Author Interview – Sherrie Cronin

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp? There is. There really is. I hope that it is obvious by the sixth book but if it isn’t I’ll be very happy to come back and talk about it.

How much of the book is realistic? Because it’s part of the sub-genre magical realism, the world of y1 is meant to look just like the world you and I live in. My goal is to convince you that Zane can alter his appearance like he does without the use of any magic or any yet-to-be-invented science.

How important do you think villains are in a story? As important as heroes. The villain in my first novel, x0, is a hateful dastardly being and it was a stretch for me to write from his warped and sadistic point of view, so I knew that the villain in y1 had to be different. And he is. He is every bit as despicable in the end, but far more slippery I confess that I enjoyed making up a sociopath who believes whatever is convenient for him at the moment

What are your current writing projects now? I am working on a collection of six novels called 46. Ascending. Each book is the stand alone story of one member of a family. Each discovers that he or she has an extraordinary power they can turn to when circumstances force them to dig deep. y1 is the second novel in the collection and I am in the process of writing the fourth. There is some interaction between the stories and some overlap where you get to see an event through two different people’s eyes but my goal is that a reader could pick up any of the books except for maybe the last one and be satisfied reading just that novel.

Do you have any advice for writers? Best advice I got, and I don’t know who to attribute it to, is to write what you like to read. If you enjoy your own writing, then some other people will enjoy it too.

Have you ever had writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it? This is another case where I got very good advice from someone else. I was told that if you are having trouble moving forward with a plot, it probably is because you are trying to take the story in a direction you really don’t want to go. Stop. Forget your outline and what you think your book should say and let yourself write what sounds like fun, or sounds more interesting or creepy or whatever it is you’re not letting yourself be. So far, that has worked for me every time.

What do you do to unwind and relax? I love to travel but to be honest travel is seldom relaxing. Sitting on my front porch with a glass of wine is relaxing. I do garden, yoga, watch more crime procedurals on TV than I should, and I play a lot of online word games.

What bugs you the most? I’m terribly intolerant of intolerance. I firmly believe that the best and worst human qualities are well distributed among every age group, both genders, every race, culture and religion, every sexual preference, every style and every income level. To me, one of the missions of a writer is to take a reader outside of their own day to day world and into that of another, and to thereby increase our understanding and appreciation of each other. (Yes, even our appreciation of intolerant people.)

What motivates you the most? I confess to being an idealist. In the end, I want my books to add to the sum total of hope in this world, to add to the joy, to add to the love. That sounds pretty syrupy, I know. But if I accomplish this even a little bit, I’m going to be very happy that I picked up my laptop and started writing.