All tagged being an author

Better Days

Sara Stratton
love story

I grew up on fairy tales. They always begin, “Once upon a time …” and always end, “… they lived happily ever after.” My romance novels are like that. They’re set in the Texas Panhandle of the 1950s, but actually they could be set anywhere, anytime. The town and the county where they take place are fictional. The characters—usually two young people—face a series of impossible obstacles to their love, but in the end they overcome the odds, kiss, marry, and live happily ever after—à la Hallmark, Disney, and traditional Hollywood. So when my Chinese international student friend, Doris, sent me to see the current Chinese blockbuster movie, Better Days, of course I interpreted it in the same way I would an American movie.

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What Would Happen If Your Culture Was Disappeared and Erased?

Sara Stratton
historical fiction, being an author

Once upon a time, the Comanche people ruled the Texas Panhandle. Then they were disappeared and erased—saw both genocide and “cultural genocide.” Tammie’s Destiny, Volume 6 of my historical romance series, tells the coming-of-age story and forbidden love between an adolescent Comanche girl from a reservation in New Mexico and a young man from a Texas millionaire ranching family. The tale’s background is the generational hatred between Texans and Native Americans, seemingly making such a relationship impossible.

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“YOU CAN’T REWRITE HISTORY!”

Sara Stratton
being an author, historical fiction

I recently had a phone conversation with a good friend—a lady in her mid-70s—who lives in Fairfax County, Virginia. She’s perhaps typical of older white Southerners, whose grandfathers served under Gen. Robert E. Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia. My friend said that although she deplored the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted from the “Unite the Right” rally of August 11-12, 2017, she agreed with the rally organizers that the City Council’s order to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville’s Lee Park was a mistake. “You can’t rewrite history!” my friend emphatically insisted over and over again, during our long discussion about removal of this and other Confederate statues—including that of a Confederate soldier in Ellwood Park, Amarillo, Texas, where I grew up.

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“NO MORE DAMN COMIC BOOKS!”

Sara Stratton
being an author

I thought of my dad yelling at me, “No more of these damn comic books!” when I read the opinion piece, “The death of serious reading among teens,” by high school and college social science teacher, Jeremy Adams (Los Angeles Times, August 23, 2019). Having published four novels and with a fifth soon to be published, I’ve yet to find a young person who has expressed interest in reading my stories, even though they’re “coming-of-age” romances, and are set in West Texas cowboy country—an exotic region, which I thought would excite young folks. It turns out that it’s the older crowd—well over thirty—who are reading my Once Upon a Time in the Texas Panhandle series.

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A good love story is timeless and “place-less”

Sara Stratton
historical fiction, being an author

I was surprised when the public librarian in a small town in Virginia rejected the idea of placing my novels in her library, saying, “They’re too regional—they’re all set in the Texas Panhandle. I don’t think my patrons here in Northern Virginia are interested in stories that take place out West. They want stories set in their part of the country.”

I can’t say that she was wrong about her patrons. Maybe they really are that limited in what they will read. But she certainly was wrong in saying that a story can be “too regional,” and for that reason would not be of interest to anyone who is not from wherever the story takes place.

Good stories are timeless and “place-less.”

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Silent Sam vs. Tommy Trojan

Sara Stratton
historical fiction

I have determined that one of my coming novels in the series, Once Upon a Time in the Texas Panhandle, will deal with the issue of whether to remove the Confederate statue from the central park of my fictitious city of Mackenzie, which is modeled after Amarillo. At present, there is an absolutely incredible number of such monuments, which are scattered throughout the former Confederate states. The central theme of my novel will be: Is it right to honor a soldier who served in the wrong army? That is, even if the soldiers of the Confederate States of America were heroes and valiant soldiers, were they mistaken in fighting for what became known as the “Lost Cause”?

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Memories

Sara Stratton
being an author

I’m different. I don’t want my memories to die with me. When someone I have known dies, part of my sorrow is that most of their memories have died with them. Most people don’t leave behind, when they leave this world, long diaries or extended memoirs or annotated albums of photographs or audio-videos or carefully-crafted CDs of their lives. And after a few years, even what memories they have left behind are stored in a box and stuck in a closet somewhere, and forgotten. Their memories died with them, in effect. I don’t want that to happen in my case.

So I write novels—historical novels, which are really my own history; romantic fantasies, which are the romances I lived or wish I had lived; tragedies, which entail the sad things that have happened to me or to my loved ones during my life.

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Do You Get Writer's Block? (I Don't & Here's Why!)

Sara Stratton
being an author

“Writer’s block?” someone asked me. “Do you ever have writer’s block?” 

“What’s that?” I answered.

If I were in my 20’s or 30’s, I’m sure I would have it. But in my 70’s? … I don’t have time. … There’s so little time and I have so many stories to tell! Furthermore, every time I meet a “character,” by which I mean a really interesting person, by which I mean a person who starts telling me his or her life story and it sounds like a novel, I immediately start imagining a new novel, based on that person’s life story.

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Using Pain to Inspire Writing

Sara Stratton
being an author

My novels are about pain—pain as an obstacle to love. But here is the paradox: While it is true that pain is an obstacle to love, love is the only true remedy for pain.

My stories include many kinds of pain: physical as well as emotional; grief from loss of loved ones as well as self-hatred for causing grief by killing the loved ones of others; depression from PTSD as well as despair from alcoholism; and more. All of these pains are obstacles to love—obstacles to finding love, to falling in love, to staying in love and to giving love. But in each case, the only true remedy to the obstacle is love, which is paradoxical.

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How I Write

Sara Stratton
being an author

The first thing that happens when I begin to write is that one of the characters wakes up in the morning with something in mind to do. I know what that character plans to do, but life is not like that. We all make plans, but we never know what is going to happen—whether we will get to carry out our plans. And my characters—they set out to go somewhere, do something, see somebody. But they don’t really know what is going to happen. They hope it happens the way they have planned, but that’s not life.

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WHAT’S THE BEST THING ABOUT BEING A WRITER?

Sara Stratton
being an author

I’ve reached the age—my seventies—at which I hope I have something worth telling. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, been a lot of places and met a lot of people. Hopefully, I have learned from all my experiences, and so I have something worth telling people. And my way of telling people is through my novels.

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