Spotlight: Author Maggie Lyons

Interview with Maggie Lyons

Maggie Lyons was born in Wales and brought up in England before gravitating west to Virginia’s coast. She zigzagged her way through a motley variety of careers from orchestral management to law-firm media relations to academic editing. Writing and editing nonfiction for adults brought plenty of satisfaction but nothing like the magic she discovered in writing fiction and nonfiction for children. Several of her articles, poetry, and a chapter book have been published in the children’s magazines Stories for Children Magazine and knowonder! 

What inspired you to write?

I’ve always loved words. My parents read stories to me when I was small and I became an avid reader. Language has always been a great love of mine, including learning how to read, write, and speak foreign languages, and read, interpret, and play music.

Have you had any training to become a writer?

In terms of formal training, one summer, centuries ago, I attended a short creative writing course at Georgetown University. Informally, all those years of writing business-related nonfiction certainly helped, as have countless pieces of advice from members of my critique group and articles on writing, and reading the works of master writers. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? If yes, how did you ‘cure’ it?

I suffer from writer’s block whenever I try to write something worth reading. My “cure” is a walk down a country lane, or through a quiet field, or if it’s really bad, I move to another country.

Can you share some writing experiences with us?

One experience rockets to mind even though it happened decades ago, when Paul Hume was music critic at The Washington Post. For several years, I was the program annotator for the National Symphony Orchestra, which has its home in Washington, DC. Program annotators contribute notes on the music that can be found in concert program booklets. It’s that stuff most people in the audience don’t read because they’re too busy trying to find their names in the list of donors. Mr. Hume decided my notes were too frivolous and said so in the newspaper three weeks in a row. Since I prefer to avoid aspersions cast against me in newspapers, or wherever, I began including technical musical analyses in my notes, even though I suspected many, perhaps most, of the few who read the program notes would bypass even a whiff of technical analysis. That dried up the flow of invective from the Post, but more people fell asleep during the concerts.

Like all authors, you have had your fair share of rejection letters. You obviously did not let the letters deter you. How did you keep your determination without getting discouraged?

My characters were screaming their heads off to be released from their files. I couldn’t let them down and I was tired of all the noise in my writing space.

Please describe to us your relationship between you and your editor. What makes an author/editor relationship a success?

My relationship with my editors can be slightly tense at times because I’m a professional editor and therefore quite opinionated about editorial matters. When I manage to get off my high horse about editorial style, I find my editors have some amazingly wise advice about writing style. The two things are not necessarily related. While my nonfiction writing experience helped improve the fluency of my fiction writing, it didn’t do much to hone the stylistic techniques that distinguish the highest levels of that particular art.

How do you see the future of book publishing, both traditional, electronic, and print on demand?

I doubt that electronic publishing will wipe out old-fashioned print books for a very long time, if ever. But the new developments in interactive electronic books for children are truly exciting. I’d certainly love to see my books published in an interactive format some day. 

What advice would you give to a new writer?

Write, read, read, write—everything you can, not just on the art of writing and promoting your work. Study the work of great writers. Join a critique group and online writers’ groups. You can’t have too much input from others.

Thank you Maggie for taking some time to share with us about writing. For those who want to know more about Maggie Lyons you can follower her at

Website http://www.maggielyons.yolasite.com

Twitter @maggielyons66

You can find out more about Maggie Lyons’s World of Ink Author/Book Tour at http://tinyurl.com/9t24kgy

Title: Vin and the Dorky Duet

Publisher: Halo Publishing Int. & MuseItUp Publishing (Canadian e-book publisher)

ISBN: 978-1-61244-091-0 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-77127-073-1 (eBook)

Genre of Book: Children’s Chapter Book Adventure

About the Book:

A twelve-year-old boy named Vin, goes on a mission—reluctantly. He doesn’t share the optimism of the knights of old who embarked on impossible missions without a doubt they’d succeed. When magnetic compost heaps, man-eating bubble baths and other disasters erupt, Vin comes close to packing in the whole ridiculous business. He calls it Operation BS, his code name for a mission to introduce his sister to a boy she has a crush on. He doesn’t want to play matchmaker, but Meg’s promise to reward him with a David Beckham autographed soccer jersey is a decisive incentive.

Get a sneak peek of the book at http://youtu.be/Qtgtp_rnAZ4

Available wherever books are sold and online.

 

To learn more about the World of Ink Tours visit http://worldofinknetwork.com  

Researching My Writing with Award-winning Author Hope Irvin Marston

RESEARCHING MY WRITING 

AGAINST THE TIDE: THE VALOR OF MARGARET WILSON

Because I am a librarian by profession, I know where to search for generic information. Since I write in several genres, my research follows different patterns. Margaret Wilson’s story is historical fiction, based on the life of a teen martyr in 17^th century Scotland.  Obviously, that required a different type of research than My Little Book of Bald Eagles or Eye on the Iditarod: Aisling’s Quest, a biographical account of an eleven-year old Maine musher with a lofty goal.

Through nearly forty years of writing, I have learned that research is time-consuming, that one often neglects to take the road she should have taken the first time and time runs out for getting that particular story published. My observations, considerations and conclusions can help you write your historical novel no matter its location or time frame.  

            First of all, don’t attempt to write about a period of time or an historical person that does not cause you to react emotionally. You may have to spend years gathering sufficient information to write a story that will catch an editor’s eye. If your excitement wanes before you complete the piece, your writing will lose the spark that ignited it. 

            I first heard of Margaret Wilson when I was proofreading for a now defunct publishing company. I was awed by her unshakeable faith that enabled her to die a martyr’s death at the age of seventeen. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. It was at least thirty years after I first read the inscription from her grave marker in a Scots kirkyard that my novel was published. Since I was writing about a foreigner living in her native land, it was a challenge to make the story authentic.

It took two trips to Scotland and several years of e-mail exchanges with my Scots friends before this story took shape. (Pleasant fringe benefits!)

I found general information about family life in Scots reference books borrowed through ILL, but they didn’t tell me fine details such as how family members addressed each other. I learned that from reading books about life in Scotland, written by Scots.

Margaret lived at a time when an immoral king attempted to force the Presbyterian Church in southwestern Scotland to accept him as its head. To understand her plight, I dug out histories of that time period.  

Though Margaret didn’t have reason to travel far, I still needed to know how her father traveled and for what reason. Not finding this information in reference books, I quizzed my Scots writer who had researched this time period for a book she was writing.

Vocabulary and speech patterns must reflect the era accurately. Modern idioms slip into your story unawares. When in doubt, look up a word or phrase. I keep by my desk English through the Ages for checking such things. I found some useful Scots words and phrases accidently when checking certain words in The Synonym Finder. The big Random House Unabridged, Second Edition gives word origins and usage notes.

My integrity as a writer is at stake with each new publication and so is yours. You must be absolutely certain your references are reliable. If something you read amazes you, it’s unwise to accept it as gospel unless you find the same information in two reputable sources, such as credentialed researchers and trustworthy encyclopedias and reference works.  I found many helpful resources in the bibliographies of books written about events in 17^th century Scotland.

Social customs differ from family to family, from North to South, from one era to the next and from one country to another.  To know about Margaret’s life I had to find and read stories about Scots children growing up in the 17^th century.

I searched for years for information about Margaret’s childhood.  Imagine my joy, when I found a book, published in 1897, describing her early life. What a bonanza, so I thought.

              When I shared some of the things I’d learned from this book with my Scots historical writer, she was aghast. That writer’s repeated scenes of Margaret’s early evening visits with her mentor in Drumjargon were impossible inasmuch as that village was twenty miles away from Margaret’s home in Glenvernoch.  Authentic information?  Hardly!  How could I trust anything else in that book.

            Had I not visited Scotland to experience the ambience of this delightful county while corroborating the details in my manuscript, it would have been full of misinformation.

 Bottom line: Play it safe, even when you are not writing about life in a foreign country five hundred years ago. Don’t write about a place without visiting it unless you have contact with someone who lives there and is willing to vet your story.

                           About Hope Irvin Marston: 

Hope Irvin Marston is a native of central Pennsylvania, the eighth child in a farm family of nine, an honor’s graduate of Lock Haven (PA) High School, Milligan College (TN) and SUNY at Geneseo. She and her husband of fifty years share their Black River (NY) home with Heidi, a lovable Bernese mountain dog. A former junior high school teacher/library media specialist in Watertown (NY), Hope retired in 1990 to write full time. Her bio is listed in Something about the Author (Gale).

           

She is a member of the New York State Retired Teachers, the Greater Thousand Islands Literacy Council, the Jeff-Lewis Librarians Association, the Adirondack Center for Writing, the St. Lawrence County Arts Council, the North Country Arts Council and SCBWI. She organized the Black River Valley Writers Club and served as its leader for several years. Later she founded the North Country Children’s Writers and Illustrators arm of SCBWI and directed the annual writing conference for five years. 

           

In addition to writing thirty-two children’s books and several adult titles, Hope has been on staff for Christian Writers Conferences at Hephzibah Heights (MA), Montrose Bible Conference (PA) and at St. Davids Christian Writers Conference at Beaver Falls, PA. She has taught creative writing workshops at Jefferson Community College, the Jefferson-Lewis Teacher Center, and the North Country Arts Council.

           

Her picture book series, MY LITTLE BOOK COLLECTION (Windward), has grown to eight titles thus far and has 125,000 books in print.

           

Hope was a book reviewer for the now defunct Provident Book Finder.  She currently writes reviews for Church Libraries.

           

Hope does school visits from kindergarten through post-graduate college and presents writing workshops for kids and adults. When she is not researching, reading or writing, you may find her cooking or baking in the kitchen, or out walking Heidi.

 

The World of Ink Network will be touring three of award-winning author Hope Irvin Marston books. Her most recent release Eye on the Iditarod: Aisling’s Quest (ISBN: 978-0-89317-071-4) is a biography, but was written as an autobiography. Windward Publishing (An imprint of Finney Company) released the book December 1, 2011. The other two books on tour are My Little Book of Bald Eagles also from Windward Publishing (An imprint of Finney Company) and Against the Tide: The Valor of Margaret Wilson from P & R Publishing. 

You can find out more about Hope Irvin Marston’s World of Ink Author/Book Tour schedule at http://storiesforchildrenpublishing.com/HopeIrvinMarston.aspx. There will be giveaways, reviews, interviews, guest posts and more. Make sure to stop by and interact with Marston and the hosts at the different stops by leaving comments and/or questions. For each comment, you will be entered into the big Giveaway at the end of the tour.

In addition, come listen on February 6, 2012 to Blog Talk Radio’s World of Ink Network show: Stories for Children at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/worldofinknetwork. The hosts VS Grenier and Irene Roth will be chatting with Hope Irvin Marston about her books, writing, the publishing industry and experiences. The show will air live February 6, 2012 at 2pm EST. You can listen/call in at (714) 242-5259. (Note: if you can’t make the show, you can listen on demand at the same link.)

To learn more about the World of Ink Tours visit: http://worldofinknetwork.blogspot.com  

Helpful Tips on Writing

Let more than one person edit your book.

 You need an editor for grammar and such, but it’s a good idea to let someone with knowledge on the subject matter read it too. When a reviewer would ask me what I meant when I wrote this or that sentence, I knew I had to do a better job conveying the message because others would ask the same questions. This give and take with people I trusted greatly improved the clarity and quality of my writing.

Know whom you are writing for.

 Life Is Not a Candy Store started as a spiritual guide for all ages. However, as the project moved forward, reaching teens became the main purpose of the book. It meant I had to go back and change some of the writing. I had to think in terms of what issues teens deal with or are bothered by. I also had to change the examples I used in the book to fit their environment and talk about things such as peer pressure and challenges teens faced in school. Changing the target audience during the writing was the right decision, but a time consuming one too.

Always talk notes when you have new ideas.

Over the years you may have had many inspiring ideas crossing your mind, but for different reasons you let them go. You will do yourself a big favor by starting to write them down as they come to you. Those are the seeds of your writing and the gifts the universe sent you. Always have something you can write with. Later on, you will have time to develop it further. 

You are the most original part of your book, so show it!

Whatever subject you write on, and whatever story you tell, most likely it was told before in one way or another. What makes your book unique is your prospective, your personality. Be passionate; let the readers see your version of something they heard about before. For example, when you read Life Is Not a Candy Store: It’s the Way to the Candy Store, you will feel that the book was written as a personal journey coming from the heart. It is so because I decided to connect with the readers on that level.

Finally, have fun writing!!!

It takes time and money to publish a book, and it’s not always easy to remember, but going through the process means you are realizing a dream. Look around you, how many people you know are actually doing that?  Very few, if any at all. It is of no use at all to be sitting there twenty years from now telling anyone who is willing to listing that once you wrote a book. Live in the present and enjoy the moment! 

Tal Yanai teaches Hebrew and Judaic Studies in Temple Beth Hillel in the San Fernando Valley as he continues his quest to explore the meaning of soul and achieve his full potential as a spiritual teacher.

You can find out more about Tal Yanai, his book Life Is Not a Candy Store and his World of Ink Author/Book Tour at http://storiesforchildrenpublishing.com/TalYanai.aspx. There will be giveaways, reviews, interviews, guest posts and more. Make sure to stop by and interact with Tal Yanai and the hosts at the different stops by leaving comments and/or questions. Yanai will be checking in throughout the tour and is offering an additional giveaway for those who leave comments throughout the tour.