Long and Short Reviews welcomes Sorchia DuBois. Sorchia is giving away a hand-crafted birthstone pendant and signed copies of books. Enter the Rafflecopter here.
“Thanks for vising with us today, Sorchia. If you had to do your journey to getting published all over again, what would you do differently?”
“Easy question. I would start sooner. I made the mistake of listening to someone else tell me what I ought to do. In my little town, girls didn’t take science classes –if they did, they didn’t enjoy them or excel at them—and they didn’t write anything but invitations to parties and gossip columns. When I approached my high school counselor about taking more science, he discouraged me. When I wrote for the school newspaper, I didn’t get to write anything but fluff. When I went to my college counselor and said I wanted to be a writer, he told me I’d be more likely to get a job as a teacher. That may be true, but I wish I hadn’t listened. I taught for over 25 years—you don’t make a bunch of money as a teacher—in case you didn’t know—so it wasn’t like being a starving writer would have been a huge pay cut. Also when you teach, you have very little time of your own in which to pursue your real passions. You come home emotionally drained and are lucky to get the macaroni and cheese out of the pan and on the table before you drop in your tracks. So anyway, long story short, I would get my degree in journalism or creative writing and do what I wanted to do from the start instead of waiting 25 years to do it.”
Sorchia told me that the hardest part of writing for her is when she’s at the end of a project. She hates to let the story go, so she will procrastinate and dawdle to keep putting it off. It means she can’t go back and change anything—it’s over and if it isn’t perfect the mistakes will haunt her forever.
“I’ll write a paragraph and delete it and write it again and delete it. I just hate to write that last scene because I’m saying goodbye to the story and the characters. Not only do I want to give them the perfect send off, but I just hate the thought of not being with them,” she explained. “I mean, these are people I’ve been spending lots of time with for the past year or more. So when that happens, and it is happening right now, I take a breath—maybe a few days away from the keyboard. A friend once told me to do something else creative—garden, paint, –whatever. Use a different part of my brain for a bit. It almost always works. When it doesn’t, I jump into a new project—get an outline worked up or write a character sketch. That usually gets me going—and I’m anxious to finish the old project and get better acquainted with the new one. It is still hard to put that last scene together though because I want it to perfectly end the story and send the characters off into their futures—not that the stories always end perfectly happily. As a matter of fact, that is the problem sometimes because characters sometimes die at the end.”
She avoids writers block with a steady writing scheduled. She writes in the mornings from no late than 8 for as long as she can. Her day job starts at noon. She told me that by that time she’s usually writing gibberish anyway, so it works to stop then.
She admitted to me that when she finishes a book she’s I’s always afraid she won’t be able to come up with anything else that it seems like she’s used up every bit of creativity she ever had and will never be able to write another interesting sentence much less an entire book.
Fortunately, so far that hasn’t happened. She’s currently putting the finishing touches on Zoraida Grey and the Pictish Runes which will end the series. She has an anthology of Zoraida Grey stories called Witchling she needs to fine tune a little bit. She also has a Christmas story in progress titles Winter Solstice and is a witchy Christmas present.
“The next really big thing is the beginning of a new murder mystery series,” she shared. “The first one is tentatively titled
Festival of Blood—though that may change. It’s about a series of murders that happen during a small town Celtic festival. It isn’t going to be as witchy as Zoraida Grey, but a few ghosts and a little magic may show up. I will write another witchy series but I’m working on suspense for a bit before that happens.”
She is a very character driven author, and she uses a deck of tarot cards to help develop the characters.
“While I may have an idea of what this character is about, the cards generally surprise me with details I would not have come up with otherwise,” she said. “When I’m stuck or feeling bored with a character, I pull a card and see what that triggers. Sometimes, it’s the image on the card that adds a detail and sometimes it’s the meaning of the card. I do a little tarot reading—I’m a rank amateur—and have a working knowledge of tarot. Along with a bunch of books with more info. I also do card readings at parties and book signings for practice so I learn more every day.”
With her Zoraida Grey series, she knew she wanted it to be a take on the old Gothic stories she read when she was a kid.
“So we had to have a haunted castle, lots of spooky atmosphere, an innocent and inexperienced damsel, and some threatening and /or brooding men,” she explained. “Mainly, I knew I wanted the main character to be a strong, self-sufficient gal who blasts into what she thinks is a situation she can handle with her eyes closed only to find herself tested in ways she never imagined. I wanted her to think she had the world by the tail in her comfortable little life, but then to find out she wasn’t the biggest duck in the puddle. She wasn’t going to be a milksop or a weepy-eyed princess. Once I started pulling cards, her character took shape and so did the love interest and the bad guys and gals. The story developed around their characters and not the other way around because I kept thinking in terms of what obstacles I could put in her path and how I could make her life miserable.”
I asked her if she were a plotter or a pantser.
“The more I write, the more of a plotter I become. I believe in serendipity and inspiration and listening to my muse and all that, and I do that at the beginning. There comes a point, however, when I need to know where I am going. The best things about reading a well-planned book are the Easter eggs the author plants throughout—those little bits that make the ending seem both logical but surprising. I find that somewhere near the middle—or even before—around 20K words—I have to spend some quality time in an outline frame of mind. If I can nail down the ending, I am good. The basics of the last scene—I might even do a rough draft of it. I like to consider the character arcs—where do they begin and where do I want them to be at the end and how do I get from point a to point b without giving my readers a twisted neck. I read a lot of books by authors who profess to be pantsers and, not to sound like an ass, but sometimes it is easy to tell they didn’t know where they were going and didn’t go back and lay the groundwork. I try to give my readers a thoughtful and enjoyable experience and to lead them along with hints and foreshadowing and little seeds planted early in the story—but I have a lot to learn. Of course, many of those things get put in later—the first draft is always ugly. That last revision is all about setting up the ending.”
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“One of the things I’m the most proud of in Zoraida Grey and the Voodoo Queen—actually in the entire Zoraida Grey trilogy—is the friendship between Zoraida and Zhu her best friend. Zhu isn’t in Voodoo Queen too much because she is a captive back in Scotland while Zoraida is desperately trying to track down someone who can help free her. The two women aren’t together in Voodoo Queen as much as they are in Family Stones, the first in the trilogy, or as much as they will be in Pictish Runes, the last in the trilogy. Several reviewers have mentioned that they enjoyed the close relationship Zoraida and Zhu have and I’m so proud to have done well with that. It was a challenge to keep Zhu in the forefront in Voodoo Queen since she was not physically present and I didn’t want to swap heads and jump into her story –yet. I think I did okay with it since Zoraida is concentrating on her friend’s plight and working for all she’s worth to get back to Scotland with enough ammunition to battle the Logans to the death if needs be to get Zhu away from them. But the friendship is a big part of the series that gets left out of blurbs in favor of action and romance.”
Finally, I asked, “What advice would you give a new writer just starting out?”
“First, read a lot. Second, study great literature but don’t get discouraged because—A-none of those people started out good. B-Though most of these writers will be men, that’s only because women weren’t running the world. It’s different now and women’s voices are valued and , more importantly, marketable. And, finally, don’t let anyone tell you that you are wasting your time. If you have a desire to write (or to become a professional tiddly-winks player or whatever) then do that as long as it has meaning to you.”
Magic may save Zoraida’s skin, but what about her heart?
Zoraida Grey needs help. With the witchy Logan clan holding her best friend hostage in a haunted Scottish castle, she can’t trust anyone—certainly not beguiling but dangerous Shea Logan. And Al, her overprotective boyfriend, doesn’t believe in magic.
Only one creature strikes fear in the blackened hearts of the Logan witches. Trouble is Jock disappeared five centuries ago leaving a trail of destruction across the Gulf of Mexico. Now he’s stepped into a steaming pile of Voodoo.
Can Zoraida drag wayward Jock back to Scotland? And what’s she supposed to do with two men who promise completely different futures?
A Scottish wizard, stripped naked and painted blue—a Voodoo priestess bent on immortality—a yacht-load of Caribbean pirates. What can possibly go wrong?
About the Author: Award-winning author Sorchia Dubois lives in the piney forest of the Missouri Ozarks with seven cats, two fish, one dog, and one husband.
A proud member of the Scottish Ross clan, Sorchia incorporates all things Celtic (especially Scottish) into her works. She can often be found at Scottish festivals watching kilted men toss large objects for no apparent reason.
Thanks for making me sound almost sane–and for being part of Launch Day for Zoraida Grey.