I am pleased today, to have as my guest, Deborah J. Lightfoot.
Castles in the
cornfield provided the setting for Deborah J. Lightfoot’s earliest flights of
fancy. On her father’s farm in West Texas, she grew up reading extraordinary
tales of adventure and reenacting them behind tall ramparts of sun-drenched
corn. She left the farm to earn a bachelor of science degree in journalism and
write award-winning books of history and biography, including The LH7 Ranch (University
of North Texas Press) and Trail Fever (William Morrow, New York). High
on her Bucket List was the desire to try her hand at the genre she most
admired. The result is WATERSPELL, a complex, intricately detailed fantasy that
begins with Book 1: The Warlock and Book 2: The Wysard, and
concludes (for the present) with Book 3: The Wisewoman. But a legal pad
filled with notes and tucked away in a desk drawer suggests a possible Book 4
before the saga may fairly be said to be finished.
What is your favorite
thing about being a writer?
I love the “writer’s high”: that exhilarating feeling of
being in the zone, hearing voices in my head as the characters talk to each
other—or shout at each other, as is often the case with mine—and typing as fast
as I can to get the whole scene down on paper in “real time,” while the action
is happening.
I also love the chance to peek inside my subconscious.
Writing provides a direct link to a submerged part of the mind that is
accessible in no other way, except sometimes through dreams. But I don’t always
remember my dreams!
What was the hardest
part of writing your book?
Getting past Chapter 1 of Book One! I wasted nearly a year, just
tinkering with Chapter 1. Finally I yelled at myself—the way my protagonist
does to get herself to “Move!”—and
after that I charged ahead, to complete Book One, then Two, and eventually
Three.
It wasn’t until I finished WATERSPELL Book 3: The Wisewoman that I really understood the
layers of the story. At that point I began again from the beginning. With my
fresh, new, clear-eyed grasp of the whole complex series of events and all the
characters’ relationships, I was able to fine-tune the trilogy and declare, at
last, that it was finished. From the
first draft of Book One until the finished manuscript of Book Three took me
more than a decade.
Are you a plotter or
a panster?
Definitely a panster. I knew where WATERSPELL began, and I
had a vague idea of where it would end. But in between, the characters drove
the plot. I didn’t know what would happen until it happened. The story told me
what it was and how it wanted to be structured. The cliffhanger ending of Book One
isn’t something I planned. That’s the way the story demanded to be told.
What other careers
have you had?
My degree is in journalism. After college I worked for a
newspaper, then as a magazine editor and feature writer. These days I earn my
living as a freelance editor for a national nonprofit organization. My first
three published books were history and biography. Each grew out of research I
did for magazine articles. Research is something I can get madly obsessive
about. In the case of those magazine articles, I ended up with so much additional
information that I had to put it all in a book, or three.
Over time, my evolution as a writer has brought me to my
present reality: Now I’m a novelist. I gotta admit, this is more fun than
writing nonfiction.
Everything a writer learns, though, influences her work. My
background as a writer of history has helped tremendously with the historical
elements in WATERSPELL. Lots of research went into getting those details right.
What’s something fans
would find fascinating about you?
I’m from the Great Plains of the United States but I’ve
always loved lush green mountains and tree-ringed lakes. I also love to travel.
In the landscapes of WATERSPELL, readers will see nearly every place I’ve ever
lived or visited: plains, mountains, woodlands, highlands, lowlands, lakes, and
seashores. Parts of the trilogy were written while I lived in the tropics, in
an open house on a high mountain lake. I’d work late into the night while all
around me fell silent except for the splash of the waves and the occasional
hoot of an owl. The perfumes of night-blooming flowers wafted in through the
screen doors. It was an unearthly experience. Magical! Those eight or nine years
that we spent in the tropics were an especially creative time in my life.
Thank you for the interview and for hosting me on your blog!
Please share with us
your future projects and upcoming releases.
Now that all three
books of WATERSPELL (The Warlock, The
Wysard, The Wisewoman) are done, I’ve got a new work-in-progress called
“Out of Mind.” It’s a story of the paranormal set in the American West of the
far future. Eventually, too, there may be a WATERSPELL Book 4. Still mulling
that over.
Website — www.waterspell.net
Facebook — www.facebook.com/Waterspell
Blog — djlightfoot.blogspot.com/
WATERSPELL’S Celtic Connections
by Deborah J. Lightfoot
In the books of WATERSPELL, readers
will hear echoes of Scottish and Irish English. You may also notice
references to traditional folklore. I made a deliberate effort to pay my
respects to those great Irish and Scottish storytellers who are a link to the
Celtic mythology that underpins much of the fantasy genre. Readers who are
familiar with Irish Fairy & Folk Tales (1892, edited by William
Butler Yeats) may recognize some of the ways in which I’ve used traditional
sayings. For instance, I adapted the old saying: “Rowan, amber and red thread /
Puts witches to their speed.”
When I
started researching the early Irish legends and Celtic myths, I was looking
mainly for “the telling detail”: authentic figures of speech, colorful
descriptive terms, gritty background textures. But as I read, I noticed that
aspects of the mythology had their counterparts in this fantasy I was writing.
Or vice versa. For instance, water often has mystical qualities in the legends:
Irish rivers like the Boyne were held sacred. It’s pretty obvious from the
series title—WATERSPELL—that water has magical properties in my story,
too.
The
traditions tell of quests, leading into the Otherworld and back. “Other worlds”
figure prominently in WATERSPELL—the premise being that what’s harmless
in one world or reality may prove deadly if it arrives, whether innocently or
by skullduggery, where it doesn’t belong. Also central to my work is the heroic
quest, traditionally undertaken to gain information or wisdom, to bring
healing, or to find or restore lost objects.
I am by no
means an expert on Irish legends. Given the huge number of books that have been
produced on the subject and the very few of them that I’ve read, I can barely claim
a nodding acquaintance. My sole aim, in working details from the legends into
my writing, is to make WATERSPELL “fit” into the world of Celtic
mythology the way Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings fits with traditional
Scandinavian mythology. I’ve tried to create a fantasy world that is deeply rooted
in an ancient tradition. I wanted it to be real.
And to me,
it is! I hope it feels real to you, too.
Thank you
for the guest blog opportunity.
For your enjoyment here is a sampling of Waterspell Book 1: The Warlock
Excerpt from
WATERSPELL Book 1: The Warlock
by Deborah J. Lightfoot
From
Chapter 1.
The Swordsman
It happened too fast to hurt at first. But, oh! the
blood—lots of it, streaming from a gouge that crosscut her knee.
She hunched over the wound, her masses of unkempt hair
tumbling around her face, strands of it trailing in the gore. Blindly Carin
fumbled in her belt-pouch for something to stanch the bleeding. Her fingers met
only flint and steel for fire-making, pebbles for arming her sling, and a length
of twine that was useful for everything from tying back her shaggy auburn mane
to rigging a brush shelter.
Abruptly a hand grasped the shank of her leg, and another
shoved at her shoulder. “Straighten up,” her captor snarled.
Carin threw back her head and flung the hair out of her
eyes. “You!” she gasped. “But—” She hadn’t heard the swordsman’s approaching footsteps—a
seeming impossibility through the crunchy carpet of autumn leaves. Yet here the
man was, crouched beside her and brandishing a dagger. Carin’s hand flew to
shield her throat, but it was her knee he put the blade to.
Stay away from me!
she wanted to shout at him. She couldn’t get the words out—not in a way that
made sense. As sometimes happened when she came unglued, Carin lapsed into a
language of her own. The sounds that passed her lips weren’t gibberish, but no
one ever understood a word she said when she got like this. Carin yelled at the
man, in her own private language, and tried to wrench free of his grasp.
“Stop your noise,” he barked. He held her leg tighter and
waved his dagger in her face. “If you can’t be quiet, I’ll cut out your
tongue.”
Copyright © 2011–2012 by Deborah J.
Lightfoot. All Rights Reserved.
Sample Chapter 1 in full at www.amazon.com/dp/B00686UIFW
Hi, Bernadette! Thank you for hosting this stop on my blog tour. I enjoyed the interview. Good questions! Thank you also for the guest blog opportunity -- a welcome "extra." Best of luck with your writing!
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