Tag Archives: Walnut Springs

Contest Author Interview – Joyce DiPastena

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(NOTE: If you haven’t yet heard about the contest I’m running through September 24th, go here to see the entry details, as well as the 50+ different prizes, and please think about entering. After all, there’s no limit on number of entries and there are many ways to enter. If you’ve already entered, remember that leaving a comment about this interview earns you yet another entry!)

In case you haven’t already guessed from her attire in this photo, Joyce DiPastena is a full-fledged fan of the Middle Ages, where she sets all of her fiction. She started out self-publishing but is now published, like me, through Walnut Springs Press. Her first and second books, LOYALTY’S WEB and ILLUMINATIONS OF THE HEART, were both Whitney Award finalists. And she has a wonderful medieval research blog to which you can subscribe (but more about that later).

Me:  When you were a little girl, which Disney princess was your favorite and why? Or were you already into more realistic historical fiction even back then?

Joyce:  I’d have to say Sleeping Beauty, (Yay! Me too.) but I confess that even as a child, I was drawn to the “medievalesque” aspects of the artwork. :D

(I know. That Disney cartoon, to this day, remains my favorite because of the way it mimics the style of actual stained glass.)

Me:  How old were you when you wrote your first piece of fiction, and do you still have it?

Joyce:  In Junior High School, I wrote what today would be called a fan fiction crossover novel with characters from the original Star Trek TV show and Dark Shadows soap opera. (Okay, Dark Shadows I can kind of see, but who would have ever pegged Joyce for a Trekkie?) No, I no longer have a copy, which the world should be thankful for.

Me:  As I understand it, you were turned on to the Middle Ages in high school when you read “The Conquering Family” by Thomas B. Costain. What about that novel made the Middle Ages come alive for you?

Joyce:  Actually, it was a non-fiction book (Oops. Didn’t dig deep enough. My bad.) about the first three Plantagenet kings of England: Henry II, Richard I, and John. The historian Thomas B. Costain had a definite narrative flair for storytelling, though, and I simply fell headlong into the world that he drew for me. 

(Okay, so it was almost novelesque.)

Me:  When was your first Renaissance Fair (because I’m naturally assuming you frequent them whenever possible) and, when you go, whom do you go as? (I’d LOVE a picture of you in costume.)

Joyce:  Oh, my, now you’re asking me to count backwards! The first Renaissance Festival I attended was the Arizona Renaissance Festival in their very first year. That will be 25 years ago next spring. I’ve attended it at least once a year every year since then. For the first 21 years, I simply went as 20th (and then 21st) Century Joyce, in comfy jeans and a T-shirt. But when I started doing book signings there, I had to buy a costume. So I suppose now I go as Lady Joyce. (LOL!)

(I’m impressed. I know for a fact that these costumes aren’t cheap.)

Me:  Okay, so I understand why you named one of your cats Clio (the Greek muse of history), but Glinka Rimsky-Korsokov? What’s the story there, and which cat is the better muse? (And I have to have a picture of them . . . after all, I’m a cat person, too.)

Joyce:  Yes, I named my cat Clio for the Greek muse of history, but she hasn’t been very cooperative as a muse. (I suppose I should have expected that from a cat.)

(Here’s a picture of Clio):

As for Glinka Rimsky-Korsokov, well, he’s a Maine Coon and when I adopted him as a kitten, he reminded me of one of those furry Russian muffs or a furry Russian hat like you see in the Nutcracker. So I wanted to give him a Russian name. I was listening to a lot of Russian classical music at the time, so first I named him Rimsky-Korsokov, then I switched it to Glinka, which is what I actually call him, but my sister liked Rimsky-Korsokov best, so I kept it for his middle name. I’m afraid these days both of them are too busy sleeping to be very inspiring muses.

(As Glinka Rimsky-Korsokov demonstrates here. He does kind of resemble a muff, doesn’t he?):

Me:  How many books on the Middle Ages do you have? Which is your favorite and which is the most used for research purposes?

Joyce:  Oh, my gosh, I’ll be up all night if I go and count them! Let’s just say I’ve got somewhere over a hundred. I have a book called Life on the English Manor that I used so much for the first two novels I wrote (neither of which is published), that it has literally fallen apart at least three times and may be beyond reassembling this time. (Me: Now you know what you can give Joyce for Christmas!) For my more recent books, I find I lean heavily on three titles for nearly every project: 900 Years of English Costume by Nancy Bradfield; Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks by Constance B. Heiatt and Sharon Butler; and The Castle Explorer’s Guide by Frank Bottomley.

(Hmm . . . I wonder if she’s ever cooked up any of those ancient recipes?)

Me:  Please describe your writing area in the language of a knight . . . let’s call him Sir Percival Scrivener. (And I MUST have a picture of this.)

Joyce:  Verily, kind lady, some workings of the scrivener are best left to the imagination. Suffice it to say that parchments and scrolls doth litter the furniture throughout my dwelling place in such manner that it is, at times, difficult to entertain company who desire to be seated. Forsooth, I count myself fortunate that my illuminator has taken ill and is unable to create a painting of my surroundings for you, lest you think me a slovenly ne’er-do-well.

(Very well, Sir Percival. I think I get the picture.)

Me:  Finally, how would you describe your writing process and what are you currently working on?

Joyce:  Some people would call me a pantser, but I don’t really care for that word, because it implies that I have no idea where I’m going when I start a novel (i.e., writing by the seat of my pants), and that’s not really true. I don’t plot my novels out ahead of time, but I do have certain scenes in mind that I’m aiming for when I start. So I’m always aiming at some target or other, even if I don’t know at the beginning exactly how I’m going to get there.

I guess we’ll have to check out her blog or website to figure out what she’s working on now (though I’m pretty sure she’s about to publish a short medieval Christmas novel entitled A CANDLELIGHT COURTING). Also, I highly recommend her medieval research blog if you’re into the Middle Ages like her.

Originally posted 2012-09-21 06:00:09.

Cover Reveal!

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Amy Orton at Walnut Springs has bent over backward and I’m now pleased to announce my cover for “A Night on Moon Hill”:

What do you think?

I’m happy and excited, and to celebrate I’m going to announce a special contest beginning on “Moleskine Monday” in which many of the prizes are…you guessed it…Moleskine products! (Any of my writer friends who would like to donate copies of their own books for the contest are also more than welcome!)

I was supposed to blog about networking this past Monday, but I just didn’t get around to it because I was so stressed about the cover. So this next Monday, I’m launching this contest to test the powers of social networking in spreading the word about my book.

Check back Monday for more details about the book and all the prizes.

Originally posted 2012-08-16 17:20:12.

I Have a Book Deal!

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Present word count of WIP:  47,161 (I know…no increase, but I did finish outlining the entire book!)

I am very excited to announce that Walnut Springs Press will be publishing my second novel, Laps (though the title will likely be different), later this year…probably late summer or early fall! I promise more details as they develop.

I believe I have the recent ANWA Conference to thank for helping to seal this deal. While there, I was able to meet with their editor, Linda Mulleneaux, and I’m sure that my winning a couple of awards in their BOB (Beginning of Book) Contest made a favorable impression, as well. Thanks so much, ANWA!

Here’s a taste of the book (taken from my first chapter) to whet your appetite:

Budding writers could be so defensive, Daphne thought, not for the first time. The women she taught in her graduate tutorial bruised like teenagers, pouting and suffering in silence. Most of the men argued with their jaws clenched—none more so than Reuben. She picked up his short story anyway, drew in a breath, and read aloud his opening sentence.

“Merrick languished in the lazy afternoon sun.” She paused and looked up at the clock on the back wall. Five minutes to go. “To be honest, this opening takes the reader nowhere. Yes, it may tell us Merrick is lazy . . . or it may not.”

Reuben raised his hand, the muscles in his face already working, and began to squabble with her assertion. Guy, the only truly talented writer in the class, wasn’t there to take her side. So she chewed on the inside of her cheek as Reuben went on and on about the visual quality of “languished.”

When he finished, she said, “I suppose you don’t care about getting published then,” and dismissed the class. As he passed her desk, she heard him call her “narcissistic” under his breath along with another unflattering term. He was wrong. She hadn’t found the right word for herself yet, but she was definitely not narcissistic.

Still stressed when she pulled into her garage a half hour later, Daphne headed straight for her pool. She checked the desert sky. No moon. She’d swim without a suit, then, shielded by the wall of palms, hibiscus, and oleander surrounding her backyard. Since the death of her parents, she’d used moonless nights to such advantage.

As she started to unbutton her blouse, she noticed that one of the four dark shapes she knew to be her patio chairs had been moved back several inches from the circular glass table with the umbrella. A sense of foreboding crept up the back of her neck like a spindly-legged spider, and she shivered. She never left a chair out of place.

For a moment, Daphne considered changing her routine. But she couldn’t. The swim in total blackness wouldn’t soothe if she varied the pattern, and though she didn’t understand the reason, she knew that patterns smoothed out the wrinkles in her life like lotion applied to rough, cracked skin.

She pushed the chair back in and undressed quickly, leaving her folded slacks and blouse on the deck. After stretching out the kinks in her back and running her fingers through her cropped hair, Daphne took her usual starting place at the far side of the pool and sliced into the dark water. Six quick strokes, and she flipped to push off the wall for the return. Ninety-nine laps to go.

She pulled at the water, deconstructing Reuben’s opening line in her mind with each lap.

Merrick languished in the lazy afternoon sun. Flip turn.

Merrick languished in the lazy afternoon. Flip turn.

Merrick languished in the lazy. Flip turn.

By the tenth lap, the classroom began to recede from her mind. By the fifteenth, the last memory of the evening’s unpleasantness sank below her consciousness. Buoyed by the night-cooled water, Daphne relished the pungency of chlorine and the familiar numbness spreading through her arms and legs.

If Daphne bowed to any god, it was the god of water—the pool his holy sanctuary, the daily swim her prayer. Water freed her, saved her from a society in which she felt ill at ease. In its liquid cold and calm, her oddities were masked or erased.

At age three, when she’d first ballooned her cheeks to slip beneath its glimmering surface, Daphne had opened her eyes underwater and discovered a world of muted sounds, bluish vision and slower motion. Here, no fly could dart around. The yapping of the neighbor’s dog hushed. Her feet and hands, often so clumsy on land, worked together in water and found a rhythm previously unknown. Stroke after stroke. Lap after lap. A coordination so practiced over the decades that now, at forty-one, she slashed through the water without thinking.

Swimming saved her in the dry heat of Phoenix where pools freckled the landscape. No matter Daphne’s schedule at the university, her morning swim came first. It steeled her for a college classroom full of opinionated writing students. And if a day’s teaching drained her, as this had, she swam again in the afternoon or night.

Switching to the breaststroke for her twenty-sixth lap, her right hand brushed against something mid-stroke. She jerked upright, surprised. Had she imagined it? Daphne strained to see in the blackness of the pool, but she could make out nothing. She swept her arm across the dark water. Still not a thing. She inched further and propelled her arm underneath the liquid surface. Contact. Wet cloth over a hard object. When she poked it, it moved away, but only slightly. She reached again. Feathery strands tickled her fingers. She lurched back and gasped. 

 

Originally posted 2012-03-16 13:36:26.

What a Terrific Second Day!

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Present word count of WIP: 39,556

Again, I didn’t have time to write and will definitely make up for it tomorrow. But yesterday was even more eventful for me than the first day was at the conference.

It started with next to no sleep the night before but, somehow, I dragged myself out of bed at 6:20 am for a 6:45 “All Star Breakfast” with the editors, agents, and faculty of the conference. The first 20 to register for the conference got this perk, even though I was feeling far from “perky” at that time of the morning. I certainly felt a lot perkier by the end, though!

You see, being the introvert I sometimes am, I headed for the unoccupied table in the back (forcing my roommate, Bonnie Harris, into my introverted ways, I’m afraid…but I think she was grateful in the end) then waited to see if anyone would join us. Susan Aylworth did and then, lo and behold, in came the top agent I’d pitched the day before–Jane Dystel of Dystel & Goderich–and she makes her way all the way back and sits down right next to me. She had asked to see the full of “Laps” the day before but I wasn’t sure if she was truly interested (after all, I’d submitted it to their agency two years earlier, though to a different agent) or simply being kind and encouraging…which she is. Then, five minutes later, we are joined by Linda Mulleneaux with Walnut Springs. In the course of conversation, Jane was describing her typical day at the office back in New York and I asked about her client list. She said she had approximately 50 active clients and perhaps 250 total, including the inactives.

Then she mentioned that she’d be having dinner that night with one of her clients there in Phoenix. Inside I’m thinking, “What a coincidence, since in my novel my reclusive protagonist is an author whose New York agent comes out to Phoenix to try and talk her into doing a book tour…so I was glad to hear that they really do make visits in this day of cell phones and email.” But I wasn’t about to mention that because we were having a great, relaxed conversation ranging from politics to publishing and I’d already done my pitch.

That was when Linda spoke up and potentially did me the greatest favor. Pointing to me, she said something like, “You know, Tanya here has written a terrific book. I’m only a few chapters in, but I’m loving it. It’s got this great beginning with this woman finding one of her students dead in her pool and the poem he’s left her is so wonderful.”

Jane looked more intrigued and seemed to want to know more so I explained the setup to the novel in a bit more detail then added that I also had a NY agent visiting my protagonist in Phoenix in my story. Linda then said something about how excited she’ll be to finish it and see it published. At that point, I turned to Jane and said, “Maybe I shouldn’t bother sending it to you in that case” and she said, “Oh no, I’d like to see it!” She then turned to Linda in full agent mode (this is no doubt what makes her a great agent…she never lets an opportunity for a deal pass by, big or small) and asked what kind of advances they gave. She was surprised to hear they didn’t provide any, but she pressed on, asking about their royalty rate (10-12%).

Linda, recognizing Jane’s interest, told me I should definitely submit it to Jane. Let me tell you, I walked away from that breakfast more than satisfied!

Later that morning when I had my scheduled pitch with Linda (which now almost seemed unnecessary though it gave us a chance to talk about the book more), she was very kind and supportive about my possibilities for a bigger market. If it turns out to be a rejection from Jane, though, I will go ahead and contact Linda, for sure.

I also pitched School of Guardians to Anita Mumm with Nelson Literary that morning and she wants me to submit the first 30 pages when I’ve got it completed. So I headed for lunch, having batted a thousand over the course of the 2-day conference: 3 requested submissions (Jane, Anita, and Lisa Mangum of Shadow Mountain, an imprint of Deseret Book) and a potential deal for Laps with Walnut Springs should Jane turn it down.

Now, I’ve been to enough writers conferences to know that all four possibilities may well evaporate in the end, but at the very least, I know I’m getting closer to my goal. And, as Lisa said in her empowering keynote speech at the close of the conference, our dreams are closer than we may imagine.

At lunch, like icing on the cake, I was announced as the 3rd place winner in General/Women’s Fiction for my beginning of Laps…and the 2nd place winner in Youth Fiction for my beginning of School of Guardians. These announcements were made in front of those editors and agents to whom I’d pitched those works. I was even happier when Bonnie (who also got a request for her full mystery manuscript from Jane) was announced as the Grand Prize winner of ANWA’s first BOB (Beginning of Book) Contest!

The ANWA Conference is getting bigger and better and, needless to say, it was well worth my registration, flight, and a few sleep-deprived nights!

My only disappointment for the weekend: not enough of an opportunity to have a long, deep discussion about LDS fiction and our role as writers who are LDS with Bonnie and my other roommate, Heather Moore. Since Heather’s going to be the featured guest at this year’s Northwest Writers Retreat in November, however, I still hope to have that opportunity.

Originally posted 2012-02-26 11:32:35.