Sharing readers thoughts about “Waking Isabella” and answering reader questions
Review of Waking Isabella – OLIO By MARILYN: Kudos to the author on a well-crafted story. I love the way the author’s writing takes the reader between past and present so seamlessly it feels like they are happening side by side. I also enjoyed the chance to learn about Italian history during several eras – the Renaissance, the German occupation, and the current day. Waking Isabella is a story of passion, love, grief, and redemption that is built upon the stories of the characters we meet – their pasts, their secrets, their insecurities, and their passions.’
Review of Waking Isabella Spanish/English – TORRE DE BABEL: Through wildly imaginative eyes, scenes from the past come alive with emotion and turmoil. I loved those. The novel is fluid and easy to read, yet it still manages to convey beauty and heart.
I love reader questions!
Here are a couple I answered sent to me by readers.
As an author – what do you enjoy most about the writing process? What feels like a chore?
I enjoy the moments when my fingers just fly over the keyboard, and it seems like the characters have come to life and are guiding my words. Those moments when ideas come to me effortlessly, scene descriptions seem to write themselves, and I have these little ah-ha moments when I make exciting connections between characters, and things just seem to fit together beautifully. Those are great days.
And then there are those days where it feels like you are pulling teeth, none of your characters want to cooperate with you. You write for an hour and think you have perfected a scene. And then you look back, and it isn’t the way you saw it in your head, and you swear the words began to jump around on the page and re-write themselves (not to your liking) when your back was turned, and you were making more coffee.
As this is your 2nd book, do you find the process of finding new storyline ideas and characters gets harder or easier with each new title?
I think book two (Waking Isabella) was much easier to write. Book one (Dreaming Sophia) was super personal. I was riding a wave of ideas and let the writing take me where it wanted me to go, which it turned out was a bit of a circuitous route and I re-wrote and re-edited the story for many months. But, it was a good thing and wasn’t time wasted. The story evolved and matured as it was supposed to and in the process, I learned a lot — not only about the process of writing, editing, and developing a story but also the design and production of a novel and how to self-publish. After blazing my own trail I had a lot of knowledge in my head, and I couldn’t let it go to waste so decided to begin right away with a second book.
So, “Waking Isabella,” even though it involved a mystery — that required more research and finesse to explain it clearly to an audience who perhaps isn’t knowledgeable about the time periods, settings, the town of Arezzo and its traditions as well as the challenges faced by the diverse group of characters — from the beginning followed a more straightforward progression from start to finish, and I had a clearer idea of how the story was going to play out.
