Author Interview: Kristy Kiernan!

I’m back with Day 3 of Kristy Kiernan week here at Crazy-for-Books!  Kristy’s newest book, Between Friends, was released yesterday and if you haven’t already gotten your hands on it, head on over to Amazon and order it now!  It’s a wonderful story of a lifelong friendship, infertility, and motherhood and I just loved it! 

Did you miss the first two days of Kristy’s feature here on my blog?  Head on over and read her Guest Blog about how she is Crazy for Books and then check out my book review of Between Friends.

Today I am lucky enough to share an interview with Kristy!  Thank you to Kristy for taking the time to answer my questions and for introducing me to Louboutins!  Yup, I had no clue what the heck Louboutins were until I looked it up after reading her answers to my questions!  I am so not a girly-girl!  LOL  I’m fairly certain I would break an ankle if I put on one of those shoes!  Anyway, enjoy the interview – I certainly did!!

Between Friends is about Ali and Cora, best friends for thirty years. Ali is ready for another child, after daughter Letty, conceived with Cora’s donated egg and Benny’s (Ali’s husband) sperm, turns fifteen. But Cora has big news to break that will likely change those plans and the lives of everyone.    

I never consider timing when writing my books. It’s a little blearily organic for me. I tend to be interested in things (in this case the ethics and practicalities of in-vitro fertilization, long-term friendships between women, marriage, the ethics and practicalities of organ donation) for a long time before I realize, in a sudden dawning of the main conflict, that it would make a good book. And because I’ve been interested in the topics for a long time anyway, the plot comes together very quickly.  

Getting to the end! There were a lot of things going on in my personal life while I wrote Between Friends. My maternal grandfather, who I was very close to, had many medical problems and died, my paternal grandmother died, and my dog, Niko, who was kind of the center of my world, got cancer and died. It was difficult to stay on task and write through all that. 

Oh, what a hard question! I always have a tremendous amount of empathy for all my characters, especially with all I put them through. If I really had to pick one, and taking the entire book into account, I suppose I’d have to say Letty. She is so loved, and has so much potential, and she’s already becoming this amazing young woman who’s starting to realize she can do anything. 

I’m not trying to be difficult, I swear—but, I don’t have any idea if it’s easier or more difficult. It’s just the way the story has to be told for me. There was never any firm decision to tell it from the three points of view, it’s just the only way the right story could be told. If it were only from Ali’s point of view, or Cora’s, or Letty’s, it wouldn’t have been the same story, and, therefore, I wouldn’t have been the one writing it. 

I started writing when I started reading, so around five or so. I remember that in first grade there was a bit of a kerfluffle over a story I wrote about a man being electrocuted (or “elocuted” I believe I wrote). But I didn’t seriously pursue publication until I was thirty. It took four novels and seven years before Catching Genius came out. 

Tell me about your writing process and schedule.  What is your typical writing day like? 

I tend to write by word count rather than a set number of hours a day. I’m most clear and creative in early afternoon and late at night, so I’m not much of a morning person. I take mornings to catch up on e-mail (my friends and family are laughing at that one!), play on Facebook (I know, terrible!), and think about the book. I absolutely advocate doing nothing more than sitting somewhere comfortable and staring into space to think. Conscious thinking is highly underrated. Sometimes I’ll spend an hour at the beach, or will walk through Corkscrew Swamp to stay connected with the beautiful state I live in. My husband cruelly forces me to eat a decent lunch, and then I write for as long as it takes to hit 2,000 words or the need for dinner strikes. If I need to, I continue to write until after midnight. 

I’m 3/4 of the way through my next novel, which is currently titled A THOUSAND CRANES. It’s the story of a woman, Dove, who voluntarily gave up custody of her daughter when she struggled with painkiller addiction–the result of a car accident–and serves jail time, and who now has to decide whether to fight to regain her parental rights. It’s told from the viewpoints of Dove; her beekeeper aunt, Carrie; her Hiroshima and origami-obsessed daughter, Silver; and Silver’s grandmother, Fujiko, who has assumed the majority of the responsibility of raising Silver. 

Read, read, read, read everything. Read literary, and romance, and mystery, and thriller, and historicals, and non-fiction…because women’s fiction incorporates elements from all of it, whether it be structure, or pacing, or characterization. Just like women in real life, women’s fiction has to do it all and is usually taken woefully for granted. 

I just finished The Murderer’s Daughter by Randy Susan Meyers, and I’m reading Rescuing Olivia by Julie Compton. 

I have to cop to being a bit of a geek. I rarely miss Jeopardy, though I’m wildly inconsistent with it. I’ve had a perfect game before, but there are also times that I just stare at it and have no idea what they’re talking about. And I adore the group psychology of Survivor. I can’t pick just one movie, but I suppose it’s a three-way tie between Gone With the Wind, The Godfather, and Grease. Yes. I know. 

Q:  What size Louboutins do you wear, and where shall I send them?
A:  Why, thank you! Nobody ever asks me that all-important literary question. I wear a size seven, I prefer ankle-endangering heights, and you can send them to Kristy Kiernan, c/o my publisher, whose full address is on my website. 

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, Kristy!  I LOVED Between Friends and highly recommend it to one and all!  If you’d like a chance to WIN this book, stop back tomorrow for a CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT!!   

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