Ask the Author: Leslie Wells
Answered Questions (5)
Leslie Wells
Writing fiction carries me away from my daily life into another world, where I can take on the personalities of my characters and talk to them in my head. In writing my novel, Come Dancing, much of the material came from things that happened to me in my twenties. I was transported back to the early 1980s and relived that time when I began working in book publishing, living in Manhattan, and going out dancing in downtown clubs. (I really did find a pair of lavender shoes on the street in NYC, and wore them until they fell apart.)
Leslie Wells
My number one piece of advice is: when you have polished your book as much as possible, read every page out loud. You will hear things that you completely missed--word repetitions, dialogue that sounds wooden, etc. I can't recommend this enough.
Leslie Wells
Right now I'm working on a sequel to Come Dancing that picks up with Julia and Jack going to visit his mother in England. I'm having a lot of fun with Julia's not understanding some of the British slang.
Leslie Wells
I have to have a very strong and specific idea about who my characters are, in order to begin writing a novel. Once I start a book, I think about it morning, noon, and night. My day job is being a book editor, so I have to squeeze in my own writing in the wee hours of the morning, usually from 3-7 am.
Leslie Wells
I woke up one morning with the words "Please do not touch" echoing in my mind. I went downstairs and wrote that Jack and Julia scene (which is about 1/3 of the way into the novel), and the characters took over from there.
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