What, Why, How: Mariam Kobras

WHAT?

I write contemporary romance/women’s fiction, SciFi short stories, and the occasional haiku. Lately I’ve been working with a co-author on a new mystery series. We have very different work styles so it’s been a whole new experience.

WHY?

One morning five years ago I woke up and felt that it was the right time to start writing a novel. So that’s what I did: I sat down and wrote The Distant Shore.

The full manuscript was requested by the publisher, Buddhapuss Ink LLC after they’d read a sample of the story on my blog. A little over a year later, they released it and they sent me contracts for the next two books in the planned trilogy. I hadn’t even started writing them.

All I can say is five published books later, I’m still bemused and slightly baffled.

The now completed Stone series includes the original trilogy: The Distant Shore, Under the Same Sun, and Song of the Storm. I followed those with two prequels: The Rosewood Guitar, and Waiting for a Song. They have a common theme: music. My main character, Jon Stone, is an aging rock star who’s on the verge of drifting off into depression and alcoholism when something totally unexpected happens that gives him a chance to turn around his life.

All were published by Buddhapuss Ink and three have received Independent Publisher Book Awards. As I said; bemused, and slightly baffled. I never dreamt of being an author, or even a writer. It just happened. And I’m very happy about it.

HOW?

Stories always start at the beginning for me. I set the opening scene, something happens, and from there everything else unfolds. I’m not a plotter; I don’t sit down and outline the novel on paper or screen. But I do plot in my mind a lot, especially when I can’t sleep and lie awake at night. One scene follows another, each one is the consequence of what happened before, it determines the thoughts, actions, impulses, feelings of the characters. Just like people in real life, they don’t follow an outline. They do have a goal, whether they know it or not, but how they get there will unfold as the story happens.

Settings are important to me. Setting defines the character’s moods, their actions, their possibilities.

Secondary characters are important for the same reason. Main characters need sidekicks, friends, foes, advisers, someone who’ll hold them and pat their backs while they cry and sob and wail about the unfairness of life, and they need someone to have fun with.

I don’t care much for writing advice, which means you won’t get any from me.

What works for me might be a disaster for you, and vice versa. There really is only one way to write: sit down, write. Write.

And write some more.

Three-time Independent Publisher’s Book Award Winner, Mariam Kobras was born in Frankfurt, Germany, of a German mother and Indian father. Growing up, she and her family lived in Brazil and Saudi Arabia before they decided to settle in Germany. Mariam attended school there and studied American Literature and Psychology at Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen. Today she lives and writes in Hamburg, Germany, with her husband, two sons, and two cats.