Author interview with Sara Lunsford

Please start by telling us a little about yourself, including things like education, jobs, spouse, children, pets, etc. 

I have an “official author biography” for Saranna DeWylde, but that’s for my other books. See, I’ve got the best day job ever. I write about happily ever after. It’s kind of my thing because I had to crawl through hell to get it for myself. I started out as a horror and romance writer. I could never quite dedicate myself wholly to one or the other.

Like most writers, I’ve held a variety of jobs. I’ve been an airline supervisor, a mover, a medical secretary, an assistant to a call girl and I was a corrections officer. I worked segregation in all male max security facility. It was inevitable, I think. It was in my blood. My father is a retired officer from federal prison in Leavenworth. I grew up under the watchful eye of guys in the towers with semi-automatic weapons. When I dialed “0” on my phone, I didn’t get the phone company’s operator, I got the prison’s. When it was time to find another job, the state prison seemed like the best option.

Tell us about your latest book and what inspired you to write it.

Prison stories. Everyone wants them when they find out where I’ve worked and I don’t mind telling them because it’s a culture that’s kept mostly in the dark and separate from the rest of the population. There’s a natural curiosity. A friend told me that I just had to write the book. It originally started out as a kind of Girl’s Guide to Prison. But after talking with my agent, she said that wasn’t enough and I knew she was right.

Only, that meant baring my soul. It meant showing all the things that hurt, all the things that I was afraid of and it meant facing everything that happened to me all over again. Then I thought about what I wanted from this book. Ultimately, I wanted to show people who were hurting, who were lost in the dark like I was that there is hope. There is good life after trauma. There is light after darkness. Granted, a lot of my problems were my own making. I own that, but what has given me hope is that it was all for a purpose. Because I did survive it, I came out swinging on the other side, so I need to be there to speak for those who can’t or don’t know how. I have this amazing platform and this loud voice and I need to use it.

Do you belong to any critique groups and/or do you have other people read your work as you're writing it? Who's brutally honest and who's a cheerleader? Which do you prefer?

I do belong to a critique group that meets every Friday. I also have several online critique partners. We exchange chapters as they’re written.

I tend to choose partners who will be both: brutally honest and cheerleaders. I need both. I need to be told if it’s bad. All the cheerleading in the world won’t help me if what I’ve produced is crap. On the other hand, all the poking and prodding and picking won’t help if no one tells me it’s good. Or no one believes in me.

I’ve been very lucky in the people who comprise my crit partners. They’re all passionate about me as an author and a person. They love me enough to tell me when I suck, but they never stop cheering me on or pushing me to be better than I am.

Which authors have been the greatest inspiration to your writing?

So many. This is such a hard question. I think every author is moved or shaped in some way by everything they read or encounter. Right now I’d say my critique partners. Jennifer L Hart, Virginia Nelson, Sally Berneathy, Madonna Bock, Julie Mulhern… It was Jennifer I had to call while I was writing the memoir and she’d just tell me it was all going to be okay and I knew it would. I never sent chapters of this book because it was so hard to write.

Do you outline before you write or just dive head-first into a manuscript? Do you maintain a schedule for writing, or is it more haphazard?

I wrote an outline for Sweet Hell on Fire. I had to when I pitched it, but I usually scribble notes about five chapters at a time, and some overarching themes. Then I dive in.

I guess you could say my schedule is haphazard, but I write all the time. When I get up, I sit down and handle admin tasks for the day and then I just write until I can’t.

Where do you do your best writing? (Ex: desk in your office, public library, under a tree in the park, in front of a Real Housewives TV marathon, etc.) Do you like music or some other background noise, or do you need quiet?

I would do my best writing in an office, but right now I use the dining room table. I need to be in a chair at a desk, though. I like quiet. I have headphones that I put on just to block out background noise. Makes it easier to get lost in what I’m working on.

What are the best and worst parts of writing a book?

*laughs* All of them? Writing isn’t really a choice for me. I just have to do it. But there is nothing so intimidating or beautiful as that first white page. Then I think I have 300+ of these to fill. OH MY GOD, what was I thinking? I can’t write books. Are you crazy? It’s just one letter in front of the next until you have a book. Even writing “the end” there is wonderful sense of accomplishment, but there’s sadness too because that experience with that particular thing you’ve created is over. Even when you go back in for edits, the experience is never the same.

When you're driving and you have a sudden, brilliant idea for the new manuscript you're working on, what do you do? (Ex: pull over and fire up the laptop, keep driving while scribbling on a McDonald's bag, tell Siri, etc.)

I will write it down on whatever is available. My crit partner, Julie, got me a notebook to keep in my bag for just such occasions. It’s always with me.

When you go to the zoo, which animals do you visit first?

I don’t go to the zoo. I used to take the kids, but after Blackfish and a few other documentaries, we decided we don’t want to spend our money that way. But when we did go, we started at the front and made a tidy circle. So it was usually penguins.

What are the top 5 titles in your Netflix queue? (Be honest.) Or if you don't have a Netflix queue, which books are on your bedside table? (Again, be honest.)

Phantom by Susan Kay

Deadly Doses Book of Poisons (It’s research, I swear.)

Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Invaded America

Hellfire Friars

Ravenous by Ray Garton

Do you prefer to read ebooks or print?

I love print for research or keeper shelf books. Otherwise, I prefer e. We live pretty far out, so rather than drive an hour, or wait days, I can click once and it’s mine, all mine!

What do you enjoy doing, apart from writing?

Reading, long drives with coffee and loud music, exploring back roads, traveling in general, and I love hanging out with my kids. They see the world in such a cool way. They keep me young. I love going to the movies, too. We have whole conversations in movie quotes.

Where is your favorite place in the world?

I don’t know. I haven’t been all the places I want to go yet.

Do you have any advice for people who want to write a book?

Do it. Sit down, bottom in chair, fingers on keyboard and write. Let it all just spill out of you onto the page. Worry about mechanics later. You can’t edit what you haven’t written. So get it on the page. Then deal with the rest of it.