Welcome, Margaret. What do you write?
I was trained as a journalist but discovered that writing fiction was much more fun. I’ve written two novels so far, and have published essays as well. The very first short story I wrote was published in The Wild Rose Press’s three volume anthology, Australia Burns (2019). The story, The Ring, appears in Volume 1.
What drew you to writing?
Cleaning out a closet a few years ago, I found a story I had written at the age of eleven. The cursive was clearly a child’s, and the plot was thin. But the characters were great! I wish I could say I decided at this tender age to become a novelist, but that didn’t happen until my kids were long grown and I had quite a bit of perspective on life.
What was your inspiration for writing Joyous Lies?
In 2007 I took the Master Gardener course at the University of Arizona Maricopa Extension in Phoenix. A fairly recent arrival to the arid Southwest, I wanted to learn to garden in our climate. The classes about botany fascinated me. The deal with taking these Extension classes is that you must volunteer to spend so many hours a year teaching good garden practices in the area. As a writer, I chose to contribute to the monthly magazine and to help with the publicity for the annual garden tour. Over time, the gardens selected for the tours were all about organic food-raising. I met some incredible home farmers, and saw lush and prolific food gardens in our arid city. I learned that many of these hobby farmers used perma-culture principles. That is, allowing the soil to build up through layering of trees, bushes, understory plants, allowing the network of underground fungi and worms to thrive and support the plants. A novel started brewing in my brain that would feature an organic farm and a passion for botany.
In my story, Maelle, an aspiring botanist, believes plants communicate and nurture their young. Raised on her grandparents’ isolated commune, Joyous Woods, from the age of ten after her mother died in a mysterious accident, she imbibed the commune’s utopian beliefs of love for all.
Joyous Lies is now on pre-order at your online book retailers, and is on pre-order sale at Amazon. Find it also on: Barnes and Noble, iTunes, and Book Depository.
Maelle meets Zachary, the first man she’s cared for. But when Zachary tells her their parents perished together in his father’s medical research laboratory, Maelle is devastated.
Searching for answers just as a filmmaker arrives to make a movie about the last of the hippies, asking questions and disturbing the commune’s uneasy equilibrium, Maelle must pierce a wall of silence to find the truth. What really happened in that lab – its role in her mother’s violent death and the commune’s possible complicity – challenges all she’s been led to believe, forces her to find strength she never knew she had, and to confront the commune’s secrets and lies. What happened to its children? What happened to love? And can it survive?
What fascinating inspiration — and storyline for your book! Tell us about your experience with the publishing process.
I finished my first complete novel in 2013. Fortunately, I decided this was my “practice” novel, and moved on. I learned to “pitch” a novel when I attended a San Francisco Writers’ Conference. My pitches to agents always resulted in requests for a partial or a full manuscript, but no offers of representation. I had the good fortune to meet Rhonda Penders of The Wild Rose Press at a RWA conference. We hit it off and I submitted my book Lipstick on the Strawberry, which was published in 2017. For my second novel, Joyous Lies, I submitted directly to TWRP. I love this publisher!
Any new projects on the horizon?
I’ve started another book, also with a female protagonist who loves plants. Stay tuned!
What was the most interesting part of the story to write/research?
Find Margaret online: website
The more I learned about the amazing powers of plants the more fascinated I became. I read up on it all. Because I am not a scientist, what I wrote about Maelle’s research into plants’ learning abilities is imaginative, not factual. Nevertheless, some scientists are researching this topic. After I submitted the manuscript to The Wild Rose Press my editor wanted evidence of the science behind the story. Fortunately, I keep a bulging file on the subject!
Excerpt
The plants, she hoped, would have something to say.
With the door to the laboratory closed and the sound barriers in place, Maelle fixed acoustic sensors onto two potted plants, situated side by side in a glass dome so even the vibrations of her breath could not disturb them. Above one, she played a recording of the sound of a caterpillar munching leaves. The noise, when magnified so humans could hear it, sounded like the march of eager feet over rough terrain. After twenty minutes, she removed the recording, put on her earphones, and waited.
She heard it, a faint clicking sound.
The plants were talking to one another.