“Quirky horror stories with tasty recipes”

As her website, CaroleFowkes.com, attests, Carole is the author of quirky horror stories with tasty recipes.  That’s a peculiar combo.  Carole also writes Sci-Fi-Murder-Mysteries and Outlandish Fantasies with a touch of Romance.  More peculiar combos.

My personal favorite of Carole’s short story collections is titled Out of Character.  This contains two of her bizarre fantasies. Both stories are about writers, which may be why I like them so much.  Very Fun!

The first story, Out of Character, centers around a novelist who is writing a gritty murder mystery. She’s caught off guard when her villain decides to make her his next victim.

Next comes a recipe for Bacon Cheese Scones that is so good I’m drooling right now just thinking about it.

The second short story is Idea Man. Bestselling author, Lucinda, has writer’s block. Her fast-talking, mafia-like muse shows up wearing a thong bathing suit. He offers her a plot she can’t refuse. What lengths will a highly successful novelist go to overcome her writer’s block?

So Carole, do you have a wacky muse like the guy in Idea Man?  How do you come up with such quirky plots?

My husband is sometimes my muse, but he doesn’t wear anything even resembling a thong.  My ideas always start with ‘what-ifs’.  For instance, a family member was trying to drop out of a weight-loss program, and I thought what if there’s more to dropping out than breaking a contract.  That was the basis for a story called A Losing Contract.  Another idea came from watching plastic bags blow across a parking lot.  I thought what if those bags weren’t just innocently flying through the air.  The story from that is called White Bag.  I think you get the idea.

Idea Man is about writers block.  Do you ever get writer’s block? If so what do you do really about it?

I have had writer’s block at times.  A fellow writer and friend once told me when that happens, just work through it.  It does help.  So does eating massive quantities of chocolate brownies.  Another thing I’ve found is to be patient and let my thoughts free-flow.  That works best for me in the shower for some reason.  I also talk out the story with my husband or a friend and that helps me see where I want to go.

I have to say, both recipes in this book are fabulous and food seems to feature heavily in your stories.  I read that you are also a food and restaurant reviewer. Do you consider yourself a ‘foodie.’ 

I love the thought of food, the anticipation of eating, and then talking about it afterwards.  I’m more of a ‘sweetsie’ than a ‘foodie’ though, because I love candy, cakes, cookies, ice cream, and cupcakes, primarily of the chocolate variety.  I’m in heaven when I find a bakery or an enticing dessert counter in a restaurant.  My fantasy is climbing over the counter and stuffing myself silly before the police arrest me.

These drool-worthy Bacon Cheese Scones are unbelievably delicious. Where did you learn to cook?

I learned the basics from my mother who was a phenomenal cook.  I remember her pie crusts.  I have yet to make one as flaky as hers.  My first forays into baking were less than successful, like when I greased the cookie sheet so much that my chocolate chip cookies actually fried in the oven.  Ugh!  Bless my father.  He actually ate those greasy discs.

In Out of Character, the author’s husband tries to offer plot suggestions.  Does your husband ever risk offering you advice?

Oh does he!  He has a much more practical mind than I do, so his suggestions are often of a pragmatic nature.  At the same time, he’s also a kind man and prefers happier endings than are in many of my stories

 Thanks for visiting with me today. I look forward to reading your next story.  Care to tell us what you’re working on now? Or is it a secret?

Thank you.  No secret at all.  I’m working on three stories.  One is about a con man trying to get out of Hell.  Another is a sequel to my novella, Deranged Seating, and the third story concerns a man who learns it’s not good to take food from a stranger.

Some time ago my publisher sold the rights to The Highwayman Came Waltzing to a Japanese Manga Publisher. I’d not seen a copy until I stumbled across it online the other day. I thought you might have fun seeing it in manga form. I’d really like to look inside to see how they translated it into drawings, but so far, I’m having trouble ordering a copy from Japan.

The story is set in Regency England. It’s about a group of impoverished women who play Robin hood to the suffering families on their selfish Uncle’s estate.  Hard to imagine that in comic form.

Click this link to view it on the Japanese version of Amazon.

There is one immovable, immutable, indelible trait that all natural born writers share.  In times of deepest stress or incredible joy, we write in our heads.  Despite the entire world collapsing a writer cannot help but observe details that will make the story live on.

Natural born writers catalog sensory data. They store emotional reactions and poignant bits of dialogue as events unfold around them.  This happens out of no conscious effort on the writer’s part.  It just happens.  No matter how nightmarish the experience, no matter how spiritually elevating, how tender, or loving, or awe-inspiring, no matter how devastating or painful – writers record story details.

You, who are writers, think back to an early memory.  Delve for an experience when you were five or six years of age.   It’s all there, isn’t it?  The scent of oil and pine as the Christmas tree dries under the hot blinking lights.  A taffeta dress and tulle slip scratching your legs as you climb up on Santa’s lap.  You remember staring at this fat stranger in red, wondering why your mother is so insistent that Santa Claus is real when clearly his beard is fake.  One good pull and…

Now, try recalling a traumatic event.  I’ll use my mother dying in the hospital as an example. I was thirteen.

I still remember the blue veins pulsing in her too thin wrists as I sat beside her bed.  Nor can I forget the cloying smell of medicinal sweat that permeated the hospital despite the biting ammonia with which they mopped the tile floors everyday.  And meatloaf. Why is it hospitals must always stink of meatloaf and medicine?

My mother’s eyes were as faded as the afternoon sky as she turned to me on that last afternoon, both of us knowing she would not be there for my first kiss or my first broken heart. She looked so desperate to say all the things a mother wants to tell her daughter.

What last words, I wondered, would she find amidst the fog of pain and drugs?  Speech battled with the morphine.  Morphine won.  It clouded her eyes and rendered her sightless.  My mother reached for me, scrabbling for my hand like a frightened child, terrified of the tigers that inhabited the pale yellow wall across from her bed.

That’s how, at thirteen, that scene etched itself in my head.  Because of that experience, and others, I know how to write a death scene.

Stress is not your enemy.   If you are a natural born writer every trauma is being recorded for future use.  Every major event in your life is subject to the scrutiny of your writer’s mind scouring it for story riches.

Here’s the flip side of this coin.  Here comes the golden nugget of this article, because if you are a writer you already knew everything I just said, didn’t you?

The real payoff is this:  when you are facing painful stressors in life, death, suffering, divorce, illness  - WRITE.  You are writing anyway – in your head.  Snatch fifteen minutes between meeting with your lawyer or the funeral director and write.  Or even if you simply can’t do that, know you are writing in your head.  It keeps writers sane amidst insanity.  It’s how natural born writers make sense of their world.

The worst thing that could happen to a writer is too placid an existence.  The richest material, the most gratifying lines you will ever write are born from your deepest traumas and your most extraordinary joys.

I enjoyed speaking in Tucson to the Saguaro Romance Authors. Eve Crook sent me a fun limerick for Pantsers.

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In Honor of Jules Verne’s 183rd Birthday.

Jules Verne is one of the top five most translated authors in the world.  Yes, Yes, Everyone knows he was a brilliant writer, educated in law and the sciences, a visionary.

But Wikipedia makes this speculative, almost rude, comment about him:  “His interest in writing often cost him progress in other subjects.” [Read the rest of this entry...]

How would two of our favorite authors, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, fare as writers in today’s world?  I have confidence they’d cope surprisingly well with technology and the added demands of promotion in today’s marketplace?  Let’s pretend Charles and Jane are contemporaries and very close friends.  Observe as they wrestle with the challenges of the modern writer.

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Writers are often asked, “Where do your ideas come from?”
Having studied the psychology of creativity in college, participated in research, taught creative theories in workshops and classrooms, etc,  I could give you a list of technical answers that would include explanations about brainwaves, neural pathways, and early childhood development.  But today, I decided to point in a different direction – one not often discussed:

New ideas appear as a result of our having acting upon other ideas. In other words, the creative act itself produces children.

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