Ask the Author: Paul Mosier
Answered Questions (17)
Paul Mosier
Hello Mirren! Thanks for the kind words! For an aspiring author I would say trust the muse. Put down whatever she puts in your head and figure out where it belongs later. And make sure all the prose sounds right when read aloud, as everything should be written for the ear. Storytelling is an oral tradition! 🙂
Paul Mosier
Hello Kristina! Thanks for the question! As I recall 2018 was a rough year as it’s the year Harmony took her last breath. I was putting the final edit touches on Echo’s Sister while writing Summer and July and responding to my editor’s wishes, and when that came out in 2020 I was busy working on 3 that I completed the first draft of in 2020 while others were learning how to bake 🤪. I completed Carnival Girl, Thirty Parks and Cave Boy’s Guide To Middle School Girls all in 2020, though none of them have been shopped much or published, though I have hope they may be some day. Since then I have been trying to finish How To Escape A Story, which is for grownups. That one is nearly (finally) ready, and then I have a memoirish novel arranging itself in my head while my back is turned to it!
Paul Mosier
Hello Rose! I have no more advance review copies to give— the hardcover arrives June 9, also on audio— but I could send you a file of an electronic version if you like. Can you tell me about yourself just so I know who I’d be sending it to? You can email your email address to Paulmosier1964@gmail.com. Thanks!
Paul Mosier
Hello Jaylyn! Thanks for the question, and thank you for the kind review of Echo’s Sister! The answer is yes and yes. You may have seen that I have a 2017 release called Train I Ride. In 2020 HarperCollins is releasing my story about a gothic girl and a surfer girl, “Summer and July.” After that will be Thirty Parks, about a girl whose father takes her on a tour of all thirty Major League Baseball Parks. There are three others after that which are on various stages of development. Thank you for reading!
Paul Mosier
Hello Mr. P! As I wrote the story, i wondered about her name, too. She’s unreliable, and reluctant to tell us the truth about her uncomfortable circumstances. She’s ready to leave her past behind, even if her future doesn’t look rosy. Dorothea finally reveals it on page 173, (of the hardcover) when a term of endearment she has been using is capitalized when not at the beginning of a sentence. I finally decided this is her actual name, and I had to make sure my editor and the line editors didn’t “fix” it by removing the capitalization But I think you are right that what is important is who she chooses to be going forward, what she calls herself, and the newly discovered ability to build a family of her own choosing. Thank you for reading! And I love to do classroom Skype visits, for which I do not charge!
Paul Mosier
In the darkness before dawn, I reached for the eye drops. It turned out to be the nose spray.
Paul Mosier
I've never been a big reader of fictional worlds, or at least worlds in fiction that are different from the one I know. Generally such places are dangerous, even the beautifully described and familiar Middle Earth of Tolkien. I love the world I am in, because it is populated by the people who are dear to me, foremost among them my wife and daughters. Also my favorite restaurants and coffeehouses, and my agent and book deal. I'd hate to have to go through that again. But since that's not an answer, I'll say the world of Ocean Park, the neighborhood of Santa Monica where my recently completed novel Summer and July takes place. I could be there with my family, enjoying the weather and the charms of the seaside town, and run into my beloved protagonist Juillet, and her new friend, the even more charming Summer. Sometimes I feel like I am looking upon a character I've met in a novel I've written when I'm out in public, and I think that happening for real in the world I know and love would be my choice. I do love this world, in spite of its flaws, and I hope that comes through in my novels.
Paul Mosier
I never have what you would call a summer reading list, and I frequently admit that I am not a voracious reader, because I am too busy writing. I do, however, want to get to some works by agency sisters and pub sisters such as Sarah Miller, Sally Pla and Katrina Leno, and finish Hitchhiker's guide. I'm most excited about wrapping up the novel I've been writing, Summer and July, and deciding which project I will work on next!
Paul Mosier
I don't see life as mysterious. Sometimes magical, and lots of other things, but not mysterious. I don't tend to write about things that have much connection to my own life, with one recent, notable exception. I don't read mysteries and I don't imagine that I'd ever write one, as I tend not to look at the world or stories that way.
Paul Mosier
The biggest reason that's a tough question is that I can't think of a single couple. Maybe because stories are more often inhabited by characters who are searching, who are unsettled. So I'll be self-serving and say Juillet and Summer from my own work in progress, Summer and July.
Paul Mosier
I'll answer this on behalf of my forthcoming "Train I Ride." The lyric "train I ride, sixteen coaches long" by Elivs and others sounded like a good first line for a novel. "The train I ride is sixteen coaches long." The question then was who says the line-- boy or girl, man or woman? Why are they on the train? Where are they going? Once I decided on the protagonist being a 12 year old girl, I had to wait for her to reveal all of those things to me, and she was reluctant and less than completely forthcoming at first. The fact that my wife and daughters and i had recently taken a long train trip helped make the idea of a story on a train more appealing and easier to visualize.
Paul Mosier
I'm rather susceptible to the muse. I'm always listening for her, and she knows it. I've now become pretty well wired for the task, so when small fragments or seeds pass through my conscious, I can quickly recognize the potential, or lack of potential, for a book-length story. Not writing makes me sad and anxious. It's my entertainment and livelihood.
Paul Mosier
At the moment, the story of a girl named Lefty whose father takes her on a tour of all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums one summer. She's hates baseball.
Paul Mosier
Stop watching television. Stop paying for Internet and cable. Don't think that you have to see the whole story to begin writing. All you need is one line, one glimpse, and then trust that the muse will give you what comes next. I feel like stories are not within me, but rather are external, and pass through me. Don't refuse an assignment from the muse. Show the reader what the muse is screening in your head. Write what you see, even if it isn't what comes next in the story.
Paul Mosier
The amazing, mysterious experience of giving birth to a story, and the characters you meet in so doing. I imaging it's much the way my wife feels when she looks at our daughters. And then the experience of connecting with an audience. It feels like it's what I was made for, and I feel lucky to be doing it!
Paul Mosier
Happily, I haven't had much experience with writer's block. The muse has been very kind to me in that regard. But every novel presents its own set of problems to solve. Often that can be helped by writing about the story in a journal, making diagrams, talking to myself on paper!
Paul Mosier
Tanya-- it took me 53 days to search my soul for the answer to your question. But, yes, I am psyched, and for so many reasons it would take a novel to count them all. Galley copies arriving tomorrow, the book punished in January, the work in progress, the upcoming holiday to Santa Monica and Disneyland. I hope the muse is treating you well in the Phillipines! Cheers, Paul
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