#WriterWednesday Author Interview with DonnaRae Menard
/
I’d like to welcome DonnaRae Menard as my guest today.
A few of your favorite things: I like real coffee, black, no hybrid flavors, fall weather, and old movies
Things you need to throw out: all the skinny clothes I will never fit into again, fabric scraps from old projects, all the plastic take-out containers
Hardest thing about being a writer: I hate the selling, the feeling I am begging somebody to like me.
Easiest thing about being a writer: Letting the words flow and telling my story out loud to people.
Words that describe you: I think I’m half as old as I am, I have a hard shell that’s fake, and I love to travel even virtually.
Words that describe you, but you wish they didn’t: I speak without thinking, can be hurtful, am not all that smart.
Favorite music or song: I love music from the 60s and 70s. The Last Kiss, a lot of classical, oh, and Christmas music.
Music that drives you crazy: Loud, banging stuff where I can’t understand the words, Christmas music that’s been redone to something modern and without depth.
Favorite smell: Fresh baked bread
Something that makes you hold your nose: Unwashed hair.
Something you’re really good at: I’m a great talker. My grandmother told me when I was six that
I didn’t have to talk to everyone on the city bus.
Something you’re really bad at: Remembering I took notes and to use them.
Something you wish you could do: I’d like to be able to sing. I know all the words but can’t carry a tune in a bucket.
Something you wish you’d never learned to do: Not tell the truth to save someone else’s feelings.
There always seems to be sorrow later when you try to save someone from reality.
Something you like to do: Have a conversation with my mother.
Something you wish you’d never done: Not had a conversation with my mother.
Things you’d walk a mile for: A friend, the joy of walking, peace of mind
Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: People who have the same two conversations on replaying tapes.
Things you always put in your books: Hm, I always try for the human element; confusion, self-doubt, then awareness.
Things you never put in your books: Animal cruelty, self-mutilation, maybe suicide.
Things to say to an author: Tell me what you’re working on.
Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: Wow, that sucked.
Favorite places you’ve been: Albuquerque, New Mexico, Boston, Mass., Ausable Chasm, NY.
Places you never want to go to again: Seaside, CA, Quebec City, Quebec, Columbus City, Ohio (I got a ticket because I was lost and crying in frustration in a no parking zone.)
Favorite books (or genre): Romance mysteries where the story isn’t necessarily all about the romance.
Books you wouldn’t buy: Self-help, it’s like doctor heal thyself.
People you’d like to invite to dinner (living): George Lucas, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama
People you’d cancel dinner on: The head of the local selectmens board, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin
Favorite things to do: Write, visit my kids, write, travel, write, eat cheeseburgers.
Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing: Oh, gotta be housework; dusting and cleaning bathroom and fridge.
Most embarrassing moment: Doing an intro and forgetting the headliner’s name. I was so nervous I couldn’t read the crib notes.
Proudest moment: Seeing my website for the first time. I felt as though I was really going to be able to sell a book.
Most daring thing you’ve ever done: Once when I was a teenager, I jumped out of a second story window on a dare.
Something you chickened out from doing: Bought the ticket, could not get in that hot air balloon basket to save my life.
The nicest thing a reader said to you: You made me cry, at a place where I cried when I wrote it.
The craziest thing a reader said to you: This character is me, isn’t it? And I’d never met the person until that day.
About DonnaRae
My writing career began in the seventh grade, where I was a country kid in a city school. I took to writing disparaging descriptions of other students in self-defense. Unfortunately, when I got caught writing during class, I had to stand up and read my notes aloud. That was also the start of my training for the one hundred yard dash in track and field.
As time went on, I had diaries, journals, two tiny columns in small-town newspapers, and wrote competition pieces for Toastmaster's International. I also had boxes under my bed filled with novels finished and not.
On April 28, 2008, I was diagnosed with stage 4 squamous carcinoma. My prognosis was bleak. I fought back and won. In 2010, I decided I was going to write and be published. Not just self-published, but by a real publishing house. I kept writing, took classes, went to seminars, book signings, readings, and conventions. Anywhere I might meet someone with experience.
At Crimebake 2019, I met Harriette Sackler and Bruce Coffin. One offered me professional advice, the other the promise to meet me at the top. I went back to work, this time treating writing like employment, not a hobby.
I live just outside of town in the type of place where people feel free to drop off cats, kittens, cages of gerbils or white rats, and even the occasional farm animal. I have a swinging door for those that need. We talk, eat, laugh, and all the while, I type.
Let’s Be Social
Facebook – DonnaRae Menard Author
Twitter - @DonnaRaeMenard
DonnaRae’s Books
Murder in the Meadows
Willa the Wisp
The Fairy Mothers, The Clarion Call Anthology, Vol 4, Fairytale Riot
Murder in the Meadows
After 10 years gone, Katelyn Took returns home in 1974 to find the grandmother who raised her has been killed in the farm meadow. Grams will leaves Katelyn ownership of the now dilapidated farm, but includes a stipulation regarding seventeen cats. Then there's the confused old woman still living in the farmhouse. Katelyn doesn't want to stay, but the longer she does, the more drawn into finding Gram's killer she becomes.
