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
		Gina Cresse September, 2001
		John Paxson July, 2001
		Terri Alcock May, 2001
		Clifford Blair March, 2001
		Amanda Harte January, 2001
		Kent Conwell November, 2000
		Carolyn Brown September, 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!: November, 2001

An Interview
with
Glen
Ebisch

Click images to learn more about these books.

How did you get started in writing?

Almost twenty years ago, after an interesting period of time as a substitute high school teacher, I decided to try my hand at writing novels for young people. So I began writing young adult mysteries and eventually was lucky enough to have five of them published. When the young adult market moved away from the kind of thing I was writing, I started to write for adults.

You write both mysteries and romances for AVALON, what do you see as the similarities between the two genres?

Fear and love are probably the two most basic emotions. Mysteries, especially suspense mysteries, usually carry the reader along on a wave of concern about what is going to happen to the main character. Romances carry us along on a similar wave, but instead of being anxious about the protagonist’s survival, we are hoping to see her find happiness in her personal life. I think stories which have both emotions intertwined are particularly powerful, so my romances usually have a gentle element of suspense and my mysteries feature a couple thrown together by dangerous circumstances.

Do you think that being a man poses any special problems when you write a romance?

All fiction writing involves getting inside the heads of characters who are different from ourselves. These differences can be based on age, race, historical period, background, or gender. One of the pleasures of writing fiction is the experience of trying to imagine how you would see the world if you were a radically different person. When I write a romance I try to put myself in the position of a woman and create in my mind her thoughts and feelings. I may not always succeed, but, then again, as I’ve discovered from my female readers, there is not always universal agreement on how a woman would respond in many of these situations. There is no single “woman’s mind”, so I just make an effort to convincingly describe how my particular female character is reacting.

One other point, as a man I find many of the male characters in romances to be overly idealized. They are heroic, handsome, and appealing to the point where they resemble no living male. Although I try to make my male protagonists intelligent, attractive, and funny, I hope that they come close to being the best kind of men you might actually meet in real life.

Are there any similarities among the main female characters in your different books?

Yes. They are smart, contemporary, strong-willed, and attempting to come to terms with their families and the goals they have set for themselves. They want to have both a career and a successful relationship, and they are trying, in a step-by-step way, to decide how this might be possible. They are not perfect people, and all their problems are not solved by the end of the story, but we have come to know them well enough to guess how they will approach other difficulties that arise in the future.

Can you tell us about your latest book, TO BREATHE AGAIN?

In this career romance, Summyr Fox, a yoga teacher who is trying to get her own business off the ground, is confronted with a variety of personal and professional problems. She is still recovering from the death of her fiance in a mountain climbing accident several years before when she meets a new man, who is sometimes charming and attentive, at other times a bit unreliable. At the same time the landlord in the building where she has her studio is requiring that she move, and her much beloved uncle is seeing a woman whom Summyr has some doubts about. Summyr gradually comes to learn that to love again she must come to terms with the past and begin to face the future with anticipation.

What are you working on presently?

I am just finishing a mystery very tentatively titled, A ROCKY ROAD, about a woman who is a guide on a tour bus traveling through the mountains of Colorado. As the passengers begin dying off one-by-one, she is forced to solve the mystery with the help of a detective who is on board. As she tries to figure out who the murderer might be, she also finds herself making decisions about her future.

Where do you get the ideas for your characters? Are they based on real people or are they completely fictional?

Although I’m sure that some attributes of the people that I know make their way into my characters’ personalities and behavior, I never consciously try to model a character on someone I have met. Even though it may sound odd, fictional characters are often more real to me than many of the people that I actually know because I have learned about them from the inside out. Since they are my creations, I have information about their disappointments, aspirations, failures, and secret desires that I would almost never have about any living person. As a writer, every character is a part of yourself that you have chosen to isolate and examine in detail. If you are fortunate and pick interesting parts of yourself, the characters in your story will hopefully be of interest to others.

Your stories always have heroines who have interesting professions. How do you learn enough about these different lines of work to make your heroines seem convincing?

In WOVEN HEARTS, the female protagonist owns a small quilt store. Since my wife is a professional quilter and designer of wearable art, I have spent more time than most men in fabric stores and at quilt shows. Simply by paying attention and asking questions, I learned what I needed to know to make Kate Manning seem authentic. In UNWANTED INHERITANCE, Heather Martinson is a decorative painter. Here I relied on several projects I’ve undertaken myself over the years and endless hours of watching Home and Garden Television. My latest book, TO BREATH AGAIN, features Summyr Fox, a yoga teacher. Since I’ve been a diligent student of yoga for the last decade, it was easy to provide sufficient background. In fact, I had to hold myself back from giving the reader more information about yoga than was necessary to the plot. The book I’m currently working on about a murderous bus tour through the Colorado Rockies is based loosely on a trip that I recently took although, happy to say, it was far less eventful.