What is the central concept of your Amy & Paul Saga series of novels?
In A Different Kind of Twin Amy is a normal eleven-year-old in a nuclear household in suburban New Orleans. She is physically and mentally healthy, as are her surgeon father, her homemaker mother, and her kid sister. Paul Owens, on the other hand, is a fifty-eight year old man who has spent the last three years of his life as a comatose John Doe in the hospital where Amy’s father works. Paul was in New Orleans on business when he was mugged and beaten into a coma. On a particular Friday evening in May of 2011, when Amy and her mother and sister are waiting in the hospital for her father to get off work and take everyone out to a Ryan’s, Amy is walking on her own when an orderly accidently bumps her with a gurney that contains Paul’s failing body. No one realizes that a small amount of fluid from one of Paul’s bedsores splashes on the little girl.
The next morning it is Paul who wakes up inside Amy’s body. The magic of fiction has allowed Paul -- his personality and memory -- to be transferred into Amy.
Although her family and doctors are worried about what seems to be Amy’s descent into mental illness, the real issue is more practical: How will they deal with each other? Who gets to be in charge? This is the underlying struggle throughout the series.
That’s not very sciency science fiction, is it?
Nope. It’s fictiony fiction. Or do you think Harry Potter really casts Patronus spells?
How did you come up with this concept? And why?
I’m pretty sure there was alcohol involved. It came from thinking about dying, and not wanting to, and wouldn’t it be great if we could jump out of our body when it’s old and get into a new, young one so we could live twice as long as otherwise. Actually, that’s a standard science fiction plot, but it always involves someone evil taking over the life of some innocent sweet thing – there’s Mondo Molari and his ‘keeper’ in Babylon 5, for instance. I thought it would be fun to consider the two people in one body deciding to coöperate instead of compete. After all, the body jumper gets to stay alive, albeit in an altered condition, and the host gets a friend, maybe the wisdom of the jumper’s experience. The more I fantasized about it, the more excited I got. Where can I sign up?
Surely someone’s thought of this already. There’s nothing new under the sun.
Friends have pointed me to some authors who have done something similar. Caroline and Richard Todd’s Inspector Ian Rutledge series, where a soldier Rutledge had to execute for insubordination during WWI takes up residence in the once-and-future Inspector’s head. By and large their relationship is not extensive, although the executed soldier often comes up with cogent thoughts on the investigation at hand. The Todds have gotten a bunch of notices and well-deserved reviews. Of course, there’s a question whether Hamish MacLeod really is in Rutledge’s mind, or if he’s just Rutledge’s guilty conscience. But I’ve had readers assure me that Amy is quite crazy, so who knows?
Anyone else?
Sure. Lorna Graham’s The Ghost of Greenwich Village, where the ghost can only get in the head of a person (or the dog!) while they are in what had been his apartment – that was my inspiration to have Amy think to an alligator and Paul think to a circus tiger in The Rothschild Jewels. And Farewell Dorothy Parker by Ellen Meister -- she uses Dorothy Parker as a ghost who can only be seen by some people, sort of like the pooka in Harvey. Both are fun reads, but read my books first. I mean, be fair!
Beyond the underlying concept of Amy and Paul cooperating, where do you get story ideas?
Everywhere and anywhere. When I finish a first draft I take a week or so off from writing. But then Amy and Paul start telling me they want to play. Right now Amy has convinced me she deserves a real boyfriend, so whatever mystery I develop has to include a man who does not get killed or convicted of anything (as opposed to her past flings). They may tell me that the last story was exciting and all, but please not another hurricane. Then some totally normal part of real life, like some changes at my church, will make me think that a neighborhood church might be an excellent setting for a murder mystery. Or some random news item may get my brain going. I ask Amy if she wants to, say, rescue a young man whose evil uncle is going to poison him; she may say, “Is he cute?” and I’ll agree the young man will be very cute.
What industry organizations do you belong to?
The Atlanta Writers’ Club and the Georgia Writers’ Association. I go to every meeting to hear what writers who have ‘made it’ can teach me. I volunteer to check in members or bring Cheezy-Poofs or whatever. You ought to hook up with whatever local resources are available. There are groups that cater to mystery writers, romance writers, westerns, you name it. If you live somewhere without such groups, START ONE.
What is your writing process like?
It might take two months to develop a general outline of a new story before I even pick up a pen or turn on the computer. I have to feel confident in the overall story arc. Then I spend several months writing -- not exactly ignoring the outline, but giving myself permission to alter it on the fly. Usually that’s to accommodate an idea that pops up unexpectedly, or sometimes to create some internal consistency. I was about three-quarters done with the first draft of The Wedding Fatality when I thought a hurricane might add some tension. Amy and Paul spent three days soaking wet and they used some naughty language indeed to tell me not to do that again.
When I finish a first draft, I go back to an earlier story and massage it into shape for publication. I’m vaguely looking for the next plot while doing this; it doesn’t seem very efficient, but it’s what I do. Once I’ve got that earlier manuscript printed and Ebooked and available I get serious about beginning the next story. There are always two, or sometimes three first drafts lying fallow between what I’m working on now and what I’m publishing.
Besides writing, what are your interests?
Reading. People at my day job think I’m a snob because I read at lunch instead of socializing. I get to things like dentist appointments early and read. I expect my local library will open a new wing and call it the A Trauring Memorial Branch; I’ll start the funding with, let’s see... two dollars and eighteen -- no, nineteen cents.
Music remains important to me, which is why Paul often quotes what Amy refers to as Jurassic era songs. When I was in radio I got albums (go ask your parents what those were) for free. Cheapskate Ferengi me is part way through the project of digitalizing them and burning them to CD. As you can guess, I am heavily invested in obsolete technology. When the world finally moves to Star Trek data crystals I’ll have graduated to eight track tapes and Betamax. Maybe even Windows 95.
Who are your favorite writers? Why?
Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and Anthony Trollope because I love that Victorian and pre-Victorian use of language. Faulkner because his characters are so bent and his prose is so clean. Thomas Pynchon because he is the Mozart of conspiracy threads. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books because they are funny. The first three John Fowles books because I wish I had lived in those stories. I miss Douglas Adams more than words can say, for the Hitchhiker’s Guide stories and even the Dirk Gently books. Christopher Moore because he is so funny. Jasper Fforde for his astonishing world of JurisFiction and Thursday Next; his Shades of Gray is just as creative and doesn’t involve 50 naked people. And Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories – I’ve read them all a dozen times and they still give me a charge. There’s a reason why Paul quotes Holmes in The Rothschild Jewels.
Any detectives beyond Holmes?
Well, C. Auguste Dupin from Poe’s Murder In The Rue Morgue. Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther, he was wonderfully inept. Maxwell Smart. Austin Powers, does he count? – no, he’s a spy. Thursday Next, definitely.
Do you have any heroes?
Thomas Jefferson, always. And Bugs Bunny. No, I’m serious! Bugs Bunny is smart, he’s good looking, and he always wins. Paul shares my affection for the wascally wabbit. Amy, on the other hand, has the hots for SpongeBob Squarepants. She has, uh, unfortunate taste in men.
How did you end up as a novelist?
I wish. No, all we end up as is dead. But writing novels began in college. The first one, 1227 Royal Street, sits, in longhand, in a looseleaf binder on a bottom shelf in my living room. It is my Mantissa, but I have no intention of foisting it on a world, however imperfect, that deserves better. I papered my bathroom walls with the rejection slips it earned. One chapter was published as a short story, it won me $25. But then I graduated and had to make a living. I had a 32 year detour through commercial radio. Hey, I was a DJ, I had believers!
When that gravy train ended I stumbled around with all sorts of bare-bones jobs – I was a handyman’s helper, climbing ladders with buckets of paint. I was the Operations Director for my state Libertarian Party. I crunched numbers at an insurance brokerage. And I spent more than three years with one of the service providers the museum had to hire in The Rothschild Jewels. There was a total absence of emotional satisfaction in my life. So I sat down and wrote most of a history of Rock and Roll. Everything was looking up, but then the Eagles put out their first album in 18 years. To this day I have not brought myself to listen to it, so that project blew up.
Next step was fiction. If I create the characters, I don’t have to worry about them regrouping for the got-to-pay-the-mortgage reunion tour. If I had known how much fun this was I would have kept at it after college.
What’s next for Amy and Paul?
The goal is to have their next adventure, The Rothschild Jewels, available in the summer of 2015. Amy has become a police detective, and Paul hates cops because, as he puts it, “I haven’t always been a pillar of the community.” After that Amy opens a Private Investigator business because the New Orleans Police Department is a little too structured for her taste.
When can I see Amy and Paul on the movie screen?
When somebody buys the rights, which is out of my control. I’d love it, though. Eleven year old Amy would be played by AnnaSophia Robb when she was twelve, in Bridge to Terabithia (In A Different Kind Of Twin Amy says she really liked the movie), and Amy’s little sister Kaylee would be played by Bailee Madison from the same film.
Have you written any other series? Stand-alone novels?
Nope. Maybe someday. Right now I’m having too much fun with Amy and Paul.
Advice for people starting out as writers?
Needless to say (he said), don’t give up your day job. There aren’t a dozen people in the world earning a living writing novels. Unless he or she is one of those dozen, your favorite novelist probably teaches undergraduate English composition at a second tier college somewhere.
Whatever your chosen genre, you must write. Get comfortable with yourself at a keyboard or with pad and pen. Write journals. Write poetry (I’ll deny I said that). Memoir. Non-fiction. Comic books and graphic novels. Advertising copy. And get your skin thick enough to Jack or Jill up when someone tells you what you’ve written is a bunch of dingo’s kidneys. And it wouldn’t hurt to pay attention to what genres are selling, in case you’re one of those people like me who will “make it longer if you like the style” and is willing to write the sort of thing people are actually, you know, paying for.
For long- or short-form fiction, get in touch with your local, state, or regional writers’ association. Go to some meetings. Hook up with a writers’ critique group that is a little better than you are so you can learn from them without embarrassing yourself. The publishing industry is changing by the nanosecond, but it might help to learn about Lulu or Amazon CreateSpace and other legitimate avenues of self-publishing that won’t leave your heirs with 487 unsold copies of your book in the attic or the garage. Try not to get scammed.
What should they write about?
Any damn fool thing that pops into their mind. I write about a woman who has an old man living in her head. I’m sure you can do much better.
How do you handle criticism?
Not much of a problem until people write reviews of your work. Until that happens, you may as well assume you need to learn more but you’re on the right path.
When the old high school buddy who’s jealous because you actually, you know, WROTE A BOOK says, “It needs work,” you can laugh at the cruel hand fate has dealt the poor bastard while you, you know, WROTE A BOOK. Or you can punch him, but that always makes my hand hurt. Like Amy and Paul in The Beaded Necklace.
I have rehearsed for the criticism I haven’t received yet. When it happens – when some internet troll bitches about my political incorrectness or lack of sensitivity to the plight of left handed blue-eyed eskimos – my response will be, “I look forward to reading your book.”
And I do look forward to reading YOUR book.
In A Different Kind of Twin Amy is a normal eleven-year-old in a nuclear household in suburban New Orleans. She is physically and mentally healthy, as are her surgeon father, her homemaker mother, and her kid sister. Paul Owens, on the other hand, is a fifty-eight year old man who has spent the last three years of his life as a comatose John Doe in the hospital where Amy’s father works. Paul was in New Orleans on business when he was mugged and beaten into a coma. On a particular Friday evening in May of 2011, when Amy and her mother and sister are waiting in the hospital for her father to get off work and take everyone out to a Ryan’s, Amy is walking on her own when an orderly accidently bumps her with a gurney that contains Paul’s failing body. No one realizes that a small amount of fluid from one of Paul’s bedsores splashes on the little girl.
The next morning it is Paul who wakes up inside Amy’s body. The magic of fiction has allowed Paul -- his personality and memory -- to be transferred into Amy.
Although her family and doctors are worried about what seems to be Amy’s descent into mental illness, the real issue is more practical: How will they deal with each other? Who gets to be in charge? This is the underlying struggle throughout the series.
That’s not very sciency science fiction, is it?
Nope. It’s fictiony fiction. Or do you think Harry Potter really casts Patronus spells?
How did you come up with this concept? And why?
I’m pretty sure there was alcohol involved. It came from thinking about dying, and not wanting to, and wouldn’t it be great if we could jump out of our body when it’s old and get into a new, young one so we could live twice as long as otherwise. Actually, that’s a standard science fiction plot, but it always involves someone evil taking over the life of some innocent sweet thing – there’s Mondo Molari and his ‘keeper’ in Babylon 5, for instance. I thought it would be fun to consider the two people in one body deciding to coöperate instead of compete. After all, the body jumper gets to stay alive, albeit in an altered condition, and the host gets a friend, maybe the wisdom of the jumper’s experience. The more I fantasized about it, the more excited I got. Where can I sign up?
Surely someone’s thought of this already. There’s nothing new under the sun.
Friends have pointed me to some authors who have done something similar. Caroline and Richard Todd’s Inspector Ian Rutledge series, where a soldier Rutledge had to execute for insubordination during WWI takes up residence in the once-and-future Inspector’s head. By and large their relationship is not extensive, although the executed soldier often comes up with cogent thoughts on the investigation at hand. The Todds have gotten a bunch of notices and well-deserved reviews. Of course, there’s a question whether Hamish MacLeod really is in Rutledge’s mind, or if he’s just Rutledge’s guilty conscience. But I’ve had readers assure me that Amy is quite crazy, so who knows?
Anyone else?
Sure. Lorna Graham’s The Ghost of Greenwich Village, where the ghost can only get in the head of a person (or the dog!) while they are in what had been his apartment – that was my inspiration to have Amy think to an alligator and Paul think to a circus tiger in The Rothschild Jewels. And Farewell Dorothy Parker by Ellen Meister -- she uses Dorothy Parker as a ghost who can only be seen by some people, sort of like the pooka in Harvey. Both are fun reads, but read my books first. I mean, be fair!
Beyond the underlying concept of Amy and Paul cooperating, where do you get story ideas?
Everywhere and anywhere. When I finish a first draft I take a week or so off from writing. But then Amy and Paul start telling me they want to play. Right now Amy has convinced me she deserves a real boyfriend, so whatever mystery I develop has to include a man who does not get killed or convicted of anything (as opposed to her past flings). They may tell me that the last story was exciting and all, but please not another hurricane. Then some totally normal part of real life, like some changes at my church, will make me think that a neighborhood church might be an excellent setting for a murder mystery. Or some random news item may get my brain going. I ask Amy if she wants to, say, rescue a young man whose evil uncle is going to poison him; she may say, “Is he cute?” and I’ll agree the young man will be very cute.
What industry organizations do you belong to?
The Atlanta Writers’ Club and the Georgia Writers’ Association. I go to every meeting to hear what writers who have ‘made it’ can teach me. I volunteer to check in members or bring Cheezy-Poofs or whatever. You ought to hook up with whatever local resources are available. There are groups that cater to mystery writers, romance writers, westerns, you name it. If you live somewhere without such groups, START ONE.
What is your writing process like?
It might take two months to develop a general outline of a new story before I even pick up a pen or turn on the computer. I have to feel confident in the overall story arc. Then I spend several months writing -- not exactly ignoring the outline, but giving myself permission to alter it on the fly. Usually that’s to accommodate an idea that pops up unexpectedly, or sometimes to create some internal consistency. I was about three-quarters done with the first draft of The Wedding Fatality when I thought a hurricane might add some tension. Amy and Paul spent three days soaking wet and they used some naughty language indeed to tell me not to do that again.
When I finish a first draft, I go back to an earlier story and massage it into shape for publication. I’m vaguely looking for the next plot while doing this; it doesn’t seem very efficient, but it’s what I do. Once I’ve got that earlier manuscript printed and Ebooked and available I get serious about beginning the next story. There are always two, or sometimes three first drafts lying fallow between what I’m working on now and what I’m publishing.
Besides writing, what are your interests?
Reading. People at my day job think I’m a snob because I read at lunch instead of socializing. I get to things like dentist appointments early and read. I expect my local library will open a new wing and call it the A Trauring Memorial Branch; I’ll start the funding with, let’s see... two dollars and eighteen -- no, nineteen cents.
Music remains important to me, which is why Paul often quotes what Amy refers to as Jurassic era songs. When I was in radio I got albums (go ask your parents what those were) for free. Cheapskate Ferengi me is part way through the project of digitalizing them and burning them to CD. As you can guess, I am heavily invested in obsolete technology. When the world finally moves to Star Trek data crystals I’ll have graduated to eight track tapes and Betamax. Maybe even Windows 95.
Who are your favorite writers? Why?
Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and Anthony Trollope because I love that Victorian and pre-Victorian use of language. Faulkner because his characters are so bent and his prose is so clean. Thomas Pynchon because he is the Mozart of conspiracy threads. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books because they are funny. The first three John Fowles books because I wish I had lived in those stories. I miss Douglas Adams more than words can say, for the Hitchhiker’s Guide stories and even the Dirk Gently books. Christopher Moore because he is so funny. Jasper Fforde for his astonishing world of JurisFiction and Thursday Next; his Shades of Gray is just as creative and doesn’t involve 50 naked people. And Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories – I’ve read them all a dozen times and they still give me a charge. There’s a reason why Paul quotes Holmes in The Rothschild Jewels.
Any detectives beyond Holmes?
Well, C. Auguste Dupin from Poe’s Murder In The Rue Morgue. Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther, he was wonderfully inept. Maxwell Smart. Austin Powers, does he count? – no, he’s a spy. Thursday Next, definitely.
Do you have any heroes?
Thomas Jefferson, always. And Bugs Bunny. No, I’m serious! Bugs Bunny is smart, he’s good looking, and he always wins. Paul shares my affection for the wascally wabbit. Amy, on the other hand, has the hots for SpongeBob Squarepants. She has, uh, unfortunate taste in men.
How did you end up as a novelist?
I wish. No, all we end up as is dead. But writing novels began in college. The first one, 1227 Royal Street, sits, in longhand, in a looseleaf binder on a bottom shelf in my living room. It is my Mantissa, but I have no intention of foisting it on a world, however imperfect, that deserves better. I papered my bathroom walls with the rejection slips it earned. One chapter was published as a short story, it won me $25. But then I graduated and had to make a living. I had a 32 year detour through commercial radio. Hey, I was a DJ, I had believers!
When that gravy train ended I stumbled around with all sorts of bare-bones jobs – I was a handyman’s helper, climbing ladders with buckets of paint. I was the Operations Director for my state Libertarian Party. I crunched numbers at an insurance brokerage. And I spent more than three years with one of the service providers the museum had to hire in The Rothschild Jewels. There was a total absence of emotional satisfaction in my life. So I sat down and wrote most of a history of Rock and Roll. Everything was looking up, but then the Eagles put out their first album in 18 years. To this day I have not brought myself to listen to it, so that project blew up.
Next step was fiction. If I create the characters, I don’t have to worry about them regrouping for the got-to-pay-the-mortgage reunion tour. If I had known how much fun this was I would have kept at it after college.
What’s next for Amy and Paul?
The goal is to have their next adventure, The Rothschild Jewels, available in the summer of 2015. Amy has become a police detective, and Paul hates cops because, as he puts it, “I haven’t always been a pillar of the community.” After that Amy opens a Private Investigator business because the New Orleans Police Department is a little too structured for her taste.
When can I see Amy and Paul on the movie screen?
When somebody buys the rights, which is out of my control. I’d love it, though. Eleven year old Amy would be played by AnnaSophia Robb when she was twelve, in Bridge to Terabithia (In A Different Kind Of Twin Amy says she really liked the movie), and Amy’s little sister Kaylee would be played by Bailee Madison from the same film.
Have you written any other series? Stand-alone novels?
Nope. Maybe someday. Right now I’m having too much fun with Amy and Paul.
Advice for people starting out as writers?
Needless to say (he said), don’t give up your day job. There aren’t a dozen people in the world earning a living writing novels. Unless he or she is one of those dozen, your favorite novelist probably teaches undergraduate English composition at a second tier college somewhere.
Whatever your chosen genre, you must write. Get comfortable with yourself at a keyboard or with pad and pen. Write journals. Write poetry (I’ll deny I said that). Memoir. Non-fiction. Comic books and graphic novels. Advertising copy. And get your skin thick enough to Jack or Jill up when someone tells you what you’ve written is a bunch of dingo’s kidneys. And it wouldn’t hurt to pay attention to what genres are selling, in case you’re one of those people like me who will “make it longer if you like the style” and is willing to write the sort of thing people are actually, you know, paying for.
For long- or short-form fiction, get in touch with your local, state, or regional writers’ association. Go to some meetings. Hook up with a writers’ critique group that is a little better than you are so you can learn from them without embarrassing yourself. The publishing industry is changing by the nanosecond, but it might help to learn about Lulu or Amazon CreateSpace and other legitimate avenues of self-publishing that won’t leave your heirs with 487 unsold copies of your book in the attic or the garage. Try not to get scammed.
What should they write about?
Any damn fool thing that pops into their mind. I write about a woman who has an old man living in her head. I’m sure you can do much better.
How do you handle criticism?
Not much of a problem until people write reviews of your work. Until that happens, you may as well assume you need to learn more but you’re on the right path.
When the old high school buddy who’s jealous because you actually, you know, WROTE A BOOK says, “It needs work,” you can laugh at the cruel hand fate has dealt the poor bastard while you, you know, WROTE A BOOK. Or you can punch him, but that always makes my hand hurt. Like Amy and Paul in The Beaded Necklace.
I have rehearsed for the criticism I haven’t received yet. When it happens – when some internet troll bitches about my political incorrectness or lack of sensitivity to the plight of left handed blue-eyed eskimos – my response will be, “I look forward to reading your book.”
And I do look forward to reading YOUR book.