Primal by Deborah Serra ~ Speed Date Interview
You the Readers are the Interviewers. Here is your chance to get answers to the questions you always wanted to ask your favorite Authors. Authors will be coming into the blog for a Speed Date Interview. They will only be there one day and you can only ask them two questions.
Pull up a chair, put on your best smile and make the best impression of yourself.
Personal and inappropriate questions may not be answered at the Author’s discretion.
Ask an Author two questions and be entered to win in our monthly giveaway. You could win a package of free reads from the RJ book vault. We will be asking Authors to select the best question they were asked on the day they day they posted on the blog. We will also be picking random winners from the general questions.
Once the Speed Date interview is done the Interview staff will be going in and selecting a group of questions and answer to post on the RJ Authors Interview Webpage.
http://www.romancejunkiesreviews.com/artman/publish/interviews.shtml
THE BOOK;
A family vacation to a Lake Superior fishing camp turns ugly when the camp is invaded by four heavily armed men running from the law. The Burne brothers do not realize that one of the campers, thirty-year-old Alison Kraft, was sick, and so, when they burst into the lodge and pulled all of the hostages together she was not among them.
Outside the lodge, in the darkness, Alison stands, paralyzed watching in the icy drench of the pounding rain. This gentle woman is left with only her wits, and the element of surprise, to battle for the life of her husband and her child. She is alone. She will win, or they will die.
THE AUTHOR:
D. A. Serra was a screenwriter for twenty years and recognized by the Writer’s Guild for her long term continuous employment. She has written ten TV movies, four feature films and numerous TV episodes including two years as a staff writer for NBC. She has taught writing at the University of California, San Diego, Wofford College and at several writers’ conferences. Serra is also the recipient if the Hawthornden Literary Fellowship and a semi-finalist for the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Award given by the Faulkner Society in New Orleans, LA.
WEBSITE AND AVAILABILITY:
Website: www.deborahserra.comPrimal is available online through www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, www.deborahserra.com, and iLibrary.
THEMES HIGHLIGHTED:
- A mother’s primal urge to protect her young
- What is the primal reaction when faced with kill or be killed?
- Can a primal rage be controlled or does it cross over to insanity
- The primal connection between family members – even the most dysfunctional ones
July 11th, 2012 at 5:58 am
Is there a distinct difference between being able to write a novel as opposed to using more visual techniques for a movie? Can you please share the subtle differences?
July 11th, 2012 at 10:19 am
Hi, Joanne,
Yes, they are different in many ways. When writing for the screen, a writer must tell the entire story in dialogue, which can be very restrictive. The writer is not allowed the freedom to wander around inside a character’s head, or to move back and forth in time. It is more difficult to build complicated characters under those circumstances — but not impossible. There are the added elements of the visual scene and the thrill of seeing an actor actually bring your character to life – but the constraints remain.
July 11th, 2012 at 11:01 am
Hi!
How about…
1) Do you plot or plan your books…
2) Do you imagine certain people in your character’s roles, or not really?
Lois
July 11th, 2012 at 11:12 am
Hi, Lois,
1. Whether, or how intricately, I plan a story depends solely on timing. If I am under a deadline then I must outline – I simply don’t have the luxury of wandering around creatively. If I don’t have a deadline, and I’m writing on spec, I love the wandering. It will mean that I will throw out a lot of pages as I meander down paths that don’t follow the plot progression properly, or that lead to a dead end – but I enjoy the freedom of being loose, and the surprise of where that might lead.
2. When I was screenwriting it was always hard for me in casting meetings since no matter who they suggested I couldn’t see it. By the time I’m done creating a character – they exist – at least for me. I see them clearly and I would try to imagine lopping off their heads and seeing a particular actor in its place – never worked. It was the rare occasion when an actor lived up to my imagined character – rare, but it happened.
Thanks for the questions.
July 11th, 2012 at 11:23 am
This sounds like a great book..
1. What kind of insperation do you look for to write your books?
2. Where is the place you go when you want down time from your writing?
July 11th, 2012 at 11:38 am
Hi, Kathleen,
1. I really do hope you like the book. And I’d love to hear back from you on it.
It is a fairly dramatic story and it came from a very specific inspiration – which oddly had nothing to do with the story itself. When I was writing in Hollywood there was a tacit understanding that women couldn’t write, or star in, gritty crime thrillers. And that…well..just made me mad. So, I wrote PRIMAL to prove them wrong. I sent it out under my initials (D.A. instead of like my other work Deborah) and I had a line of producers interested. A few visibly shocked when I walked into the room to meet them and they realized I was a woman. I finally sold it to James Cameron. Then I got back the rights to novelize – and I truly loved turning it into this novel. I thriller about being a women, a mother, and still kick ass. So my inspiration for this particular book was kind of a screw-you to the old boys network that was running Hollywood at the time…not so much now. I loved the stunned looks on their faces when I walked into the room!
2. I love to travel alone. I leave my kids (now in college) and my husband and take off in the world for solo journeys. I get a great deal of inspiration and personal solace feeling alone and lost in the world. I really love medieval cities where I can sit over a cup of coffee in an outside square and imagine what life was like for these people hundreds of years ago. I especially loved Prague and Sienna. I am well-versed at traveling cheaply and it is my great joy.
Thanks for tuning in, Kathleen.
July 11th, 2012 at 11:53 am
Hi,
1. What surprising thing would we find if we took a peek in your closet?
2. What kind of books do you personally like reading?
Valerie
in Germany
July 11th, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Deborah, I am so glad you “kicked ass” with the big boys, and I always thought that James Cameron was a smart cookie….
I like to travel by myself sometimes too.. You always get to see what you want to see and not have to let others decide. But I like to travel with my friends too… best of both worlds..
July 11th, 2012 at 12:03 pm
What ways do you prepare to write?
What techniques do you use when you write yourself in a corner?
Are you the type that plot out or let the characters lead you a merry chase in the book?
Do you have to have complete quiet or do you like to have music or white noise in the background
July 11th, 2012 at 12:09 pm
1. Oh, no, do NOT look inside my closet! I still have blue jeans in there from 1979. I cannot understand how i raised two daughters who are conscious of fashion, and what is new in the retail world, when, here I am, in the same pants year-after-year. My closet is an example of extreme redundancy: blue jeans, stretch pants, Tshirts. Such a boring woman. (although I do like shoes!)
2. I am an eclectic reader. I generally have a hard book, a kindle book, and an audio book all going at the same time. I love gripping or quirky characters in any and every genre out there. Currently, I have UNBROKEN on my audio (for walks and driving – and which I’m not really liking that much), I’m reading FREEDOM EVOLVES on my Kindle (for research on my next book), and I just started Alice Hoffman’s DOVEKEEPER, which someone gave to me as a hardcover. I suppose the only thing I really don’t ever pick up at the bookstore is Sci-Fi.
July 11th, 2012 at 12:27 pm
Hi, Raonaid, what a great name. We writers collect names, as I’m sure you know, so I love something new to me.
1. I must prepare a space in my office that is not too cluttered. This is hard for me because I do work on more than one thing at a time, and so I frequently wind up with stacks. Sometimes I runaway from my office to a local coffee shop and write there – where no one knows me, no phone, no interruptions.
2.I get mad – call myself names – sometimes go for a walk, and go back to work. I usually find though later that there are important elements, or pieces of dialogue that belong in the story, they are just in the wrong spot – so a corner isn’t really a corner. I print out the errant pieces and keep them on my desk (yes, in that stack of clutter) and I find many times they become useful later.
3. I generally know where I’m going. And some of this depends on the genre I’m writing. Thrillers and mysteries really require such careful plotting that I don’t let myself get derailed too much. For other pieces though, I try to give my characters as much leeway as I can to lead.
4. I need either complete quiet or white noise. I love music. I’ve tried so many times to have all different kinds of music playing in the background, but I just can’t pull it off. I can’t focus the way I need to. I do really well in a cafe with the white noise, but if they turn up the music there, then I have to leave.
July 11th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
So far, I’m enjoying your answers to our questions so I thought I’d join in the fun and ask a couple of my own for you.
1. If you could choose an animal that best represents you, your personality and use it as your public personna, what animal would you be and what qualities does that animal possess that made you chose it?
2. If you were going to write in a genre totally different from what you usually write, what would it be and how comfortable would you be writing in that genre?
July 11th, 2012 at 1:57 pm
Hi, Sarah, welcome to the conversation.
1. Ummmm…the Kermode Spirit Bear of British Columbia. These are white brown bears. I like the contradiction. It is an odd genetic affect. I went to see them and had to trek into the woods and sit on top of a wooden platform in the rain for two days. Strenuous! Most people wait and wait and never see one. They are unique and extremely rare, found only on one set of islands in Canada. And, yes, I saw one. He wandered up twenty feet from me and scooped some salmon out of the river with his huge paw – so serene, and so settled into his place, I envied him. In the folklore of the natives of that area, it means great luck if you manage to see one. The luck was the adventure itself for me.
2. My writer friends started calling me a Stem Cell writer years ago: a writer who can become any kind of writer. While many writers excel or enjoy writing in the same genre I have written everything from children’s comedy to horror, from true stories to fantasy, and from blank page to adaptation. Perhaps I learned to do this because I had to…we all need to make a living, right? But I like switching around genres. I don’t think I would be very good at Sci Fi, though, because of the gadget element – not good with gadgets.
February 25th, 2013 at 3:38 pm
What’s up, everything is going sound here and ofcourse every one is sharing data, that’s genuinelу fine, κeep up writing.