Interview With Author - Maggie Davis
Name: Maggie Davis
Website: www.maggiedavis.com
Contact: MaDav1@aol.com
Questions:
Q: Where are you originally from?
A: I was born in Tidewater, Virginia (home of the historic Mercury Space Program) and raised in New York City. I actually went back and forth with vacations in Virginia in the summertime, which makes me a Southerner/Northerner or a Northerner/Southerner.
Q: Can you tell us your latest book news?
A: I’m currently working on a romantic suspense about a Fashionista who inherits a castle in Scotland.
Q: How old were you when you first started writing?
A: I was writing for my school magazine when I was in the 6th grade. Really doing some good work, too. I was such a book worm it seemed writing was implanted in my brain from an early age. And I had wonderful teachers.
Q: When did you first realize you had the potential to be a writer?
A: I really started focusing on writing in high school. New York City had some wonderful schools, and offered Creative Writing as part of their English curriculum.
Q: What was your inspiration to write your first novel?
A: Inspired? Hmm, well I have always had a romanticized idea of the Vikings - which wasn’t borne out when I started serious research. I started my first novel, The Winter Serpent, when I was married and expecting my fourth child. Something had to give - I wanted to write, and we needed the money. Then I read a really bad book and said, “I can do better than this!” (Since then I’ve found a lot of writers got started that way.)
Q: Is there anyone or anything that inspired you to write?
A: Not anyone, and if anything it was my experience with the so-called bestseller mentioned above.
Q: How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?
A: I was raised in a family that read books - we always had books and magazines around the house. So many families don’t these days, and yet say they want their kids to read. At about age 12 I had read my way through most of the small storefront branch of the New York Library in our neighborhood. I don’t think it’s there anymore.
Q: Do you have a specific writing style?
A: If I have a style it’s “pictorial.” Readers often say of my books that they should be a movie. I have had one of my books - A CHRISTMAS ROMANCE - starring Olivia Newton-John made into a CBS Sunday Night Movie in 1994. It’s now shown on Lifetime cable TV every Christmas season.
Q: What genre are you most comfortable writing?
A: I really don’t know. I guess it depends on how successful the book is - quality, not sales. I’ve written mainstream (ROMMEL’S GOLD), high tech (EAGLES), horror/ghost story (FORBIDDEN OBJECTS), mainstream historicals (THE FAR SIDE OF HOME, STAGE DOOR CANTEEN), romance (BLOOD RED ROSES) comedy (THE LAST MALE VIRGIN), and science fiction/fantasy (OUT OF THE BLUE). About the only thing I haven’t written is men’s action adventure.
Q: How do you come up with the title(s) for your book(s)?
A: I really don’t know. Sometimes the working title seems to fit (BLOOD RED ROSES), sometimes I change it several times. And sometimes an editor picks his own title (THE FAR SIDE OF HOME) and there was the awful time when the sales department at one publisher changed Paris Velvet and Paris Lace into SATIN DOLL and SATIN DREAMS. I actually cried. The sleazeball titles didn’t help the books, either.
Q: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
A: No, no message.
Q: How much of the novel is realistic?
A: My novels are usually based on true events or characters. Sometimes I write an “author’s note” as I did with my historical romances, or STAGE DOOR CANTEEN.
Q: Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your life?
A: A writer always calls on past memories and experiences, we put them into our “mental data bank.” Right now in my suspense novel set in Scotland, the story opens with a boat ride I took out of Oban in the Highlands which scared me witless. Scares my heroine, too.
Q: What books have most influenced your life?
A: I’m always asked this question and I’m darned if I know. All of them, I guess. Since I was a champion bookworm as a kid, all the books I read then.
Q: If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
A: I’ve never had a “mentor” but my faves are still Rudyard Kipling (a great storyteller). Lawrence Durrell, Dickens, Mary Stewart, Thomas Wolfe (not Tom Wolfe).
Q: What are you reading now?
A: Right now I’m reading FRANKLIN AND WINSTON, about Churchill and Roosevelt during WW2.
Q: What new author has grasped your interest?
A: I’m way behind on my reading, I’ve done so much research reading for my Scotland suspense novel.
Q: Is there anything additional you would like to share with your readers?
A: Yes, visit my web site where you can read three chapters of my books and see the photos from my TV movie.