Now Playing: Christy Tillery French
Topic: Dames Dozen (interviews)
1. Tell us about your latest published book and your current writing project. Aging with Gentle Attitude includes humorous, light-hearted comments and opinions on aging and personal views on life’s experiences throughout the years. Articles are interspersed with collected humor and nostalgic tidbits reminiscent of days and times seniors knew, and can relate to, with a tender regard for the past. It stresses a viewpoint that includes acceptance of change and a hopeful attitude toward the future. Aging with Gentle Attitude is an appealing book for seniors and others interested in the many experiences of their parents and grandparents.
2. Your Jeannie, a Texas Frontier Girl series has been compared by reviewers and readers to the Laura Ingles Wilder Little House on the Prairie series. How do you feel about that? What do you think the two series have in common? What are the differences?
I am flattered and most pleased to be given that comparison. The two series have in common similar customs, traditions, and values of the frontier in our country in the mid eighteen hundreds. The Jeannie books are set on the Texas frontier, and the Little House books are set in the central part, the frontier prairie states of our country. The Jeannie books are more about ranch life, and the Little House books are more about farm life.
3. You write fiction and nonfiction. Which do you prefer to write and why?
I enjoy writing in both genres as much depends on the story to be told and the events to be reviewed.
4. Do you have a specific writing regimen? If so, what is it?
I usually write in the mornings when I feel energetic and fresh.
5. Do you do anything “outside the box” in regards to promoting?
My main objective now in marketing and promotion is to write letters to libraries, schools and bookstores. I don’t do many booksignings, although I did in the first year of my Jeannie books. I am a senior citizen touching on “eighty young years” and I find I don’t have energy for more activity. I have also decided, at this time, after ten published books, my writing is for family and friends for the most part and those in the media who have previously purchased books, or are interested in a purchase via my promotion letters.
6. What’s your most favorite thing about writing? What’s your least favorite?
My favorite thing about writing is to be able to communicate in such a way that the reader feels as if he is “in the scene” and is interested in the life of the protagonist, as if he were his friend. My least favorite thing about writing is a lack of personal motivation and a lack of interesting plot development.
7. Who’s your biggest fan?
My biggest fans are probably my email author friends who have been most supportive of all my books and in writing their great reviews; also, my immediate family, including my helpful editing friend and husband, Elmer McDaniel.
8. Who are your favorite authors? Have any influenced your writing?
My favorite authors are those who have written quality western fiction and other kinds of fiction that have been made into excellent movies and TV series, specifically, Larry McMurtry. My roots are in Central Texas and McMurtry’s are in the Texas panhandle. We have experienced lifestyles in our early years that are similar.
9. What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Work hard, study and learn all you can about writing. Edit and revise and send your best effort to the publisher. Don’t give up when rejection slips arrive. I have received many. It isn’t that your work is inferior as much depends on the needs of the publisher. Remember, the more you write, the better your skill. One’s writing can always be improved. It is never a “finished” work. I am continuing to learn. And do remember, money and fame are not the primary concern. Most of us will never get rich from writing. We write to share, to promote our theme, to instruct, to give to others in some worthy way through our writing. We need to write to bring pleasure, to uplift, and to entertain our readers.
10. Tell us something about your part of the country – we love to travel.
Southern California has many sources of interest. I live about sixty miles from San Diego so there are all the tourist attractions available from the Pacific Ocean to Sea World, museums, theaters, and Old Town. In Temecula, a city of l00,000, there are many restaurants, a large shopping mall, smaller stores, theaters, and several miles away, a large Indian Casino called Pechanga. The casino attracts large numbers of folks from the Southern California area. Temecula has many beautiful trees, flowers and shrubs growing in landscaped yards of lovely new homes. It is located in a warm valley surrounded by rolling hills. One can drive to nearby Palomar, the Observatory, to Julilan, where apple tree orchards grow, to Beaumont where there are cherry trees, and take a drive to Palm Springs an hour away, and two hours away are Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear in the San Bernardino mountains.
11. Chat about your pets – we love them, too.
No pets but prefer small dogs like cocker poos.
12. What’s your favorite Southern food?
I like Cracker Barrel for good Southern food. There are no Cracker Barrels in Southern California that I know of.
For more information about Evelyn, go to: http://www.authorsden.com/evelynhoran
