Ask the Author: Helen Currie Foster
Answered Questions (13)
Helen Currie Foster
Same answer: Start searching for your voice. Start writing about people--real and imaginary--and when suddenly you find a character who lets you say what you want, who gives you real fluency--a character you're not shy about writing through--you are on your way!
Helen Currie Foster
The Once and Future King...where Merlin, as tutor to young Wart, turns him into a fish, a raptor, a snake, an owl, introduces him to Madame Mim the witch and Galapas the Giant and the Queen of Air and Darkness. If I could have Merlin as a tutor...think of the lessons ahead!
Helen Currie Foster
Sometimes a character just pops in, fully dressed and speaking. That's what happened when Eddie LaFarge walked into the Central Garage and asked Alice about her truck.
Sometimes a place--real or fictional--calls. I still love treehouses. I wish I had one. So Ghost Cat introduces the treehouse in Alice's yard.
Sometimes it's something about the animals in the hill country. In February, the smell of skunk hits you as you drive a lonely road...because in February, skunks are out seeking love, and not always making it across the highway safely. Anyway, what we do for love...that can inspire.
Sometimes inspiration comes from the past. I saw a photo of a cargo-load of mass-produced Bronze Age axes retrieved from the Thames. This image brought the Bronze Age to life, inspiring the plot of Ghost Dagger.
Sometimes a place--real or fictional--calls. I still love treehouses. I wish I had one. So Ghost Cat introduces the treehouse in Alice's yard.
Sometimes it's something about the animals in the hill country. In February, the smell of skunk hits you as you drive a lonely road...because in February, skunks are out seeking love, and not always making it across the highway safely. Anyway, what we do for love...that can inspire.
Sometimes inspiration comes from the past. I saw a photo of a cargo-load of mass-produced Bronze Age axes retrieved from the Thames. This image brought the Bronze Age to life, inspiring the plot of Ghost Dagger.
Helen Currie Foster
In the middle of the night, instead of worrying about wars and pandemics, I resort to plot twists and how a character wants to talk.
Helen Currie Foster
Still hooked on human migration...and who we are. I've started Peter Watson's The Great Divide: History and Human Nature in the Old World and the Old.
And I'm still loving Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways.
And I'm still loving Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways.
Helen Currie Foster
I know--we all know--people we love or hate who are a frustrating mystery to us. We have unanswered questions. If you've lost a parent, think of the questions you wish you'd asked, and whether (if you'd gotten answers) you could have gotten closer to solving the mystery of that parent.
Figuring out the answers to those questions serves as a strong plotline--but a frustrating one. Even when we have a basket of clues, the other person's reality eludes us.
Another plotline arises from a protagonist's effort to solve his or her own mystery.So, in the Alice MacDonald Greer mystery series, Alice's lifelong question (not that she focuses on it every minute) is--WHO AM I REALLY? Occasionally she tries to guess--HOW DO OTHERS SEE ME? AND HOW ACCURATELY? The reader knows Alice is probably wrong in those guesses, and that she forgets to ask herself, "HOW ACCURATE IS MY OWN ASSESSMENT OF MYSELF?"
Figuring out the answers to those questions serves as a strong plotline--but a frustrating one. Even when we have a basket of clues, the other person's reality eludes us.
Another plotline arises from a protagonist's effort to solve his or her own mystery.So, in the Alice MacDonald Greer mystery series, Alice's lifelong question (not that she focuses on it every minute) is--WHO AM I REALLY? Occasionally she tries to guess--HOW DO OTHERS SEE ME? AND HOW ACCURATELY? The reader knows Alice is probably wrong in those guesses, and that she forgets to ask herself, "HOW ACCURATE IS MY OWN ASSESSMENT OF MYSELF?"
Helen Currie Foster
Wow, tough question! Huck and Jim? Queequeg and Ishmael? Darcy and Elizabeth? Harriet and Peter? Today for me it's Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, aboard the Surprise, sawing away on their Corelli piece. I relish their differences, their competition, their heroism, spats, and misunderstandings, their withholding of information about and from each other in aid of friendship, and their loyalty in terrifying and ridiculous situations, including Stephen leading Jack, in his bear suit, to safety across the Pyrenees.
Helen Currie Foster
Hi, Nancy! They're all available on Amazon and Kindle, and at BookPeople in Austin. I'll write your library too. Thanks--!
Helen Currie Foster
Helen Currie Foster
Helen Currie Foster
Hi, Cassie! Yes, the books were all mailed out a week ago Monday (June 13) in white envelopes with black "Sharpie" addresses (as provided by Goodreads). Let me know! Thanks--Helen
Helen Currie Foster
Boy, that's frustrating! I read, research, play the piano, go for a run, and then--finally--sit down and think hard about Alice's motivations and emotions. She gets frustrated too, it seems. So she goes to talk to the donkeys, who can be soothing if you just stand near them. Or she drives with the windows down and the radio turned up loud on KUTX or Sun Radio. Then at some point...she's back on the counter stool, gingerly approaching the manuscript.
Helen Currie Foster
Why did Alex Drinkman, the young Texas pilot who made it home from WWI but died on the way to the ranch, sign up to serve in France? For that matter, why did my two great-uncles, buried there? Read Barbara Tuchman's The Zimmermann Telegram--a great spy story and war-time code-breaking tale. Southwesterners were outraged when the German telegram was revealed in April 1917 and President Wilson had no choice but to declare war.
Helen Currie Foster
No spoilers here. However: you know, it's fun to live out in the country, where you can hang out your wet laundry in your nightgown, without neighborly comment. But this time, Alice might be sorry....
Helen Currie Foster
Recording audio books! So far, Ghost Cave, Ghost Dog, Ghost Dagger...ready to start Ghost Letter.
But also--Volume 5 is in the works. Yes, sports fans, Alice is back in Coffee Creek, in the Texas hill country....under some surprising surveillance, and puzzled by the amazingly hot-blooded competition in the first annual Coffee Creek barbecue competition. People and brisket...hope no one loses his or her temper.
But also--Volume 5 is in the works. Yes, sports fans, Alice is back in Coffee Creek, in the Texas hill country....under some surprising surveillance, and puzzled by the amazingly hot-blooded competition in the first annual Coffee Creek barbecue competition. People and brisket...hope no one loses his or her temper.
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