Guest post – Deb Atwood

Deb’s blog, peninherhand, is full of delicious ghost story reviews. As this is one of my favorite things to read – ghost stories! – you can imagine why I am a fan. Add to this a beautiful photo of her and her dog and you can see why I’m often visiting her blog. As part of my new year resolution of hosting guest posts by bloggers I’ve come in contact over the years, I’m very happy Deb has agreed to be a part of this. Here are my questions and her answers. More guest posts to come in the following months.

1. Who are you?

Aside from a year in Utah and another in London, I’m a long-time Californian, earning my BA and MFA here. I’m a reader who maintains a stack of books by the bed. When the stack runs low, I get the shakes. I’m also sort of a research fiend. That’s the great thing about being an author—you get to find out cool stuff about whatever piques your interest, and it doesn’t even have to be for your current project. In my case, that includes studying Korean for five years as well as traveling throughout the “hermit kingdom.” I also picked up factoids about celadon pottery, martial arts, car trunks, samurai swords, adoption, shamanism, and iguanas. Writers are like magpies. We collect shiny bits first and figure out what to do with them later.

2. Why do you blog and what is your blog about?

On my blog I set out to be the go-to girl of ghostlit (okay, maybe no longer a girl). Just like Lucy from Peanuts who sits behind a desk offering advice, I wanted to match readers to ghost novels. Ghostlit fascinates me partly because it’s not actually a genre. You can come across ghost novels in Literary, Women’s Fiction, Mystery, Romance, really any kind of genre you read—yes, even horror—but it can be hard to locate. I review these ghost novels on my blog because I love to read them (and I even wrote one). I’m branching out now to include reviews of young adult contemporary and doglit. I’m currently writing a young adult novel featuring a service dog and finding myself drawn to books covering this new topic as well. I guess I read and review what I like to write. Or is it the other way around?

3. Favorite books/authors/genres.

Age of Innocence/Edith Wharton/historical
Catch 22/Joseph Heller/literary
Emma/Jane Austen/literary
The Madwoman of Chaillot/Jean Giraudoux/drama
Second Glance/Jodi Picoult/women’s fiction
A Single Shard/Linda Sue Park/historical middle grade.

4. Kindle or paper book?

Both are great as long as I’m reading! I like the Amazon feature of downloading 10 % so that I can preview a novel I’m thinking of buying. So handy! If it’s an old book, I love to check it out from the library. There’s nothing like the smell of leather and the touch of fine paper to get me in the reading mood. When I’m doing research, I find it’s much easier to locate a passage or consult the index in a physical book.

5. Three things you learned from a book.

From the opening pages of Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, I learned that prose can be poetry. I learned that forgiveness and redemption are the noblest of themes. And much later I learned that writings inform and interweave with each other and with the past. Alan Paton was so moved by The Grapes of Wrath that he set out to do for South Africa what Steinbeck had done for the Dust Bowl.

6. Best book to take with you on a desert island.

I would take Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. I love this book, and it would make a great companion because of the unique characters and intelligent writing and ironic wit. More than that, though, Neverwhere offers so many connections to mythology, classics, fairy tales, and metaphysics that I could spend hours untangling all the allusions.

7. Best book to use as a doorstop.

My house is almost one hundred years old, so I favor a vintage book, perhaps something in burgundy tooled leather. Paradise Lost would do nicely. It’s big and fat, and if an earthquake traps me in my room, I would have something seminal to read since Paradise Lost has inspired such masterworks as Of Mice and Men and Frankenstein. Plus, there’s a part of me that would like to have John Milton at my feet, a man who was not nice to his daughters. When he knew he was going blind, he taught them to read Greek and Latin poetry. But Milton would not teach his daughters the meanings of these languages, so they sat for hours reading to him without understanding a word.

8. Last book that made you cry.

Meant For You by Edie Claire
I’m not a crier, not generally, though for some reason children working as school crossing guards can prick my eyes with tears – their shiny whistles and stop signs and somber expressions. Meant For You, a work of romantic suspense, does not include crossing guards, but the novel does touch another of my soft spots – the adoption quest. Though Meara has been raised by loving parents, she always wondered about her birth story, and Meant For You proves the perfect medium for the unfolding of her surprising discoveries. My family has been impacted by adoption (and my fiction inevitably references adoption in some way or other), so I was probably already primed for some tears. By the way, they were happy tears.

9. Favorite quotes.

Everyone knows that as one wears pearls, little by little, they become real…And isn’t it exactly the same with memories?

~ Jean Giraudoux.

Men have had every advantage of us in telling their story…the pen has been in their hands

~ Jane Austen.

10. Three tips for bloggers.

* Please use black type. When I visit a site with white or red type, I click off right away. White and many other colors are nearly impossible to read and will give visitors headaches.
* Establish an engaging voice. Marti does a good job of this in her blog What Has Been Read Cannot Be Unread.
* Make sure your menu and sign-up bar are easy to navigate.

11. Best/worst blogging experience.

I had a blast participating in my first Armchair BEA. Every morning the facilitators would post a writing prompt related to books. I so enjoyed composing responses to the prompts and having conversations about books with other bloggers. I highly recommend this annual event for book bloggers.

12. You are also a writer. Tell us more about your book.

A doll…a ghost…a love that transcends time. My women’s fiction novel Moonlight Dancer is about how we are connected in ways we may not know. Kendra JinJu Macgregor, a UC Berkeley student, discovers an antique Korean doll in a dusty warehouse. Once she brings home her purchase, her dog reacts with fear, and items go missing only to reappear. When unexplained events escalate, Kendra seeks the help of Hiro Piretti, the expert in Asian art who sold her the doll. Together they begin to uncover the past of NanJu—a ghost who will soon draw Kendra to war-torn 16th century Korea to right a grievous wrong and prevent murder.

13. What is your writing routine like? Do you have one?

I write longhand on the backs of used manuscript pages or pieces of junk mail. It’s less intimidating to scrawl my words on brightly colored sheets of paper destined for the recycling bin than onto a blank computer screen. Ice water and milky coffee are at the ready. Sometimes I sip boricha, Korean barley tea. Keiko Matsui, Kitka, or Bach play in the background. Then I type onto my ancient, heavy laptop.

14. Three tips for writers.

* Read all the time in as many different genres as you can and observe how writers resolve plot and characterization issues.
* Attend a writing conference or retreat. You’ll come away refreshed and inspired (and tired).
* Move your body. Walk, swing, or take a step or twirling class. Movement, especially back and forth or circular, stimulates the right brain, your creative center. When I have a writing problem to solve, I pose it to myself right before my weekly step class. By the end of class, I have my answer. A train’s rocking motion works, too.

15. What are you most passionate about?

Do I get to choose more than one? I love ghosts and all things Korean, but right now I’m feeling pretty passionate about service dogs. I’m in awe of sniffing dogs like the Belgian Malinois that parachute out of planes to hunt for bombs, and the allergen canines like the Portuguese Water dog who alert their owners to deadly substances. The novel I’m working on features one of the latter that has been trained to detect peanuts. I’m also a sucker for service dog stories, especially those about formerly homeless dogs. Operation Freedom Paws is a wonderful organization in Gilroy, CA that rescues dogs from shelters and places them with veterans suffering from PTSD. Something simple like standing behind a veteran in line at the grocery store to prevent him/her from being bumped and scared by another shopper can make the difference in that vet’s quality of life. I marvel that an animal can sense just what its owner needs and move into position to provide care and protection.

Ask me a question.

Goody! I’m interested to know how you came by your unique name. Delia, a diminutive of Cordelia, appears to be Welsh, meaning sea jewel. How lovely! There’s also a Greek shepherdess by that name. Do you identify with Lear’s daughter or with the shepherdess from Delos or…?

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Thank you, Delia, for the opportunity to introduce myself to your readers! It’s been fun talking about a subject near and dear to my heart—me. I have enjoyed reading your posts and will continue to be an avid follower. Cheers!