Trisha Wooldridge Interview Part 2

We're back with Trisha, for more insight.

What brought you to Broad Universe, and what do you like best about the organization?

A friend of mine from a longstanding writer's group, the DragonWriters, said that she loved Broad Universe and had found a lot of publishing information and opportunities there, so she convinced me to join.  I thank her very much because I've met so many amazing women in the organization - many who have had a direct influence on getting my fiction and non-fiction published and forwarding my career.  Also, I have always felt that women need to help each other because, unfortunately, we are still at a disadvantage in the realms of business, publishing, rights, expectations, and opportunities.  We should honor, celebrate, and nurture each other, and I believe in taking an active role to do that.

What do you feel is the greatest challenge and the greatest asset of being a woman author?

I recently wrote a blog post entitled, The Devil Wears Post-Feminism, where I shared several stories of women who still had to hide behind male or non-gendered pseudonyms.  Yes, there are women who submit the very same work under a non-feminine name and not only get it accepted but get offered more money!  That's wrong and needs to be changed.  On the other hand, in a recent poll Broad Universe did of various magazines, women's submissions followed submissions better and overall had a higher level of writing.  I do think women are more detail-oriented than men, and in many cases we already expect to work hard to get what we want; we don't automatically assume an agent or publisher will do our work for us.  We know how to be part of a team.

What is the story behind the greatest lesson you've learned so far as an author?

The greatest lesson I've learned, not only as an author but a person, is that you never stop learning.  There will always be things we will never, ever know; our world is so HUGE we simply cannot learn everything about anything.  Never assume you know what you think you know.  Always double check yourself.  And forever search for new things to learn about.

The story behind this is that my co-author and I wrote a good 75% of a novel based on a Biblical premise that we both were sure we knew.  Well, when we got to the details of the story and opened our respective Bibles - well, let's just say we had an AWFUL LOT of rewriting and reorganizing to do.  This was about 3 weeks into NaNoWriMo for both of us, too.  Yeah.  Research = Healthy Blood Pressure.

What is your favorite comfort food or drink to help you write?  What do you save as reward treats for meeting goals and deadlines?

My number one comfort food for writing is chocolate - dark, dark, chocolate.  Potato chips are a close second.  I am also a fan of a proper California Zinfandel (deep, black red with a hint of chocolate and a huge burst of fruit - did I mention I was a food/wine writer, too?).  However, I also will drink various mixers when I need them, usually containing amaretto.  During the day, I'm a coffee and tea fiend and will eat all meals at the keyboard if not watched.  As a reward, I open an expensive dessert wine, like a Trochenberrenauslese or an Ice Wine.
 
What is your favorite organizational trick for meeting all of your goals and deadlines?

My favorite trick is to force accountability and have outside forces create deadlines for me.  I've got regular readers of my blog, so I will let them down if I miss a blog deadline.  I get friends to pester me because they are expecting a chapter/scene/whatnot, and whenever I write with a partner, I feel dedicated to that other person - so it has more priority than stuff I have no deadline for but to myself.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure (be it food, a habit, a show…)?  And how do you rationalize giving into it?

Sleeping in and dreaming is my favorite guilty pleasure, especially on weekends and when I don't have anywhere immediate to be.  I often lose hours dreaming - and I recall all of my dreams with the utmost vivid detail.  But, I can rationalize all this because many of my favorite stories have either germinated or found resolution during these times.

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and time with us at the Far Edge of Normal!

Check out more about Trisha here: Trisha Wooldridge, A Novel Friend, http://www.anovelfriend.com/blog.htm

Trisha Wooldridge Interview Part 1

Welcome to Trisha Wooldridge, the first interview on my blog tour. She's got some great insights and great information to share. This is just part 1.
Trisha J. Wooldridge, a member of the Broad Universe Motherboard, is a freelance writer, editor, and educator whose experience includes Dungeons & Dragons Online, animal rescue public relations, and web-based learning.  She loves interviewing goth and metal bands, reviewing food and wine, helping other writers, and giving words a dark yet whimsical twist.  Her fiction is in Bad-Ass Faeries 2: Just Plain Bad, the upcoming Bad-Ass Faeries 3: In All Their Glory ( both co-authored with Christy Tohara) and Fantasy Gazetteer. www.anovelfriend.com

1. How can we find you? Website, Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc. - please share your public links.

Hi!  I'm Trish Wooldridge, and you can find me at www.anovelfriend.com, novelfriend.blogspot.com, novelfriend.livejournal.com, @novelfriend on Twitter.  (There's this theme thing…)  I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn as Trisha Wooldridge, or Trisha J. Wooldridge.

I've done my best to become Google friendly.



2. Tell us about your writing - What genre do you prefer to write? What books, stories, other publications that you've written are your personal favorites? Anything new coming up?


I write in non-fiction and fiction.  In non-fiction, I love writing about writing (of course), food, wine, horses, animals, art, education, music, feminism, and various spooky things.

In fiction, I tend to lean more towards action-packed contemporary and urban fantasy.  That said, I have a Blade-Runner-esque android story in the works and a mid-grade/YA science-fantasy about a deaf girl destined to hear the future from the songs of stars that I'm querying.

In May, the latest Bad-Ass Faeries anthology, In All Their Glory (Mundania Press), includes a piece by me and Christy Tohara, my co-author and good friend.  Faerie is more than a little pissed when relations between human and fae have ended in nuclear war as surviving human and fae factions battles decide whether Faerie will take over the human realm--or leave it forever.  Also, in May, I've got a poem coming out that I wrote for my parents, "To Me, You are Holy," in Eye on Life Magazine's Poetry Locksmith.


3. What about you as a person? What do you do to relax? Favorite movies or tv shows? Hobbies?

You mean writing for hours over a keyboard isn't relaxing?  Shoot… I must be doing it wrong. I kill stuff in writing to get over a bad day.  Mercilessly and with utmost cruelty and fervor.

But… when my wrists are in pain because I have horrific posture… I do occasionally watch TV.  My favorites include House, MD; Caprica; Burn Notice; Castle; Fringe; Bones; Doctor Who; and Eureka when it comes back.  Movies… my husband could open a branch of Netflix, so it's hard to pick a favorite when I can pick just about anything.

For non-writing hobbies, I work with horses at the Bay State Equine Rescue.  It's an amazing experience to communicate with these majestic creatures who have suffered so much by human hands… yet still want to trust us more than anything (except food.  They want food most of all.  Even if they are a pushing the limits of a healthy weight.)  I also have a few artistic endeavors: I love painting, drawing, wood-burning, and other crafts.  Hiking and playing with pets and hanging out with my Husband-of-Awesome are the rest of my favorite things.



4. What gets your creative juices going? Do you write to a music, and do you want to share your playlist?


Music.  Music, music, music!  I have very eclectic taste, but the Crüxshadows are almost always in my list, as is Nightwish, and frequent regulars (because I still use a CD player and not my mp3 player for writing) are Voltaire, Blackmore's Night, Roger Cline & the Peacemakers, Within Temptation, Loreena McKinnet, La Oreja de Van Gogh, Trans Siberian Orchestra, Omnia, Emerald Rose, Brobdingnagian Bards, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Bruce Dickenson (apart from Iron Maiden), Ozzy Osborne, Unto Ashes, and some soundtrack of something or another.

Current CDs:  Crüxshadows' Birthday, Lady Gaga's Fame, Band of Skulls' baby darling doll face honey (from their being featured on an episode of Castle), Omnia's Pagan Folk, and Nightwish's Once.


5. "All writers must have cats, especially if they write fantasy or speculative fiction." Do you have a stand on this one? Any cute pictures of your kitty or other pet?

I have found this to be mostly true.  I have a few writing friends who are exceptions… they may be the exceptions that prove the rule.  Who knows.  I have both a cat and a rabbit.  In fact, I've had three rabbits in my life; two have since passed away.  I've noticed the rabbit trend among comics, however, and know of at least two top webcomic artists who have house rabbits… which I include as support for a project I haven't done a LOT of talking about yet, but will when more is done on it.  ;)

My sweet cat (well, sweet to me; my husband is another matter) is Nylis, a mackerel tabby.  My brother adopted her from the MSPCA, then a couple years later, got a promotion and had to move to Florida - so she moved in with me (an act which required great feats to obtain the forgiveness of my otherwise Husband-of-Awesome).  Her original name was Nile, which didn't work for any of us, so with the suggestion of a fellow writing friend of mine, she became Nylis - the name from a race of cat-people from said friend's work-in-progress.  For as fabulous as my kitty is, she is in the running for the Dumbest Cat in the World.

Loki is my appropriately named rabbit.  He is a grumpy 10-year-old, 3-lb Siberian Rex who has no problem letting people know his opinion of everything (which can be summed up "I am the most awesome being in existence, worship me now!  With food!  Or nose pets!  Better yet: Both!  Now!")  At his venerable age, it goes without saying he usually gets what he wants - including getting the cat in trouble/injured for his amusement and knowing neither the H-of-A nor I have the heart to scold him.  (So we occasionally find ourselves apologizing to the cat when we find out she was NOT, in fact, chasing the rabbit - or at least not without due cause of him teasing her first.)


6. What organizations do you recommend for those wanting to become writers? Any advice you'd like to share about writing?

Broad Universe!!  Some of the best contacts I've made as a writer have been through my work and membership in Broad Universe.

Besides Broad Universe, I'm also a member of the Editorial Freelancer's Association (which is on the higher end of membership dues), where I've gotten several jobs in editing and writing (such as editing the text for the MMORPG Dungeons & Dragons: Stormreach!)

I follow the blogs of Writer Beware! and QueryTracker, and have found both some of the best resources for information and advice on the business of writing.

There are two important pieces of advice I can offer.  One is to read everything you can get your hands on:  fiction to enjoy and study, blogs, books, and articles about both the craft and business of writing, and each other - with heart and mind to help one another.  That leads me to the second piece of advice: be part of the greater community.  There are some wonderful communities for writers out there, and we should seek them out and put our positive energy into them; it really does get returned exponentially.  Science fiction, fantasy, horror, speculative… our niche has one of the most amazing communities of fandom.  If possible, get to know the community online - or in one of the hundreds, thousands, of conventions across the world.  Being involved in the community - and sharing my active reading within the community - have been the two most important parts of making my career happen.



7. What writers inspired you to become an author?

I wanted to be an author for as long as I remember, so you could really date things back to Dr. Seuss, Judy Blume, whoever wrote those many Classic Children's Stories that my mother read me… and Jane Yolen and Ruth Sanderson are in my childhood collection.  I have always been a voracious reader, but one of the key persons who showed me how amazing writing could be was Madeleine L'Engle, who I discovered at 11 with A Swiftly Tilting Planet (kudos to the person who decided to throw a unicorn on the cover!)  From there, I found even more SF & F lit, like The Last Unicorn, and eventually the pulp series of DragonLance and Forgotten Realms and other Dungeons & Dragons-Lord-of-the-Rings-esque stories.  (Though, I never read LOTR until college.)  Currently, I'm a huge fan of Neil Gaiman for the same reason I loved L'Engle: the breadth of each work.  Gaiman also works in multiple media, which I also want to do.  Besides Big Names, there are many colleagues who inspire me to no end, particularly members of Broad Universe, who write mind-blowingly amazing work and are Real People I have gotten to know on a regular basis - like the other women featured in this blog series.  I've read a lot of their work and just love it!

8. Any special appearances or events coming up that you want to mention?

Not in April; it's my birthday month - along with about 20 of my closest friends and family.  However, in May, look out for the release of Bad-Ass Faeries 3: In All Their Glory at Balticon, and my poem in Eye on Life Poetry Locksmith.  I'll be at the following conventions:  Wiscon, Readercon, Pi-Con, and Dragon*Con… and I'm considering World Fantasy.  On June 12, there's a Massachusetts release party for Bad-Ass Faeries 3, at Generations Herbal Apothecary and Gift Shop. My good friend who through the successful MA release party is holding it again.

Lastly, thank you Jaleta for organizing this blogging event - and to all of the wonderful Broad Universe authors who are taking part!

And for all you readers who made it this far, don't forget to comment. One lucky commenter will get a free copy of my book Nexus Point. For the rest, use download code TF69P to order the ebook for only $2.99 at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/10672