Surprise! Interview with Mary Connealy

 Mary Connealy is one of the fastest growing writers in CBA - in fact, she's one of the fastest writers I KNOW! Since her first book, Petticoat Ranch came out in 2007, she has published over 20 books! I figured gleaning some info from this fabulous author (and wonderful person) might be a good way to spend our Saturday.

Mary is a blogger at the FABULOUS Seekerville, but you can also find more information about her at her website - www.maryconnealy.com


Who are a few of your favorite authors?

This is a mean and cruel question, Pepper. Shame on you.
I am a fanatic reader and the list is not only insanely LONG I also have a lot of authors I love both professionally and personally and I’m terrified I’ll forget one. I love the work my Seeker buddies are doing. Janet Dean, Missy Tippens, Myra Johnson, Julie Lessman, Camy Tang, Debbie Giusti, and Cheryl Wyatt. And several more of these ladies have their first books coming out soon and I can’t WAIT. Glynna Kaye, Cara Lynn James, Ruth Logan Herne. I love Cathy Marie Hake, Terri Blackstock, Susan May Warren, Tracie Peterson, Marcia Gruver. . .I could go on a long time.
I also love Julie Garwood, Amanda Quick, Elizabeth Lowell, Linda Howard, Faye Kellerman, Janet Evanovich. Again, too numerous to mention.

I love romantic comedy with suspense. If they’re sassing each other and falling in love while they’re running for their lives, then I’m happy.

Since we’re talking about your tastes in reading-choices, what’s your favorite dessert ever?
This is so easy. First of all, I didn’t get into my generally oval shape by being all that picky. Having said that, Apricot Torte from the Lithuanian Bakery in Omaha, NE. Who knew Lithuanian’s could bake?

If you could be any person (present or past) who would it be and why?
I’d be me. Only thin and cool with a little better sense of direction and some social skills and an improved short term memory and a passion for dusting and vacuuming.


Writing is a big job and I’ve heard you mention before “if you can stop writing, do it”. For those of us who are ‘infected’ by the compulsive need to place words on paper in a narrative fashion, what are your top three tips?

Write
Write
Write
That’s it. If you want to be a writer? Write.
No excuses
No exceptions
No escape.
The three Es of writing.

Do everything you can think of to improve, take classes, read books on the craft, join a critique group, enter contests and study the judge’s comments, join professional organizations, attend conferences. All of that is good, but no matter what you learn from those things if you don’t sit your backside down in a chair and write, you can’t improve, you can’t submit, you can’t get published.

Do it.
Write.

You refer to yourself as a Seat-Of-The-Pants writer, or panster, could you give your definition of what that means for your writing? The method to your creative genius?

Well, I do a lot of daydreaming before I start a book. I’m an insomniac and when I’m laying awake at night I flip ideas around in my head, try not to get stuck on one to the exclusion of others, think off the wall and outside the box until I hit on an idea that makes me excited.
I start the book with an explosion and I spend a lot of daydreaming time planning that. I want an inciting incident that you can NOT look away from when you open the book. Action, high high stakes. It can be an emotional explosion but I really prefer for something to actually blow up. A run away stagecoach, bullets flying, a riding plunging off a cliff, a heroine attacked by a pack of wolves. Something fun like that.

Your books are chock-full of humor, which gives them a light-hearted feel, but spiritual depth sneaks out in ways that are unexpected and beautiful. As a Christian writer, what type of role does your faith play in your stories?

I wrote for a long, long time before I got my first book published and back in the day when I started writing, there really was no Christian fiction, or very little of it. When Christian fiction exploded onto the scene, I’d say with the Left Behind books or about that time, here I had all these books on my computer that OH WOW, were Christian fiction except without the faith thread. There are just some

things I’m not willing to write. Graphic sex, profanity. It’s just not gonna happen and that left me with a lot of books and a very, very narrow market to sell them to. I could only find about one publishing house that accepted very sweet romances. Then BOOM Christian fiction appears and I can open my book files on my computer and realize that all my characters are Christians and they conduct their lives by Christian principles but I’ve never spoken aloud the words they live by. Adding a faith thread was simple. It was like I was writing for years for a genre of books that hadn’t been invented yet.

My fundamental desire when I write is to entertain. I don’t think of my books as powerful works of life changing fiction. Instead, I think of them as fun. What I want to do more than anything else is prove that Christian fiction can be just as fun, fast paced, high stakes, roller coaster ride as secular fiction. I refuse to believe that we can’t have that kind of fun with a book without the sex and cussing. So that’s my goal; to entertain within the rules I live by. I do tend to have some heavy issues climb into my books. I don’t know why exactly.

Gotta LOVE Mary Connealy!!!
So - if you've read Mary's books, what's something from her writing that inspires you as a writer? as a reader?
Any important tips here that really resonate with you?