Today, I want to welcome author Eve Marie Mont to the blog. I recently reviewed her debut novel Free To A Good Home. Eve actually lives quite close to me and is having an appearance at the Barnes and Noble in Willow Grove, PA on August 18, if you live around the area!
1. Have you always wanted to become a writer?
In fourth grade, my school hosted a book fair in which students were invited to write and illustrate their own books and showcase them for parents and students. I wrote a highly autobiographical story called The Only Tomboy in my Class, and that was it””I was hooked. I have written off and on ever since, but I only began writing seriously with the intention of getting published about five years ago.
2. Where did you get the idea for this specific story?
I had two really clear inspirations for Free to a Good Home: one was my adorable shelter dog, Maggie, now thirteen years old but still a puppy to me; and the second was my mother-in-law, Anne Mont, who just passed away this May after a courageous battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease. I created her fictional counterpart, Margaret, who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, as a way to deal with the feelings my husband and I were experiencing as we struggled to provide love and care to his mom. Fiction diverges greatly from truth because my mother-in-law was the sweetest and most selfless person I have ever met; as someone described her at her funeral, she was “grace personified.” By contrast, Margaret is bitter and ornery and not very good at accepting her lot in life. I thought it would be interesting to take a character like Noelle, who tries so hard to be selfless and good, and throw her into a “cage” with a character like Margaret. The dog rescue subplot just reinforced the theme of finding friendship and belonging in unlikely places.
3. In Free To A Good Home, the setting plays a prominent role in the story. I also thought the way you described the setting was absolutely beautiful. What made you choose this specific setting for the book?
For the past few years, my husband and I have spent our vacations exploring New England, our dream being to live in a cottage by the sea. During one of our trips, we discovered the seaside towns of Bristol and Tiverton, Rhode Island, and they quickly became our top contenders for future places to live. Situated on the Narragansett Bay, Bristol is the quintessential New England village, complete with clapboard houses, brick walkways lit by old-fashioned gas lamps, and a picturesque bike path that runs along the waterfront all the way to Providence. Tiverton is a bit smaller and quieter, but has a lovely marina and beach. I knew I wanted the story to be set in this seemingly idyllic yet very real place.
4. Every writer struggles with some aspect of writing. For me, I struggle with characterization. What aspect of writing do you struggle with the most? How have you worked to overcome that struggle?
When I sent out the first draft of Free to a Good Home, I got a few “nice” rejections, in that the agents actually wrote back and told me how I could improve the draft. One thing they suggested was that I work on conflict. Initially, I think I shied away from conflict. If you like your characters, it’s difficult to torture them. But I’m learning that a strong central conflict, along with several smaller problems along the way, is what drives a story. So I revised with this idea in mind, asking myself, “What would make Noelle’s life even more complicated?” The trick, I realized, is not just to pile on random external conflicts, but to find problems that would naturally arise due to the character’s circumstances or weaknesses. That way, resolving the conflict becomes a vehicle for character growth.
5. Can you describe your writing process? Do you outline or just jump into writing the story?
I tried writing my first book without an outline, but it didn’t really work for me. Without a strong sense of narrative direction, I’m liable to go off on tangents that don’t contribute to the story or characterization. So now I do a loose outline, but I stay open to changes to keep things fresh. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. Unfortunately, since I teach full-time during the year, I cannot write every day, even though that’s what the experts say you should do. I try to write a little bit every weekend (not always possible), and then cram over breaks and summer.
6. What are you working on next?
My WIP is quite a departure from Free to a Good Home. It’s a Young Adult book, sort of
7. If you could pass on one bit of advice to aspiring authors, what would it be?
Before getting Free to a Good Home published, I knew absolutely no one in publishing and had zero contacts, which can seem rather daunting. But I wanted to be a writer, so I wrote a book that I thought was pretty good, agonized over the query letter, did research on women’s fiction agents, sent queries and sample chapters to dozens of them, then got ignored or rejected for the better part of a year. While it was tempting to keep sending out queries and hoping that some day, someone would take notice, eventually I had to accept that maybe this wasn’t THE book. I was ready to move on.
So I wrote another book and went through the entire process again. After about six months of déjà vu, I was so frustrated that I followed up with some of the agents who hadn’t responded yet. One of them said, “Hey, we must have missed this the first time around, but I like what I see.” (I’m paraphrasing here.) That person ended up becoming my agent, the lovely and talented April Eberhardt from Kimberley Cameron and Associates. From there, she and I worked to polish the manuscript, and April sold it in four weeks to Jackie Cantor at Berkley Books.
So, I guess what I’m saying is:
1. First and foremost, love the writing.
2. Be persistent.
3. Know when to move on.
Thank you for taking the time to chat with Cover to Cover Eve!
