Reading and Writing Addiction was able to catch up with
Margo Bond Collins, Author of Waking Up
Dead, for an interview. We are pleased
to share this insightful interview today with our readers.
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| Margo Bond Collins, Author of Waking Up Dead |
RAWA: When did
you first discover that you were a writer?
MBC: I’ve been
a writer for as long as I can remember. I told stories before I could write,
and wrote them down as soon as I learned how to write.
RAWA: What is
your favorite part of writing?
MBC:I love
getting lost in the worlds in my imagination, in those moments that feel like
the words pour out on their own and it’s all I can do to keep up with them.
RAWA: What do
you think is the most challenging aspect of writing?
MBC: Editing!
Even when I know it will make my story and my writing stronger, I dread having
to try to decide what to cut and what to keep.
RAWA: Tell us
about your latest release.
MBC: In Waking Up Dead, Callie Taylor is
murdered in Dallas, but instead of going to Heaven or Hell, she winds up as a
ghost in Alabama. She doesn’t know how or why she’s there, but when she sees
another woman murdered, she knows she can’t rest until the killer is brought to
justice.
RAWA: How did
you come up with the title of your book?
MBC: My grandmother
used to warn us that if we weren’t careful, we would wake up dead some day.
It’s an old Texas saying and it always made me laugh. When Callie’s story came
to me, I could almost hear my grandmother’s voice.
RAWA: Who are
some of your favorite authors?
MBC: Lois
McMaster Bujold, Connie Willis, Neil Gaiman, Stephen Messer, Ilona Andrews,
Carrie Vaughn, Rachel Vincent, Janny Wurts, Holly Black, Faith Hunter . . . and
too many more to list!
RAWA: What do
you think has influenced your writing style the most?
MBC: In my other
life, I’m a college writing and literature professor. The process of getting a
Ph.D. in English forced me to learn to pare down my writing and to make it as
clear and direct as possible. Working with students to help them improve their
writing has taught me what sorts of problems I should look for in my own
writing. And finally, reading some portion of everything from the classics of
Homer through modern graphic novels has taught me to take inspiration where I
find it.
RAWA: As a
writer what is the accomplishment that you are most proud of?
MBC: I have
two novels coming out in the next eighteen months, but they were accepted by
different publishers within two weeks of one another; having both of them
accepted so quickly made for an excellent month!
RAWA: How did
you get published?
MBC: I made a
list of publishers who were interested in works in my genre and submitted to
all of them. I kept a running list of where I had submitted, and when
rejections came in, I crossed that publisher off the list.
RAWA: Do you
have any advice for writers looking to get published?
MBC: Ignore
rejection! The very best advice I ever got was to keep writing and keep
submitting; just because one or two or a dozen or fifty publishers turn down
your book doesn’t mean that it’s not good—it just means that the right
publisher hasn’t seen it yet. Don’t get bogged down in waiting to hear back
about your current submission; just keep moving forward on your work in
progress (and always have a work in progress!).
Waking Up Dead by Margo Bond Collins is published by Solstice Publishing and available at Amazon.com
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