Hi Everybody,
Thank you sincerely for your interest in Distant Heart Sounds. The book has received amazing reviews and I’m humbled with gratitude. As a result, this blog will, hopefully, answer your questions, share some ideas, and give us a chance to learn about each other.
Not following the usual path of starving artists, I’ve been more of a part-time starving artist, mother, newspaper features journalist, office worker, graduate student, and novelist wannabee. I’m a late bloomer and DHS is my first published novel. Truth is though, I’ve been writing since childhood and in the past 20+ years, I’ve made a very good living at this craft, even though my work was not fiction.
I want to be clear – writing is a craft and it can be easy to learn or very tough depending on your approach, confidence level and skills. I was told by someone extremely wise and successful that there are two types of writers: one who stares at the blank page until the words come and the second is one who writes in his/her head 24/7 without true rest. I’m in the second group. More often than I can count, I’ve had ideas in the middle of the night and had to write them down for fear that the thought would be gone by morning.
Why did I choose to write about ghosts? Just about everyone on the planet has a ghost story or knows a friend. or the friend of a friend with a chance encounter that remains unexplained. I find it fascinating that all of us have this common thread and yet we don’t accept the existence of ghosts as a fact. Also, those who do openly address the issue of ghosts generally do so in a scary, terrorizing manner. I’d rather flip that and look at it in a positive light. Didn’t you love the movie Ghost? Or Field of Dreams? The world is such a chaotic, ugly place right now, why not create entertainment that lets us escape and ponder the possibilities of life and afterlife? With this in mind, I wrote DHS.
About being clever, as the name of this blog reveals, I’m never clever when I try. If forced to be an advertising copywriter or newspaper editor who writes only headlines, I swear it would be eternal hell on earth for me. That’s forced funny and I can’t do it. But I can create a character with a sharp wit and great humor who says amusing words. That’s much easier for me to do. We all have weaknesses in the writing game, you just have to figure out a way over it or around it.
Please, take a moment to send to me your questions or ghosts stories at authorkatemacinnis@gmail.com. With your permission, I will share some of these comments on this space at my home page, katemacinnis.com.
Be safe and I hope to hear from you!
Kate MacInnis
9/27/2020
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