Want to meet the Japanese Bridget Jones? Get yourself a copy of Wendy Nelson Tokunaga’s novel, Midori by Moonlight. Too independent for traditional Japanese culture, Midori is lovely, feisty, and determined to stay in America.

Her fiancé, who helped her flee the traditional culture of Japan, dumps her when his ex reappears at their engagement party. Midori is devastated. She knows only a smattering of English. In addition, she has minimal cash, no green card, and I-told-you-so parents in Japan. She needs a roommate and a job immediately.

When Shinji, who she met at the ill-fated engagement party, offers her a room in his apartment, she accepts. She helps with the rent, bakes fabulously pastries, and watches Shinji and his girl friend relate. Respect grows between these two fugitives from Japanese family expectations. They both love the independence of American life and their freedom in San Francisco.

Readers will root for the spirited Midori. Tokunaga’s novel is great fun. It is also a timely look at Japanese and American cultures co-existing in contemporary San Francisco. Midori by Midnight is well crafted, entertaining chick lit with an important message about independence and survival. Here she tells the story of her novel and her career.

LG: Tell us about yourself. When did you know you were a writer? What led you to tell this story?

WNT: I was always busy with creative projects as a child and teenager (creating my own magazine, writing songs, singing and performing, etc.), but I didn’t start writing fiction until I was an adult.

While working at a job as a technical writer, I found myself surrounded by coworkers who were passionate about fiction writing. This inspired me to take a night class in creative writing at a junior college. The requirement was to write three short stories in a semester, and the stories I wrote were about Japan and Japanese culture, which have been big influences in my life. And that theme eventually found its way into my novel, Midori by Moonlight.

LG: How did you discover Midori and Shinji? Are they composites of people you know or wholly original? 

WNT: They are both original and composites. I have always been intrigued by people like my Japanese husband, who are compelled to trade their native culture for a new one, and I wanted to write a story about that. And I’ve known a lot of Japanese expatriates who have ended up living in the U.S., so I am aware of adjustments they must make since the two societies are so different. 

LG: How did your Japanese husband influence you?

WNT: Living with my husband and dealing with Japanese in-laws who speak no English have given me a fair amount of insight into the Japanese way of doing things. I have also lived in Japan and spent many years studying the language both there and in the U.S.

LG: What kinds of research did you need to do to make this bi-cultural story authentic?

WNT: I did a lot of research on the phenomenon of Japanese women who feel the need to escape from Japanese society’s strict gender roles and limited career and lifestyle opportunities, as well as those who zero in on marrying Western males as a ticket out. 

LG: Do many Japanese learn English through soap operas? How did you select the scenes she saw? 

WNT: I don’t know if many Japanese learn English through watching soaps, but I know I always picked up a lot of Japanese from watching what they call “home dramas.” Since soaps tend to thrive on repetition, I think watching them can make for good practice.

I have never been a soaps fan, but my grandmother and mother were both hooked on “As the World Turns” when I was growing up (my mother still watches it to this day even though she admits it’s ridiculous) so I’m sure I based those scenes on repressed soap opera memories.

LG: You are very skilled at advancing the plot. Tell us about your process. 

WNT: I try really hard to see things from the reader’s point of view without getting too caught up in my own writer’s ego. After all, it should be all about the reader. And I don’t like it when books sag in the middle. My goal is to not have any wasted scenes—each must move the story forward. This comes from reading the material over and over, employing constant revision, and paying strict attention to pacing and structure.

LG: Thanks for sharing that. How did writing Love in Translation compare to writing Midori by Moonlight? What elements were easier and what, if anything, was more difficult? 

WNT: It was quite a different experience to write Love in Translation because I was writing it while in the throes of my MFA program at University of San Francisco. I didn’t want to use it as my thesis book so I was simultaneously working on a different novel for that. But I did get to workshop some parts of the early draft of LIT in class and that was helpful.

LIT is somewhat autobiographical so I was more comfortable with the first-person voice of the protagonist. Writing third-person from a Japanese woman’s point of view was a bit more challenging, but just about everything is a challenge when it comes to writing a novel! 

LG: “The Wishing Star,” a song in Love in Translation, propels Celeste forward. Tell us about bringing that song to life.

WNT: Celeste Duncan is struck by a Japanese song called, “The Wishing Star (Nozomi no Hoshi)” that she hears in a music video. She soon becomes compelled to learn this song and once she does, things begin to change for her. This fictional song has now become a reality. My husband Manabu Tokunaga wrote the music and I co-wrote the lyrics with Hiro Akashi. I now sing “Nozomi no Hoshi” at my book events and readers can download the song for free at this link: http://tinyurl.com/yfsuebh

A commemorative CD is also available, which includes the song, a karaoke version and an audio drama excerpt of “Love in Translation.” Readers can write to me at info AT WendyTokunaga DOT COM with their postal address and I will send them a copy at no charge. 

LG: Tell us what convinced you to self-publish No Kidding, and how it paid off.

WNT: I do not regret self-publishing No Kidding, but the only reason I did so was because I could not get an agent to represent it after much trying. I learned quite a bit about online marketing as a result of self-publishing and that has been valuable. I self-published the book in 2000 when POD publishing was fairly new and no one knew what the future held.

LG: When should people self-publish and when should they keep searching for a traditional publisher? 

WNT: At this point, I would generally not recommend self-publishing a novel. Even though No Kidding won the Mainstream/Literary Fiction category of the 2002 Writers’ Digest’s Best Self-Published Book Awards, I still could not garner any agent interest. But the book still sells and I hear from readers from time to time. I much prefer, though, being a traditionally published author.

LG: I’m sure you do. Congratulations on the book’s award. What is the best writing tip you ever received-- other than read in your genre and write daily?

WNT: Read your work out loud. It is so helpful to hear the rhythm of the prose, to determine what sounds best. And also to combine this with constant revision.

LG: What are you working on now? How can readers learn more about you? 

WNT: I am working on my next novel and that’s about all I can say about it right now. :-) Readers can find out more about me at my Web site: http://www.WendyTokunaga.com

I also have two blogs and am active on Twitter, Facebook, and RedRoom.

LG: You are one busy lady. Thank you so much for all that you shared here, Wendy.

Want to catch a glimpse of the style and spirit of Midori at Midnight? You’ll find a marvelous Midori Book Trailer at http://www.WendyTokunaga.com and on YouTube.

Wendy Nelson Tokunaga is an up and coming author whose stories are charming, entertaining, and enlightening. Explore her website and if you need a manuscript consultant, ask for her help before she gets to busy. She has a lot to share.

Why would a sane, healthy, middle-class woman marry a psychopath? At first, his captivating stories and affection made him seem like Prince Charming. Barbara Bentley could not imagine what Navy rear admiral John Perry would become when she married him. Her compelling memoir, A Dance With the Devil: A True Story of Marriage to a Psychopath is filled with passion, patience, and finally persistence. After her divorce, Ms. Bentley became a legal advocate who changed a Victim’s Rights Law in the State of California.

Back when Perry proposed, Barbara couldn’t believe her luck. He was a decorated war hero, who came from a good family. Even before they were married, though, something was amiss. His family refused to meet her, and he told her they thought she was a gold digger. She knew better. He ran up bills on her credit cards and one business deal after another failed. Every disappointment came with a convincing explanation.

After they were married, he refinanced her homes and drove her into financial ruin. When she considered leaving, he collapsed from an old war injury and needed her help. Determined to make this marriage succeed, she did not see the light until he joined her on a business trip with a sinister plan that forced her to take action.

Love can blind anyone, and Bentley looks at herself candidly in A Dance With the Devil. No one else could have written this story, and she talks about her experiences living it, telling it, writing and marketing it in the interview below.

BB: Writing a book did not enter my consciousness until after my husband tried to murder me and I decided that I would write a book about the crazy-making world of love and psychopaths. There was only one problem. I didn’t know how to write a memoir. I went to the library and checked out How to Write and Sell True Crime by Gary Provost. I wrote and asked him to co-author my book; he said that based on my proposal, he felt I could write the book myself.

A year later, I found an advertisement for The International Women’s Writing Guild (IWWG) that said, “An alliance and network for those connected to the written word. Membership is open to those who write or aspire to write – whether for personal growth, professional development or publication.” I learned about the annual, weeklong summer conference and registered.

Four days into the conference, Hannelore Hahn, the founder and director of the IWWG, asked that I give a speech at the evening gathering. I was dumbfounded, but I recognized that the door of opportunity had opened. I accepted.

Never had I faced an audience as large as what sat before me that evening….almost 400 women. As Hannelore introduced me and I walked on stage, I noticed that I was not nervous. When I started to speak, a funny extraneous comment about Hannelore’s introduction popped out. Laughter filled the lecture hall.

I said I was going to change the law. Thunderous cheers and clapping filled the lecture hall. When I finished, I received a standing ovation. As I returned to my seat, one lady told me that many of the women took notes. I thanked God for the right words, and for showing me that I had a voice and I didn’t need to be afraid to use it.

I also discovered the importance of networking. Through the most remarkable chain of events, I reconnected with Gary Provost and attended his intensive ten-day Writer’s Retreat Workshop. My writing journey was now well on its way. Did speaking at work or at the conferences have an effect on my writing? I have to say yes.

LG: Did you have additional support from writing groups and editors?

BB: My real immersion into the life of a writer took place at the ten-day Writer’s Retreat Workshop. It was full of classes, critiques and lots of writing. When I left the workshop, I had the first working title for my book, a rough timeline, a partial chapter, and the firm belief that yes, I could write the book. Gary’s wife, Gail, became my mentor. She worked with me on the outline and helped me find my writing voice.

During this time, I did not attend writing classes, join a critique group, or use an editor. Eight years later I had a completed manuscript and decided, as a first time author, I would hire a professional editor to help me make it sparkle. I found Lois Winsen in the IWWG classifieds of the guild’s Network magazine and we developed a close working relationship.

LG: How did you decide what to include and what to leave out of your story?

BB: After the murder attempt I went through John’s office, stuffed documents into dated folders, and stored them in cardboard file boxes. I reviewed my old calendars, appointment books, photo albums, and the folders in the file boxes and recorded events on 4 x 6 in index cards, one per card.

Then I constructed an outline and looked for the most interesting of the repetitive events that illustrated the same point. I chose scenes that would move the story forward and expose critical information and behaviors. I chose scenes that would keep the reader’s interest. I tried to keep out the mundane events of everyday life or sprinkle them into a scene as back-story. Each scene had to have an inciting incident and a result. In the end, scenes that met all the criteria were weeded out to give more clarity.

LG: I love your pragmatic approach. Do you have any concern about repercussions from John’s friends?

BB: What friends we had together were my friends who stayed loyal to me. The one acquaintance that helped John get out of jail was eventually conned by John, so he is no threat.

LG: What were some of the challenges you faced as you told the story?

BB: It took me a long time to write the manuscript because I didn’t let it become my whole life. I balanced it with changing the law, establishing a new romantic relationship, a full-time job, and traveling. A lot of people say writing the book was cathartic for me, but that is not the case. By the time I immersed myself in the writing, I had successfully moved on with my life.

LG: How did you find your agent and how did she find the publisher?

BB: In January 2006, my manuscript was finished and I sent thirteen queries to publishers who accepted unsolicited proposals. It didn’t work out, so I decided to find an agent. In February 2006, networking comes back into my story. My mentor provided a lead; I looked Rachel up and added her to my agent spreadsheet. I also read Michael Larson’s book Literary Agents: What They Do, How They Do It, and How to Find and Work with the Right One for You. This time I sent out twenty query letters. Rejections trickled in over the next three months.

In May 2006, I opened my SASE from Rachel and read her handwritten note on the back of my query letter. She asked to read the manuscript and three months later, she said she wanted it. Over the next month we negotiated a contract, did some minor editing, sent the proposal to four editors, and sold the story to Berkley Books in four days. I imagine that the literary agency maintains a list of editors at major publishing houses and it’s an agent’s job to know what genre an editor handles.

LG: You have had some wonderful publicity for this book. What is your strategy for finding so many media interviews?

BB: I am fortunate to have a great publicist with my publisher. That being said, I have also done a lot of work to make it happen. My main strategy is to network, to put myself out there not only in the writing arena, but also in areas other than writing, and to create a list of contacts from that networking. My list began back in 1995 and along the way. I added important media contacts that I had met from my non-writing activities.

LG: What are you working on now? Where can readers learn more about psychopaths, victim’s rights, and you?

BB: I have written and illustrated a fairy tale trilogy about the blacksmith’s daughter and am actively looking for a children’s literary agent. I have also started my research to write a historical novel about a strong Irish woman who was part of the Easter Rising of 1916.

My webpage www.adancewiththedevil.com contains information about writing, recovery, advocacy, appearances, my blog, and my story. I also list resources in the back of my book A Dance with the Devil: A True Story of Marriage to a Psychopath for those who want to know more about psychopaths or recovery. My four minute video A Dance with the Devil can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rmtJw6iArc .

If you are a reader experiencing violence, be sure to visit www.adancewiththedevil.com. If you love reading about true, victim’s rights, or bizarre behavior, purchase a copy of Barbara Bentley’s A Dance with the Devil: A True Story of Marriage to a Psychopath.

How is your brain wired? Can you imagine its inner workings? Sybil Lockhart’s unique memoir, Mother in the Middle, makes it possible to observe three generations of women’s brains.

Her honest, compassionate memoir shows her life as a UC Berkeley neurobiologist, a wife, a mother, and a daughter struggling with denial and acceptance. Using a unique combination of neurobiology, personal experience, and evocative prose, she contrasts her baby and toddler’s growth with her mother’s descent into the insidious confusion of Alzheimer’s. She mixes in a healthy dose of her own needs, desires, and unique insights as she sheds new light on the sandwich generation.

Starting with a Friday night visit from Ma, Lockhart shares cooking, shopping, lab experiences, parenting, and nights beside her husband with heart, empathy and beauty. She intersperses her life in Boston and Berkeley with metaphors that make brain science accessible to all of us. Her debut novel is “a unique combination of science and intimate experience.”

Mother in the Middle juxtaposes scientific detachment against the human emotions of guilt, denial, and frustration. Her honesty is amazing. Here she shares the experiences and advice.

LG: Tell us about yourself. When did you know you needed to write and when did you realize that your Literary Mama columns could lead you to a memoir?

SL: After I made the decision to leave my teaching job at UC Berkeley to stay home with my second baby, I began to feel very isolated--I was isolated. Of course, I had friends outside of work, but they were all at work themselves. So, I spent my days either alone with the baby, or struggling to help my mom, with the baby in tow.

I began writing about the experience in my journal, just as I had always written about everything in my journal, but somehow this time the writing turned into a way to reach out to others in my situation.  I eventually joined a writing group, and we created a website, Literary Mama, www.literarymama.com to showcase our neophyte work; we all became columnists there. When an editor from Seal Press approached two columnists to suggest they turn their columns into books, the rest of us were inspired to try too! 

LG: How did your background in neurobiology help you cope with your mother’s aging? Did it ever get in the way?

SL: My knowledge of neuroscience both helped me and hurt me.  My biologist's perspective definitely empowered me in the doctor's office, for example: I knew what questions to ask, how to find more information, and how to understand that information. I could also really appreciate the beauty of the processes at work, the astounding complexity of the biological systems underpinning both my mother's dementia and my daughters' development.

On the other hand, I knew the story of her destruction in such painful detail; I understood far too well how devastating the unhealthy processes at work in Ma's brain would ultimately be. That was truly hard.

LG: I never thought about the knowledge such a layer would add. Despite your scientific background, did you need to do research for this book?

SL: Yes, absolutely. I hadn't studied Alzheimer's in much detail before. Although my mother's diagnosis inspired me to do some pretty extensive research, when I wrote the book, I felt I had to go back to the primary research literature to make sure I had everything right. Also, in order to describe some less well-known forms of dementia and understand how alcohol may have complicated the picture for Ma, I needed more information.

LG: How did you decide how much science to include, where it belonged, and how to write it so it would be accessible to lay people?

SL: I am not entirely convinced that my integration of science into the narrative was completely successful; that was one of the biggest challenges of this book. I’m continuing to develop my science writing skills through my blog “Fearsome” at www.PsychologyToday.com, where I often find myself translating hard science into language more suitable to the layperson.

LG: I love the way you use flashbacks. How did you pick your starting and ending scenes and how did you organize this story?

SL: The story is fairly chronological, but I wanted the first scene to plop the reader right into middle of the story—into the complicated, busy life of a caregiver with children, and all the inherent conflicting emotions. So the book starts in the middle, then flashes back and proceeds chronologically—more or less. But in a story about three generations of family affected by a disease that steals our memory, how can one avoid flashbacks?

As I mothered my own children and began to be a kind of parent to my mother, I often contemplated our mothering roles, which naturally brought back so many relevant scenes from my childhood; these very organically popped up as flashbacks throughout the book.

LG: What is it like to use family members as characters? Did you have any struggles over what you should and should not include? How has your family reacted to the book?

SL: My husband Patrick was initially very uncomfortable with the idea of being made a character in my book. After I finished the manuscript, I gave it to him to read. He asked that I remove certain scenes and facts, but not that much. I think he was very generous—what is left is still a very raw and honest portrait of our struggles at the time.

When I asked my sister, Alice, she told me not to worry about it; she understood that my memories were mine, and they might differ from hers. She was supremely supportive of my right to record my experience however I wished.

My daughters were just thrilled to be in it. Zoë, who is now twelve, I am sure would NOT be okay with being featured in a book today, but as a toddler, it was fine!

LG: Your description of everything from the functions of the brain to the hills of Martinez is lyrical. Any tips for writing exquisite prose?

SL: Thank you! Here is my advice: Open yourself to even the silliest thoughts, and write every raw, tangential, strange thing that comes into your mind, without judgment, in your first draft. Feel the scene; write from your body, from your deepest soul. Write it all down and don’t look back.

Then, get a writing group. Surround yourself with brilliant, sensitive, honest, generous, supportive, intelligent, insightful people, and ask them to read your raw, ragged, imperfect writing. Ask them to tell you what is good in it; ask them to tell you if anything gives them a tug. Be fearless, and remain open. Focus on what is good first.

Later, a few drafts later maybe, ask them to tell you what they think you might do to make it better. Be unafraid to edit, but keep old drafts, in case you over-do it and need to go back. This should give you an excellent start!

LG: Excellent advice. How did you find your agent? What advice would you give to writers seeking an agent?

SL: I was writing my column, Mama in the Middle, for Literary Mama Magazine, when I was approached by an editor from Seal Press who told me she thought I had a book in me. I wrote a very strong proposal. There are many books that tell how to do this; I followed their advice.

The next week this editor handed me a contract specifying a very small advance and told me I had a very short time to decide whether to sign on the dotted line! I freaked! I could not parse the legalese.

So, I did a kind of speed-dating search for an agent. I asked all my friends for their recommendations, and I looked at the acknowledgements of my favorite like-minded memoir writers to see if they loved their agents. I sent emails with my 100-word pitch, asking if anyone on that list would be willing to read my proposal and look at this contract, to see if I was getting a decent deal. 

My agent is with David Black, who received praise from Elizabeth Cohen in her acknowledgment section. We got a much better deal in the end!

LG: What advice would you give to people who want to write memoir?

SL: Write from the heart, include the gory details, and don’t worry that it might have "already been done," because memoir readers are interested in your unique perspective. If you are an expert at anything at all, or have anything unique that you can claim as your own special angle, sell that in your proposal, but in the end it is really your voice that matters the most.

LG: What are you working on now? Where can people learn more about you?

SL: At the moment most of my time is taken up teaching writing to middle school and high school students, but I am also creating something. It is a kind of daily journal populated with my own drawings and "deep thoughts." It's something I would love to read, but I have no idea whether anyone else in the world will be interested! If I have any big news, I will post it at www.sybillockhart.com. Write me at sybil-AT-sybillockhart-DOT com.

LG: Thanks so much for sharing your story.

Mother in the Middle is a strong, unique story and an important book for everyone watching their parents age.

Whether she is describing a setting, a feeling, or a brain function Lockhart’s lyrical prose will grab you. Don’t miss this universal and unique story. Sybil Lockhart is a promising author.

Unapologetically Original
An Interview with Veronica Chater by B. Lynn Goodwin

In 1972 Vatican II fit right into America’s increasingly liberal culture. It didn’t resonate with everyone, though. In Waiting for the Apocalypse, a Memoir of Faith and Family, Veronica Chater’s father vehemently fought Vatican II, and he dragged his family with him. Chater’s memoir chronicles what the family went through to remain traditionalists at the same time it explores “passion, belief, love, family, and our ultimate individuality,” as she says in the Q & A below.

Through the eyes of young Ronnie Arnold, we watch the outraged father uproot his whole family and move to Portugal in search of traditional Catholicism. Penniless but not defeated, they return a year later to seek out other traditional Catholics who say Latin Masses in garages and abandoned department stores. The Arnolds were reverse renegades a few years after Time Magazine asked, “Is God dead?”

Though young Ronnie loves her parents, their fanatical devotion overwhelms her. She craves the normalcy of her neighbors’ lives as she searches for her own identity and worldview in an overcrowded house filled with stifling rules.

Her adventures are told with refreshing honesty and objectivity. She is resilient and resourceful and the journals she kept as a young girl helped her share her story. Here, she tells how she became a writer and found the courage to share her experiences and tell this story in Waiting for the Apocalypse.

LG: Tell us about yourself. When did you know you were a writer?

VC: I grew up in a close-knit family of thirteen, with religious parents who were very independent thinkers. Our house was small (too small for a family of thirteen), so life was pretty noisy and chaotic, but always interesting to me because I was surrounded by characters and their dramas. As a family, we were off the grid, and never seemed able to conform to a normal lifestyle, and as I grew up I felt different, and wanted to understand why. That was why writing was the only path for me. It was the way for me to make sense of my life.

I remember telling myself that I wanted to be a writer at the age of seven, when I discovered my dad’s Underwood typewriter in the little cabin he called The Womb, where he composed his letters in the evenings. I wasn’t allowed to enter The Womb when he wasn’t there, but I used to sneak in and roll the paper into the machine and type little poems and short stories when he was at work. I didn’t know how writers made their living, but I knew I wanted to be one because I loved the feel of the keys under my fingers and the magical way I could put my living thoughts on a page. Writing gave me a voice.

I didn’t consciously develop my skills until college, but from the age of about nine I kept a daily journal. And it was through journal-writing that I grew to understand and love language and to manipulate it in order to tell a compelling story. I’d spend hours at night writing letters and letting my homework go. That was one reason I never did very well at school. All I really wanted to do was write.

LG: The narrator does not see herself as gifted or special. When did you realize that the life you experienced was a story you wanted to share with the world?

VC: For years, I wrote short stories and essays about my life, but I always kept them short and humorous, and I didn’t go too deep. I think I was building up to tell the real story, and needed time to get there. And because I made my living as a writer for magazines, it seemed much easier to tell other people’s stories. But every time I finished something, I found myself right back at the place I’d started, a writer with her own story to tell.

So one day I sat down and I wrote a two page summary of the book I might write about my life, and when I read it over I said to myself, “I would read that book.” And I’ve always believed that the book an author would like to read is the book that he or she was meant to write. So, I began to write Waiting for the Apocalypse, and as I did, it occurred to me that I’d needed those years under my belt in order to have the courage and the skill to write the memoir. 

LG: How were you able to portray your parents and siblings so three-dimensionally? What was easiest about portraying your family? Which scenes were hardest to write? Is there anything you regret sharing or wish you had shared?

VC: I love writing about my parents because I find them fascinating people. They really are every writer’s dream characters, so consistently themselves, and so unapologetically original.

When I did a radio piece for This American Life, before I wrote my memoir, I had so much fun portraying my big, tough cop dad who is helpless as a baby without my mom, and my loving and sensitive mother who plays heartless jokes on him. It helps that both my parents are gifted with the ability to laugh at themselves, so there was never any problem writing a memoir and staying true to their personalities. My entire family is the same way. They were very easy to portray. 

The hardest scenes to write were scenes that involved my anger and rebellion against my parents in my teen years. There have been some painfully raw times in our relationship when we’ve had to grow up and accept each other, and it was difficult to recreate the agony, and forgive them all over again. It’s the most difficult thing about writing a memoir. Reliving a painful situation, and interpreting it with a fresh mind while remaining true to the young narrator is a tricky balancing act for every writer, especially when you are so much wiser than you were back then.

Is there anything I regret sharing or wish I’d shared? Nothing I regret, but I do wish I could have written one more chapter about my mother’s transformation in the years following. Unfortunately, I had to end the book! But I guess every writer feels that way—like the story doesn’t end on the last page.

LG: I love the seamless way the narrator’s voice matures. How did you get into the younger voice, and how did she mature so seamlessly?

VC: Writing in the voice of a young person was tremendously fun, and not as difficult as I’d originally expected. Once I got started I found myself quite connected to the girl I used to be, and with so many memories in tact. It also helped that I have an older sister who would happily remind me of the things I’d forgotten. But I didn’t need much reminding.

All those years of journal-writing helped to ingrain my experiences into a deep part of my psyche that was very accessible. But as the book progressed and the narrator matured, and I began to assume the voice of the older girl, I noticed that the writing came to resemble my voice now. I found that I related more to the questioning young woman than to the naïve adolescent, and didn’t have to stretch my imagination quite as far. I realized I could just be me.

LG: What a great discovery. Your description is wonderfully poetic. Any tips for doing that effectively?

VC: When I compose a scene I use all five senses. I may only need one or two for the particular scene, but I always use five if I can. Which means I always overwrite. But that’s okay. I like having a lot to work with, so that when it comes time to edit, I narrow it down to the right senses and the best parts.

LG: Tell us about your writing process.

VC: Having three kids puts a lot of restrictions on my time, so I learned to stop everything when they are in school and just write. That means I don’t answer phones, or clean house, or do bills, or run errands. I write from 9:00 to 2:00 every weekday and then try to catch up with life once the kids get home. That means that the house is usually a mess, there is no food in the fridge, and I get in trouble for not returning calls. But I realized early on that I couldn’t have a regular life and be a writer at the same time. I had to choose one or the other. So, I chose to be a writer with a very unorganized house.

And writing books means committing to a big project that lasts a long time. Maybe that’s why I resisted writing Waiting for the Apocalypse at first. It had been percolating in my mind for years, but I wasn’t sure what form it would take.

When I first began to write it I thought it would be an essay, and that I might send it to the New Yorker. But as the chapters grew and the story unfolded it became clear to me that it had to be a book. So I wrote an overall summary, and then I laid out the chapters, one through sixteen, and summarized each one, and it helped me to see the entire thing on the page like that. Once I had the outline, the writing began to flow.

My process is surprisingly simple. I’m a sequential story-teller. I can’t tell stories any other way than in their chronological order. What I do is begin at a provocative point, where the conflict is at a critical stage, and go from there. However, as much as you're attached to your process, you have to be flexible with it, too. For instance, when I sent the proposal and first two chapters of Apocalypse to my editor he asked me to, “Write me a middle chapter.” Well I didn't have time to write all the chapters leading up to the middle chapter. I had to jump straight into the middle of the story and compose it separately. In this case, the context was my family's life in Portugal, so I wrote a stand-alone scene that was different from the rest of the book, and it became the middle chapter. But generally speaking, I live my stories as I write them, so I tend to start on page one and end on the last page.

LG: Tell us the story of finding your publisher?

VC: I’d written a novel, and my agent had submitted it to different publishers, and W.W. Norton was interested in it, but then got cold feet because it is somewhat unconventional. And I really wanted to be a Norton author, so I decided that the thing to do was to put the novel aside and write the book that they couldn’t turn down. And to my delight they were very receptive. I spent almost a year working on the proposal and sample chapters, but within a month of turning them in I had a contract.

LG: What advice would you give to writers trying to find an agent or publisher? 

VC: A good memoir is about more than one writer’s personal story. A good memoir has a larger theme that concerns all of us as human beings. The secondary story is almost more important than the primary one. I learned that as I was writing Apocalypse. I wasn’t writing about me, as much as about passion, belief, love, family, and our ultimate individuality. I was telling two stories at the same time.

Finding an agent and publisher is the hard part. Make sure your proposal is the best it can be. Then don’t waste time and stamps on doing mass mail outs. Get to know which agents handle your genre, and which publishers publish memoirs and put all your focus on them. Be educated. Do your homework, and be ready to fight for your work. Don’t let rejections get you down.

Have passion, and show that passion by being persistent. Recognize the truth. If the manuscript gets more than a few rejections, find out why. Then rewrite. Always be willing to rewrite. The world loves a good story. Make your story indispensable to the world.

LG: What are you working on now and how can people learn more?

VC: I’m having fun promoting Waiting for the Apocalypse right now, but I’m also working on another (very different) memoir, and revising my novel Vespers Nine. Readers can visit me by checking out my blog on my Red Room page, along with some short stories and essays at: http://www.redroom.com/author/veronica-chater, and I keep my website updated when things change http://www.veronicachater.com/.

LG: Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. You’ve given us some excellent insights.

Veronica Chater is a wonderful author with a promising career. Get yourself a copy of Waiting for the Apocalypse today and watch for her upcoming books. We’ll be hearing much more from this fine author.

In 1972 Vatican II fit right into America’s increasingly liberal culture. It didn’t resonate with everyone, though. In Waiting for the Apocalypse, a Memoir of Faith and Family, Veronica Chater’s father vehemently fought Vatican II, and he dragged his family with him. Chater’s memoir chronicles what the family went through to remain traditionalists at the same time it explores “passion, belief, love, family, and our ultimate individuality,” as she says in the Q & A below.

Through the eyes of young Ronnie Arnold, we watch the outraged father uproot his whole family and move to Portugal in search of traditional Catholicism. Penniless but not defeated, they return a year later to seek out other traditional Catholics who say Latin Masses in garages and abandoned department stores. The Arnolds were reverse renegades a few years after Time Magazine asked, “Is God dead?”

Though young Ronnie loves her parents, their fanatical devotion overwhelms her. She craves the normalcy of her neighbors’ lives as she searches for her own identity and worldview in an overcrowded house filled with stifling rules.

Her adventures are told with refreshing honesty and objectivity. She is resilient and resourceful and the journals she kept as a young girl helped her share her story. Here, she tells how she became a writer and found the courage to share her experiences and tell this story in Waiting for the Apocalypse.

LG: Tell us about yourself. When did you know you were a writer?

VC: I grew up in a close-knit family of thirteen, with religious parents who were very independent thinkers. Our house was small (too small for a family of thirteen), so life was pretty noisy and chaotic, but always interesting to me because I was surrounded by characters and their dramas. As a family, we were off the grid, and never seemed able to conform to a normal lifestyle, and as I grew up I felt different, and wanted to understand why. That was why writing was the only path for me. It was the way for me to make sense of my life.

I remember telling myself that I wanted to be a writer at the age of seven, when I discovered my dad’s Underwood typewriter in the little cabin he called The Womb, where he composed his letters in the evenings. I wasn’t allowed to enter The Womb when he wasn’t there, but I used to sneak in and roll the paper into the machine and type little poems and short stories when he was at work. I didn’t know how writers made their living, but I knew I wanted to be one because I loved the feel of the keys under my fingers and the magical way I could put my living thoughts on a page. Writing gave me a voice.

I didn’t consciously develop my skills until college, but from the age of about nine I kept a daily journal. And it was through journal-writing that I grew to understand and love language and to manipulate it in order to tell a compelling story. I’d spend hours at night writing letters and letting my homework go. That was one reason I never did very well at school. All I really wanted to do was write.

LG: The narrator does not see herself as gifted or special. When did you realize that the life you experienced was a story you wanted to share with the world?

VC: For years, I wrote short stories and essays about my life, but I always kept them short and humorous, and I didn’t go too deep. I think I was building up to tell the real story, and needed time to get there. And because I made my living as a writer for magazines, it seemed much easier to tell other people’s stories. But every time I finished something, I found myself right back at the place I’d started, a writer with her own story to tell.

So one day I sat down and I wrote a two page summary of the book I might write about my life, and when I read it over I said to myself, “I would read that book.” And I’ve always believed that the book an author would like to read is the book that he or she was meant to write. So, I began to write Waiting for the Apocalypse, and as I did, it occurred to me that I’d needed those years under my belt in order to have the courage and the skill to write the memoir. 

LG: How were you able to portray your parents and siblings so three-dimensionally? What was easiest about portraying your family? Which scenes were hardest to write? Is there anything you regret sharing or wish you had shared?

VC: I love writing about my parents because I find them fascinating people. They really are every writer’s dream characters, so consistently themselves, and so unapologetically original.

When I did a radio piece for This American Life, before I wrote my memoir, I had so much fun portraying my big, tough cop dad who is helpless as a baby without my mom, and my loving and sensitive mother who plays heartless jokes on him. It helps that both my parents are gifted with the ability to laugh at themselves, so there was never any problem writing a memoir and staying true to their personalities. My entire family is the same way. They were very easy to portray. 

The hardest scenes to write were scenes that involved my anger and rebellion against my parents in my teen years. There have been some painfully raw times in our relationship when we’ve had to grow up and accept each other, and it was difficult to recreate the agony, and forgive them all over again. It’s the most difficult thing about writing a memoir. Reliving a painful situation, and interpreting it with a fresh mind while remaining true to the young narrator is a tricky balancing act for every writer, especially when you are so much wiser than you were back then.

Is there anything I regret sharing or wish I’d shared? Nothing I regret, but I do wish I could have written one more chapter about my mother’s transformation in the years following. Unfortunately, I had to end the book! But I guess every writer feels that way—like the story doesn’t end on the last page.

LG: I love the seamless way the narrator’s voice matures. How did you get into the younger voice, and how did she mature so seamlessly?

VC: Writing in the voice of a young person was tremendously fun, and not as difficult as I’d originally expected. Once I got started I found myself quite connected to the girl I used to be, and with so many memories in tact. It also helped that I have an older sister who would happily remind me of the things I’d forgotten. But I didn’t need much reminding.

All those years of journal-writing helped to ingrain my experiences into a deep part of my psyche that was very accessible. But as the book progressed and the narrator matured, and I began to assume the voice of the older girl, I noticed that the writing came to resemble my voice now. I found that I related more to the questioning young woman than to the naïve adolescent, and didn’t have to stretch my imagination quite as far. I realized I could just be me.

LG: What a great discovery. Your description is wonderfully poetic. Any tips for doing that effectively?

VC: When I compose a scene I use all five senses. I may only need one or two for the particular scene, but I always use five if I can. Which means I always overwrite. But that’s okay. I like having a lot to work with, so that when it comes time to edit, I narrow it down to the right senses and the best parts.

LG: Tell us about your writing process.

VC: Having three kids puts a lot of restrictions on my time, so I learned to stop everything when they are in school and just write. That means I don’t answer phones, or clean house, or do bills, or run errands. I write from 9:00 to 2:00 every weekday and then try to catch up with life once the kids get home. That means that the house is usually a mess, there is no food in the fridge, and I get in trouble for not returning calls. But I realized early on that I couldn’t have a regular life and be a writer at the same time. I had to choose one or the other. So, I chose to be a writer with a very unorganized house.

And writing books means committing to a big project that lasts a long time. Maybe that’s why I resisted writing Waiting for the Apocalypse at first. It had been percolating in my mind for years, but I wasn’t sure what form it would take.

When I first began to write it I thought it would be an essay, and that I might send it to the New Yorker. But as the chapters grew and the story unfolded it became clear to me that it had to be a book. So I wrote an overall summary, and then I laid out the chapters, one through sixteen, and summarized each one, and it helped me to see the entire thing on the page like that. Once I had the outline, the writing began to flow.

My process is surprisingly simple. I’m a sequential story-teller. I can’t tell stories any other way than in their chronological order. What I do is begin at a provocative point, where the conflict is at a critical stage, and go from there. However, as much as you're attached to your process, you have to be flexible with it, too. For instance, when I sent the proposal and first two chapters of Apocalypse to my editor he asked me to, “Write me a middle chapter.” Well I didn't have time to write all the chapters leading up to the middle chapter. I had to jump straight into the middle of the story and compose it separately. In this case, the context was my family's life in Portugal, so I wrote a stand-alone scene that was different from the rest of the book, and it became the middle chapter. But generally speaking, I live my stories as I write them, so I tend to start on page one and end on the last page.

LG: Tell us the story of finding your publisher?

VC: I’d written a novel, and my agent had submitted it to different publishers, and W.W. Norton was interested in it, but then got cold feet because it is somewhat unconventional. And I really wanted to be a Norton author, so I decided that the thing to do was to put the novel aside and write the book that they couldn’t turn down. And to my delight they were very receptive. I spent almost a year working on the proposal and sample chapters, but within a month of turning them in I had a contract.

LG: What advice would you give to writers trying to find an agent or publisher? 

VC: A good memoir is about more than one writer’s personal story. A good memoir has a larger theme that concerns all of us as human beings. The secondary story is almost more important than the primary one. I learned that as I was writing Apocalypse. I wasn’t writing about me, as much as about passion, belief, love, family, and our ultimate individuality. I was telling two stories at the same time.

Finding an agent and publisher is the hard part. Make sure your proposal is the best it can be. Then don’t waste time and stamps on doing mass mail outs. Get to know which agents handle your genre, and which publishers publish memoirs and put all your focus on them. Be educated. Do your homework, and be ready to fight for your work. Don’t let rejections get you down.

Have passion, and show that passion by being persistent. Recognize the truth. If the manuscript gets more than a few rejections, find out why. Then rewrite. Always be willing to rewrite. The world loves a good story. Make your story indispensable to the world.

LG: What are you working on now and how can people learn more?

VC: I’m having fun promoting Waiting for the Apocalypse right now, but I’m also working on another (very different) memoir, and revising my novel Vespers Nine. Readers can visit me by checking out my blog on my Red Room page, along with some short stories and essays at: http://www.redroom.com/author/veronica-chater, and I keep my website updated when things change http://www.veronicachater.com/.

LG: Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. You’ve given us some excellent insights.

Veronica Chater is a wonderful author with a promising career. Get yourself a copy of Waiting for the Apocalypse today and watch for her upcoming books. We’ll be hearing much more from this fine author.