in handy, and sometimes I find little things that are so uncanny it freaks me out a bit. Where and when and how did the writing life begin for you? The first story I remember writing was about a dad losing his wallet. I was probably about 8. I was notorious for beginning stories and not knowing how to finish them (my executive dysfunction goes waaaaayyyy back), but when I was 16 I completed a novel and I was SO proud of myself. I was sure it would be an instant smash success. (Spoiler: The wider world was spared the most melodramatic piece of trash everrrrr) Later in my early 20s I completed another novel that wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t until I began writing what turned into a novel-length fanfic in 2017 that I felt I formed the discipline and focus and critical skills needed to write something really successful. I wrote The War in Our Hearts in late 2017/early 2018. Why historical fiction? I’m obsessed with history. Most people think history is boring, and I hope I can help readers learn that history is just people like us dealing with problems like ours, but with the limitations imposed by past societies, lack of technology, what-have-you. History is my setting, but my characters are The Thing That Drives The Story. If you want to dip your toes into a historical novel that has been hung on well-researched fact but doesn’t feel weighed down with details, you might like my writing. What's been the hardest part of your writing/publishing experience so far? And the most enjoyable? Waiting. I feel like Ötzi in his glacier most of the time. Considering how fast I can churn out a novel, it is maddening to have to wait for results. I do keep writing in the meantime, but it’s hard to do that when you don’t know quite what will be most wanted next. And of course the virus of doom has fritzed my focus (and a lot of other authors’, according to the twitter...) Would you go back and change anything? When I recorded The War in Our Hearts for the audionook last October, there were a lot of things I wished I could change—wording, mostly, and my mistake of twice referring to Lord and Lady Livingston as “the Livingstons” instead of as “the Moncrieffes”. But nothing major, and I actually took a good deal of pride in the fact that with each WIP, my writing has gotten stronger. I love TWIOH, but I love my WIPs even more. I can’t wait to share them with the world! What is next for you? I have a middle-grade novel we’re getting ready for an editor right now. The working title is The Summer I Found Home, and it has some of the same characters from The War in Our Hearts. It’s set in 1925 Oregon, about an hour from where I live, so I was able to do a lot of on-site research, and it was SO MUCH FUN. Where would you like to be in 5 years time? And 10? Or, what are your plans for the future? I’d like to be a bestseller (what author doesn’t?) but even modest success with a new book out every year or so would be good too. Mostly I just want to know my books are resonating with my readers and filling a need! And most importantly... Ketchup or Mayo? - Mayo Night or Day? - Night Inside or Outside? - Inside Dogs or Cats? - Cats Twitter or Facebook? - Twitter Ebook or Paperback? - Audio Sun or Rain? - Rain Keyboard or Pencil & Notebook? - Both Comedy or Drama? - ALL THE DRAMAZ Chips or Chocolate? - Chocolate
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