Author Carolyn Curry will be featured Sept. 6, in the Georgia Writers Museum’s Meet the Author series. Doors will open at 11:30 a.m., with the program beginning at noon when Curry will be interviewed by her husband, Bill Curry, a two-time Superbowl winner as a player and later an accomplished NFL and college coach.
The event will also feature an old-fashioned tailgate party in the parking lot behind the GWM storefront in downtown Eatonton.
Curry will be
discussing her new book, Sudden Death, crafted around the murder of a football coach. She recently was interviewed by GWM about her writing process.
What attracted you to writing a murder mystery as your genre?
I really do not know. I am a historian who has spent my life doing research and attaching footnotes.
It is an escape to go to fiction. I love to watch TV and movie mysteries.
I don’t read that many mysteries, either. But I started this 20 years ago on vacation in Hawaii.
It was my “vacation mindset.”
Tell us about your writing process.
I like to write in the morning after breakfast. I will take a cup of coffee into the office and stay there writing until about 1 p.m. It is important to me to have a long, unbroken time, say three or four hours to work out scenes, et cetera.
What is advice from another writer you consider helpful in your work?
I had to learn to find my fiction brain. I had always written history.
When you write history, you tell folks things based on research.
When you write fiction, you show your readers things; you paint scenes. The best advice for a fiction writer is, “Don’t tell me, show me.” Write it where your reader can see it.
What is the most difficult part of the writing process?
The hardest part is finding big blocks of time. As I said I needed three or four hours to develop ideas. I have said that through the years my life has gotten in the way of my writing. I live a very busy life. I am a wife, a mother, a grandmother and have run a non-profit for 20 years.
When I have a writing project, I must prioritize my writing.
Can you give us a sneak preview of your next book?
I am thinking about a historical novel using the life of the Civil War woman I wrote about in my book Suffer and Grow Strong. Her name is Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas and she lived before, during, and after the Civil War in Georgia.
Her family suffered great hardship and lost everything, but she survived and prospered late in life. I admire her.
What advice can you give new authors to bring their book idea to a finished product?
Don’t give up. Keep writing. It is very easy to get discouraged. Many people say they want to write, but they don’t start writing. Just sit down and write. It is easier said than done. It took me many years to publish my first book. We are all busy. You just have to make the time.
To register for Meet the Author with Carolyn Curry and pre-order her book, visit the Georgia Writers Museum (109 S. Jefferson Ave., Eatonton), or visit online at: www.georgiawritersmuseum. org.
– Contributed