Hey Redheads, I want to introduce you to a woman who has a special place in my heart, Bonnie Grove.
I love her hat, I wonder why she's wearing it, hmm...Today is the last day of her blog hop, and I am quite privileged to have Bonnie land here from all that hopping.
Bonnie, just like moi, is a Canadian and so I'm already thinking that at least one person will know what I mean when I say "So, do you want a double double?"
A few weeks ago, I saw on the blog, www.novelmatters.com, that Bonnie's book "Talking to the Dead" was free on Amazon. So I skipped over to Amazon and downloaded it.
I put it on my tablet and tried to figure out when to read it. Late one Saturday afternoon, when the house was half empty, I "cracked open" the book...and closed it exactly 5 1/2 hours later.
Talk about riveting!!!
So, here's a blurb about TTTD:
An
Interview with Bonnie Grove, Author of Talking
to the Dead
About
Talking to the Dead
Twenty-something Kate Davis can’t seem to
get this grieving widow thing right. She’s supposed to put on a brave face and
get on with her life, right? Instead she’s camped out on her living room floor,
unwashed, unkempt, and unable to sleep—because her husband Kevin keeps talking
to her.
Is she losing her
mind?
Kate’s
attempts to find the source of the voice she hears are both humorous and
humiliating, as she turns first to an “eclectically spiritual” counselor, then
a shrink with a bad toupee, an exorcist, and finally group therapy. There she
meets Jack, the warmhearted, unconventional pastor of a ramshackle church, and
at last the voice subsides. But when she stumbles upon a secret Kevin was
keeping, Kate’s fragile hold on the present threatens to implode under the
weight of the past…and Kevin begins to shout.
Will
the voice ever stop? Kate must confront her grief to find the grace to go on,
in this tender, quirky novel about embracing life.
Bonnie,
tell us a little about your main character.
Kate
Davis is having the ultimate bad day, and is living out some intensely strange
circumstances. My goal was to create a character that reflects real women –
messing up, but stronger than she knows. Kate is a fighter deep down in her soul—she
just doesn’t know it yet.
She
has her own, unique way of navigating through the world. It isn’t an easy
way—but it is her way and she owns it. To me, that’s heroic. To bear tremendous
loss and heartache, yet remain true to herself to the end.
Please tell us about yourself.
I’m
a happy Canadian. I’m married to a guy I love, and we have two children who are
so well behaved I have to ask for I.D. when they come home from school each
day. I just can’t believe they are mine. Our house is usually a mess, and one
summer we lost our dog (Poppy the Pomeranian) twice in one day. We found her
both times, she’s fine and forgave us.
I
think in stories, and have a hard time understanding the world without them. I
have recently rediscovered how much I love poetry and am thumbing my nose at
all those English teachers who told me I didn’t really understand what the poem
meant.
I’ve
often thought about getting out of the publishing gig and just going to work
for Taco Bell, but I’m too far gone, so write I must.
Do
you put yourself into your books/characters?
Wow,
I’d love to say no. That I just make it all up based on something I saw on the
bus one day.
But.
I
recently wrote a list of images and ideas that reoccur in each of my novels. It
was a long list that included things like forests, narrow paths, isolation, and
mental illness. Cheerful, eh?
At
this point, I can’t pretend I’m not working out my issues via story. The plot in
Talking to the Dead is fiction, and I’m not Kate Davis, but if there is such a
thing as an emotional biography, I think that is what I write.
The
other item found in each of my novels? Humour. The day we can’t have a laugh in
the middle of it all is the day we’ve just given up.
How
did you come up with the story for Talking
to the Dead?
I’d love
to say I was so savvy I plotted and wrote the novel in a few weeks—like those
genius writers I hear so much about—but the truth is, I had a question nagging
me, and I started writing out that question in story form.
I
used to work with at risk families (families that experience a host of social
and economic disadvantages) and it dawned on me that I couldn’t judge what a
person was trying to accomplish simply by watching their behavior. That, often,
what I thought they were doing and what it was they were actually trying to do
were very different things. In other words, that behavior doesn’t always match
up with intention. So the question was, if behavior isn’t an indication of
intention, then what is the best way to truly understand a person?
Did
I answer the question? Probably not, but this story is an attempt to explore
that question. I’d love to hear from readers and have them tell me if I hit on
any sort of answer.
What
are you working on now?
I’ve
recently completed a novel entitled The
Season In Between that is now in my agent’s hands. It’s the story of an
East Coast island, a dying fishing community that is confronted with the lies
of their past.
I’ve
started work on another novel, the working title is Trillium, about a woman who stumbles upon a magical town, and must
fight to save it.
Where
are people getting Talking to the Dead?
Until
December 17th, you can download the e-book version of Talking to the
Dead for only $2.99!
If
you’re a fan, like I am, of books made out of paper, you can always order the
paperback of Talking to the Dead at Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com , or your
favorite brick and mortar bookshop.
Thank
you so much for letting me hang out with you today!
I HIGHLY recommend you skip over to Amazon and download TTTD for 2.99,
because today is the last day you can get such a good deal.
Have fun and happy reading, and thank you Bonnie, for joining us today!
