Ask the Author: Anne Schroeder
Answered Questions (7)
Anne Schroeder
Summer is over and I confess I spend most of it writing my own novel! NORSKE FIELDS is my latest endeaver, due for release October 1st. I've read it so many times now (24) in doing edits and rewrites that I know it forward and backward. I managed to read a collection of John Steinbeck's short novels" Of Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat, the Red Pony, The Pearl. Delightful! It made me appreciate his attention to detail. I read James Scott's "Reach for the Sky", a novel set in 1929 California's Golden Age of American Aviation. I think I'll read another novel as soon as my new hammock arrives. Time to take in the last perfect days of fall. Happy reading!
Anne Schroeder
What's writer's block? If I can't write I drag myself down to a bench in town and people watch, or take a yellow tablet to a cafe and write free-flow images onto the page. Building a writing brain is like building any muscle--it takes constant effort but it has to be fun or we won't do it.
Anne Schroeder
The realization that my words can change a person's life. I've had so many people tell me they cried, or laughed over my work. I've had 14 women tell me they either stopped their divorce or returned to their ex husband after reading my memoir, Ordinary Aphrodite. That's the best feeling ever!
Anne Schroeder
Start with short stories. Don't tackle a novel until you have the technical skills. Make each short story a learning tool. Write one to practice dialogue, another to practice building conflict, another to practice characterization. I used to write very long stories and then cut them to see what I didn't need. It taught me to write sparingly, a problem that was VERY hard for me.
Anne Schroeder
I'm working on Book #3 in the Central Coast series, a story about Miguelito, a vaquero who is Maria Ines's angry son. I'm trying to get the cholo gang banger mentality just right for the time period of 1850-1880.
Anne Schroeder
Usually my ideas come to me while I garden. I have vivid daydreams while I do mindless toil. I create a little world inside my head and I live there for months, to the exclusion of friends and family who always think I'm mad at them.
Anne Schroeder
I grew up a few miles from the Cholama Valley (modern day Parkfield, CA,) so I was familiar with the setting. The idea came from seeing a young girl's tombstone (Nettie Imus) in the Santa Cruz Cemetery. And later, on a horseback ride through Cholama Valley, her brother and sister's tombstones in the Imusdale Cemetery. I wanted to write the story about them, but the radio shock jock, Don Imus, is a relative and I didn't want to incur his wrath, so I wrote about a fictional family and put the Imuses in as authentic historical characters. I had so much fun writing this story! And now I'm working on book #3 of the series. Book # 2, Maria Ines, will be out later this year.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more