Hi all, we’re back today with another author interview from the Cat Tales #2 bundle; this time I’m talking to Danielle Williams.
Sherry: Welcome, Danielle! First off, please tell us a little about the story you have in Cat Tales #2.
Danielle: Hi, my name is Danielle Williams, and my story What the Cat Brought Back (found in Cat Tales Issue #2) is about a woman whose klepto kitty stops stealing random socks and toys from around the neighborhood and starts bringing her some really creepy objects from parts unknown.
Sherry: I’ve read this story, and I can confirm that it’s definitely creepy! Now, I love to know where other writers work. Can you describe your current writing workspace(s)?
Danielle: I rotate writing stations depending on my mood. Some days I’m in our hobby room, sitting on the floor using my step aerobics bench as a desk (I write by hand in a jumbo Leuchtturm 1917 lined notebook, then type the stories up later), other times I’m at the kitchen table. My hands-down favorite place to write when I’m out and about, though, is the hair salon! They’ve always got some great dance tunes I can groove to.
Sherry: So I guess the answer to this question is at least partly answered: do you prefer music, silence, or some other noise in the background when you write? If music, what kind?
Danielle: Silence is fine, but some days I use music to set the atmosphere of a particular scene or overcome any hesitations I’m having in getting started…or to just drown out the TV running in the next room! My go-to ambience right now is “New Space Music” by Brian Eno. If I’m feeling really stuck, I put on Mannheim Steamroller’s “Fresh Aire IV”, or an album by Kraftwerk. They help me fall into the page when it’s difficult to break away from real life.
Sherry: I love movie and game soundtracks myself–anything without words! So, what’s your current writing project? How do you feel about it right this minute?
Danielle: I’ve always got a lot of irons in the fire. I just finished a short called The Witching License today. (I’d really like to know why the ending made me cry so much, I knew it was coming!) Once it’s polished, I’m going to submit it to some fantasy magazines. But now that it’s written, I can work on finishing another couple of fantasy shorts I started in February, including one about magical goats! So I guess you can say I’m feeling that “aaaah” feeling when you’ve done a good job on something.
Sherry: I always say my two favourite words to type are “the end.” ;) Do you remember what sparked the idea for your story in Cat Tales? What was it?
Danielle: There was a segment on TV once where night vision cameras caught a housecat stealing items (including a bra!) from around the neighborhood. That was rattling around my brain and got mixed up with some other ideas about technology and daytime horror.
Sherry: What’s the most challenging thing about being a writer in 2019? What’s the best thing?
Danielle: The biggest challenge is all the distraction that comes from the Internet. Unlike a newspaper or a book, there’s never a “stopping place” when you read or watch something on the ‘net. It can quickly turn into a huge timesuck. That’s why I refuse to have a smartphone. My tablet is bad enough, even with an app blocker on there.
The bestest-best thing about being a writer in 2019 is how easy it is to get your work out there. If you can write, there are ways to get your formatting and covers done so you can sell. You no longer have to wait for a gatekeeper to pick you. Marketing guru Seth Godin says, “Don’t wait to get picked, pick yourself.” Indie writing and publishing is how I’m picking myself.
Sherry: Many writers also put their creativity to use in ways other than writing. Do you consider yourself a “creative person?” What other creative outlets do you have?
Yup, I’m a “creative”, all right! Been playing piano since I was 6 and drawing and doing digital art since I was 11. (That background in digital art comes in REAL handy when I’m designing my own covers!) I also started coding webpages around that age, which is very similar to coding eBooks. And when I’m not writing, I teach piano lessons.
Basically I grew up to do all the stuff I loved doing when I was a kid!
Sherry: Tell us about your other works, projects, publications, and what’s on the horizon next. This is the shameless self-promotion portion of the interview. :)
Danielle: My website’s got a full listing of what I’ve written so far. But if you’re an animal fan, I’ve written a short novel called Love Potion Commotion! starring two talking French bulldogs who are the familiars to a fashionista witch who also fosters other dogs. It’s like a Hallmark movie, but with way more magic.
If you like PG-13 horror, I’ve written a short for anybody who’s ever wanted to burn down a call center, The Bureaucrat. If you want something longer, I wrote another novella called The Girlfriend Who wasn’t from Delaware, about a guy hearing strange noises from the apartment above him.
If you’re into sci-fi/fantasy, you’ll wanna keep an eye out for my science-fantasy Steel City, Veiled Kingdom. I’m determined to publish it this year ‘cuz I’m WAY excited for people to finally meet the fantastic characters I’ve come to love and see all the craziness in it (including teleporting rabbits… and Hawai’i in space?!).
The easiest way to keep up with my new releases is to sign up for my newsletter over at http://PixelvaniaPublishing.com, but you can also catch me (and art!) more casually at http://mastodon.art/@AesAthena. I’d love to hear from y’all!
And to anybody who reads CAT TALES ISSUE #2, thank you for reading my work! :3
Sherry: Thanks for stopping by to chat, Danielle!
Danielle Williams writes scifi/fantasy/horror/comedy/??! stories! The tagline on her website reads, “Wonder. Horror. Humor.” so that gives you a pretty good idea about her stories. She’s a BYU grad who majored in Visual Arts, then inadvertently double-minored in German and English. You can find Danielle online at her website, PixelvaniaPublishing.com, as well as over at Goodreads. Instead of tweeting on Twitter, she toots at Mastodon, and her official Amazon author page is right here.
But don’t get so distracted by following her around online that you forget to check out Cat Tales #2 while you can! :) I’ll be back with more interviews soon!
Donald: I’ve written more than fifty published stories over the years, many of them for themed anthologies by DAW or other companies. Since I write in multiple genres, once rights revert I publish the stories in small groups by genre or setting. These are all steampunk or historical fiction pieces.
Sherry: As someone with a long publishing history, have you had to deal with bad reviews? How do you manage them?
Sherry: Tell us about your other works, projects, publications, and what’s on the horizon next. This is the shameless self-promotion portion of the interview. :)
Bonnie: “Familiar Trouble” was a short I wrote for a Halloween themed call. I have cats and blogged as my cat for years so I have a fan base that are all about cats, so I wanted something that featured a feline. This was from the cat’s point of view and has become one of my most popular stories. It’s got it all—a feline familiar who is the hero of a Halloween tale that could end in disaster.
Bonnie: I lived in the Pacific Northwest for over 20 years. Whisper is set there. I love the landscape, the mountains and trees and that influences a lot of what I write. When I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, my next door neighbor was from a small town near Hickory, North Carolina. She loves my writing and as we talked, another contemporary fantasy was born set in that part of Appalachia. I like setting things in the Appalachians because I tend to write contemporary fantasy and there is something about those old mountains that lends itself both to that and to a kind of Gothic suspense that I also enjoy writing.
Bonnie: I write mostly contemporary fantasy. The Whisper series is currently at nine volumes, and yes, there’s a cat in it—well, sort of. Zari A looks like a cat and mostly acts like one, but she’s actually an alien who was studying our world. Her mistake was that she thought cats were the apex species. Oops. At any rate, she’s telepathic and helps out with all sorts of odd mysteries because nothing is quite what it seems in Whisper. I’m currently working on book ten and hopefully by June I’ll have it to the editor. It’s slow going as I’m also in the process of moving yet again (hopefully for the last time for a good many years!). I also have The Appalachian Souls Duology and two standalone contemporary Gothic novels.
I was just looking back at my year-in-review post for 2017 and having a laugh at myself. I’ve just finished trying to reconstruct the months from June to December in my writing/revision tracker, because I only kept good records for the first half of the year, and my 2017 post said much the same thing. I could make a comment about old dogs and new tricks, but I do have a new tracker all set up and ready to go for 2019, so we’ll see if I can change my errant ways.
At any rate, 2018 shaped up with just over 150,000 words of new writing, an increase over the year before, which makes me happy (this number doesn’t include blog posts). I finished four new short stories, one middle grade chapter book, a novella, and made progress on several other longer projects, including coming *this* close to finishing a new Nearspace novel (which I should finally achieve by the end of January at the latest). I kept a few stories in submission throughout the year and had a couple of acceptances. I self-published four new titles. I gave a couple of courses and professional development sessions, one of which was new. I helped our local writer’s group publish an anthology. All in all, a very productive year for me.
Today, October 11, has been designated “International Day of the Girl” by the United Nations. The theme of the day is “With Her: A Skilled Girl Force,” and it’s meant to draw awareness to girls as they “inspire, innovate, and take charge of their own future.” Although many girls face adversity and roadblocks to education, entry into the workforce, and access to information and resources, they continue to persist, resist, and make their voices heard.
. :)
