Award Winning New Brunswick Author Susan White.

The Scribbler takes great pleasure in having Susan, a widely recognized author, as our featured guest this week. At the time of writing this interview, the good news is that Susan’s novel – Fear of Drowning – has been shortlisted for the best in Fiction of the New Brunswick Book Awards. Congratulations Susan!



The author of eight novels with another only weeks away, she is an accomplished storyteller. We are more than pleased to have her participate in a 4Q Interview and she is sharing an Excerpt from When the Hill Comes Down








Pg. 24.

“My parents died when I was three weeks old. I have never even seen a picture of them. The house was destroyed and they were killed. Suffocated, they say, when the house collapsed and the mud came in. It sounds crazy, and I don’t talk about it, but I want you to know what happened. People talk about it as if it was a horror movie. People tell the story like I was an extra or a prop. Just an afterthought in the good story it makes when a whole house fills with the rushing flood of an avalanche of mud, rocks, and debris, knocking out windows and collapsing walls. She threw me out. They don’t know for sure it was her, but I like to think it was. I landed on the roof of the veranda and somehow I was still there when they found it on the ground hours later. ‘Wrapped up in a blanket and not even crying,’ my aunt Helen always said. That’s what they base their theory of me being simple on. A baby wide-eyed and not even crying after dropping two storeys must have some damage to his brain. Plus the fact I didn’t talk until I was four years old.

I wanted to tell you the story myself. The damn story seems to be all anyone cares to know about me. You would think after fifteen years it might fade, but instead it just gets better, more farfetched, and more entertaining, apparently, to everyone but me. I would be happy if I never heard the story again. I thought about not telling you and just enjoying knowing one person who doesn’t know the story. But I figured you probably knew it by now anyway and wouldn’t even show up.”

          Susan White was born in Moncton NB, moved to Fredericton at age eight and at the age of twelve moved to the Kingston Peninsula. She earned her BA and B Ed at St. Thomas University fulfilling one of her childhood dreams of becoming a teacher. She and her husband Burton raised four children, ran a small farm and Susan taught elementary school for 29 years.  She retired in 2009 to follow another dream which was to be a writer.

  Susan White’s first book The Year Mrs. Montague Cried was published in 2011. It won the Ann Connor Brimer Excellence in Children’s Literature award in 2012. Three more Y/A novels, Ten Thousand Truths, The Sewing Basket and The Memory Chair followed. The Memory Chair was shortlisted for the Ann Connor Brimer in 2018. Her first adult novel Waiting For Still Water was released in June 2016   and her second adult novel Maple Sugar Pie in 2017. Her Y/A novel Headliner was released in 2018 and was shortlisted for the Mrs. Dunster Fiction NB Book award in 2019. Fear of Drowning was released in 2019 and her latest adult novel When the Hill Came Down will be released soon.











4Q: Let’s talk about Fear of Drowning and the excitement of being shortlisted for Mrs. Dunster’s Fiction Award.





SW: In March I received word that Fear of Drowning was shortlisted for the Mrs. Dunster’s Fiction Award. I was thrilled. I felt the same excitement last year when my book Headliner was shortlisted. The NB Book Awards Gala last year was so much fun. The organizers did a great job with every detail from the amazing cake created by Emma Hyslop and a friend, the interesting questions posed to each shortlisted author, to the great music provided by Good Timing. I was so looking forward to the gala this year but we all know why that has been postponed. I look forward to whenever that night comes. I am very proud to be an New Brunswick author and celebrate all the good work been written in our province.

**Scribbler note: Due to the ongoing pandemic, the awards ceremony has been cancelled and as of the time of this interview, the winners have not been announced. A new date is expected to follow soon.






4Q: Your blog - https://author-susan-white.blogspot.com/ - tells us that your ninth novel is coming close to reality. Can you tell us about it?





SW: When the Hill Came Down is a fictional novel with an ecological slant.  In fact, the clay and shale surface of a very steep hill that is clear cut in the mid 1950’s experiences catastrophic failure during a torrential rainstorm and destroys a nearby home killing two of its occupants. In a final act of love a mother throws her three-week-old infant from an upstairs window saving his life as the avalanche of mud and debris comes down. Keefe Williams, the child left behind grows up in the shadow of this terrible tragedy.   He is taken in by his aunt and uncle; the very uncle whose lumbering practices many people believe caused the hill to come down.


     When the Hill Came Down explores greed, jealousy, love, loyalty and the very fabric of a community full of stories whose threads intertwine. The color, texture and the multi facets of any story, in any community bear scrutiny. Nothing is ever exactly the way it seems.











4Q: Your novel “The Year Mrs. Montague Cried" won the 2010 AWC YA/Juvenile Novel Prize and, after publication by Acorn Press, the 2011 Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children's Literature. Tell us a bit about the story and the awards.

SW: In April 1999 we lost our oldest son Zachary in an automobile accident. I went back to my classroom in

September and experienced many challenges dealing with the day by day of grieving and carrying on. The Year Mrs. Montague Cried is an account of that year weaving my real life experiences with a fictional story of a Taylor Broderson, a nine year old girl in Mrs. Montague’s grade four class who is experiencing challenges in her own family. While watching her teacher grieve Taylor learns much about loss and love preparing her for the difficult days to come.

I took a deferred leave from teaching in 2006-2007 to write this book and submitted it to five publishers receiving five rejections before entering it in the AWC in December 2009. It won first place in August 2010 and the sixth publisher I had submitted to contacted me and two weeks later I signed a contract with Acorn Press. The Year Mrs. Montague Cried was released in 2011 and went on to win the Ann Connor Brimer in 2012. 






4Q: I know this might be a tough question but with nine novels published, which one is your favorite? The one you enjoyed writing the most.





SW: I get asked this a lot and always answer that choosing my favorite book is like asking me to choose my favorite child, not an easy or wise task. I love them all. I am probably proudest of The Year Mrs. Montague Cried because of the challenge of writing it, the truth of living it and the reward of seeing it become my first published book. I am also very proud of Fear of Drowning. It went through at least six rewrites and the final draft presented challenges as I attempted to write  so many points of view  in  a back and forth timeline. Having it shortlisted is validating. And I love… 








4Q: In your opinion, what makes a great story?





SW: I believe a great story should make you feel a plethora of emotions. I have been accused of making people cry and I take great pride in that. Crying, laughing and feeling a connection to your own experiences and struggle is what a great story should do.








4Q: Your favorite authors or the ones that have influenced you the most?



 SW: It seems cliché but my answer is always Lucy Maud Montgomery. As a child I loved the rural setting which offered Anne a place to truly belong. Reading as many of her books as I could get my hands on I began dreaming of being the three things Anne Shirley grew up to be; a teacher, a mother, and an author. As an adult I admire her determination and dedication to her work.











An Excerpt from Fear of Drowning Pg. 10.


(Copyright is held by the author. Used with permission)  

My first thoughts as I woke early, before pulling back the bedclothes and making myself get up, were layered and somewhat convoluted. What if my grandmother had not sent the telegram?

What if she had never tripped on the bottom step and twisted her ankle? What if I had gone with Mother and Father? That was at the core of all my emotional floundering, which seemed not to have lessened even with the passing of almost nine decades.

I still found myself going back to the crucial questions: What

if they had not gone to San Francisco? What if I had gone with them? My life was forever changed because after receiving the telegram from my grandmother, my father booked train passage for my mother and himself and left me behind.

What if the telegraph had never been invented? If my grandmother had mailed a letter instead and the receipt of it was delayed by even one day, my parents would not have been in San Francisco when the earth moved and sections of the city were levelled.

This was to be a long and tiresome day if I continued to mire

myself in a web of useless thoughts. What if the train Mrs. Price and I caught that day had left the tracks? What if she had taken me home with her? What if I’d not taken employment at the Prince George Hotel?

Possibly my reluctance to share my deepest thoughts with

Clara had more to do with my inability to truly see my life.

Had I, like she said, simply used the cloak of my misery to gird myself from any real introspection? Was getting back to being the darling daughter of Frederick and Claire McDonough my motivation for all the choices I made?

Thank you, Susan, for being our guest this week. Wishing you continued success and recognition for your writing.

For those of you wanting to discover more bout Susan and her novels, please follow this link:



author-susan-white.blogspot.ca

Featured Author Heather McBriarty of Saint John, NB.

I was introduced to Heather by an author friend and discovered her captivating book – Somewhere in Flanders: Letters from the Front. Published in November, 2019, by Crow Mountain Publishing, it is the story of James W. Johnstone who enlisted in Canada’s Expeditionary Forces in the First World War and contains the love letters he sent home to his sweetheart, Isobel.

She has graciously agreed to a 4Q Interview and is sharing an excerpt from her interesting book.






Well, first, I’m an x-ray technologist masquerading as a writer! It’s interesting how life goals come full circle. I have been passionate about books my whole life, and began writing my own stories at a young age. I could always be found, nose firmly between the pages of one book or another. When I was desperate, I read encyclopedias, sitting in the front hall beside the bookshelf. As the middle-ish child with four much older and two much younger siblings, the world of books gave me the friends and companions I lacked at home, and to some degree, at school (I was terribly shy!). Wherever I was, if I had a book, I had a safe, friendly space. My oldest brother had the knack of finding me the most wonderful books; A Wrinkle in Time and The Phantom Tollbooth were gifts from him.


I was fortunate in high school to have an English teacher who encouraged creative writing and was happy to read everything his students wanted to share, outside of class work. Because of him, I entered a national short story contest, got an honorable mention and a $25 cheque. Big leagues! However, my life turned to the sciences and a career in health care, and while I still never went anywhere without a book in my bag, writing took a backseat to work and the myriad chores of adulthood, marriage and motherhood. 

Reading to my three sons was a joy, encouraging their interest in reading a return to the pleasures of my childhood. After many, many years, I found the joy in writing again, in creating, in reproducing for others a world long gone. I have a feeling this is only the beginning. When not reading or writing (or working), I’m playing with my two wee grandsons, filling my nose with the scents of horse and hay at the barn, or plotting offshore adventures with my husband on our sail boat (AKA my summer writing office!).









4Q: Who is James W. Johnstone to you? Why did you decide to tell his story?




HM:  Jim is not a relative, but had he survived the war, he might have been my grandfather. Okay, okay, I know genetics don’t quite work that way, but I’ve adopted him as such. The recipient of Jim’s letters - and his incredibly touching expressions of love - was my grandmother, Isobel McCurdy. They were school chums, although he was a bit older, and the mere fact that she kept his letters all her life speaks volumes about her feelings for him. Through these letters, I feel a connection to her, a woman who died before I was three years old and who I never knew. 


Jim seized me from the moment I read the first letter, pulled at random from the pile of 69. He was this bright spark of determination and duty, cheeky and flirtatious, trying his best to make light of what became a horrific situation for him, as he saw friends die. His love for my grandmother and his deep love for Canada is moving and inspiring. He was so alive, he leapt off the page, and I could not let him sink into obscurity again. I have a lifelong love of Egyptian history. The Egyptians believed that as long as a man’s name and deeds were spoken of and written down, he lived; I wanted to make sure Jim lived again.






4Q: Please tell us what to expect when we pick up our own copy of Somewhere in Flanders.




HM: Be prepared to make a friend, and lose a friend in Jim. This is what happened to the men in those trenches. They went in with a crew of guys who they worked with side by side, in miserable conditions, becoming brothers, and then suddenly some would be gone, instantly, gruesomely. The longer they were in the war, the fewer and fewer of their original friends survived with them, and the further some withdrew from their comrades. Be prepared to cry a little, but also to laugh, and to be inspired by the dedication of Jim’s generation, who went in and fought a dirty, bloody war to protect the innocent of a country not their own - for which the people of Belgium are still incredibly and touchingly grateful. Be prepared to see this war as not just some ancient, dusty history. It was lived by young men with the same hopes and dreams we have, many who never got to live those dreams. Jim’s words make it as relevant to the reader today, as it was to him. 

4Q: Please share a childhood memory or anecdote.




HM: I don’t remember a time without books. Apparently my mother decided to teach me to read at age 3. I do remember the first time I learned a rather big word. I was six, and had been placed in a very small group of more advanced readers in my class at school. We were allowed to take home real chapter books from a classroom library, not the Dick and Jane readers (dating myself here!) that everyone else used, and I raced through those voraciously. One day, the teacher wrote down a word – “determined” – and I recall sounding it out, finally getting it right and the blaze of accomplishment when I realized I knew what it was. Right then I fell in love with words and reading. It was an empowering moment!






4Q: In your opinion, what makes a great story?




HM: Characters are the most important part of a good story. They don’t have to be likable or good people (in fact, I prefer a character who is flawed) but they can’t be too good or too bad; that’s a cardboard cutout. They have to move you and be believable, have flaws and redeeming virtues. You have to feel what they are feeling and be transported into their minds and situations. If I hate a main character, I cannot continue reading the book, no matter how interesting the plot may be. Second, a great story needs great language – not big fancy, ten-dollar words but beautifully arranged words. It needs to sing and to elevate the reader. If I lose myself in the beauty of the language, I am transported and transformed by the book. I just finished a book that sums this all up, Tim Leach’s Smile of the Wolf…I devoured it.





4Q: What are you working on now?




HM: I’ve got a novel on the go, rather than non-fiction, as my next project. I can’t say it’s the first I’ve started, but it is the first I have begun in an organized and deliberate way…which I hope translates into getting more than a few pages done! 11,000 words down; 60-70,000 to go! Having reached the goal line of publishing a completed book, I feel I have more discipline now. Staying true to form, this one is set during the First World War, and involves a young couple from Halifax. What is different is the hero comes back, albeit not the man he was when he left, and the heroine is a medical student who faces the trauma of the Halifax explosion. They are both left splintered, much like the environments they experience. I am stealing heavily from my grandfather’s stories as a med student at Dalhousie in December of 1917!





4Q: If you were to write a biography of anyone you want, who would it be and why?



HM: My grandmother, Isobel McCurdy. I have always known she was an interesting woman, but I only now appreciate just how much she experienced, from the death of her beloved young man, her work during the war years with the Red Cross, to setting off to China in 1921 - pregnant, with one year old baby in tow - with her medical missionary husband. There, they spent six years deep in the interior, in remote outposts, before fleeing the revolutionaries with hardly more than the clothes on their backs. My father (born in China having made the trip there in utero) made a comment once, that his mother often thought they’d never have gotten away but for their – by then – four little brown-eyed, tanned boys, who spoke Mandarin and Cantonese fluently.





4Q: Can you remember that defining moment when you decided to become an author?




HM: I’ve written short stories all my life. I began and abandoned novels before. It had always been a dream to be a published author, see my name on a cover. It was not until these letters that I knew I had a book. There was never any question I would finish it, almost like Jim was guiding my hand…or perhaps it was my grandmother. Certainly, her picture gazed down at me from the top of my desk through the whole process. I can’t say where the drive came from but it was unstoppable, and was nothing I really decided. Remember that word “determined”? This was determined for me, and I was determined to make it happen!

An Excerpt from Somewhere in Flanders: Letters from the Front.


(Copyright is held by the author. Used with permission)

The paper was old and stiff, yellowed from age. The notes, addressed to my grandmother, were small, folded over and over to fit in tiny envelopes, and crackled alarmingly as I unfurled the pages. Faint notes of must, the tang of rusty-coloured ink and old books rose from the paper. The writing was far more elegant than anything I’d been taught, slanted, spiky, the product of years of careful tutoring and hours slaving over lessons. Young men never write like that now. The ink was faded, but the words leaped out at me “My Dearest Chiquita”. Flipping to the end, there was a quick scrawl, “Yours ever, Jim”. My grandfather’s name was Kenneth. 

My grandmother, Isobel, died when I was three, so I only knew her from pictures: an older woman, hands folded lady-like in her lap, back straight as if she still wore boned corsets. Her grey hair was neatly braided and coiled around her head in a halo. Her face was always turned ever so slightly away from the camera, eyes always a bit sad. Her lips, never smiling in those photographs, were mine. She was a pianist, a graduate from Dalhousie University in Halifax with a music degree, but rarely played publicly. She was the daughter of the editor of the Halifax Herald, brought up in a well-to-do home. She was a diarist, and I devoured her record of the years she spent as a newlywed and young mother in China in the 1920’s, while my physician grandfather worked as a medical missionary. She was most definitely not a Chiquita! And who was Jim?

The letters had come in a tattered old cardboard box from my cousin in BC, part of a mishmash of things she was cleaning out of her father’s basement. As I read through this treasure trove, I came to know Jim. His letters were filled with misspelled words and insufficient punctuation, but also with quotes from Shakespeare and Omar Khayyam. He had strong opinions on many subjects, and experiences none of us want to repeat. He was bright, and funny, and oh, so young. This book is his story.

From Somewhere in Belgium

April 21/15   [eve of the Second Battle of Ypres]

My Dearest Chiquita:

We have been on the march again and now are within a very short distance of the firing line. A certain town within a mile or so of here has just been under a very severe bombardment by the Germans and it would make anyone heart sick to see the women and children and old men hurrying away from their homes with only what they can carry with them. The road is practically blocked with motor-lorries, transports, ambulances etc carrying the refugees away and those who are not fortunate to get a ride are pulling little carts with their personal necessities in them.

Your birthday was celebrated by a bombardment from both sides all last night and early this morning the enemy sent up a quantity of star shell all last night they must have expected an attack. We have orders to keep in the billets and move out to the trenches in a moment’s notice, so it looks as if there would be something doing in a short time. Just behind us is an observation baloon but the German shells don’t seem to be able  to get the range at all as nearly all of their shells go wide. I like Belgium ever so much more than France the people are very much more civil and a whole lot cleaner the whole country seems much more prosperous, you notice the difference the very moment you cross the frontier. We were billeted just outside a very large chateau which was once owned by the Rothschilds so as you can image it is quite a place. The park is simply grand with little grotos here and there, statues and caves etc imitation Moslem temples etc. We were in for a bath in one of the lagoons in the park and although this is April the water was quite warm. Just received your letter written on March 13/15 so you see it must have gone astray for the one you wrote on the 23^rd I received a week or so ago. We have to parade in a very few minutes so will have to close. Please excuse pencil and writing. Good bye my dear Chiquita. I trust you have come out successfully in your exams which I know you will so au revoir dear.

                                                    Yours  Jim

Thank you, Heather, for being our featured guest this week. Wishing you continued success with your writing journey.

For you visitors to the Scribbler wanting to learn more about Heather and her book, please follow these links:



https://www.facebook.com/SomewhereinFlanders/

https://www.amazon.ca/Somewhere-Flanders-Letters-Heather-McBriarty/dp/1999265009

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Best Selling Author Kathrin Hutson of New England, USA.

The Scribbler is pleased to do a series of guest appearances in conjunction with Creative Edge Publicity of Saskatchewan, Canada. (See below for more of Creative Edge)



This week’s guest is International best-selling author, Kathrin Hutson.


When you visit Kathrin’s website, you are greeted by the words “Exquisite Darkness”. If that isn’t enough to lure you in, there are the gorgeous covers of all seven of her novels.


The Scribbler is most fortunate to have her visit and answer a few questions. On the plus side, she is sharing an excerpt from one of her novels. Read on!

International Bestselling Author Kathrin Hutson has been writing Dark Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and LGBTQ Speculative Fiction since 2000. With her wildly messed-up heroes, excruciating circumstances, impossible decisions, and Happily Never Afters, she’s a firm believer in piling on the intense action, showing a little character skin, and never skimping on violent means to bloody ends.

In addition to writing her own dark and enchanting fiction, Kathrin spends the other half of her time as a fiction ghostwriter of almost every genre, as Fiction Co-Editor for Burlington’s Mud Season Review, and as Director of TopShelf Interviews for TopShelf Magazine. She is a member of both the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and the Horror Writers Association. Kathrin lives in Vermont with her husband, their young daughter, and their two dogs, Sadie and Brucewillis.






4Q: Your website tells us most of your work is Fantasy (the dark kind) and Sci-Fi. What draws you to these genres?





KH: I’ve always been a fan of dark fantasy in general. That was the genre I got into reading at an early age (though it’s not dark fantasy per se, I was reading Stephen King’s It when I was ten, if that paints a better picture). Beyond all the fun and imagination-inspiring tropes of magical worlds, grand landscapes, sweeping quests, and the kinds of people, places, and creatures not of our own world, I’m just particularly drawn to the darker side of Fantasy. Dark magic, seedy characters, terrifying consequences, and the struggle characters must endure in order to prevail (or not). It’s the richness of that kind of magical darkness that really gets to me, the “not shying away from” what’s terrifying or heavy or maybe even cringe-worthy on the gruesome side.


As an author, it’s just so much fun to let my imagination run wild with the terrifying possibilities of things going wrong in a magical world. It also helps me let out my “inner darkness” when I write these things. At one point in my own life, things were pretty dark for a while. I struggled in a lot of ways, made a few poor choices, and found myself facing the end once or twice. Now, I am incredibly fortunate to have found my calling with writing fiction and spinning up these other worlds for readers to get lost in and enjoy. I’m married to the coolest guy in the world, and we have a pretty fantastic three-year-old daughter, and life is good for me these days. In a way, I think I’m drawn to writing Dark/Grimdark Fantasy because it lets me inhabit the darker sides of myself without drawing any of it out into the pretty awesome life I managed to put back together after my own struggles.


The same thing is true for the Dystopian Sci-Fi I write. Science Fiction in general (as I perceive it) has a lot more rooted in technology and science, yes, but also serves as a reflection of “what may be possible for us in the real world”. With my own Dystopian Sci-Fi series, Blue Helix, I get to play with real-world topics and issues in a reality close to ours but twisted just enough into the speculative realm to make it more about a good story and poignant characters. Writing that, for me personally, feels more like showing the world what might happen if we don’t pay close enough attention to our own actions and everyday choices (much like what happened to me when I chose not to be aware of the ripple effect of my own choices, once upon a time). 


And, of course, speculative fiction in general is just such a fun escape from the real world, which can often seem particularly mundane. Of course, I read and write a little bit of almost everything (Romance as a genre is completely out, though), but my heart will always be with dark speculative fiction.









4Q: I know this is a tough question but one that I find compelling. Which of the novels was your favorite from beginning to published work and why?




KH: Yes, that’s definitely a tough question! I love all of my novels completely, for very different reasons. But if we’re looking at the entire scope of from beginning to end, first line to publication and beyond, I’d have to say Daughter of the Drackan was my “favorite”. And that word can be interpreted so many ways! And it might be better for me to list why this book takes the “all around favorite” award, so here we go.

1)   This was my first completed novel, which I finished my junior year of high school on December 31^st, 2007 at 11:52 p.m. (I declined New Year’s Eve parties with my friends to finish the monster). At the time, it was roughly 210k words, which was eventually split up into the Gyenona’s Children duology.

2)   I learned so much about writing strong, independent, fierce, wild female main characters who are not particularly friendly or easily likeable—and how to create their interactions and the world around them to make their prickliness essential (and for which readers end up loving them even more).

3)   I learned how cutting 11k words nine years after finishing the first draft only improves the story.

4)   I queried the bajeezes out of Daughter of the Drackan, racking up 116 rejection letters from traditional publishing agents. That taught me so much about the traditional publishing query process and having a thick skin.

5)   This book started my Indie Author career.

6)   I learned that even an epic Grimdark Fantasy book rejected by 116 traditional agents can become an Amazon Bestseller in Dark Fantasy within its first year of publication all on its own.

7)   I definitely learned my lesson (three times over) about what not to do with book covers and how important it is to find the right cover designer.

8)   I taught myself (using some fantastic references for Indies) how to format ebooks to look exactly how I want by building them at the CSS HTML level. Just for this book first.

9)   This book has been a reader favorite and a perfect glimpse into the darkness of my writing for the last four and a half years of my Indie career. Fans still love it, and it was a Quarterfinalist in the 2019 Epic Fantasy Fanatics Readers Choice Awards.

10)                    This was my first attempt (unknowingly at the time) to include a piece of my own social commentary in an epic work of fantasy. This gave me the confidence to step it up a notch with the Blue Helix series (very different, far less subtle commentary, and for very different reasons). 

Photo credit: fanart.tv

Ten is a nice round number for this list 😉 But to sum it up, I learned more about my writing process, my craft, my capabilities, and what’s actually possible within an Indie Author (and now Indie Publisher) career through writing, editing, setting aside, editing again, querying, publishing, and re-branding Daughter of the Drackan. If I hadn’t done what I did with this first novel of mind, I definitely would not be where I am with the other five, with a seventh novel on the way, and so many more to come.







4Q: Please share a childhood memory or anecdote.




KH:  This qualifies as both a childhood memory and an anecdote, and I think right now, in the current times and everything this world is facing, that it’s an incredibly poignant snippet for me to remember and, of course, for me to share.

My dad is one of my biggest role models for so many things, and I’m so fortunate to be able to say that I have an incredible relationship with him in my adult life. We are so alike, and I find it funny and still endearing that I see myself reflecting him in even more ways as I keep growing as a person (and especially a parent).

afterimmoo.blogspot.com

For as long as I can remember, whenever I had a particularly rough day or headed to bed feeling anxious, upset, disappointed, or overwhelmed, my dad would tuck me into bed and tell me, “Just remember: Tomorrow is a new day. You get to wake up fresh and start all over again, improve your decisions and your mindset, and everything you’re feeling now will fade into yesterday.” 


When I was small, it brought me comfort. When I was a teenager, it made me roll my eyes. When I went through some of the roughest, lowest, darkest days of my life, it served as an anchor. And now I find myself saying it to my three-year-old, with the addition of, “That’s what Papa used to say to me every day when I was a kid.” But it’s so true, and I think it plays a huge role in my eventually shift from being a night-owl (working bars and restaurants from 6:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.) to absolutely being a morning person and waking up at 4:00 a.m. every morning (which also helps my writing brain).







4Q: Lets talk about your latest novel, Sleepwater Beat and the Blue Helix series. 



KH:  Sleepwater Beat turned out to be one of the most important and definitely the most well-received (so far) of my novels. It’s the first in the LGBTQ Dystopian Sci-Fi Blue Helix series and has opened up a whole new world of opportunities for me in both the genre and my Indie career. 


I published Sleepwater Beat in November of 2018 after a grueling four years of workshopping a short story with my writers group at the time, turning that short story into a novel, bashing my head against the wall because I wanted to “get it right”, querying traditional publishing agents and getting rejected by all of them, and finally deciding to put it out there as an Indie book with my other five novels at the time. Four and a half months later, this book became an International Bestseller on both Amazon and Kobo within the following genres: LGBTQ Fiction, Lesbian Fiction, Noir Sci-Fi, LGBTQ Sci-Fi, and Genetic Engineering and Conspiracy Sci-Fi (in the UK, Canada, Australia, Thailand, Japan, New Zealand, Denmark, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Lithuania, Germany, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, and India. There may be a few others). 


Long story short, this book got big, and when I signed an agreement with my publicist, things got even crazier. Sleepwater Beat is also an Award-Winning Sci-Fi Finalist in the 2019 International Book Awards, and I’ve been on live local news in Vermont (broadcasting also to Canada), as well as more podcasts, blogs, and magazines than I can list right here and not bore everyone to pieces. All to talk about Sleepwater Beat. 


This book has such a special place in my heart—my first time writing Dystopian Fiction in general, my first time writing LGBTQ Fiction and queer characters, my first “big” release, and one heck of a nail-biter when I finally published it. The main character, Leona “Leo” Tieffler, has more of Kathrin Hutson in her than any character I’ve written to date. The book draws directly from so many of my own experiences during the much darker period of my life (in which I didn’t write any fiction at all), and it was a bit of a terrifying experience to write so much of myself into a story, only slightly intentionally, before releasing it to the world. Apparently, I didn’t have to worry about it nearly as much as I did! 


Beyond being a fast-paced, heart-pounding page-turner crossing the line between Dystopian, Noir, and Thriller, Sleepwater Beat was written in large part as a fictional discourse on what I was seeing in the world and what I wanted to illuminate for others. I actually finished writing it just before the US Presidential Elections in 2016, and so many elements of the fictional world I created (our world set in the 2030s but with a Dystopian twist and a new “power” some people have developed called “the beat”) started to reveal themselves in our world. This book became a timely discourse on the opioid epidemic, late capitalism, the 24-hour news cycle, technology and pharmaceuticals, and ended up going so much deeper, too. What I really wanted was to shed light on a slew of marginalized communities (many of which I belong to myself), all through the lens of this fictional community of “beat-spinners” who are feared, hated, hunted, ostracized, and discriminated against purely because of their “beat”. I worked with LGBTQ characters, drug addicts and addiction survivors, survivors of abuse and broken homes, the homeless, the destitute, “black-market” dealing, and the generally seedy underbelly of society that does in part exist today and could potentially exist (the point of Sci-Fi, right?). And the point was to touch on these topics while simultaneously making them accessible to a much wider audience purely for the fact that it is very much fiction (while still reflecting the current times). 


Needless to say, it was a huge step forward for me as an author and for my entire Indie Publishing career. I’ve been told it reads like a thriller, and it’s even been compared to work by Peter Straub, which absolutely blew me away. I also realized this story and this world was in no way finished with Sleepwater Beat and Leo’s story, which prompted me to turn this into a series and write the next book, Sleepwater Static, which is set for publication on May 26^th, 2020. 


Sleepwater Static is a whole different animal, and while it continues the story on a broader scale, it dives a little deeper into supporting characters from Sleepwater Beat to tackle the same topics with an additional view into race, racism, transracial families, biracial people, and the climate of racial discrimination (and discrimination in general) still so prevalent and destructive in the world today. And I can’t wait to see how people respond to this second book in the series. (I thought writing Sleepwater Beat was so hard for being so close to home. Sleepwater Static can with its own set of trials, tribulations, and nights of really hoping I’ve done this right. So far, advanced readers and reviewers have told me I’ve succeeded).


The Blue Helix series will be at least three books (if not more), and I do think this is some of the most important work I’ve done for my own personal growth, as an author, and for potential readers of the Blue Helix series.







4Q: Have there been any favorite authors or persons in your life that has inspired you to write?




KH: I’ve been a fan of Stephen King for a long time (I read It when I was ten, and maybe I shouldn’t have… ha). My particular favorite is his Dark Tower series—a mash of Horror, Dark Fantasy, Arthurian Legend, and Western. He’s called it his magnum opus, and I agree (currently reading the series for the 10^th time right now). In my earlier years of writing, before I had enough experience writing in different voices and styles to come up with something more uniquely my own, I think I reflected (or tried to emulate) King’s writing style. Which is definitely not for everyone (I had one reader tell me the only fiction he read before finding my books was Stephen King. What a compliment!). The way King leaves Easter eggs throughout almost all his work touching on his other books and series fascinates me. I decided to do something a bit like this between The Unclaimed trilogy and my upcoming Vessel Broken series, and On Writing was a favorite read in high school.

Beyond that, I might be able to credit Jacquelyn Carey (author of the Kushiel’s Legacy series) for inspiration with my own Vessel Broken series and Stieg Larsson for helping to inspire the Blue Helix series and Leo Tieffler’s character (I’ve called Sleepwater Beat “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meets X-Men). Really, I could also credit all the fantastic fiction I’ve devoured over the last few decades and all the ideas they’ve sparked in my head. I don’t want to write like my favorites, but I do hope to take what I’ve learned from enjoying their stories and put my own unique twist on it to the same effect. 





4Q: In your opinion, what makes a great story?



KH: I am a firm believer in round, complex, flawed, and exciting characters being the driving force behind all great stories. Of course, the plot, action, intrigue, world-building, and a high quality of crafted writing are all very important as well. But when the characters surprise you, when they feel so real that they could almost leap off the page and smack you in the face, that’s when I believe the story is at its best. Written the right way, these types of characters can turn a mundane, everyday situation into a saga of suspense, horror, comedy, love, hope, despair, etc. As a reader, when I pick up something with characters that are flat, predictable, or have particularly cookie-cutter shapes, it doesn’t matter how intricate the plot or world is. I lose interest. It’s the characters that bring us closer to the story, closer to ourselves, and in some cases closer to each other. In my personal opinion, that’s the point of fiction in the first place.






4Q: What’s next for Kathrin, the author?




KH: Like I’ve said, I’m really gearing up for Sleepwater Static’s release on May 26^th. I have a feeling this might be an even bigger release than when I published the first in the series, and the end of May couldn’t come fast enough (it’ll be here before I know it).

I also have a severely dark LGBTQ Dark Fantasy series bordering on Horror in the works, Vessel Broken, and if all goes well, the first book Imlach Fractured will be out in October of 2020. Beyond that, I’m whipping up a fun little dark Urban Fantasy series, but I’m keeping that one under wraps for now. It’s so much fun to delve into so many different genres and put my own flavor on them, and as far as I can see, the tales will just keep coming.









4Q: Anything else you’d like to tell us about?



KH: Nothing immediately comes to mind. I’ve pretty thoroughly captured everything 😉

An Excerpt from Sleepwater Static, Book 2 in the Blue Helix series:

(Copyright is held by the author. Used with permission)

“Well it’s not like I can just go around South Carolina asking if people have some freak thing inside them they can’t explain. You know what’s about to happen with that anyway. They’re about to make what I do…” Bernadette shook her head and forced herself to whisper. “They’re about to make it a goddamn felony, Darrell. I saw a draft of that new bill. Nobody’s gonna just start steppin’ up and claiming they can do this, all proud and brave.”

“Come on. Destroyin’ government property ain’t exactly legit, either.”

“Mom… Dad?”

They both turned toward their daughter, who looked like she’d gotten something stuck in her throat. Olivia’s hand had moved from her chest to her neck now, rubbing at something there none of them could see.

“What’s wrong, baby? You need to get a glass of water or somethin’?”

“I don’t…” Olivia blinked and stared blankly at the table.

“Go get her some water.” Bernadette nodded into the kitchen. “We shouldn’t be talkin’ about this right here anyway.”

“Oh, sure. Just keep brushin’ me off like every other time I try to have the real hard conversations with you.” Darrell smacked a hand down on the doorway into the kitchen. “Damnit, B, I don’t even know when you’re gonna be home half the time. We ain’t sayin’ what needs to be said when you’re gone, and I’m not interested in pretendin’ you can’t do better with that thing you’ve been given.”

“You think I’m just wastin’ it, do ya?” Bernadette patted her own chest and stepped toward him, her neck craned back so she could hold his gaze. “Think there’s some perfect job waiting out there for me where I’m not doin’ somethin’ folks would generally frown upon? I’m not gonna sit behind a desk all day and kill myself for somethin’ I don’t believe in—”

“Yeah, you’re gon’ kill yourself, all right. Y’all are just as bad as—”

“Stop it!” Olivia lurched up from her seat, sending the chair clattering back against the wall behind the door. “Stop yelling at each other. This isn’t what y’all do! I know y’all love each other, so can’t you just act like…”

Her daughter’s words fizzled away somewhere in the back of Bernadette’s mind. As Olivia shouted at them from behind the kitchen table, Bernadette found herself focusing only on the tightness in her chest. Her throat closed, like some invisible hand had wrapped around it and squeezed. She tried to take a breath and choked on the effort. Her own hands went up to her throat, trying to free it from the sudden pressure. The burning in her lungs now was nothing like her own beat and everything like suffocating right there in the hall. When she staggered backward and thumped against the hallway wall, she looked up to see Darrell doubled over, holding himself up with a hand against the doorway while he coughed and tried to suck in a full breath that just wouldn’t come.

He dropped to one knee, and Bernadette’s awareness scrambled to find an answer. The carbon monoxide detectors would’ve gone off a long time ago, right? And what about Olivia?

Bernadette pushed herself off the wall, gasping and wheezing, and found herself on her hands and knees a second later. She looked up into the kitchen, reaching for her daughter. If this was it for her, fine. But she had to get Olivia outside. She had to get her child out of this before all three of them were—

“What’s… W-what’s going on?” Olivia stared at them and lurched out from behind the table. “Mama?” The girl froze there in the middle of the kitchen, her lower lip trembling as she stared at her parents falling over themselves in the hall.

The grip around Bernadette’s throat let off just enough for her take in a raw, searing, desperate gasp. Behind her, Darrell fell into a fit of coughing and sat back against the wall. Now she could breathe again. Now she could think, and the light in the kitchen seemed brighter than ever.

“Are you okay?” Olivia’s voice cracked, her eyes quickly filling with tears. The curls bursting from her pigtails shivered as a wave of trembling washed over the ten-year-old girl who’d just done what none of them had expected. What none of them could have ever known until it happened, just like this.

And that was exactly what it was. Bernadette was certain of it. She stared up at her daughter and for a moment just couldn’t move.

Olivia’s shaking hand returned to her own throat, as if she had to double-check that she was still inside her body. Still there. This was real. “Mama, I… I didn’t mean to—”

“Oh, baby.” Bernadette leapt to her feet and raced across the kitchen toward her daughter. The girl’s tiny, solid frame fit right into her arms, and Olivia let out a strangled sob.

“I couldn’t stop it—”

“No, no. Shh. It’s okay.” She wanted to squeeze her daughter tighter than she ever had, to press the girl so closely against her that it would suck all that horror and shame right out of Olivia and into Bernadette herself. “You’re okay. We’re all fine.”

“I’m sorry, Mama…”

“You didn’t know. We didn’t know, baby. Everything’s okay.” She stroked those dark, shivering curls and felt two small hands clutching at her jacket. Olivia bucked in her arms with silent tears, her entire body still trembling with all the reactions Bernadette had had to teach herself to rein in. But no one in Bernadette’s family had known what to do with a child who could make them feel something just because of the words she’d spoken, whether in rage or terror or spite or just because she fucking could.

But Olivia didn’t have that problem, did she? Bernadette might have considered her daughter lucky on that count and that count only. The girl wouldn’t have to go through this alone, because Bernadette was there, and Bernadette knew what this was.

A shadow passed over them in the living room, and she looked up to see Darrell standing behind them. Tears swam in the dark pools of his eyes too, and he bit his bottom lip as he studied his child and her mother—two-thirds of their family who now belonged to a world he accepted but could never fully understand.

She didn’t need to explain to him what had just happened. He already knew, and he didn’t have to say that he still stood by them no matter what. Darrell set a hand on the back of Bernadette’s neck. Olivia lifted her head for a gasping breath, her light-brown cheeks flushed and glistening with a layer of her own tears. When she saw her father standing there, the pain on that face—a face too young to have to feel anything like this—broke Bernadette’s heart. It was a pain that started right here with hoping her daddy still loved her, despite what he’d just watched her become. And no matter what Darrell did now, that pain would stay with Olivia for the rest of her life.

“Come here, baby.” That was all he had to say, and the girl threw herself against him. He lifted her up into his arms and ran his hand down her tight curls before burying his face in them. When he met Bernadette’s gaze again, everything he might have said but didn’t was right there in his eyes. They’d get through this too, just like they were getting through everything else. But where the rest of the world could see them and make their own judgments—a white woman and a black man raising their daughter in the South in the twenty-first century—no one would ever see the other legacy Olivia carried with her until it was too late. And how the fuck were they supposed to make sure that things never got that far?

Darrell sniffed and turned away, carrying their crying child out of the kitchen. Olivia had looked so damn grown up sitting at that table with her head in her books and a sharp, witty defiance against anything that got in her way. But in her daddy’s arms, she was still so terrifyingly small.

Bernadette stepped back against the counter beside the kitchen sink. Her own body trembled now too, and she clapped both hands over her mouth so they wouldn’t hear her crying beside the fridge. But her hands just weren’t strong enough to keep it all down.

Thank you, Kathrin, for being our featured guest this week. Wishing you continued success with your stories.

For you wonderful readers and visitors wanting to discover more about this talented author, please follow these links:



Kathrinhutsonfiction.com

Facebook.com/kathrinhutsonfiction

Instagram.com/kathrinhutsonfiction

Twitter.com/exquisitelydark

amazon.com/author/kathrinhutson

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14541725.Kathrin_Hutson

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