Interview with Author Marilyn Morris

Marilyn Morris is a multi-published author in 3 different genres. She has written a mystery, a biographical book about her life as an army brat, and a journal about her journey of discovering she has Lupus. Marilyn is one of the most interesting people I have had the pleasure to interview and I think you will find that her upbeat personality in the face great odds gives you the same sort gratefulness to be alive that it gave me having the opportunity to interview her.

So, that being said, let's have a chat with Marilyn.

1. When did you first know you wanted to be an author?

I think I was born with a pencil in my hand. In kindergarten, my teacher put funny little squiggles on the blackboard and said they were letters of the alphabet, and letters made words, and words made stories. I was hooked. Also, my family read a lot, and I passed a lot of hours in such duty stations as Seoul, Korea, in 1946, entertaining myself by writing stories.

2. Do you have any muses? Who are they? Anyone in particular you'd like to give a shout out to?

I would consider my muse to be Dorothy Thompson, of The Writers Life yahoo group. She has encouraged everybody in the group to write and promote and is an inspiration to us all. Recently she set up shop as a publicist at http://www.pumpupyouronlinebookpromotion.blogspot.com/ where she takes clients like me, who are no use at all in promoting their books, and turns them around 180 degrees and shows how much more publicity/sales we can get for our books just online. And that's who I would give a shout-out to.

3. I notice you write in a number of different genres. What in your life has precipitated such a wide range of interests in your writing?

Well, I really enjoy writing novels. My first novel, Sabbath's Room, is a supernatural murder mystery set in the Texas Hill Country, where a writer moves into an old farmhouse and her cat, Sabbath, gives clues to indicate that there are bodies buried under the sun room.

After that book was published, I was asked by the President of the American Overseas Schools Historical Society to write my experiences as one of the first military brats to go overseas right after WWII, so my manuscript could be placed in the Archives of the museum to be built in Wichita KS. So I wrote about my travels with my Army officer father from my birth in 1938 to his (our!) retirement in 1958, from Korea to Kansas, and Austria to Texas, and Texas to Oklahoma with various stateside posts in between.

The next book that I had to get out of my system was my book about lupus and my struggle to find a diagnosis and treatment for this mysterious disease. I had kept a journal for years expressing my frustration, anger and despair, and took some selected pages to make a book, "Diagnosis: Lupus: The Intimate Journal of a Lupus Patient." Rather than it being all gloom and doom, I did find some spiritual growth that accompanied my pain and anger, and I wanted other lupus patients to know they were not alone in their feelings.

So now I had my non-fiction books out of the way, and I'm continuing to write novels, several of which are in various stages of progress.

4. Do you have an official website that potential readers can visit? If so, could you please give us the address here?

I do, it's being revamped at the moment by my esteemed publicist (how I love saying that word) at www.graceworksproductions/freewebs.com' I also maintain several blogs each covering a different facet of my life and/or my writings: http://www.onceabrat.blogger.com/

http://www.IsItLifeOrIsItLupus.blogspot.com/

http://www.YaGotMeStarted.blogspot.com/

http://www.Sabbath'sRoom.blogspot.com'/

http://www.OnceaBrat.blogspot.com/

http://www.TheWomenofCampSobingo.blogspot.com'/

http://www.MyWriter'sWorld.blogspot.com/

and http://AStoryTeller'sWorld.blogspot.com/

That's probably about three too many blogs to handle, and I'm considering taking down at least one of the StoryTeller's or Writer's World blogs, as they are virtually the same.

5. I see you are on a blog tour at the moment. There are a lot of authors interested in doing this, but they don't really know how to get started. Do you have any advice for them on the best way to start a blog tour?

Hire Dorothy Thompson! I didn't know beans about promotion, and when she stepped in and announced she was going to open a promotion business, I would have kissed her if we had been in the same state. She knows which blogs are likely to be more receptive to the author's books, which ones get the most hits, and she patiently straightens out her client's blogs and makes them more attractive to readers. I have ventured out to a couple of other bloggers by way of recommendation from other members of her Yahoo writer's group, The Writer's Life, as I have with you, Regina. I believe it was Karen Magill who gave me your name and site. We all help each other in this group, which is amazing. I think writers are the most helpful to each other than in any other profession, and part of that is because we all have our own particular "voice" that no one else can imitate. There are a couple of women in the group who are excellent fantasy/vampire/werewolves writers, and I couldn't begin to figure out how to do that genre. I am, however, toying with the idea of a historical romance, and it might involve time travel, which seems to be doing well these days, but I have lots of research to do before I can even think about finishing it.

6. Could you tell us a little bit about each of your books, please? For those who might not be familiar with your works.

Well, I have already mentioned three of the books, Sabbath's Room, Once a Brat and Diagnosis: Lupus, but I also have more novels in progress. I'll save the description of my latest novel, which is coming out on June 9th from Mardi Gras Publications, in question #8.

7. How does someone purchase your books?

My publisher of my first three books has at last instituted a return policy so I'll need to go see if I can get some of the area bookstores to order a few of each. Otherwise, they are available on Amazon.com and the Barnes and Noble web sites.

8. Do you have any upcoming books you'd like to tell us about?

Ah, yes. It's an outgrowth of my Once a Brat book. While we were in Korea, my mother met and played bridge almost daily with three other army wives, and one day one of the women decided to end her life there. No one ever knew why, but I have invented a story line about all four of the women, their backgrounds and their marriages, and how they developed the true grit to survive in such a primitive, far away country, at least at that time in our history. And 25 years later, the women hold a reunion, where secret sorrows and assumptions are shared, and the ghost of Leah vanishes from their world, now that the truth is known.

9. How have your friends and family reacted to your published author status?

I have to tell you about my 86 year old mother, who lives in Boerne, TX, where we can never find her, she's such a pillar of the community there. She called me when my first novel, Sabbath's Room, came out and she said, "I sat down and read it all in one day." I asked her, "Well what did you think? " She stuttered for a moment, saying, "Well, uh, I don't know, but, uh...." and I interrupted her with, "Mother, are you ashamed of me or embarrassed that I wrote a murder mystery?" She finally summoned up the courage to admit, "Well, no, it's not that. It's just that, before I read it, I didn't know it had so much sex and violence in it!" I almost laughed. The sex part included words such as, "She lay in his strong arms," and "necking like teenagers." And I reminded her that it had to be violent, because, after all, it WAS a murder mystery.

Then she got very quiet and said, "But I recommended it to my Sunday School Class!" O-kay, I thought. So I told her, "Now, Mom, just go back to your Sunday School class and apologize for recommending it before you read it because it does have some sex and violence in it." She agreed she would do that.

And you know what? My sales went up! Gotta love those Methodists.

One thing about friends and members of the family that I find is an issue with all authors: They all want a free copy. I patiently explain to them that since they're all Print on Demand, I even have to buy my own books to take to book signings, etc. Then I ask them, if you sold life insurance, would I expect you go give me a free policy?" Well, that explains it pretty well. I think people in general think once you are a published author, you must be rolling in royalties and your book will be on the showcase shelf in every bookstore. And we who are in the trenches know that isn't happening.

10. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Never give up. There are a lot of publishers out there who just might be looking for your work. And don't get daunted by thinking it takes a long time to write a novel. Well, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. It depends. Sabbath's Room took me oh, about 20 years from conception to birth, as I went through a lot of changes in my life, including a divorce. But I never gave up writing on that danged book. Others aren't quite as hard to write, and sometimes the words just flow.

And I'll tell you that while writing is fun, re-writing and editing are a bitch. I just received yesterday my first edits for my 400 page saga, The Women of Camp Sobingo, and I was appalled at how many pages were red lined. And there were point of view problems, too, which I had evidently turned a blind eye to. The kicker is, I do evaluations for a publisher, and thought my book would be almost perfect, but my editor turned out to be a Comma Queen, and since I was in school some 50 years ago, some of the rules have changed. And I don't like them one bit. But you do what the editor says. It's not a bullet through the heart, or somebody is telling you your baby is ugly. It just means it needs a little more work. .

11. If you had it to do all over again, is there anything you would change about your writing career so far?

Oh, yes. I would have started much earlier than I did. After my divorce at 44, trying to find out what mysterious disease was attacking me until age 50 when I found out it was lupus, I had no time to think about anything other than earning a living and paying for my medications. Now, at age 69, with several serious illnesses breathing down my neck, every day is a gift, and I will probably keel over at my keyboard one day. But I was in Intensive Care for 3 months in the summer of 2004, and my parish priest was called twice. But God threw me back, I think because he wanted me to finish my lupus book and get it published. Now if he'll just allow me to do the same with the works in progress, I will die a happy author.

Thanks, Regina.

Thank you Marilyn!