Author Interview: Jane Kirkpatrick

Today's Author Interview is with historical novelist Jane Kirkpatrick. Jane, who lives at the end of an eleven-mile-long dirt road in rural Oregon, is a prolific and award-winning writer. The list of her books are on her website. She blogs here. Jane's newest novel is A Flickering Light.

There's a substantive comment contest attached to this interview, for readers in the U.S. Make a comment (more than "me me!") and I'll put your name into consideration. The prize is a copy of Jane's new novel, A Flickering Light. On May 8, I'll draw and post a name from amongst the commenters to be the winner. Said winner has until May 13 to send me their mailing address. Email me here.

Welcome, Jane! Tell us who you are and what you do.
I’m a writer and rancher living in eastern Oregon, the dry side we like to call it. For a number of years I worked in mental health as a therapist, administrator and later as a consultant in early childhood programs on the Warm Springs Indian reservation in Oregon. My husband I raise hay now on our 160 acres along the John Day River. His son works for us full time. I’m a retired Clinical Social Worker.

What type of writer are you? Do you plan ahead/plot or do you simply fly by the seat of your pants?
I’m a mix of both. I don’t officially outline or plot but I spend a lot of time preparing for the book, making a timeline for the character, identifying the major life events in his/her life, creating the arc of the story. I have an idea of the turning point in the characters' lives and the beginning and ending. Since I write most stories based on the lives of actual people, their lives tell me much of the plot, but I get to fill in the blanks of why they did what they did when they did. That’s the fun part. The historical research also often changes my plot as I’m going along so I’m still researching as I’m writing. I also refer to the book Structuring Your Novel by Meredith and Fitzgerald and do some of the exercises they suggest before I ever start writing. I’ve done that with 15 novels now and it helps. If I have to write a synopsis, I have to write the whole book first and THEN do the chapter by chapter.

Do you write best at a certain time of the day?
When I’m in my writing mode, which is usually December through March, I write early in the morning, often from 4:00 a.m. until 5:00 in the afternoon with a break for lunch. When I’m in the promoting and researching mode which is the rest of the time, I may not get up that early, but I usually write every day for several hours. I can’t wait for inspiration. I have contracts to meet. :)

What food or snack keeps the words flowing?
Great question! String cheese. And almonds.

What sparks a story?
Could be anything! I once read a quote from a physicist (I’m not one!) who, when asked if he had any advice for young people, said yes: tell them to find something strange and thoroughly explore it. That’s what I do, I think, look for the unanswered question to something strange. We visited a beautiful state park one time and on all the kiosk information we learned about the man who developed this amazing garden, built the estate, and that he gave it to his wife. Her name was only mentioned once throughout the park and I wondered, what kind of woman would inspire this and why don’t people talk about her? That led me to A Gathering of Finches. Each book has some similar beginning like that. For A Flickering Light, it was wondering about my grandmother as a photographer and how she fell in love with her very married mentor…how did that impact her life and frankly, how might it have impacted my own all these years later?

What was it about your genre that interested you enough to choose to write in it and not in another genre?
I never liked history in school. Too many dates to memorize. In graduate school (my first degree was in communications and public address, not clinical social work) we had to study the great speeches of the world and explore why they were remembered. From Cicero to LBJ. Anyway, to discover the why of a speech, one had to know the context, what else was happening. That piqued my interest in history and I realized then that I had always loved reading historical novels and getting my history that way. I think of historical novels this way: history is the spine but the people, what they did, the landscapes they did it in, their relationships, their work and their faith, those things make up the blood and flesh of the story. Without the people brought to life, the spine is just a skeleton. I had written nonfiction and been published before trying fiction but once I went there, I didn’t want to come back so I do both. I’m sure the mental health part of me was intrigued too by exploring the landscapes of the mind, but that isn’t limited to historical novels.

Character you wish you had created?
Oh, Mamah Borthwick Cheney who was the paramour of Frank Lloyd Wright in Loving Frank by Nancy Horan or any of Molly Gloss’s characters in The Hearts of Horses.

What authors do you look to as a role model and inspiration?
Molly Gloss, Shannon Applegate, Irene Brown, Harriet Rochlin, Frederick Buechner, Kathleen Norris, Robert McKee, Ann Parker, and I just read my first Craig Johnson novel and was amazed at his depth and craftsmanship.

What's the best advice you ever received?
It isn’t about me, it’s about the story.

I believe good writers read a lot. What do you use to mark your page when reading?
Whatever I can find; a beautiful quilted bookmark given me by a friend, Kleenex, grocery receipts, dental floss – it’s based on where I am and what I can easily grab.

What one thing do you like most about writing? Least?
I love being able to live inside the heads and times of others. I love speculating as I’m doing the research wondering what it must have been like then. I love discovering things about myself I didn’t now I needed to learn.
Least? All the extra stuff like posting things on Facebook or proofing my brochure or following up on whether a group I’m speaking to will have a microphone or not, the necessary parts that really don’t involve the actual “writing”. I guess I don’t look forward to the copy editing queries but I’m doing better with that. It isn’t about me. Its about making the story the best it can be.

Your novel is called A Flickering Light, published by WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group, a division of Random House. Tell us what the book is about and why you wrote it.
It’s based on the life of my grandmother who was a photographer in Minnesota at the turn of the century. She was trained to run studios while the photographers recovered from mercury poisonings. She fell in love with her mentor, a very married man. The story is told through her eyes, her mentor’s eyes and his wife. I wrote it because I so admired who she was, her spirit of “can do” and not letting the past hold her hostage. She lived to be in her 90s and her optimism was always an inspiration to me. Yet she never told the family she once owned her own studio. That was a bonus I found in doing the research and made me wonder more why that hadn’t been discussed. And then there was her mention that she’d married the same man twice….

Why should anyone part with their hard earned cash and precious time to read your book? Sell it to us!
It’s a story about temptation and faith, shadow and light and how creative people often sabotage their gifts. I’ve used several glass plate photographs in the first book and given my grandmother a first person voice as she tells us about that particular photograph, what was going on, the context etc. I’ll include several more in the sequel due out next year called An Absence So Great. Publisher’s Weekly gave A Flickering Light a starred review describing it as “exceptionally authentic, a compelling portrait, both aching and hopeful.” I hope that readers will discover things about their own lives and relook at photographs from their own family albums through new eyes.

Where can readers buy your book?
Everywhere…Amazon, Indies, Christian bookstores, even Costco sometimes.

What is your next project?
The sequel to A Flickering Light. Then I have contracts for three more books so I’ve got my ears out for that next story that says “choose me!”

What advice would you pass along at this point in your career?
Enjoy the journey; celebrate along the way, the little things like getting a personal rejection letter from an editor or having someone ask to see the entire manuscript or submitting an excerpt for a contest, or meeting interesting people to interview, who are passionate about their own specialties like weapons or art or quilts that expand the story and give it depth and add to our own pleasure, too. I’m fond of a Mary Oliver poem called “When Death Comes” and there’s a line that says and when that time comes for her that she wanted to be able to say “I was a bride married to amazement, a bridegroom who took the world into my arms.” I hope to be able to say that myself and I’d encourage people to live their lives in such a way that they pay attention to the gifts this passion for writing gives us.

Anything else you want readers to know?
I’ve been blessed with some award-winning stories (a Wrangler in 1996 and a WILLA Literary in 2008) and being on the short list for several, including a Spur in 2005, so someone besides my mom thought they were worth the price and I’m grateful. I also do a monthly essay called Words of Encouragement on my site. People might like reading that to see sort of how I write before they risk their time on a book.

Jane, thank you for the Interview!
Thanks for having me visit, Marsha.