Writers on Wednesday: Debra Borys
Welcome back to Writers on Wednesday. This week, Debra Borys, author of the Street Stories series steps up to answer my questions ...
Tell me a bit about yourself …
Though I grew up in a small town in the
U.S. and loved it, I grew restless in my thirties--mid-life crisis,
probably--and felt a calling to connect with people whose lifestyles differed
from mine. I was particularly
drawn to the poor and homeless living in crowded cities. It was so opposite of what I’d always
known, so harsh, yet they seemed even more alive and tenacious and interesting
than most people I knew. So I
decided to leave the isolated confines of my home county and moved to Chicago where
I could volunteer with the homeless.
The switch was scary and exciting at the
same time. I found a part of me I
didn’t know existed and before long I was just as at home on the late night
streets handing out coffee and sandwiches to strangers as I had been in the
front yard of my childhood home.
I spent twice a week volunteering with
Chicago’s homeless, youth in particular, and got to know a few on a personal
level that made me want to become a voice for them. That is what sparked the
idea for my first Street Stories suspense novel, Painted Black, and continues
to inspire me to write new stories that entertain while also revealing the
reality of life for the homeless.
Tell us about your most recently
published book?
Bend Me, Shape Me, is the second book in
the Street Stories series, and tells the story of Snow Ramirez, a bi-polar
street youth convinced the psychiatrist treating her brother is instead driving
him to suicide. Of course, because
of her history of mental illness, no one is willing to take Snow seriously
until she approaches my series protagonist, reporter Jo Sullivan.
Snow hasn’t trusted anyone in a long
time, not even herself. She has
clouded memories of something she did as a child when she visited her deceased
mother’s family on the Yakama reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Not only
does Jo need to find a way to prevent Snow’s brother from becoming another
victim of the obsessed Dr. Levinson, but she must use her faith in Snow to help
rebuild that young woman’s sense of self-worth.
Tell us about the first time you were
published?
I had almost given up hope of finding a
publisher for the first novel, Painted Black. I’d been working on it off and on for probably ten
years. And that wasn’t even the
first book I had written. There
are at least four completed manuscripts sitting in a drawer somewhere.
I had finally decided that I needed to
either add Painted Black to that drawer, or just self-publish to get the thing
out of my way. I already had a
plan for Snow’s story, but couldn’t seem to let go of the first book. Then fortune struck. Someone I had met in a writing class a
few years previously started a small publishing company with a friend of his. When I was congratulating him about
that, he asked me if I had ever done anything with the novel I’d been editing in
class. When I told him I was
thinking of just publishing it myself, he asked if I would mind if they took a
look at it. Would I mind, he
asked. What a silly question. Obviously, they liked what they read
and the rest is history.
As writer, what has been your proudest
achievement so far?
Persistence. I am proud of never giving up, at least not for long. That, I think, is the key component for
any writer. In this age of
self-publishing, of course, you don’t have to wait years to get published like
I did. You can just upload it
yourself. But even today
persistence is the key to success, because the more you write, the better you
get at it. The better you get, the
more readers will love your work and beg for more. That is the true success, not just getting published, but
producing stories that entertain or enlighten or thrill a reader.
What books or writing projects are you
currently working on, if anything?
I am about 5000 words into the third
Street Stories novel now, with hopes to get it published this year or early
2015 depending on my publisher’s schedule. I don’t have a title yet, though I am toying with either
Hello Goodbye or A Box Of Rain. Jo Sullivan gets involved in the lives of two
street youth this time. Booker T
is a former foster kid who is trying hard to pull himself out of the poverty
rut he was born into. He has managed to graduate high school and win a
scholarship to a community college, but when he finds a severed head in an
alley dumpster, all he’s achieved means nothing to the police who suspect him
of murder.
Booker’s best friend, Shorty, is almost
an exact opposite character. He’s
been tied up in gangs since he was eight years old and while he values his
friendship with Booker, his loyalty to the Vice Lords always comes first and
foremost. Even if it means letting
his childhood friend take the rap for something he knows the boy didn’t do.
Which do you prefer? eBooks or Paper
Books? Why?
I’m still in love with print books, but
have purged all but my favourites from my library. Most of my reading is now with eBooks. I don’t think I’ve bought a print book
since I started reading eBooks, although I have read a few that people have
loaned to me. Cost is one main reason for that, since eBooks are less
expensive. I write full time now,
no outside job, so I have to watch the pocket book. But also it’s just more
convenient to read an eBook. I can
take all my books with me when I go somewhere and I can easily look something
up or highlight and bookmark things.
Indie Publishing, or Traditional
Publishing?
I lean toward traditional publishing as a
writer because I do believe that publishing houses serve as a filter, a first
reader if you will, which means readers can have more confidence that my books
are entertaining, well written, and with limited errors. Of course, I’m considering small
presses part of the traditional publishing model--maybe that’s not what you
mean? Small presses are, I think a better market for an author than the big
houses, simply because there are more of them, and they seem to care more about
their catalogue and their authors.
Things are changing, however, as
self-published authors learn the importance of having their work edited by a
professional editor and putting out quality work rather than focusing on
quantity. But for right now it’s a
bit of a slush pile out there still, and the odds of downloading something
that’s not up to your standards are higher than I like.
Aside from your own books, of course,
what is one book that you feel everybody should read?
I read Tessa’s Dance, by David Edward
Walker, when I was researching Bend Me, Shape Me and really enjoy the way he
immerses the reader into the world of the Yakama reservation in Washington
state. Tessa is a young girl struggling
to overcome generations of oppression that she doesn’t even know are weighing
her down. He has just put out a sequel to the book, also, Signal Peak.
Not all of us have the opportunity or
privilege to be able to directly learn about other cultures. Thank God for books, then. The best books not only engage our
minds and entertain us, but create a tangible world and drop us in the middle
of it, comfortably living another life from the familiarity of our own homes.
If you read one of my Street Stories novels, I hope when you put the book down you
will feel like you yourself have been walking the streets of Chicago with me,
getting to know these kids and these men and women who are fighting so hard to
live good lives.
Links
Twitter
@debborys
Websites
www.Debra-R-Borys.com
www.StreetStoriesSuspenseNovels.com
Comments