Two books are out, and the third is in progress.
Find both books together on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, and through Books2Read! For other purchasing locations, see Mystical Greenwood and Beneath the Deep Wave.
Many thanks to Sally Cronin for featuring one of my posts from last year as part of her Archives series, along with a nice review of Beneath the Deep Wave from Robbie Cheadle:
Art often imitates life. In searching for stories and ideas, they often come from real life. Real people, events, situations, whether from the author’s life or from others’ experiences, make excellent soil to plant story seeds in. Sometimes the real story is told through the lens of fiction with fictional names for people and places (known as a roman à clef, or novel with a key; film à clef for movies), which allows for stretching of truth a little more. Yet this calls into question how close to the truth should a writer stick. What’s more, how will the people upon whom characters are based react?
If characters are not composites but primarily based upon specific individuals, there is a risk they might not like how they are portrayed, especially if it is in a negative light (such as caricatures, a technique used by a fictional writer in the mystery shows Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders who wasn’t a good person). Ernest Hemingway has been accused of antisemitism due to the character Robert Cohn, based on his contemporary Harold Loeb, in his roman à clef, The Sun Also Rises. As revealed in Ken Burns’s program, Hemingway used people’s real names in his first drafts, but he changed them so as not to be sued.
If people’s real names are used, even if it’s just the first name, the risk is even greater that they will be forever associated with the fictional versions. It was true for Peter Llewellyn Davies, Alice Liddell, and Christopher Robin Milne. Even aliases in nonfiction/memoir can be viewed negatively, as it was with Donald Sinclair and the family of Fritz Pfeffer, respectively, over “Siegfried Farnon” and “Albert Dussel” in All Creatures Great and Small and The Diary of Anne Frank, or if unflattering names are used for fictional characters.
Then, of course, it’s not just themselves but those they care about, and trying to say counterparts aren’t the real people may not matter. William Randolph Hearst not only disliked that his life was the main inspiration for Citizen Kane, but he also hated how the counterparts to his mistress Marion Davies and his mother were depicted. He used his influence to sabotage the film’s box office success.
Of course, when telling a fictional narrative with fictional names, one can always claim plausible deniability. Plus, hopefully most people won’t mind, especially if the writer is on good terms with them. Nevertheless, it is always something to bear in mind when fiction is drawn from reality. There is a boundary regarding fact vs. fiction, and it should be taken into account when crossing it.
Many thanks to Melissa for this opportunity to talk about my books and my writing!
Telling a Story Well: An Interview with Andrew McDowell
This is my second time appearing on the Merry Writer Podcast, which is hosted by authors Ari Meghlen and Rachel Poli. Many thanks to both of you!
You can also listen to it on Podbean. There are many other places you can choose from to listen to it as well.
I wish all my fellow Americans a Happy Independence Day tomorrow.
Many thanks to author and blogger Sally Cronin for another guest appearance. I’ve already shared blog posts, as well as book promotions and excerpts, with Sally, and now I’ve had a chance to share the poet side of me.
If you’re a poet looking to promote your poetry, or an author looking for opportunities to promote your book(s), I highly recommend you get in touch with Sally.
Many thanks to author Jan Sikes for this opportunity to promote my fantasy books as well as discussing knowing when to stop (and no, I don’t mean writing).
Many thanks for author, blogger, and book podcaster Jean Lee for the opportunity to do this interview!
Imposter Syndrome is something that’s been discussed many times by writers, and it is something that I wanted to talk about. Like so many others, I’ve been a victim of this. It’s a vicious cycle of looking at stuff I’ve done, hearing others praise it, and it all feels empty, like it isn’t really that good, or not good at all. At such times, I convinced myself that what I have done, what I’ve written, wasn’t worth the merit it’s received.
Typos have been a big source of that, more so because I began overanalyzing everything from word choice to sentence structure, even formatting. I decided I needed to change some internal formatting factors like margins and font size before Beneath the Deep Wave was published, and for the sake of consistency, to change them in Mystical Greenwood as well, resulting in a roughly 40-page deduction for both. It seems Mystical Greenwood was destined to have a checkered history, similar in some ways to films that have had decades worth of production behind them.
Another example of this feeling happened when, in recent years, I’ve seen books appearing on Amazon with people who have the same name as me, such as an academic book by an anthropologist and a short memoir by a British man discussing a traumatic childhood. At times, as a result, I’ve regretted not choosing a pen name or what I referred to as a “writer’s name,” meaning a different way to write my name.
Yet at the end of this regret and anxiety, every time I am reminded why I didn’t go that direction. My full name, Andrew Michael McDowell, is long, and there was a writer named Michael McDowell (not my dad). As for Andrew M. McDowell, well, because of the sound with which the letter M ending and beginning a name being the same, when said aloud, it’s as if they fuse and can’t be differentiated. Plus, before I became a writer, I’ve always introduced myself, and signed my name, as Andrew McDowell. And, at least, I’m currently the only Andrew McDowell in the Poets & Writers directory.
As for errors, well, I must remind myself that you can always fix them; everyone’s been printing them forever. I made the decisions I made which, at the time, were the right ones. Judging them by what is happening at present only causes anxiety, unless we can learn from them. But I cannot fault those decisions for being the right ones at the right time. At least I have let go…for now. Besides, imperfections show that I’m human, and if I look at famous movies and TV shows with goofs, continuity errors, etc., those haven’t prevented them from having the cultural impact they’ve had.
Worrying about things I’ve done is ultimately meaningless. I know I should be proud of all that I have accomplished. I am not perfect, nor do I need to be. I need to see both the trees and the forest. But still, sometimes, I worry. I’ve tried to be more positive, but I’ve not succeeded yet. I guess it means I’m learning and that I care. But I also cared enough about myself to know that I needed to let go of chasing perfection and just be happy. I still need to work on self-love. It is apparent to me that something I write someday could not be as favorably received (like Charles Dickens experienced with Martin Chuzzlewit), but I hope that won’t stop me from trying better next time. The key is to let go and move on.
I’ll be at a local author showcase sponsored by the Maryland Writers’ Association next week at Savage Mill. If you’re going to be in the area, I hope you can stop by.
Many thanks to Jenny for a wonderful opportunity to promote Beneath the Deep Wave and another upcoming anthology from Fae Corps Publishing that I’ll be featured in.
Wishing all my fellow Americans a Happy Labor Day tomorrow.
Recycling is something we’ve been told since childhood is vital for protecting our Earth, and I don’t dispute that. Today, however, I want to talk about another kind of recycling, one which may serve writers well, especially if they are suffering writer’s block. This is literary recycling.
And no, I do not mean recycling entire plots or characters. Definitely not. That would be counterproductive. Every writer, in my opinion, ought to strive for something different in every project. Recycling entire plot structures or character arcs would not only be boring for readers but also indicate to them that the writer isn’t showing any growth in their art.
What can you recycle literary wise, then? Scenes, scenarios, passages, anything that will not simply fit during the editing process. This was something I first discovered during my long and checkered history of writing Mystical Greenwood. New scenes were written, and some were altered, characters removed, names changed, etc. All for the sake of pace and telling a better story. That left some passages cut through different drafts, ones which I simply couldn’t fit back into the story. But I liked them. I didn’t want to simply trash them.
Instead, I used some of them as starting points in Beneath the Deep Wave. And you know what? The same thing happened again! Some bits were moved around, and a few would no longer fit within. So I’ve decided to simply use them again, but this time for the third One with Nature book. A few others were also saved for other projects that I thought they would work better in. They simply would require a few tweaks, such as changing names or other factors to accommodate different settings and structures.
It’s a good feeling to not entirely throw out some words you’ve written, especially when it might be possible to fit them into a different puzzle, perhaps even better that what they might have been before. The only other thing I would caution is be careful not to inadvertently use the same plots or plot elements over again. When I first started my pets mystery in college, at some point I realized I was using some similar elements to my fantasy story. I knew I had to make some changes.
Don’t forget that Beneath the Deep Wave is coming out next month! One another announcement: I have reopened my social media accounts on Twitter/X and Tumblr, with the same usernames as before. It wasn’t an easy decision, nor a light one. I remember leaving them for the sake of my mental health, and in the former’s case, it hasn’t had the best reputation, especially since its rebranding. but I am also aware that I did gain followers and readers/reviewers on each. Hopefully, I will be able to use them now wiser than before. So, if you were following me there before, you can do so again. Don’t forget about my other sites as well.
To all my fellow Americans, I hope you had a happy 4th of July yesterday.
Andrew McDowell