I'd like to welcome Anne Mateer to my blog. It's nice to have you here this week, Anne.
Anne Mateer always longed to author historical fiction, to combine her love of history and research with her love of story. After eleven years of studying and practicing the craft of writing, she saw her dream become a reality. Anne and her history-loving husband have three young adult children and live in Texas. Be sure to leave a comment to be entered to win a copy of her new release, Wings of a Dream.
Where are you right now (LVR, DR, Bathroom) and what are you wearing? You have to tell the truth. I’m in the living room, in my chair in the corner. I’m wearing denim capris and a shirt--but you caught me on a good day. I actually have to go out in public this evening. :)
What thing surprised you the most when you were researching your book? When I first had the idea that eventually became Wings of a Dream, back in 2000, it surprised me that there were almost no scholarly historical accounts of the 1918 influenza epidemic. While that has changed a bit over the years, I still find it fascinating that you have to dig to find personal accounts of the deadly epidemic. You might find this interesting then, Anne. My great-grandmother Basha Bay and her sister Icey May both died in the 1918 flu epidemic. My grandmother was left motherless at age 1. She was the only living child of my great-grandmother. Icey May's child died and she had no children to carry on her legacy. My husband's father was in his 30's during the epidemic (he'd be 128 today. He was 75 when he started his family) he said they took the dead people in his town and piled them up like corded firewood.
Many writers will say they see stories all around them. Is there someplace you found this story? Originally, I found the situation of this story in my grandmother’s tales of her childhood. But by the time I wrote it, I found the theme of the story in my own life. Looking back at the story now, I see that it is what I wanted to tell my daughter about life as she stood at the precipice of change from high school to college, from childhood to adulthood.
If you could be any character in any literary book who would you be and why? Oh my! Can I be a conglomeration? I’d love to have the spunk of Anne of Green Gables and Jo from Little Women, the grace and compassion and quiet wisdom of Melanie Wilkes from Gone With the Wind, and the ability to eventually recognize and laugh at my own shortcomings and foolishness like Jane Austen’s Emma. I love your answer!
What is something that very few people know about you? I love going to plays and musicals.
Do you have a favorite place to write and why? When I’m doing serious writing--high word count days or major revisions--I write in a bedroom of our house that has been turned into a study of sorts. I sit in an oversized chair with an ottoman and write on my laptop. I think I like it because I can shut the door and ignore all the parts of the house (kitchen, laundry room, etc.) that usually scream at me when I try to write.
What is your favorite material item that you own (examples: ipod, Gone with the Wind book, grandmother’s rocking chair) This is going to sound so cliche, but it is the honest truth: my Bible. My husband gave me a leather-bound Inductive Study Bible ten years ago, at a very pivotal time in my spiritual life. I love that each note in the margin reminds me of a different point in my spiritual journey. I love that it doesn’t look pristine or unused. And I love that even if I can’t name chapter and verse of a scripture that comes to find, I can often picture where it is on the page in my Bible! Not cliche at all.
If you could meet any person alive or dead who would that be and why? (excluding the Lord) I won’t hedge this one like I did the “which character would you be”! I would have to say Abigail Adams. I did my senior thesis in college on Abigail and she just fascinates me. She had such an unusual life because of when she lived in history and her marriage to one of the movers and shakers of that amazing era. I’d love to sit down and really talk with her because I think she might be very different than the way she’s been portrayed by modern day scholars.
Rebekah Hendricks dreams of a life far beyond her family's farm in Oklahoma, and when dashing aviator Arthur Samson promised adventure in the big city, she is quick to believe he's the man she's meant to marry. While she waits for the Great War to end and Arthur to return to her so they can pursue all their plans, her mother's sister falls ill. Rebekah seizes the opportunity to travel to Texas to care for Aunt Adabelle, seeing this chance to be closer to Arthur's training camp as God's approval of her plans.But the Spanish flu epidemic changes everything. Faced with her aunt's death, Arthur's indecisiveness, and four children who have no one else to care for them, Rebeka is torn between the desire to escape the type of life she's always led and the unexpected love that just might change the dream of her heart.
Still time to enter in August 15th giveaway, Shadowed in Silk and 22nd giveaway, The Reluctant Outlaw! Just leave a comment on the interview.
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