Words by Webb

Check out Liz Rosenberg, a great author I interviewed for WOW! Women on Writing March issue

Don’t be scared if you aren’t a woman! I also interview guys for WOW. They give great advice too. You can check out some of my recent stuff at WOW :

Interview with Bonnie Hearn Hill

Interview with Linda Joy Myers

And coming up is an interview with Miles Nelson(a guy!)

I recently talking with a writing friend about interviews. When I started out I was amazed that these important people would agree to allow me to interview them(OK, we’re not talking the President but…keep in mind I was a newbie writer with three kids playing dolls in the background while I tried to sound professional on phone interviews). Everyone was important to me! So I was thrilled to find out I wasn’t the only writer with the “Really? Yes? You’ll Let Me Interview You?” complex. So for anyone else out there with this complex I thought I’d tell you that most of the people you interview are secretly feeling the same things you are.

1. You are doing me a big favor — As a writer, you feel like whoever you’re interviewing is doing you this humungous favor but you’re also doing them a favor(maybe not humungous but still a favor). You are giving them a little free publicity.

2. I am so nervous — Does conducting an interview make you nervous? Afraid you’ll say something stupid? Forget something important? Be exposed as someone pretending to be a writer? The person you’re interviewing is afraid they’ll make themselves look foolish, get some fact wrong, or be exposed as someone pretending to be an “expert”.

3. What if I do something weird? — Oh the possibilities are endless. Say bye-bye instead of goodbye(comes from spending too much time with preschoolers). Think I pushed the record button when I actually pushed the delete button. Start laughing at the wrong place. We’re all worrying about our weirdness breaking through. I had a woman confess to me after being interviewed about her book that the only thing she could remember was blinking–constantly.

Interviews become more fun and effective when you learn to approach them as two friends getting together for a chat. Sure, you still have the job of getting the information and quotes out of them to create an interesting article. But it becomes a lot easier when you aren’t listening to your self say “OMG” in your head through the entire interview. Actually, I don’t say “OMG”–it’s usually something a little stronger. I’ll leave it to your imagination.

The Complete Guide to Hiring a Literary Agent: Everything You Need to Know to Be Successfully Published

Author: Laura Cross

Paperback: 288 pages(also available as paperback, Kindle and audiobook)

Publisher: Atlantic Publishing Company (June 1, 2010)

Synposis: If you want to know what’s covered in Laura Cross’s new book let’s just say it covers the five questions:

How do I get an agent?

Why do I need an agent?

When do I get an agent?

Where do I find an agent?

What should an agent do for me?

Who makes a good agent?

In short, The Complete Guide to Hiring a Literary Agent probably takes you through the entire agent-writer relationship from your pre-agent days to the need to someday leave your agent. And all the good days in between!

Review:

Recently I led a workshop for beginning writers—they had a LOT of questions. I should have brought a bottle of water. I also should have brought Laura Cross’s book! It would have been the perfect answer to one attendee’s question: Well, what does an agent do anyway and can’t I do that myself and keep the 15 %? Answer: An agent does A LOT. And yes, in theory you could do it but you wouldn’t do it as well and isn’t your job writing not agenting?

Laura Cross’s book seems to cover everything, even questions you hadn’t even thought of yet. How to find an agent, recognizing bad agents, how to be a desirable client(surprise: it isn’t all about your writing!), firing an agent, figuring out what genre you’re writing in, queries, proposals, conferences, pitches. I was amazed she packed so much info in one book. She also breaks up the text with expert advice stories from writers and agents to tell you how it works in the real world of publishing. There are also plenty of examples of queries, proposals, and synopses to help you go through the pain of crafting your own.

This is a book every writer should read—whether your unagented by choice or simply because you haven’t found your agent yet. It will help the former decide if it’s the right decision for them and help the latter land, not just any agent, but the right agent for them and their writing career.

Note: The cover shown above is for the e-book version of her book. The print copy has a man and woman in business attire(they must be agents because I don’t know any writers who dress like that). But I love the e-book version of the cover! Same helpful info on the inside.

I met Elisa Lorello this summer when her debut novel, Faking It, was released and I wrote a review for her. Now she’s back with the sequel Ordinary World. Although both books feature the same characters, they are like two sides of the coin called “love”. Faking It is a fun romantic comedy where you’re laughing 80% of the time with only 20% of your time spent crying a few tears. With Ordinary World she explores the grief that comes from the loss of true love and, although you spend 80 % of your time crying, that 20% that has you laughing conveys the unquenchable hope we all feel.

Elisa Lorello is on a WOW Blog Tour so you can learn more about her and her books(she’s busy on her third) by visiting other blogs along her tour. You can also read excerpts of her books at her website.

Faking It

Author: Elisa Lorello

Paperback: 220 pages(also available as Kindle)

Publisher: Elisa Lorello (June 6, 2009)

Synposis:
What happens when a writing professor and a male escort become friends? Thirty-four-year old professor Andi Cutrone has broken up with her fiancé in Massachusetts, moved back to her native New York, and wants to be a better lover. So after meeting Devin, a handsome, charming escort, she proposes an unusual arrangement: lessons about writing in exchange for lessons about sex. When Devin accepts Andi’s proposal, he draws up a contract in which the two are forbidden to see each other socially. There’s just one problem: Andi also wants Devin. Faking It is a witty, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heart-wrenching story about relationships, writing, and getting real.

Review:
When I first dove into Faking It I worried that the premise–Andi Cutrone, a young urbanite takes `love lessons’ from a male escort–might be a little too Sex and the City for me. But the weekly lessons surprised me. Instead of sex, they focus on Andi’s feeling about herself, her body, her relationships. Somewhere in that tangle of confused emotions every female reader will recognize either the woman she is or the woman she once was.

Then, about a third of the way through the book(yes, I checked the page number)I realized that the weekly lessons, although illuminating and the hook that pulled me in, had become secondary. Instead characters had become paramount. I wondered more about what Andi and her love tutor/platonic friend Devin would do on the other six days of the week. This book could have become an excuse to lurch from love scene to love scene but author Elisa Lorello created believable people that eclipsed their careers(one boring and one naughty). Ultimately, a book that seemed to be about taboo subjects like sex for money was really about something much more prosaic–changes. Changing attitudes. Changing careers. Changing partners.

My biggest round of applause goes out to Lorello for keeping me guessing. Too often books that contain romances follow a predictable formula. We know who the good boyfriend is. We know who the bad boyfriend is. We know who she’ll wind up with. The only question mark is what will happen along the way. Faking It kept me guessing until the last page. Really! Thank you Elisa for characters and complex personalities that propelled me to the last page.

Ordinary World

Author: Elisa Lorello

Paperback: 295 pages(also available as Kindle)

Publisher: Elisa Lorello(November 1, 2009)

Synposis:
Six years after leaving New York, Andi has everything she wants: a tenured professorship at Northampton University in Massachusetts, a published collection of essays, good friends, and a blissful relationship with her husband. But what happens when tragedy strikes and the world as she knows it changes in an instant?

Author Elisa Lorello reunites us with Andi and has created a story of love and loss, joy and sorrow, and heartbreak and hope, all the while keeping us hooked through the laughter and tears.

Review:
The last line of Elisa Lorello’s first book could have been “and they lived happily ever after.” Except Elisa Lorello doesn’t write fairy tales. And sometimes people die. Reading Ordinary World truly felt like living through the loss of a loved one with a friend. You begin devastated with Andi, but as happens in real life, you get over the death before her and want to drag her along into happiness with you. Several times I wanted to shake her and say “Get over it already.” I was impressed by Lorello’s ability to portray the path of grief as not a straight line but as a constant “three steps forward, two steps back.” So often in fiction, a grieving character has a turning point and from then on they’re constantly moving toward happiness. Lorello shows that tentative first move toward happiness but also the withdrawal from it, the guilt, the anger. The grief journey of Andi is real.

Andi’s meeting up with an old lover in romantic Italy felt a bit contrived at first but I couldn’t resist. It did underline the fact that they were meant to be together if they could find each other thousands of miles from home. The exploration of her family relationships(who were minor characters in the first book) was fascinating and reveals so much about Andi’s attitude to life, love and grief. I found myself wanting to go back and re-read Faking It with new eyes now that I had a peek inside her family.

As you near the end of this book you’ll find yourself turning the pages faster and faster wanting to learn how Andi finally rearranges her life. There are so many options and you’re never sure which will suit Andi until the last page. I had to restrain myself from peeking ahead just to know how it turned out. My recommendation? Don’t peek! The journey Andi takes is just as important as her ultimate decision.

A Sequel Note: Even though this is a sequel, the plot lines of the books are not so interlinked that you can read Ordinary World even if you haven’t already read Faking It. But if you do read Ordinary World first you’re going to want to go back to Faking It just to discover more about the characters you’ve met.

Yesterday afternoon I received a two sentence email:

“It is with a great sense of loss that we send this message announcing the death of Sister M. Pacelli, OSF. Sister Pacelli passed last evening, Tuesday, February 16 with Sister Madonna and Sister Mary Margaret at her bedside.”

For twelve years I went to Catholic school and had many religious sisters for teachers. When I enrolled in a Catholic college–Alvernia University–I never expected there to be religious nuns teaching us. Professors had doctorates and that just wasn’t something “nuns” did, was it? Apparently it was!

Sister Pacelli taught English and Communications and whatever picture you have in your head of a religious sister…chances are she wasn’t it. Except for the habit part, she did wear the habit. Of course she had her doctorate. She launched a criminal justice department at Alvernia when she was dean–picture a sister about 5′ 2″ and a bunch of big burly cops. She taught a class called “From Batman to Dracula”. Need I go on?

Her name “Pacelli” means “little peace” but I suspect whoever bestowed that name on her didn’t know her very well. Either that or it was an inside joke. “Little hurricane” would have been more appropriate.

My senior year in college I was taking a short story writing class with Sister Pacelli. My writing classes were “for fun”. My major was Political Science. As she was ripping one of my stories to shreds in her office one afternoon(she was tough) she asked what I’d be doing after graduation. I told her I was thinking about getting my doctorate in history. She pointed to my assignment, full of red ink, on the desk between us. “You could put yourself through school with your writing.”

Huh? Writing was my hobby. Nobody have ever told me I could make a living with my writing. Seriously? I never forgot what Sr. Pacelli said and eventually I did become a writer and, to the amusement of anyone who reads the acknowledgements of my first book, I mention Sister Pacelli. We both wrote our first books at the same time and each had a copy of the other’s book on our bookshelves.

Thanks for all you did for me Sister Pacelli.

Sister Pacelli lit my flame. Who lit yours?