Friday 31 January 2014

Interview with R. V. Doon

Today I'm delighted to welcome R. V. Doon, author of 'The War Nurse.'

About the book


The War Nurse is a heart-rending story of two Americans, a civilian nurse and doctor, caught in the Philippines when WWII interrupts their newfound love. As the bombs fall, Katarina Stahl frees a German doctor accused of spying. This impulsive act haunts her throughout the war’s duration and, it even sets off a chain of tragic events for her German-born parents in New York. Jack Gallagher surrenders to the Japanese at Bataan, but his pregnant war bride, Katarina, begins a journey into depraved darkness as Manila descends into chaos and occupation. Every choice she’s forced to make to avoid interment and starvation causes Jack’s memory to fade. By the war’s end, she’s earned the nickname given to her by the soldiers on Bataan...but will Jack still love her?
Excerpt

Red Cross Surgical Outpost
The Philippines
December 7, 1941 International Date Line

The jungle’s heart quit beating.
Katarina Stahl froze on the hacked-out jungle path, lantern swinging in her right hand, listening for a sign of danger. Local Filipinos paid attention to the sudden hush of insect song and feral animal noises. She experienced the same tunnel vision, cold hands, and pounding pulse as when a patient stopped breathing. Her muscles tensed awaiting a cry for help that never came.
“Where is Miss Stahl?” Doctor von Wettin’s muffled shout came from behind her.
Katarina took a deep breath and quickened her pace, hoping to avoid him. Two years ago, she’d left behind home, family, and all her regrets to be a Red Cross nurse in Manila. In paradise, her nightmares slowly became tranquil dreams. Then Jack Gallagher came back into her life. Unwilling to let the past threaten her future again, she traded in her newfound peace for the sweeter agonies of lying in his familiar arms. She hoped he wasn’t a mistake.
“Wait,” Doctor von Wettin yelled, but she ducked inside her tent.
Keeping the lamp dim, she changed into a swishy blue dress and slipped into heels. A metallic glint from underneath her discarded clothing caught her eye. Jack, you dope.
Smiling, she grabbed his gift to wear for good luck. A sharp piece stung her finger and she dropped it. Oh, swell. She stared at the puncture mark; no itching or swelling, just a bead of crimson. Licking the blood off, she turned up the light and then leaned over to examine the primitive necklace using a discarded sax reed.
“Miss Stahl,” von Wettin said in a loud voice from outside the tent, “how dare you plot to kidnap my wife? I will issue charges.”
Minka kept the letter? “Sir, a moment, please?”
Drat that man! Two weeks in the jungle doing medical charity work, and he picked the last night to stir conflict? She took a deep breath and concentrated on the odd necklace.
The leather cord held a rock wrapped in red silk, a shark’s tooth, and three metal medallions in shapes of a circle, a triangle, and a square. Etchings and inscriptions covered the medals. Jack wouldn’t have given her a native amulet that Filipino’s called anting-anting. Anting-anting was similar to the more familiar voodoo gris-gris from her New Orleans childhood. Both required blood to sanctify their magic. Katarina knew such charms were meant for the superstitious, but couldn’t help flinching as chills goosed her neck.
Did someone mean to frighten her? Well, hexed or not, she was going on stage to play jazz in public. Feeling punchy, she put on the anting, grabbed the sax, and confronted von Wettin. “You’re confused, doctor.”
He held up a lantern while his gaze swept up her body. Flushed, he waved a fistful of letters in the air. “Nein. I have proof.”
“Can this wait? I’m due on stage.”
He smacked the letters against his thigh. “No, cousin, it cannot.”
His careless words chilled her. “We agreed to keep our connection quiet.”
“It no longer amuses me. Did Minka ask you to smuggle her to Honolulu?”
Von Wettin would never be called charming, but imposing would be accurate. Tall and barrel-chested, he wore civilian clothes like a military uniform. His sharp blue eyes behind round glasses lent him a piercing gaze and a commanding presence. Katarina knew his eyes were colorblind to red hues, and to her, the flaw lessened his impact.
Applause from the amateur show interrupted their silence.
Her skin prickled under his glare. “Minka panicked. She expected you to be recalled to Germany. War and raising babies don’t mix. Good thing she had a false alarm.”
“You blame my wife?” Anger stuttered his words, and the letters brushed her cheek.
She stepped back and shoved his arm away. “I tried to help my cousin.”
Minka von Wettin had let slip at a bridge tournament that his stammer preceded violence. Katarina observed clenched fists, gritted teeth, and stormy eyes. He wouldn’t have to strike her to cause harm—no, he could ruin her happiness with whispered words.
“Your hand is icy.” He looked amused. “You fear me?”
The larger envelope with official stamps caught her attention. She squinted at the address. Katarina grabbed the letter out of his hand and stared at the expensive stationery. The words blurred as more chills swept up her spine.
The German Consul in Manila had addressed it to her father in New York. Katarina’s vision blurred as she considered the consequences of such a letter arriving at her parent’s modest home. Her younger brothers’ sweet faces flitted through her mind, and her nervous tension erupted. She kicked von Wettin in the kneecap.
He dropped the lantern and letters before doubling over. Curses followed in German. “Why?” he shouted, glancing up.
She rammed the sax bow into his forehead, snapping his black glasses. He staggered backward against another tent as blood seeped down his buttoned white shirt. Oh, no. Reacting without thought of consequences was a family curse. Katarina gathered the other letters he dropped. “Never interfere with my family! Thanks to you, my friendship with Minka is over.”
She fled to the alfresco stage lights.
Jack Gallagher quit pacing when he saw her and grinned. He wore black pants and a white cotton shirt open to the chest. His dark hair had been slicked back, but a wayward lock fell like a spike between shiny green eyes. Her insides warmed up. God, she loved this man.
“Those my love letters . . . what’s wrong, baby?”
She took a deep breath. “I’ll play sax, you sing.”
“Girls can’t play jazz. Not even in N’awlins.”
“I can bust the notes same as you.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “Trouble follows when people break rules.”
“Who makes the rules? I want to do what I love with the man I love.”
The onstage act concluded to applause.
He stepped closer and pressed his lips against her neck. Her breath caught and the spot felt red hot. He examined the anting necklace. “Scared of something?”
She kissed his lopsided chin dimple. “Not with you around.”
“You’re on,” Jack said, and jumped onto the stage. Two men joined him, and Jack informed them of the change. They nodded. Excited, she tucked the letters under a chair leg.
Jack turned to face the crowd and held up his arms. “Ladies and gents, give us a moment to warm up. Tonight we’re playing some good ole boogie-woogie from N’awlins.”
The crowd hollered and clapped.
Heart stampeding, Katarina took the stage. She tried to moisten the reed, but her spit had dried. Her first notes came out flat—nerves. Ignoring catcalls, she looked past the crowd to feel the vibe. Then she was in the tube, notes flowing out like rippled satin.
Jack’s head bobbed as he counted, “One anda two anda three.”
Katarina took lead and blasted out the first song.
Some people cheered, others stared with mouths agape.
Confident now, she began to pour it on, hitting the sweet notes. The drummer and trumpet player followed her lead without missing a beat.
Jack shouted, “Yeah, baby.”
Her squabble with von Wettin faded with every note. She was sick of him. Staff missed meals to avoid his chronic boasts of being descended from royalty. Minka was a fantastic bridge partner, but her friendship wasn’t worth enduring one more day of him. She rued the day Minka uncovered their common relatives in Dresden, Germany.
They concluded the number to wild applause. Jack shouted, “Wasn’t my girl grand?”
Nurses cheered her. Laughing, Katarina blew a kiss to them.
Jack winked and finger snapped the next count. He sang, “You lied to me,” and shot an ardent glance at her—“kitten.” She saw her friend and fellow Red Cross nurse, Corazon Castillo, burst out laughing.
Katarina poured her heart into the music and wondered if women would ever play instruments in bands. After Jack concluded the song, she and the trumpet player bowed.
When she looked up, instead of a dazzling, starry sky, she saw an orange fireball flanked on both sides by smaller flame trails dropping from the heavens. It headed straight for the stage. As people cheered for more, she couldn’t react. The impending disaster petrified her. 
About the author

R.V. Doon is a registered nurse with a wide variety of experience and certification in emergency medicine, critical care, and clinical research. She’s been a bedside nurse, nurse manager, and teacher. Her nursing experience has given her unique insight into the human condition. While working she wrote novels and short stories until one mystery was a finalist in a national contest. Now R.V. writes across genres from medical and dark fantasy thrillers, to cozy mysteries and historical family sagas.

She lives in historic Mobile, Alabama on the beautiful Gulf Coast with her husband. R.V. loves seafood, deep sea fishing, and she’s recently taken up sailing. She’s also a caffeine and chocolate addict. If she’s not home writing, she can be found reading in a comfortable book nook.


Welcome to the hot seat. So, if you're ready, let's get started:

1. Can you tell us what prompted you to first start writing? What was the first thing you wrote?

As a child, I went through a period after surgery when I couldn’t talk. I learned then if I didn’t write down exactly what I wanted or needed, I would have to do without it when the adults left the room. At twelve, I wrote an ode to my horse, Trampus. He liked it as I recall.


2. Can you summarize your latest work in just a few words?

A civilian nurse in war-torn Manila makes a tragic decision that haunts her, the man she loves, and her German-born parents in New York. Basically, it’s a story about mistakes and how they come back to haunt, especially during desperate times.

3. What was the inspiration for this book?

Two things stretched years apart. I went to get a surgical consent form signed by an elderly patient, and he asked me how painful it would be afterward. I described the normal recovery and his grandson said, “Pops can take it. He’s a Bataan survivor. The pride and love I witnessed in their close relationship made me study that period in history. He survived the surgery, but I never saw them again.

Second, we had back to back hurricanes on the Gulf Coast and tons of downed trees, especially in pecan orchards. That’s when I learned that German military POWs planted acres of pecan trees in Alabama. The men carved their names on the trees. I started reading a book on the POWs, and the author mentioned the civilian camp locations for Japanese, German, and Italian aliens. So these unrelated ideas rolled around in my head, and The War Nurse popped out.

           
4. Did you do any research for the book?

Tons. The inter-loan library program was fabulous. My public library found rare books in universities that were long out of print. I devoured first hand survivor accounts, studied the civilian internment camps in America and of course the one in Manila. I read three different accounts written by Americans held in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila. I read newspaper stories. Finally, there are several great non-fiction books documenting the army nurses and doctors experiences on Bataan. The women went into the internment camps and the men became POWs.


5. How do you decide on the names for your characters?

Strangely, this is a hard question. I don’t name them until their faces jell, and this is helped along by clipping pictures from magazines. They never look exactly like the pictures, but once I know how the characters look and move the name comes naturally. Katarina came first, but sadly most people pronounce her name as Katrina. I change the secondary character names at will, but the main characters I never change once I start. So far I’ve never used a name generator, but one day I might give it a whirl.

    
6. Which writers have influenced your own writing?

I know I’m supposed to quote a list of well know and probably dead ones.  Every writer I’ve ever read has influenced me. They hooked me on story and made me an unabashed bookworm.

In all honesty, I should mention the librarian in my small town. She influenced me more than the authors I read. She used to ask me what I liked and disliked about the books, and she would suggest new authors based on my answers. Once when I complained about a book’s ending, she told me to remember what I didn’t like; so I wouldn’t do the same when I became a writer.

7. What are you working on next? Do you have a WIP?

My sister read The War Nurse and challenged me to write a romance. According to her, she thought I’d missed my calling. I’ve finished it and now I’m hunting beta readers. I’m halfway through the second book in my dark fantasy thriller series, and I’ve plotted my next cozy mystery. So, I’m busy.


8. What has been the best part of the writing process…and the worst?

The best part for me was stepping off the career track to follow a life-long dream. I admire the people who jump in early before they get in established careers with mortgage payments looming overhead. I wish I had.

The worst part was realizing that after writing medical jargon and bullet notes for years, I’d forgotten more than one grammar rule. Thank goodness for editors.
    
9. Tell us about your childhood.
    
I’m proof positive of the power of wishing. I wished for a horse so much that my parents to this day still can’t explain what happened. Naturally, I told them I knew how to do everything because I’d read it in books. Take a shy girl and give her a horse...a whole new person emerges. I wouldn’t change those years for anything in this world. My childhood was reading, riding, and swimming.

10. What book(s) are you reading at the moment?

The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally
An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Come Back To Me by Melissa Foster




Links



Monday 27 January 2014

Interview with Jane Jackson

About the author


With 28 books published and world-wide sales, Jane Jackson (who writes medical and contemp romance as Dana James) is passionate about historical romance spiced with adventure and intrigue.
She taught the Craft of Novel Writing at summer schools and as a module of the MA course in Professional Writing at the University College Falmouth. Ten of her former students are now traditionally published novelists.
Married with an expanding family she lives in Cornwall.






About the book- A place of birds


Nineteen-year-old Susanna Elliot rebels against her strict Quaker upbringing, which alienates her from her family and community. Rejected by the doctor she admires, and refused permission to take her dead brother's place in the family business, she flees to join her two cousins on their mission to China. All three leave Falmouth for Shanghai aboard a schooner owned by Lowell Hawke.  Hawke's daring exploits have made him a legend along the Chinese coast and Susanna finds herself in danger – and love...
  
Welcome to the blog, Jane. Now if you're ready ...?


What prompted you to first start writing?
As soon as I could talk I was making up stories to tell my younger sister. Learning to read got me hooked on books. At school I loved writing essays. It just evolved from there.

Can you summarise your latest work in just a few words?
A young woman flees Cornwall for China, faces death and finds love.

Did you do any research for this book?
Masses!  I learned about pearl diving in the South China Sea; jade carving; well-intentioned but inept missionaries; opium and the two wars it caused; Yangtze pirates; and trade in Shanghai.

What does a typical writing day involve for you?
Afternoons are my creative time so I try to keep them free for work on the current book. Mornings are usually hectic as I juggle housework, dealing with email, drafting posts for my website blog, and promo work for backlist titles newly released as paperback and ebooks. I also try to fit in a walk every day even if it's just the half-mile to the village for shopping. Fresh air and a change of scene often produce solutions to story problems.

Do you have a WIP?
With two more paperbacks out between now and May and a brand new historical romance out in June I'm never without one!  I'm at the beginning of an exciting new project – a 'cosy' contemporary Cornwall-based book about a widowed genealogist.  My publisher and I hope this will be the first of a series.  

What has been the best part of the writing process...and the worst?
I love research because it opens doors into worlds I knew little or nothing about.  I enjoy planning the book: choosing situations and events that create the most emotionally engaging and dramatic story from among all the possible 'what ifs?'  I interview the characters, learning who they are and how they feel from not simply from what they tell me, but their tone of voice, body language, and what they refuse to reveal. I know the book is going well when they take over and leave me trying to keep up with what's happening.  
I'm not so keen on all the promo expected of authors.  I would prefer my books to speak for themselves.  But it's a necessary part of the job now.  Letting people know about a new book while not irritating them by pushing it too hard is like walking a tightrope – balance is everything.  

Do you plot your novels or allow them to develop as you write?
When I first started writing novels I was a 'pantster.' I'd done my research, knew the period, background, characters and a starting point, and launched into the story from there. It worked. My books were accepted and published with rarely more than a single page of edits.  But life became complicated and after being away from the story for days or weeks at a time trying to pick up the threads was really difficult.  So I started planning. I know authors who fear they'll get bored if they know where the story is going. I found the opposite: that it gives me scope for a more complex plot. Besides, if you don't know where you're going, how will you know when you've got there?  You might stop too soon and miss something amazing. I think of my plan as a road map of my story. It shows my intended route from starting point to destination with 4-6  major events along the way that build to the climax. What it doesn't show is the state of the road – is it smooth or rocky; expected events that might force detours, or weather creating drama, danger and delay.  Best of all, it's not written in stone. If your characters suddenly take off in a direction you hadn't foreseen you can follow them, safe in the knowledge that if it proves to be a dead end you can easily retrace your steps and rejoin the planned route. If this new direction is better for your story you can adapt your plan accordingly.

What book/s are you reading at the moment?
I read voraciously in many genres.  I've just finished reading Ranulph Feinnes' 'Cold.' His power to drive himself on in circumstances that would kill most of us is simply awesome; as is the fact that he has raised over £10 million for charity. I'm currently switching between Jane Austen, Lesley Horton, Nora Roberts writing as JD Robb, David Baldacci, Michael Connelly, Georgette Heyer,  Lesley Cookman's cosy crime series 'Murder In...' CJ Box's Joe Pickett series about a game warden in Wyoming is another favourite, as is Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series set in Canada.  I adore Terry Pratchett's Discworld series; Kate Hardy's medical romances, and Jodi Taylor's Chronicles of St Mary's, 'Just One Damned Thing After Another' and 'A Symphony of Echoes.'  I'm currently reading 'The Semi-Detached Marriage' written in 1830 by Emily Eden, and it's superb: hilarious, and a wonderful study of human nature.

Do you have any advice for new writers?
Read – as much and as widely as you can. You won't write well unless you do.  Worried about absorbing someone else's style? Don't be. It's not that easy. (If it were, everyone would be doing it)  Write about what moves you deeply. If you are not passionate about your characters and their story, how can you expect to grab and hold readers?  If you are planning to self-publish, employ a first-rate editor. It will be worth every penny to have an expert and unbiased eye help shape your story into one that will hook readers on the first page, keep them riveted until the last, then immediately search for your other titles. 

Thanks so much for inviting me onto allthingsbookie, Julie.