Friday Friends - Interview with @PattiYager @MusaPublishing

Today I'm interviewing multi-published contemporary author Patricia Yager Delagrange as my Friday Friend about her life and writing career.

Welcome, Patti. Please tell us what or who inspired you to start writing?
In 2009 my daughter came home from school and told me her friend asked her why her mommy didn’t have a job. I had been a stay-at-home mom since becoming pregnant with my son in 1993. This gave me pause. I realized I had more time since my two kids were becoming more independent. So I went to the Apple store, bought a MacBook, and told my family that I was going to write a book.

How did you come up with ideas for your books?
Ideas come into my head for whatever reason. For Moon Over Alcatraz I’ve always been intrigued by how parents live through the death of a child. Being a mom, it’s always bothered me to see Amber Alerts and news reports about children who are kidnapped and found murdered. How do parents get through that? So I decided to write about the loss of a child at birth and how the couple deals with their subsequent grief.

What components are necessary for the genre of this novel?
I write women’s fiction with romantic elements which centers around a main female character and how she deals with whatever difficulties are thrown in her life path. Women’s fiction novels may or may not have a Happily Ever After, but my novels always do. I believe attitude is everything and in my books the woman always finds her inner strength, jumps through life’s hurdles, and makes it through to the other side.

What expertise did you bring to your writing?
It's the simple fact that I’ve lived a varied life which I believe enhances the quality of my novels. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and have attended universities in Madrid, Santa Barbara, and Oregon. I’ve traveled throughout Central and Eastern Europe and lived abroad for a year. I’ve worked in various offices, from Price Waterhouse in San Francisco to an office of a Chinese entrepreneur in Alameda. I own a horse and have been learning to ride for the last ten years. I love all animals and have two chocolate labs. I am a mother of two teenage children. I think a full life has given me the opportunity to write about a wide variety of characters and themes.

What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?
That “riding” my 1,425-pound horse Maximus is harder than “writing” an 80,000-word book. Learning to ride has been the biggest challenge of my life and I bring that persistence and determination to my writing. I am an extremely determined person and when I decided to write a book, nothing was going to stop me. And when I finished, I knew then that I could do it, so I started writing another one. I now have four completed, edited, and critiqued novels.

As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?
My plans are to write a fifth book as soon as I have a bit of time. Right now I’m in the end stage of edits of my fourth book and will be sending it back to my agent in a few days. That’s when the REAL intense “waiting period” will start - finding a publisher for Brenda’s Wish. I’m already nervous.

If you could be one of the characters from any of your books, who would it be and why?
I would be Jessee Bradford in my book Taken Away. Jessee is a veterinarian whose wife and child disappear. He moves away from his home in Santa Barbara, California, and takes over his grandfather’s vet practice in Earlham, Iowa. There he finds love, a family connection, and his own happily ever after.

Do you outline your books or just start writing?
For my first three books, I was a complete “pantser.” I had an idea of the theme for the book and the people involved and I would sit down and start writing. When I finished I would spend as much time editing to get it right. For my fourth novel, I had complete writer’s block. The author who edits and critiques all my work suggested I write out a synopsis and chapter outlines after we talked about possible ideas for a novel. I did as she suggested and was able to write my fourth book much easier than ever before. So now I’d call myself a “plantser” where I do have a plot, yet I don’t outline everything down to the last detail.

Do you have any hobbies and does the knowledge you've gained from these carry over into your characters or the plot of your books?
My biggest hobby is riding my horse. I have incorporated that in Taken Away. Jessee Bradford, the veterinarian, meets a woman who is a horse trainer in Iowa and their relationship blossoms. There are several scenes with her and her horses and it’s obviously a big part of her life.

Do you have an all time favorite book?
One of my favorite books is the Horse Whisperer, for obvious reasons. I loved seeing Tom Booker bring an extremely damaged horse back to its owner through his kindness, love, and understanding.

What is your favorite reality show?
My favorite reality show would be Animal Cops: Houston. Although sometimes it makes me cry, I love the happily ever afters for a lot of the animals. I am an animal lover to the max. I often blog about endangered animals.

Who is your favorite actor and actress?
My favorite actor is Russell Crowe. When I saw Gladiator (for the first of a gazillion times) I fell in love. My favorite actress is Meryl Streep.

Can you tell us a little about the black moment in your book?
When Brandy and Weston are at their baby’s funeral you can feel she’s in the pit of depression. He’s also very sad, but since she carried the baby to term, she’s having a very hard time accepting it wasn’t something she did during her pregnancy that caused her child’s death.

If you were a casting director for the film version of your book, who would play your lead roles?
I’d love to see Sandra Bullock as Brandy and Keanu Reeves as Edward. I love the way those two work together.

Weston and Brandy’s marriage splinters beneath the burden of sorrow following the death of their child, and after an accidental meeting with her high school friend, Brandy ends up carrying more than just the weight of grief inside her heart.

BLURB:
Following the death of their baby during a difficult birth, Brandy and Weston Chambers are grief-stricken and withdraw from each other, both seeking solace outside of their marriage; however, they vow to work through their painful disloyalty. But when the man Brandy slept with moves back to their hometown, three lives are forever changed by his return.

BUY LINKS
Musa Publishing
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Learn more about Patricia Yager Delagrange on her website and blog. Stay connected on facebook and Twitter.

Inspiration Behind the Book

by Patricia Yager Delagrange

How many times have I seen an Amber Alert on the news which ends in the child’s death?  How many times have I been driving down the freeway and read about another child kidnapping in yellow lights across a billboard?  How many times have watched on the news that another child has been murdered?

Too may times.  One time is too many.

And each time this occurs I wondered how in the world do the parents make it through such a tragedy?  How do they go on?  How can they return to work?  How can they face interacting with family and friends after their child’s death?  How do they go on living?

This question had burned in my mind for years and I wanted to write about it.  People have asked me how I can write about something that’s never happened to me.  I counter with: I write fiction.  All fiction writers tell a story they’ve made up in their heads.  But they imbue that story with their own feelings.  Which is what makes a good book.  And I have a wealth of feelings that I used when I wrote Moon Over Alcatraz.  I have two children.  I know what it’s like to love two human beings unconditionally, with no reservations.  My kids often ask me, “Do you love me, mom?”  And my answer is, “Always and forever.”

So I took a happily married couple, excited to have their first child, placed them in the delivery room, and had the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck, which produced a still birth.

And that’s pretty much what happened to that couple - their life stood still.  They didn’t know how to move on from there.  Instead of looking to each other for solace and renewal, they turned away from each other.  Both of them, unbeknownst to the other, dealt with their grief in a way that broke them apart, instead of pulling them together.

Losing a child is devastating.  And each person deals with that emotional turmoil in their own particular way.  I’d go so far as to say that no one can predict how they would act in that circumstance.  Emotions can be unpredictable, surprising even to the person who’s experiencing them.  This is what happens to Brandy and Weston.  You have a difference in their emotional upheaval.  One character is the mother who carried her baby to term, and the other is the father who didn’t have that same physical experience.

BLURB:

Following the death of their baby during a difficult birth, Brandy and Weston Chambers are grief-stricken and withdraw from each other, both seeking solace outside of their marriage; however, they vow to work through their painful disloyalty.  But when the man Brandy slept with moves back to their hometown, three lives are forever changed by his return.

EXCERPT:

Three days later we were standing at the edge of a hole in the ground at Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Hayward, the silence so thick, the insides of my ears buzzed like a distant swarm of angry bees.  Mr. Peralta and another gentleman stood off to the side while Weston and I held hands next to a tiny casket.

Weston had chosen a simple mahogany box with gold handles, a bouquet of white lilies graced the top of the small box.  I knelt down and laid a kiss on the smooth wood then wiped off the tears that had fallen on top.  Weston joined me, placing a single red rose in the middle of the lilies.

He helped me up and we stood side-by-side in silence, my guilt over her death like a stone in my empty belly.  I missed everything I’d dreamed would be happening right now, yearned for all that could have been.

Weston nodded at the man standing next to Mr. Peralta and our baby was slowly lowered into the gaping maw.  She reached the bottom, and a bird landed on the rich brown dirt piled next to the grave.  It pecked around, chirping a little song then flew off - as if saying goodbye.  My heart squeezed inside my chest.

I picked up a small handful of soft dirt.  “Goodbye, Christine,” I whispered, throwing it on top of her casket.

Weston wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me in close to his side.  Why her?  Why my baby?  Was this supposed to make sense?  And, if so, to whom?

We drove home in silence.  No words existed to express my grief.

BUY LINKS

Musa Publishing

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble 

Learn more about Patricia Yager Delagrange on her website and blog. Stay connected on facebook and Twitter.

I’m a winner. You’re a winner. Everyone’s a winner.

I’m a winner.  You’re a winner.  Everyone’s a winner.  Yep, that’s right.  I pay it forward, backward and every which way here!  Patricia Yager Delagrange won a copy of Mr. Forever from the Musa Blog Hop.  Patricia is the author of Moon over Alcatraz, a contemporary women’s fiction novel from Musa Publishing. Weston and Brandy’s marriage splinters beneath the burden of sorrow following the death of their child, and after an accidental meeting with her high school friend, Brandy ends up carrying more than just the weight of grief inside her heart.  Wow, that’s some heavy conflict.

While everyone was hopping to my blog, I was hopping around checking out everyone else’s.  And what do you know?  I won!  I won a copy of Arley Cole’s The Blacksmith’s Daughter.  She believes she is only a blacksmith's daughter, but he must discover the truth or risk losing his land---and his life.  This is particularly exciting for me because I have been sneaking guilty peeks at Arley’s new work-in-progress, and I’m loving it.  Now I get to read a complete book of hers from start to finish.  Woo-hoo!  I can't wait.

Remember I said everyone’s a winner.  My short story Second Chance Valentine is absolutely FREE.  Download it here. Then tell all your friends, so everyone can have their own copy!