On the road to publication, Michelle fell into fandom in college. She has a bunch of useless degrees in theater, English, film/communication, and writing, and books and novellas in science fiction and fantasy, YA, suspense, women's fiction, and romance. Her official launch into publishing came with winning first place in the Writers of the Future contest in 1990. Her training includes the Institute for Children’s Literature; proofreading at an advertising agency;
and working at a community newspaper. She freelance edits for a living, but only enough to give her time to write. Her crimes against the literary world include co-managing editor at Mt. Zion Ridge Press, the publishing co-op, Ye Olde Dragon Books, and Ye Olde Dragon’s Library, the storytelling podcast.
Michelle is giving away an ebook copy of Common Grounds. Please comment by December 6. We need five comments to offer a giveaway.
I asked Michelle to share a bit about her favorite things: What is your favorite? Drink?
This time of year, hot chocolate – found this awesome peanut butter cup hot chocolate, with actual tiny peanut butter cups in it. Dangerously good!
Candy?
Dark chocolate. With occasional indulging in Dots.
Holiday tradition?
Operation Christmas Child, through Samaritan’s Purse. It’s fun seeing how much I can cram into shoebox-sized plastic boxes, to benefit a kid in another country. School supplies, toys, costume jewelry, socks, combs, harmonicas, etc.
Season?
Spring, when I can sleep with my windows open, and there’s daylight when I wake up in the morning.
Now, tell us a bit about yourself:
What genre do you enjoy reading most?
Fantasy. I’ve been finding some really good fantasy stories woven through Chinese mythology, and on the other end of the spectrum, a series where the main characters are dragons in our modern world
When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
High school. I got an idea in my head, a story from a TV show that caught my imagination, and the only way I could get it out of my head so I could study for final exams was to try to write it down. Trying to write stories had always killed them before. This time … I kept going. And haven’t stopped, even with the “distraction” of going to college and working full-time. I have always loved stories, and I’ve always had a tendency to rewrite TV shows and books that I loved and wanted to keep going – or struck me as really stupid. My first published stories were all fan fiction, like Star Trek, Highlander, The Phoenix, Stingray, Stargate SG-1. My 5-book Arthurian fantasy series came from watching a really bad MacGyver episode that borrowed from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. My version started out as a Fantasy Island fan story, then turned into one novel, then expanded into five. (See: The Zygradon Chronicles)
What’s really funny is that I found a DVD set of that TV series from high school (not saying how long ago that was ….) and in watching it, I cringed at some really bad storytelling … and started dreaming up how I would have done those scripts differently. Someday, I’m going to write some books where I fix all those scripts. And probably no one will recognize the series …… It’ll be a lot of fun.
Do you have any upcoming projects, releases, or sales?
This week, I hope to start final edits/formatting on Inquest, the 4th book in my science fiction/space opera series, AFV Defender – after that, I need to start final edits on Brighten Your Corner, the 3rd book in my cozy mystery series, Book & Mug Mysteries – while I’m doing that, I need to edit narration for The Beastly Beauty, the 2nd book in my Enchanted Castle Archives fantasy series, and decide when to release it. Oh, yeah … and I’m doing a Kickstarter for Inquest. My first Kickstarter. I’ve got a lot to learn …
What have you been working on?
What genre do you write and why did you choose that one?
The book Penny asked me to spotlight is Common Grounds, which is a romantic suspense, set in my
sweet romance series, Tabor Heights, which I am re-launching, expanding from ebook only to ebook, paper, and audio, from Mt. Zion Ridge Press.
That being said, I’m focusing more on my science fiction and fantasy. I have a cozy mystery series,
Book & Mug Mysteries, that I’m doing for Mt. Zion Ridge, but everything else is SF/fantasy. A lot of time, the story chooses the genre. Some story ideas just “fit” better in a specific genre. For instance, that series I mentioned based on the TV show from high school – I’ve gone back and forth a couple times between an urban fantasy based in our modern world and a futuristic set on an alien planet. It all depends on how much the fantastical element wants to come out. There was a suspense story I wanted to write years ago, that started out as a modern-day story, but the legal elements of the story, where a powerful man kidnaps and holds captive a young woman he believes to be his daughter, eventually required me to make it science fiction before it “worked.” See: True Caderi, part of my
Commonwealth Universe SF series from Writers Exchange.
Do you find yourself returning to a similar theme in your novels or do you have a new message with each release?That’s a funny thing – I don’t really know if I have a theme. I never set out to write a specific message. I was a theater major in college, and in playwriting class I can’t count how many professors said: If you want to send a message, use Western Union. I don’t set out to send a message, and I don’t choose a theme, but there’s a recurring undercurrent of the struggle to do right, of oppression from outside, stronger forces, of finding identity and family and purpose. A lot of my
Commonwealth Universe stories, for example, deal with different groups of people who are oppressed by those who would dictate who is accepted, who is considered a “real” Human, and try to either erase or enslave those who don’t fit their narrow standards. I also have lots of sub-plots in other stories where nasty, powerful people try to force people into molds, whether political, religious, cultural, or genetic.
Specific to
Common Grounds, my hero, Xander, is a lawyer setting up a branch office in Tabor Heights. He is getting some opposition from another lawyer, who happens to be a loud voice in his church. Mr. Montgomery just keeps criticizing and judging and sneering at anyone who disagrees with him, and uses a 50-pound Bible to pound people and force them to fit his narrow standards – all the while socializing with a local judge who comes under scrutiny for ethics violations. But don’t worry, Mr. Montgomery eventually punishes himself. He ends up having to either eat his words or leave his church when the pastor and leadership won’t bow to his demands. He’s so vicious to his daughter-in-law (“real” Christian women don’t do art, don’t have careers, don’t wear pants) that his son finally sees the light and stands up to him (The Family Way) and he loses access to his first grandchild.
Huh, funny what comes out from a question like that. I was going to pass this up, then I got thinking. It’s dangerous when you get me thinking!
The bottom line is that whatever “theme” or “message” comes out in a story, it’s not intentional. It comes from my personal feelings, my beliefs, my faith. I certainly don’t see it during the writing, and maybe not until much later. Like James Rubart says, “It’s hard to read the label when you’re inside the bottle.”
How do you select the names of your characters?
Sometimes I pick names for a specific meaning. Usually that’s in the planning stage, to help me create the characters. I have a Latin dictionary and a Greek dictionary, plus a baby name book and a character naming book that lists by ethnicities/cultures. For example, I’ll pick all Celtic names for the characters from one country, all Greek names for characters from another country.
Other times, I’ll pick a person or country or movement that’s being especially visible in the news and twist their names around. I have a lot of monsters and troublesome planets and governments in my SF stories based on political figures or political parties or movements. In the words of Hawkeye Pierce, I’m an equal-opportunity annoyer: I pick on loudmouths and boors from both sides of the aisle.
Sometimes, I just play with sounds, such as naming various countries that my wandering heroine travels through. Sometimes I get silly, and if you sound out the name of a country, it’s a string of words. Such as the phrase “ne’er do well” is now a country called Nayrdoweil.
Just for fun:If you could have any super power, which would it be?I’d be a Hoveni – that’s a metamorphic race in my
Commonwealth Universe. They can change into any animal or plant to suit the need or situation. So if I needed to get somewhere fast, I’d become an animal that could fly or run at sonic speed. If I needed to hide, I’d become something really small. And of course, being a SF universe, there would be animals with telepathic powers, the ability to heal, to use natural radar to find things, and go invisible, when necessary.
But I wouldn’t tell any but a few people I completely trusted, because “different is dangerous,” and like they show in most TV shows, special people, aliens, magical creatures, either get locked up in labs for study, or they’re expected to save the world every week while different groups try to put them on leashes and control who they use those powers for, or call them vigilantes and persecute them. (See; a lot of Marvel movies) Secret identity, anyone?
Thanks so much for joining us today, Michelle.
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Michelle is giving away an ebook copy of Common Grounds. Please comment by December 6. We need five comments to offer a giveaway.
