Into the Fire

Author Susan Meissner has graciously agreed to answer some questions about writing, faith, and personal preferences. Her fiction is intriguing, real, insightful, and the writing is deeper than surface level. Try any of her books to experience her unique storytelling: Why the Sky Is Blue, A Window to the World, The Remedy for Regret, In All Deep Places, A Seahorse in the Thames, and the two Rachel Flynn mysteries: Widows and Orphans, Sticks and Stones.

1. Susan, periodically there is the ongoing raging controversy about the CBA versus the ABA as far as quality of writing. I’ve asked each of the other authors interviewed here about their thoughts on this. What is your opinion?

Part of what separates CBA books from ABA books is geography. ABA novels are located in one part of Barnes and Noble and CBA novels are located in another. I have wondered if there wasn’t this quirky and unnecessary spatial relationship between the two if that particular controversy wouldn’t pop up as much. ‘Cause, in my opinion, there’s mediocrity in both of them. And brilliance. To make a blanket statement that all ABA novelists reach for a higher bar than their CBA counterparts is simply not true. What is true, again IMHO, is that the CBA has fewer literary fiction titles per capita than than the ABA. And those books seem to be the measuring rod for all things brilliant. To be honest, I read a lot of ABA titles because I really like literary fiction. And there aren’t as many to choose from on the CBA shelves. The sad thing is, CBA readers aren’t clamoring for them. So they tend not to sell as well which explains why there aren’t that many of them. Why aren’t more CBA readers clamoring for them? I honestly don’t know.

2. If you could hand pick the audience for your books, who would they be and would they differ from book to book?

I would love to write a book that would satisfy the airport reader. You know, the person who simply must have a book to read on the plane. The person who goes into the little airport bookstore and who’s drawn to a book — mine perhaps!— (‘course it needs to BE there) and they buy it and take it on the plane and they fall into my story so completely they’re hardly aware when they’ve have landed. They could be anyone who loves a story and has even the slightest interest in the things of God. I don’t know that they would differ from book to book, unless my target audience was different, and they’ve largely been the same.

3. What is your absolute favorite part about the writing gig?

Writing novels gives me an outlet for my restless imagination. I see story value in almost everything. Storytelling is how I interpret life, I guess.

4. Is there anything about the process that you dislike or dread?

Maintaining a story’s arc isn’t for wimps. It’s hard work to keep the momentum going, to keep the middle from sagging, to keep from racing to the end. I don’t dislike it, but I do sense dread when I’m in the middle of a project. I sometimes feel like I won’t be able to carry it through and that I will fail. I haven’t so far, hallelujah, but I have to admit I dislike not feeling like I’m in control of the story in the dreaded middle.

5. How do your stories come to you?

Honestly, most of them have come from reading an insignificant, below-the-fold story in a newspaper. Sometimes it’s a human interest photo or snippet of an AP wire story. When I read in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2004 that a seahorse had been found in the dirty, over-used Thames River, I knew I had a title for a book about finding loveliness in an unexpected place. I wrote A Seahorse in the Thames some months later, using that image as a metaphorical backdrop for a character who had weathered a lot of pain and heartache in her life and needed to learn to kneel down and look closely for beauty, because it was there waiting to be found. My ideas seem to come when I’m not looking for them. I’ll just be observing ordinary life in progress and I’ll see or hear something that will flip a switch in my head. I’ll think to myself, “There’s a story there,” and I’ll make one bleed out of it somehow.

6. Writing is a gift from the Lord. Because of writers sometimes being plagued or bothered by doubt(s), do you feel like you’ve been obedient in using yours?

I let fear keep me from writing novels for many years. I was afraid if I started a novel I wouldn’t finish it. And if I finished it, I would have to see if anyone thought it was good enough to publish. I was afraid no one would. I think I wasted a few good years when I could’ve been writing. On the other hand, I know more about life than I did fifteen years ago. Story is about life. I think perhaps I tell a more convincing story with a little maturity under my belt. Any regrets so far? None that don’t sound like whining. God’s been good to me.

7. What is the story you have yet to write that you want to write?

There is no story like that for me unless I say it is the story that actually gets noticed. That takes me to a different level in the charts. Sure, I’d like have a bestseller that people compare to works that I admire, like The Kite Runner or Peace Like a River or The Poisonwood Bible.
That’s the story that I’d like to write.

8. Unpublished writers are always seeking insights, advice, and instructions from those authors who’ve gone down the various roads to publishing. What can you say to them?

Of all the counsel I could give, what springs to mind first is this three-fold suggestion: Keep your faith, keep your perspective, keep your cool. I think every writer longs to see her work published. Publication looks and feels so much like validation it’s hard to think of anything else providing it. But getting published is a blend of polished writing and perfect timing. You can only control the former, yet you need both to get a contract. In the end, you need to find your validation in who you are and not what you produce. You need to find your focus in God. You need to learn not to take those rejections personally. Become the best writer you can be. That’s the part you have control over. Talent will not go unnoticed forever.

9. What are your thoughts about writers’ conferences?

They are the best way to meet with editors and agents on a one-to-one basis. They’re actually the only way. But don’t stress out over getting those face-to-face appointments until your manuscript is done, polished and in tip-top shape. Until it is, go to conferences to make friendship connections, and to grow in your knowledge and skills.

10. Does your husband read your novels?

All of them. Sometimes before I turn them in, sometimes after.

11. Where did “Rachel Flynn” come from?

Rachael is me if I was a firstborn, highly-driven justice-seeker. She sprouted from my imagination like everyone else; without much yanking and fully clothed. (How many books are now in the series and will be in the series?) There are currently two in the series, Widows & Orphans and Sticks & Stones. Days & Hours will come out in September. That’s all I am contracted for in the Rachael Flynn series, but I have ideas for more.

12. What are you working on now?

I’m researching a project that will take me to the dark days of the colonial America witch trials. Many innocent people were hung during those months of hysteria. Not our brightest moment.

13. Your fun things?

Traveling, photography, playing keyboards, hiking

14. Your favorite things?

Italian food, good coffee, thunderstorms, walks on the beach, malt balls

15. Your pet peeves?

Being late, wet socks, the non-word “irregardless,” people who are oblivious to other people

16. Favorite beverage?

Diet coke with lime.

18. What is your ultimate goal in writing, in life, in faith?

I just want to honor the One who loves me. I want Him to smile down on me and say, “That’s my girl.” I want to leave the planet having proclaimed Jesus is Lord.

Father, thank you for Susan’s thoughtfulness and for her candid answers. Thank you also for her lovely prose, intriguing stories, real characters, and honest portrayals of less than perfect people done with openness and compassion and the uneasiness we sometimes feel when looking in the mirror. Please bless her book sales, Lord. Help those people who would truly enjoy her stories to find her novels. There are lots of them out there, Lord. They just don’t know she’s there. You can bring the increase, Lord. You can point her books out to them. I pray you would do that so they might be blessed to find both hurt and healing within the pages. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.