What?
Hello, my name is Maryann, and I’m addicted to writing. It started when I was about ten years old and had just finished reading a charming book about Lassie written by Albert Payson Terhune. After closing the book, I turned to my friend who was reading with me and said, “Let’s write stories like this.”
My first story wasn’t about a dog. It was about a horse, and The Call of the Wild won an award in the Scholastic Writing Awards contest when I was twelve. I was sure I would grow up to be a rich and famous author. Ah, wonderful childhood dreams; but if we didn’t have them, would we ever dare?
My first professional stint was in journalism, writing columns for local newspapers, as well as feature stories for regional and national magazines. The humor columns were eventually compiled into my book, A Dead Tomato Plant and A Paycheck.
Nonfiction is so much easier to sell than short stories, but I never strayed far from writing fiction because of my love of story.
Much later, I got hooked on police procedural mysteries reading the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain and decided to write one set in Dallas, which lead to one more, then one more, then one more. The Seasons Mystery Series has a similar ensemble-style cast of characters, with the leads being Sarah Kingsly and Angel Johnson. They are thrown together in a partnership neither of them wants, and that personal tension is a big part of the ongoing series that began with Open Season and is now four books strong.
There’s another series that debuted with One Small Victory, a thriller based on the real experience of a woman infiltrating a drug ring in her small rural town and taking down a major distributor. The third book in the series is under construction.
My other two mysteries are Boxes For Beds, an historical set near Hot Springs when the Mob ruled the town, and Doubletake, another police procedural. Doubletake was written with Margaret Sutton, who taught me words I’d never used before because killers don’t say, “Gosh, golly, gee,” and neither do police officers.
Evelyn Evolving is an historical novel based on my mother’s life, and is probably the book of my heart for obvious reasons. My tagline is “Writing books celebrating strong women,” and my mother was the strongest woman I ever knew. Not always the best mother, but she persevered through considerable hardships in her life.
Why?
There’s a magic in stories that transports a reader to wonderful places outside their own reality, and it’s always restorative to visit a fictional place and spend time with fictional people. I love to tap into that magic as a reader and a writer. Ask any writer and they’ll tell you that there’s an incredible high that comes from a good day at the keyboard when the characters talk and the words pop up on the monitor so fast the spelling is atrocious and grammar has been suspended. But who cares. That can all be fixed in the rewrites.
I’m certain my soul would wither away if I could never read another book or write another story. And I’m so blessed to have a muse that shows up now and then to bring something bright and new to write about.
A good friend, who is also a writer, once said that writing isn’t just something we do, it’s part of us, a part that cries out for expression. At the time, I was helping him with his latest book. He was slowly going blind from retinitis pigmentosa and could no longer read pages he’d printed out for self-editing. So, I met with him quite a few times to read for him and then make fixes in the document on the computer. Other friends had asked him why he didn’t stop writing since it was becoming increasingly difficult, and he said he simply couldn’t. Writing was in his soul. In his blood.
That’s the way it is with me, too. Not only am I addicted to fiction, both to read and to write, I process anything that happens in my life or the world, by writing about it. It’s like journaling out loud, although editing the content is a must, whereas the private journal can keep all its mistakes.
There have been times in recent years, as some health problems have severely impacted my ability to churn out more than a few hundred words at a time, that I have considered quitting. But when the thought comes to mind, acting on it is impossible. Like my friend said, writing is an integral part of me.
How?
Authors are encouraged to write in one genre. Well, I blew that one.
Authors are encouraged to outline their stories. Blew that one.
Authors are encouraged to organize their work. Blew that one, too.
The only books that I started with an outline were nine nonfiction ones written for the Rosen Publishing Company, and the outlines were so beneficial in steering me toward areas that needed research. That same approach worked well for writing long feature stories, too.
However, that process doesn’t work the same way for me when writing fiction. Probably because I turn control over to the characters who primarily drive the story.
One Small Victory was my first novel of published by Five Star/Cengage back in 2008. The story was prompted by a news article about the woman who’d worked undercover on a drug task force. It was only two short paragraphs in the newspaper, but the account of her daring and courage came through loud and clear.
Instantly, the main character, Jenny, appeared as a full-blown character, name and all, and started talking to me. When my current publisher who released the updated version of the story asked if there would be a third book in the series, my response was that I had to see if Jenny was going to talk to me again.
Luckily, she is.
While writing, I take lots of notes in a large spiral notebook that is always on my desk. That is especially helpful for the books that are part of a series. for the Seasons series, I keep track of plot, sequence of events, and details of the characters: where they live, what car they drive, their relationships, ranks at the department and more. Those notes are then turned into a series bible so I don’t inadvertently change the color of a character’s hair.
Bio:
Maryann Miller, an award-winning author, started her professional career as a journalist, writing columns, feature stories, and short fiction for regional and national publications. At one time she was known as the Erma Bombeck of Plano, Texas, for her humor column about the joys of family life.
Miller is the recipient of the Page Edwards Short Story Award; the New York Library Best Books for Teens Award; and her mystery, Doubletake, was honored as the Best Mystery by the Texas Association of Authors. She took first-place in the short story and screenwriting competition at the Houston Writer’s Conference and was a semi-finalist at Sundance for her script “A Question of Honor.” She was also a semi-finalist in the Chesterfield Screenwriting Competition with the adaptation of Open Season, the first book in the Seasons Mystery Series.
When not writing, Miller loves to play on stage and work in her garden – two creative pursuits that bring great joy, along with coloring and quilting. She lives in Texas with her dog and three cats. The cats rule, and the dog is very patient.
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Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist:
Multi-finalist award winning novel In the Context of Love
Picture book Gordy and the Ghost Crab
Latest poetry chapbook: Sleepwalker
Connect with Linda: LinkTree
