Avalon Books - Author! Author!


	Read some interviews from past editions:
		Zelda Benjamin April, 2008
		Shirley Marks December, 2007
		Donna Wright December, 2007
		Carolyn Brown August, 2007
		Roni Denholtz June, 2007
		Tara Randel April, 2007
		Sydell Voeller February, 2007
		Sheila Robins December, 2006
		Ann Holt October, 2006
		Cynthia Danielewski July, 2006
		Jane McBride Choate March, 2006
		Kathryn Meyer Griffith January, 2006
		Mel Taylor November, 2005
		Kathleen Fuller September, 2005
		Tracey J. Lyons July, 2005
		Ludima Gus Burton May, 2005
		Holly Jacobs March, 2005
		Sandra D. Bricker January, 2005
		Kathryn Quick November, 2004
		Cheri Jetton September, 2004
		Heather S. Webber July, 2004
		Karl Fieldhouse May, 2004
		Shelley Galloway March, 2004
		Ilsa Mayr January, 2004
		Kathy Carmichael November, 2003
		Dorothy P. O'Neill July, 2003
		Joani Ascher May, 2003
		Patricia DeGroot March, 2003
		Nancy J. Parra January, 2003
		Barbara Meyers November, 2002
		Christine Bush September, 2002
		Debby Mayne July, 2002
		Jean C. Gordon May, 2002
		Charles E. Friend March, 2002
		Norma Seely January, 2002
		Glen Ebisch November, 2001
		Gina Cresse September, 2001
		John Paxson July, 2001
		Terri Alcock May, 2001
		Clifford Blair March, 2001
		Amanda Harte January, 2001
		Kent Conwell November, 2000
		Annette Mahon July, 2000
		Marjorie McGinley May, 2000
		Jack Lewis March, 2000
		Amanda Harte January, 2000
		Joyce and Jim Lavene November, 1999
	Return to the current Author! Author! interview:
		S.J. Stewart April, 2008


Author! Author!: September, 2000
Click on images to learn more about these books. An Interview with Carolyn Brown

Where do you get your ideas?
	From any and everything. A piece of line from a song, perhaps something I overheard at a wedding or a family reunion. My youngest daughter called me one day and said, “Momma, I’ve got an idea for a story. This little boy steals some money from the collection plate at the church a little girl sees him do it. Now write a book about that.” I laughed at her. A book could scarcely be written with only one sentence as a core idea. But it kept coming back to my mind and suddenly I knew the little boy and why he took the dollar from the collection plate. And the little girls...by this time there were two of them who saw him and I knew both their personalities. The Yard Rose is that story. The idea for A Falling Star evolved while my other daughter and I were driving home late at night from the college where she’d just received a prestigious award. She said, “Write a book about a girl in Nashville who has this real hick name like Patsy Loretta and she doesn’t want a thing to do with the music industry. That will be a real change since everyone goes to Nashville to be a star and she wants to get of out the big city and go to a little bitty town.” I just nodded but I thought, Yeah right. By the next day Retta King was a real person with a past and a heart waiting to fall in love. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to set the Oklahoma side of the story until the next week. We were at a wedding and I overheard a lady ask another if they’d gotten any rain at Bugtussle. A little research and I found that it fit perfectly with what I wanted to do. The very last line in All the Way from Texas was what inspired me to write that book.
All of your books have been set in small towns. Is there a reason?
	I’ve lived in small towns most of my life so writing about them is natural. I was born in Whitewright Texas, and raised in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, both with a population of less than 3,000 people. Small towns have a heartbeat of their own. The Yard Rose is set in Terral, Oklahoma. Residents there could practically throw a stick across the Red River in Texas. There really is a Baptist Church on the corner and they really do grow the best watermelons in the whole state. And there’s still a watermelon festival where you can eat all the ice-cold watermelon you want for free. We lived in that town for a year back in the late ‘,70’s. My husband was the high school principal and head of the English Department, not just the head of the department, but the whole enchilada. He taught all the English for grades seven through twelve. They still had a high school then and graduated twelve people in the class of ’78. My readers often comment on how much they enjoy reading about towns they know something about. One man said, “Hey Carolyn, I knew just exactly where that restaurant is that you mentioned in your book. I sat at the same booth those people did.” He’d already begun to think about my characters as real people. To relate to thm and to see what they saw in that café.
When and where did you begin writing?
	I can’t remember when I didn’t write stories...sappy and horrid as they were in the beginning. I began to seriously write when my third child was born and wouldn’t sleep at night. I had to be up half the night with her anyway so I started a novel, with a pencil and a spiral notebook. The novel is still a pet project even though I have enough rejection slips on it to paper the White house. No, it hasn’t sold and may never since it won’t fit into any genre. In August of 1999 I sold Love Is to Avalon Books. The Yard Rose, available this month is my fourth novel for Avalon. My fifth, The Ivy Tree will be available next year. Writing romance is so much fun, I may never stop. It’s an escape hatch for lots of folks, men and women alike. Young girls to gray-haired grannies have read my romance novels and commented on them. A couple of men in our community read them too. I won’t mention names just in case their wives aren’t in on the secret.
Are you working on anything else for Avalon?
	Yes, as mentioned above I finished The Ivy Tree. Its locale is Dougherty, Oklahoma, population of less than 150. And I’m already at work on another romance, which I hope the editors will like. Sometimes it’s hard to write “END” at the bottom of the last page. By that time I know the characters and they are my friends. But I can always dive right into writing a new book and make new friends.