Conversations with Writers

Catherine Czerkawska is a poet, a novelist and a playwright. Her books include The Amber Heart (Amazon Kindle, 2012), Bird of Passage (Amazon Kindle, 2012) and The Curiosity Cabinet (Amazon Kindle, 2011) In this interview, Catherine Czerkawska talks about her concerns as a writer: When did you start writing? When I was very young I wrote poems, stories and fan fiction before fan fiction was ever invented – stories about The Beatles , especially John Lennon . I found some of them a little while ago in a box of old papers. They weren’t too bad, considering how young I was. I think I probably wanted to be a published writer from the start. But it’s so long ago that it’s quite hard to remember. I submitted poetry and stories to all kinds of magazines and when I was still in my teens, I began to get personal letters instead of standard rejections. By the time I was at Edinburgh University, I’d had various poems published. My first biggish sale was a short story called ...

Charles Derber is a professor of Sociology at Boston College, a private university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, in the United States. So far, he has written and published 12 books, among them, The Wilding of America (Worth Publishers, 2006); Hidden Power (Berrett-Koehler, 2005); People Before Profit (Picador, 2003) and Corporate Nation (St. Martin's Griffin, 2000). In this interview, Charles Derber talks about the factors which compel him to write. When did you decide you wanted to be a writer? I was trying to get tenure at a major university. That required a book. I also found writing something like a meditation. It calmed me and centered me. I also found it a way to think and communicate about issues that I was passionate about. My first book took five years and I started in the early 1970s. It’s called The Pursuit of Attention and it’s about who talks and who listens in ordinary conversation -- and focuses on how people subtly shift the topic of conversation ...

Novelist Brian Wainwright has a deep-seated interest in the middle ages, especially the 14th and 15th centuries; the House of York and the era of Richard II. He has published two novels, The Adventures of Alianore Audley (Bewrite Books, 2005; Jacobyte Books of Australia, 2002) and Within the Fetterlock (Trivium Publishing, 2004). Currently he is working on several other book-related projects. In this, the second of three interviews, Wainwright speaks about the factors that pushed him towards becoming a writer. When did you decide you wanted to write? Very early in life; even as a young child I enjoyed making up stories and writing them down. However, it took me a long time before I thought of writing as something that could be done for an audience, as opposed to just for me. It was even longer before I plucked up the courage to submit something for publication. For many years the idea of doing so scared me stiff. Who influenced you most? A wide array of writers; if I wr...

Novelist Brian Wainwright made his debut as an author with the publication of The Adventures of Alianore Audley (Jacobyte Books of Australia, 2002), a humorous story about an intelligence agent in Yorkist England. Alianore Audley was followed by Within the Fetterlock (Trivium Publishing, 2004), which tells the story of Constance of York, an English princess who lived in the reigns of her cousins, Richard II and Henry IV. In the first of three interviews, Wainwright speaks about his writing. How would you describe your work? Historical fiction. Within that there are two strands, the serious HF and the comedy projects. My two published novels demonstrate these two sides to my writing. My main focus so far has been England and Wales in the 14th and 15th centuries. I think this will always be my main area of interest, if only because I know the period so well and so don’t have to run around doing masses of new research every time I write a paragraph. However, one of my curr...