Spotlight Author with Pamela Clare

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!! Before I share my interview with my spotlight author, Pamela Clare, I want to share a couple of things that I am thankful for. #1. My family. #2. My wonderful friends. (You know who you are) #3. And last but not least… all of my amazing readers. Thank you all for taking the time to stop by and check out what I and my guests have to say. Speaking of guests, I have Pamela Clare here with me today.

Hello Pamela, I am so glad that you were able to be a part of my blog. There are so many things that we aspiring authors as well as fans like to know about the published authors we all know and love.  Can you tell us about yourself and what you write?

Thank you, Micole, for having me here today. I really appreciate it. I am the single mother of two adult sons, one who’s 24 and the other who turned 21 on Nov. 20. I’ve worked all of my adult life as a journalist — first as a reporter, then an editor. I’m currently the editor-in-chief of a weekly paper in Boulder, Colorado, where I grew up.

I’ve wanted to write novels since I was 10 years old. It felt to me like books had a magic about them. Someone I didn’t know could write words and those words could make the world around me disappear. I knew from the moment I experienced the magic of reading that I wanted to be a novelist.

Right now, I write historical romance. My current series is the MacKinnon’s Rangers series. Set in upstate Colonial New York during the French & Indian War, it tells the stories of three brothers from the Highlands of Scotland who grew up on the American frontier after their family was sent into exile by the English. They grew up side-by-side with Indian nations and are every bit as “Indian” as they are Scots. It’s the same time period in which the very romantic epic film The Last of the Mohicans was set. I’ve done a lot of historical research for the specific events in the stories, including visiting the sites of the battles and forts, and try very hard to make them historically accurate.

I also write contemporary romantic suspense. The I-Team (short for Investigative Team) series tells the stories of a team of reporters who take on the bad guys of the world and face a world of danger as a result. Along the way, they also happen to meet alpha heroes and eventually fall in love.

What is your favorite thing about being an author?

I love losing myself in the storytelling process. When readers open a book, some part of them is hoping to get lost in the alternative reality of the story. That’s true of writers, too, I think. It’s certainly true of me when I write.

The story unfolds in my head through the eyes of my characters, and then it’s as if I’m experiencing the reality of the book along with them. It is both a learning experience and a source of emotional release. And it’s different depending on whether I’m writing a historical or a contemporary.

Writing historicals is like time travel. Because of writing, I’ve been able to “live” in on the Colonial American frontier. I witnessed the Battle of Fort Ticonderoga and the siege of Fort Pitt. I’ve trekked through the primeval forests of North America several times. I’ve seen wildlife that is now extinct. I’ve been flogged, branded, almost hanged. And I’ve lived to tell about it.

The I-Team series is different in that the stories are based on things I have done. My agent calls them “biblio-therapy,” and I think there’s some truth to the idea that I get emotional release through writing about these things, some of which were not good experiences.

Tell us a little about your latest release.

My most recent release was Naked Edge, which came out in March. It’s the fourth book in the series and tells the story of Kat James, a Navajo journalist who finds herself caught between the white and Indian worlds. Here’s the back cover blurb:

What do you do when desire drives you to the very brink?

The day Navajo journalist Katherine James met Gabriel Rossiter, the earth literally moved beneath her feet. Nearly killed in a rockslide while hiking, she found her life in the tall park ranger's hands. Although she can't forget him she thinks she'll never see him again. She is crushed when she recognizes her rescuer among the law enforcement officers raiding a sweat lodge ceremony one night, throwing her and her friends off Mesa Butte, land they consider sacred.

Gabe long ago swore he would never again lose himself to a woman not even one with long dark hair and big eyes that seem to see right through him.

But from the moment he first sees Kat, the attraction he feels is undeniable. Appalled by what he has been ordered to do, he's determined to get to the bottom of recent events at Mesa Butte and to keep Kat safe. But asking questions can be dangerous almost as dangerous as risking one's heart. And soon Kat and Gabe's passion for the truth and each other makes them targets for those who would do anything, even kill, to keep Native Americans off their sacred land.

The story meant a lot to me because it offered me a chance to share my love of the Navajo people. I spent a lot of time on the dinetah — Navajoland, the Navajo reservation — reporting about certain issues facing traditional Navajo families. I learned so much during that time and made some very close friends.

Also, the story features Gabe Rossiter, who is drawn from the climbing/extreme sports aspect of Boulder, where everyone hikes, bikes, climbs, skis, etc. I come from a climbing family. My father and brother still climb 14,000-foot peaks, as well as ice and rock. We all ski.

However, the story opens with an event that almost killed me — a fall off a cliff. I was climbing with my father and fell 40 feet. I broke my tibia, ruptured my thigh, had a head injury and broken ribs and had to be airlifted to a trauma center. Great fun! Not!

I shared that experience through Kat. Writing that scene was the first time it really dawned on me how tough I had to be that day to survive.

The author’s note on my website (www.pamelaclare.com) details that experience, as well as my relationship with the Navajo.

So Naked Edge was very special to me, and I think some readers had a hard time identifying with a heroine who was truly Navajo and not white with a Navajo coating. But I wouldn’t write Kat any other way. At the same time, there are lots of readers who loved the book.

Right now I’m finishing Breaking Point, which tells Natalie Benoit’s story and which will be out in May. Here’s the back blurb:

While investigating border violence in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Denver journalist Natalie Benoit is caught in a bloody ambush and taken captive. Alone in the hands of ruthless killers, she will need every ounce of courage she possesses to survive.

Betrayed by another operative, Deputy U.S. Marshal Zach McBride has endured a week of torture and interrogation at the hands of a bloodthirsty Mexican drug cartel. Ready to give his life if he must, he remains unbroken—until he hears the cries of an American woman.

Although Natalie is only a voice in the darkness of their shared prison, her plight brings renewed strength to Zach's battered body. With her help, he overpowers their captors, and they flee through the desert toward the border, the attraction between them flaring hotter than the Sonoran sun.

But past loss and tragedy leave both of them reluctant to follow their hearts, even when the passion between them reaches its breaking point. Faced with feelings neither expected, they fight to stay ahead of the danger that hunts them as forces more powerful than they can imagine conspire to destroy them both…

It’s my most action-packed story. At the same time, I try very hard to balance the romantic elements, so that the suspense doesn’t overwhelm the development of the relationship. There are excerpts on my blog and website. I’m very excited about it and can’t wait to get that last chapter penned and off to New York.

What is your writing process? Are you a plotter or a panster?

I am an unrepentant pantser. I can’t write a word until my characters get it together and know what they feel and what they’re doing. And since they don’t know till they get there, I can’t really plot. Stuff always happens that I didn’t expect. I often don’t even know who the bad guys are in the romantic suspense novels.

For a book to feel real, it has to come from the characters. We’ve probably all heard the phrase “character-driven novel.” That’s what I write. I write in sequence, chapter by chapter, with no jumping ahead.

I’m required by contract to submit synopses to my editor, but she and I both know the synopsis is nothing but an educated guess at what will happen in the story. I rarely refer to it while I’m writing the story itself.

Because I still work full-time — for me, that’s four days a week — I spend Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays locked in my house writing my brains out from the moment I get up until I just can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Sometimes that’s an 18-hour day.

There are weekends when the words flow, and there are weekends where I’m so frustrated with the lack of flow that I want to scream. But I just keep at it, weekend after weekend, until the book is finished and is as close to what I envision in my mind as it can be.

I have a dry erase board where I jot down things I want to remember. Sometimes bits of dialogue or plot come to me, and I don’t want to forget them. I also have sticky notes that are the size of a enormous flat-screen TV that I post on my flat screen, actually, where I’ve written notes for whatever chapter I’m writing. I also keep notes of changes I want to make in earlier chapters, and on days when I don’t have time to write, I go backward and make those changes.

By the time I finish, the book is done. I do one very slow, long draft and then edit it. There aren’t multiple drafts, though I do sometimes redo an entire scene. To this day — knock on wood — I have never been asked to do revisions

Where does your inspiration come from?

For the historicals, my inspiration comes from history itself. My degree is in archaeology, and I’ve always been fascinated with the details of daily human life. Most history classes teach the big events and tell us about the famous people. But the lives of lords and ladies interest me less than those of ordinary people.

I want to feel the past surround me. I want to know what it was like to live in a world without cell phones and electricity and modern medicine. There is no detail too small for me.

The conversations at our dinner table are often about history. My sons have read scholarly level historical texts since they were little. My older son, Alec, loves the ancient world and studied Latin like his mother, and my younger son, Benjamin, knows as much about World War I as most professors who specialize in World War I. I used to drive him to campus when he was only 10 years old so that he could discuss WWI with professors because they were the only ones who could talk about it on his level. He collects WWI weapons, as well.

So we talk about all of these things, from the ancient Minoans all the way up to World War II. It is a great passion in this house. We watch more documentaries than movies, that’s for sure.

All of this turns into inspiration when I hear about something and the wheels of my imagination begin to spin.

The MacKinnon’s Rangers series grew out of research I did for Ride the Fire, my third historical. Set in 1763, it touched on events during the French and Indian War. I kept reading about Robert Rogers and his Rangers, and that led me to research them. Then I knew I had to write about the American Colonial Rangers and the role they played in our history. It utterly fascinates me.

I’ve been to Fort Edward (Fort Elizabeth in the stories) and stood on Rogers Island (Ranger Island). I’ve been to Fort Ticonderoga and spent hours asking the poor curator 10,000 annoying questions. Benjamin, who knows a great deal about this time period as well, went with me, as did my mother. When we went back to the car, my mom said, “You do realize, don’t you, that I had no idea what you were talking about the entire time we were there.”

Here’s an example of what I live for:

When we were at Fort Ti (as they call it), I stood in the arched doorway of the fort and looked out over Lake Champlain. And as I stood there, I realized that this was the exact same view that George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and Benedict Arnold and the Marquis du Montcalm and thousands of real French, British and, later, American soldiers saw when they visited and lodged in the fort. Just as importantly, it was the same view my characters Morgan and Amalie had. That connection with the past and with my characters gave me goose bumps.

That is a great moment in life for me. I felt like had touched the lives of those who’d walked there before me. Priceless.

I have thought of writing straight historical fiction, but I’m not doing that yet.

The I-Team series is all drawn from things that I’ve touched on in real life. I once stayed in jail as a bogus felony arrest to see what life was like for incarcerated women. That experience went into Unlawful Contact. And so on… One reader called the way I write my I-Team books “Method writing,” because I really do know what I’m writing about, sometimes too well.

Music plays a huge role in keeping me inspired. I create playlists for books, playlists for characters, playlists for scenes, playlists for moments in the story… It’s all a form of emotional manipulation. I get myself in the frame of mind of my characters and then, hopefully, I’m open to what they’re going through.

Do you ever read your own books after they are published?

Rarely. It’s too intimidating. What if I find something I want to change. Here are the ones I have read: Ride the Fire (deeply personal for me), Surrender, Untamed, Hard Evidence, Unlawful Contact, Naked Edge. The one I’ve read most is probably Unlawful Contact, which drew together years and years of experiences covering prison issues.

This past legislative session, three laws that come into being at the end of Unlawful Contact to protect prisoners became reality in Colorado. One of them — a bill that prohibits the shackling of pregnant women in labor — I wrote myself and took to the state Capitol. I testified during the hearings, met with lawmakers and was so thrilled when it passed.

That’s how close I am to the subject matter of these books.

Give us your best advice about getting published and staying that way.

There are no shortcuts. Whether you’re writing very commercial novels or striking out on your own into something no one else is doing, there are no shortcuts. Here are six things I believe are important:

1. Write the very best book you can. You won’t be able to please every reader every time, but you should be able to maintain a level of quality that enables readers to trust you. It’s better to turn a great book in a bit late, than to turn a disappointing book in on time.

2. Do your research or world building. Readers aren’t stupid. They’ll spot it if you make mistakes or fake it.

3. Truly devote yourself to your career. This may mean making serious sacrifices, like eliminating television shows or video games from your life. I don’t watch TV at all. I don’t even have cable. My TV is for DVDs only. I rarely go out or get together with friends. My life is built around writing. If you don’t want to put 100 percent of yourself into writing, then don’t plan on being a multi-published author.

4. Don’t be tempted to jump on the bandwagon. Write what you know. Write what you love. For example, I don’t write vampires. Doing so has never interested me, though there’s a lot of money to be made in writing vampires. If you don’t like historical romance, don’t waste your time trying to write it. I’ve seen writers waste their momentum hopping from one breaking trend to the next without building readership in any single area. They write a chick-lit book because that’s big, but before they can build a solid readership there, they’re off writing vampires. Then it’s urban fantasy. Let yourself build readership in a sub-genre you love and can write well.

5. Find your voice. What’s unique about you and the way you relate to the world? I’m a history geek and a journalist who has face death threats as a result of my work. Those things fuel my writing.

6. Plan on feeling discouraged. There are no guarantees in this business. Some writers find success immediately. Others struggle for years. One author whose books are very well written might not make it to the bestseller lists as another whose books are less polished than they are commercial.

As I tell people, writing a novel is an act of will. If you want to succeed you must not give up. That, perhaps, is the most important tip I can give.


Pamela, that is some of the best advice I have heard! Thank you!!!;-)


What do you like to read when you have the time?

I love historical romance, straight historical fiction, and history books. I can sit and read historical accounts of almost anything—fiction, nonfiction, whatever. I also read romantic suspense from time to time.

Where can we find out more about you and your books?

I have a website (www.pamelaclare.com), as well as a blog (pamelaclare.blogspot.com). There’s also a Yahoo group. And I’m on Goodreads, as well, where there’s a Pamela Clare Fan Club. I’m very open to chatting with readers, so I welcome e-mails. Sometimes it takes me a while to respond, but I read every single one.

Thanks Pamela. I’m so glad that you’ve been able to join us.

Thank you, Micole! I had fun.

And once again, I want to say thank you to my readers. I hope everyone has a happy, healthy, wonderful Thanksgiving, full of loved ones, and lot’s of turkey, stuffing, and pie!!!!

See you next week!

Hugs

Micole