Author Interview ~ Lisa Samson

Lisa Samson is the author of nineteen novels, including the Christy Award winning Songbird. She has been called, "one of the best inspirational novelists in the market today" by Publishers Weekly Magazine. Lisa broke ground in CBA fiction with her novel The Church Ladies, a novel portraying broken, brutally honest women who struggle with their faith. She has continued to offer her readers an edgier experience with books such as Tiger Lillie, The Living End and Women's Intuition. Quaker Summer, set to release in March of 2007, deals with social justice and mercy themes and will be Women of Faith's Novel of the Year. Lisa lives in Kentucky with her husband and three children.


What book or project is coming out or has come out that you’d like to tell us about?

Straight Up, released September 18th. Georgia Bishop has wasted her life on booze. Her cousin, Fairly Godfrey is entering a consumeristic and social-climbing vacuum. Both women are giving God the cold shoulder in their ‘own special way’. Straight Up explores what it looks when we choose to live in the shadows of our own pain instead of using the gifts God has given us: time, talents, people, places, to crawl back into the light. It explores what grace might look like to those who seem to deserve it the least because they’ve been given the most talent, energy and drive and yet, have thrown it away completely or centered it on the temporal. I admit, my take on that grace is a little crazy, but that’s nothing new.

Tell us about your journey to publication. How long had you been writing before you got the call you had a contract, how you heard and what went through your head.

I was writing for about a year-and-a-half. Yeah, it’s a Cinderella story and I totally DID NOT deserve to be published. What went through my head? It’s ridiculous but here goes. “Oh my gosh. I’m gonna be a published author. Now if I write five of these a year and they sell 40,000 copies a piece I can break six figures!” I kid you not. And hey, you asked for specifics.

Do you still experience self-doubts regarding your work?

More than ever before. It’s like the widow’s cruise of oil. Just never seems to stay empty.

What mistakes have you made while seeking publication?

As I said, a Cinderella story. I’m the last person to give advice for that. However, personally speaking, waiting to get published was like being drunk on the bathroom floor. I don’t know how many times I begged God to “get me through this.” I was really an emotional wreck and that’s too bad. I should have trusted God more. But I didn’t.

I also thought I was pretty darned something because I finished a book. Okay, plainly speaking, I was arrogant and I had no right to be. I still don’t. I’ve learned a lot over the years but not nearly as much as I want to or can or should. So the question you ask, while meaning your first novel, should be applied in the present tense, year after year. “What mistakes am I making?” Getting published doesn’t mean I’ve arrived. It simply means the cubicle’s been set up, the chair is in place and I’ve got a new job to do. The great thing about that is, for every book, you at least get a new boss to work for, and depending on what your protagonist is like, that can be good or bad! But at least it’s always interesting.

What’s the best advice you’ve heard on writing/publication?

Write the book. I think that’s where I had the advantage, even in my Cinderella experience. I had a completed manuscript before I ever tried to get published. Also, make sure your manuscript is as polished as can be, because you can be sure someone else’s manuscript in that slush pile will be, and who’s the editor going to pick?

What’s the worst piece of writing advice you’ve heard?

As a first-time novelist you don’t need more than three chapters and a synopsis. Now, I’m just speaking as someone projecting herself into the acquisitions editor chair. I know I would think, “How do I know if this person can actually pull off a novel? I need to see it all.” So what I’m saying right here might be absolutely worthless. But it seems to me, that would be the case with any art form.

Another piece of advice I read one time, and I have no idea who said this but they were really famous, was: (and I’m paraphrasing) If you’re hungry, don’t eat, write. If you have to go to the bathroom, don’t go, write. If your children need you, tell them “Not now” and write.” And blah, blah, blah! By the time I was finished reading it, I wanted to say, “Lady, you need a lobotomy!” Personally, if we’re not really living, what are we actually going to say in our writing? In other words, get out of that darned chair too!

What’s something you wish you’d known earlier that might have saved you some time/frustration in the publishing business?

That publishing is quite possibly an industry slower than molasses dripping from a hole the size of a pinhead. In Antarctica.


What are a few of your favorite books? (Not written by you.)

Believe me! None of my favorite books are written by me! Ack!

The Moon and Sixpence, by W. Somerset Maugham
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck
On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon (Okay this is a guilty pleasure read and I can’t believe I’m admitting this here.)
Katrina’s Wings, by Patricia Hickman
The Second Coming, by Walker Percy
The Chosen, by Chaim Potok
Pretty much anything by: Anne Tyler, Larry McMurtry and Douglas Coupland
I would put down Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger, but this has become for novels what that Aslan “safe” phrase has become for quotes. (I know, I’m awful.)


What piece of writing have you done that you’re particularly proud of and why?

I’m not particularly proud of anything. Upon reading the books of those writers up there, I know how far I have to go. The book I’m most likely to give to people to read, however, is The Living End. I like the way the relationship with God is presented in this book. I like the way my protagonist does things a lot of us would like to do but don’t have the guts to do. Then again, she pretty much had nothing to lose. And I sure can’t say that about myself.


Do you have a pet peeve having to do with this biz?

That novelists are encouraged to have “a platform”. IOW, if you’re a speaker or have a ministry, you have a greater chance of getting published because you already have a marketing machine in place. That’s crap. Not that people with platforms shouldn’t write novels if they’re good novelists. But good novelists shouldn’t have to become speakers. I just hope and pray our publishing house aren’t choosing mediocre novelists with platforms over excellent novelists without them. Dear Lord, I hope not! But I’m not on the inside, so I wouldn’t know if this is happening or not. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that there’s some integrity about it.


Can you give us a view into a typical day of your writing life?

Sure.

Get up. Make my favorite tea. Read the Bible while my mind wanders, beg God to let me actually get through the day. Check email and blogs. Walk Jake to school. Sit here at Starbuck’s (or Third Street Coffee or Kiser’s) like I’m doing right now. Write. Sometimes go to mass. Walk home. Homeschool Gwynnie. Write while checking email at least ten thousand times an hour and bloglines another 250. Fold laundry inbetween, pay bills, talk on the phone, stand in front of the fridge and wonder what there is to eat.

Sometimes I wish reincarnation were true so that perchance, I might be able to come back as a focused, organized individual. Even if I was a focused, organized horse or cow, that would be okay.

If you could choose to have one strength of another writer, what would it be and from whom?

I would be focused and organized. Like Angie Hunt.

Do you have a dream for the future of your writing, something you would love to accomplish?

I want to write compelling fiction for the general market someday. But God keeps me in the CBA. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be in CBA to kick against the goads or to learn to be content. Both frighten me.

Other than that, the Pulitzer for fiction would be okay too. Ha!

Was there ever a time in your writing career you thought of quitting?

Um, does yesterday count?

What is your favorite and least favorite part of being a writer?

Favorite:

Making my own hours, writing wherever I want, being finished with a project and having something physical to show for it, getting paid for exploring a creative outlet.

Least Favorite:

All of the above. Making my own hours? I’m undisciplined! Writing wherever I want? I have the focus of a gnat. Being finished with a project and having something physical to show for it? You mean it’s done? I can’t change that? Everybody’s going to see that? Getting paid for exploring a creative outlet? I must be done by X date no matter what. I know there’s a better ending out there, but there’s no time. I can’t mull over this one . . . well okay then, there, that’ll have to do.

That’ll have to do. Are those words horrible to admit to or what?

Another big fave? Meeting other writers!


How much marketing do you do? Any advice in this area?

Hardly any. I blog, send out influencer copies, book club leaders copies, speak occasionally, do interviews on the radio. I’m the last person you want advice from! Especially on things like the best place to get bookmarks printed up.

What are you most encouraged about when you read CBA fiction?

Some houses are willing to take chances these days. I’ll be a little shocked at times and say, “Wow, my editor would never let me get away with that!” I’m all for putting little fires under the status quo.

Least?

Most of what I find discouraging about Christian fiction lies more in the lap of the industry itself. And I'll just leave it there, except to say, should Christian “anything” ever have become an industry? It’s a tension, me being a part of that industry, that I live with every day.

Is there an upcoming writer that you're particularly excited about?

Claudia Mair Burney. Read her blog www.ragamuffindiva.blogspot.com. When the rest of our books have been returned to the earth, nary a copy remaining on the planet, Claudia's writings will be read by the faithful.

What are your thoughts on the ongoing debate of writing fast vs.writing well?

If you can't write well and write fast, then please don't. If you can, go ahead! Ray Bradbury always comes to mind. So there are speedy exceptions. The trick is not to fool yourself that you're a Ray Bradbury simply because the words come out fast. They might be a swift current of dreck! Always, always, always the artist must tell him/herself the truth about their art.

Is your fast work mediocre? Then be man or woman enough to admit it. We simply must look at ourselves with an extremely critical eye. I've got to say, I totally respect Ray Blackston's take on writing only the books you're supposed to. I know I could bathe my work in a LOT more prayer than I do and I have at least two titles out there that I wonder whether they were something God wanted from me or not. Thankfully, I have a lot of good people praying for me so hopefully I won't put too much out there that the world would be better off without.


Parting words?

Read great books. The best way for a novelist to get better is to read great books that have stood the test of time and find out which books today are well-written. It doesn’t have to all be literary, surely you must read the classics but find the top of your genre as well and learn from the masters, old and new, in it. For instance, for pure pleasure, I picked up an old Ellery Queen novel called The Glass Village. Oh my goodness! I am blown away by the imagery, the description, the delicate, almost magic wand touches of character development. Reading is part of “what the novelist does” and it stands to reason, the higher the quality of books we’re reading, the higher the quality our own output will be.

Other than that, no parting words, really. Ha!

Thanks for having me!