Caryn is a fellow Wiffer whose blog I’ve been following closely. She also takes beautiful photos which she shares on her new photo blog. I even won my very first ever prize from a random drawing – an autographed copy of Jess Riley’s Driving Sideways. Given the online interviews that Caryn, Pam and Robin have done with Jess, I can hardly wait for her book to arrive.
As always, when I visit a blog and read that ‘About Me’ page, I often find myself full of questions. Caryn was gracious enough to answer a few of them:
1) Where were you born? Where did you grow up? Where else have you lived?
I was born in Ohio, and lived there all the way through procuring my Master’s degree. Even before I graduated, though, I had a job lined up in Colorado, and I moved west just days after graduating. I’ve never moved back. I’ve also lived in Moab, Utah (where I spent two summers as a white water rafting guide in college); Toledo, Spain (where I studied for six weeks); and Cuernavaca, Mexico (where I studied for three months during my first winter in college). After growing up in a city of over a million people, I’m definitely a small-town girl, and I love both the desert and the mountains, so the southwest is perfect for me. Plus, my husband loves it here, too.
2) You take beautiful photographs. Does it come naturally or have you had some kind of training?
Awww. Thanks, Ilana! Actually, I think my photography is mostly a combination of my living in and visiting many beautiful areas, the sheer number of photos I take, and lots of practice with Photoshop. That said, I did have some formal photography training in high school, and even won a few state and local contests with my photos. Beyond that, I’ve also spent a lot of time look at others’ photographs and trying to decide what does and doesn’t work for me — much like I do when I’m reading and watching movies, in order to improve my writing.
3) What is your favorite cat story?
Wow. I don’t even know. How about a favorite cat picture? That would probably be this one of Rosemary and The Basil. Or favorite cat quirks? Echo the Cat bites when he wants attention, and he becomes angry easily, but when he’s in the right mood he’ll let me hug him just like a teddy bear. Sometimes we fall asleep that way. Rosie is our little strumpet. When she wants attention, she’ll trot coquettishly up to the person, meowing in a flirtatious manner, then throw herself to her back and begin scooting across the floor. I swear she flutters her eyelashes all the while. Someday I’ll have to catch it on video. The Basil is my breakfast buddy. Every morning he insists on sitting at the stool next to mine while I eat, and rubs against me for attention. He also loves to ride around on my shoulders, especially when I’m in the kitchen because I let him sniff whatever I’m working with at the time; he’s very nosy, so with that and the height that comes from his perch, he can indulge his curious nature.
4) What is your day job? Does any of it carry over into your writing?
I actually never blog about my day job except in the most general terms, because of privacy reasons and also because I don’t want anything to be misconstrued. That happened once before, with a different job, and it was awful, so I erased the post and have never done it again. That said, I’m only thirty-one, but I’ve been a veterinary assistant, white water rafting guide, paper-pusher, independent bookstore manager, typesetter/copyeditor, English teacher, bookkeeper, and an artist’s assistant — not necessarily in that order. Many of these were part-time jobs while I was in college, or to supplement my teaching income, or when I moved to my current town before I could get something full time; that’s why there are so many. (I live in a tourist town, so full-time work can be hard to come by.) I think that all of my jobs have carried over into my writing or will eventually, either because some situations inspire scenes or characters, or because I now have plenty of jobs to give to my characters without having to do too much research! 
5) Do you remember the moment when you first decided to write a novel?
Wow. I remember the year when I decided to give it a try, though I don’t remember the exact moment when I switched from thinking, I could never get a novel published to I want to be an author, too!. I’ll tell you, though, my first book was AWFUL! I was learning about writing a book while doing so, and it turned out I had a lot to learn. It wasn’t a waste, however, despite the fact that I will never, ever try to publish it. I learned so much about writing — and about myself! — while writing it. In fact, sometimes I like to look at it just to see how much I improved over the course of writing it, and how much more I’ve improved since then. It amuses me, but not in the ways I had originally intended.
6) What kind of novels have you written?
Let’s see. My first three novels were categories for Harlequin. I’m wincing even as I write this, and category people, please don’t get mad, but I never really read much category; I just liked it because the books were shorter, which seemed more doable. That, of course, helps explain why the first two were unpublishable. Then I discovered Flipside, the romantic comedy line, which actually fit my voice. I read a few, then aimed my third book for that line. It got all the way up to a request for a full before the line was dissolved and the book was orphaned. I don’t know if they would have published it otherwise, but I’d like to think they would have, since it makes me feel better. Unfortunately, it can’t be worked to fit any of their current lines, and it’s definitely not a single title, so I’m pursuing alternative routes of publication for it. My fourth book was a chick lit, and by the time I pitched it I was told in no uncertain terms that chick lit was dead. I then switched careers in my day job, which meant that I needed to go back to school and didn’t get much writing done for a year and a half. Now I’m back at it, (slowly!) revising my chick lit into a romantic comedy and (much more quickly) writing a young adult romantic comedy with paranormal elements. I’m having so much fun with this fifth book, and I’m really hoping that it will finally be the one.
7) Can you give us a little summary about one of your novels? The future back cover copy, perhaps?
My current book is about a girl who loses her last friend and learns she has telekinetic powers on the same day — and it’s a tossup which event distresses her more.
Here’s what I have so far for my query letter summary, though I’ll add on to the blurb before I send it off: Tenth-grader Hannah Lindstrom would give anything to be ordinary. Ordinary girls have friends. They don’t have embarrassing little brothers, clueless fathers, or mothers who change their personalities as often as their shoes. Most of all, ordinary girls do not have psychic powers.
8. Pantser or plotter? And have you tried it the other way?
Uh, some of each? I also revise as I’m writing, too. (The horror of it!) I usually start off with an idea — often a bit of dialogue or a whole scene. I write that down, and think about it for a while. As the voices start talking more and I figure out the gist of the plot, I start outlining. Usually, though, entire scenes — or chunks of them — come at me, and I have to start writing or go crazy. By the time I’m a quarter to a third of the way through a book, I usually have a good idea of my turning points and most of what has to happen to lead up to them, but there are still tons of surprises, and I often have to go back and rework earlier scenes. If the idea speaks to me strongly enough that I know that it has to be written, then it simply can’t wait while I sit and plot the whole thing out first.
9) Please share a moment of ‘writer crazy’. Have you found people looking at you strangely or found your thoughts wandering down a pathway that some might find disturbing?
All the time! The good news is that I am now surrounded by family and friends who understand that. My brother, for example, has begun to expect me to kick off a phone call with, “I have a random question for you.” And my husband, friends, and family are great about hypothesizing with me when I’m trying to work something out. However, I haven’t always been surrounded by such tolerance. Once, for example, I worked with a guy who was a total jerk — for so many reasons, not just the following example! As you know, anything can spark a story idea — just see something unusual, put a few characters in the scene, and bam! Story. I used to think everyone did this. (How else do they entertain themselves? Honestly!) This is where the jerk comes in. We saw a car that had gone off into a ditch in the middle of the night. I heard that the people were fine, and had just gotten out and walked back to town. I mused aloud something like, “I wonder what they must have thought when the road suddenly disappeared and they were in a ditch.” A perfectly normal question, I thought, imagining their fear and surprise. He turned to me and said nastily, “God, you have such random, pointless thoughts sometimes. You’re like Jack Handy, that Deep Thoughts guy.” I was a little embarrassed at the time, but now I’m glad for my imagination. My life is richer for it, and he’s the one who’s missing out.
Caryn is another blogging Wiffer whose site I’ve been visiting regularly. Not only does she maintain an interesting blog, she also takes beautiful pictures which she’s recently been sharing through her new photo blog. I also won my very first ever random drawing for a prize (really truly random) by entering a contest she ran for an autographed copy of Jess Riley’s Driving Sideways. Pam, Robin and Caryn’s interviews have me looking forward to this read.
So, as always, I read the ‘About Me’ page on a blog and found myself wondering… So, Caryn has humored me by answering a few of my questions.
10) With nearly five completed novels, do you have any advice for all us other writers who are just getting started?
Oh, wow. I don’t know if I should be giving advice to anybody! If I were to do so, however, I’d say that no writing is a waste if you’re learning from it and having some fun. Chances are good that your first book won’t sell. That’s fine. Now that you have that out of the way, and you know that you can write an entire book, you can continue to work on your craft without feeling quite as intimidated by the idea writing an entire book. One thing that kept me going was learning that 90% of all those who start writing a book never finish it — and that doesn’t even include all those people out there who say wistfully, “I’d like to write a book someday…” and never do. I wanted to be part of that 10
