In my blog post last week featuring my interview with Dana Caspersen, I noted that I learned about her through her Deborah Kalb Book Q&As interview.
That is also how, several years ago, I learned about and connected with Kathleen M. Rodgers, the North Texas-based author whose latest novel is The Llano County Mermaid Club. Deborah interviewed Kathleen for the new book, the fourth time the latter has been featured in the past decade. (Each Q&A contains a link to the preceding interview.)
I’ve been impressed by how Kathleen is so generous to and supportive of her fellow writers, especially in Texas and in New Mexico, where she was born. Her new book, which is set there, is published by The University of New Mexico Press. She started her writing career in her hometown of Clovis, as a journalist (see below).
Kathleen has received a number of writing awards and recognitions, including the 2024 MWSA/Military Writers Society of America Mike Mullins Memorial Writer of the Year Award “for exceptional literary achievement & contributions to the MWSA mission.”
I’m grateful to Kathleen for answering my three questions below; plus a “bonus question” at the end.
For the non-specialist reader, can you describe the nature of your day-to-day and week-to-week work as a writer, including the writing process, research, thinking, and anything else related to being a writer and author?
Thanks for the opportunity, Bruce. Since my fifth novel was published by University of New Mexico Press in October, I’ve been focusing more on promoting my new book and less time actively working on my sixth novel. I’m certain I will get serious again on my work in progress, but for now, at age sixty-seven, I’m less about “getting my work done” and more about “living each day as it comes.” I’m also trying to read as many books as I can during this time of reflection before I find myself consumed again with the mystical process of writing fiction. It takes everything out of me to wrestle my stories into being.
My writing process is messy. The best way to describe it is that I must FEEL an emotional connection or SPARK of energy to a person, place, idea, movement, or experience. The initial feeling or spark must be strong enough that it drives me to invest so much time and mental energy into writing a book, from conception to completion and publication.
In your 2015 interview with Deborah Kalb regarding your novel Johnnie Come Lately, you noted something I found to be quite intriguing: “…“I don’t think in a linear way with anything I do.” Can you briefly expand upon that, assuming it is still the case?
Yes, that’s still the case. My scenes and stories come to me like memories: they swirl around me, going back and forth in time. One moment I’m the age I am now, and the next second I’m five years old and on the playground at kindergarten. Since most of my novels swing back and forth in time, I work hard to keep the reader oriented. So, if one chapter ends in 1968 and the following chapter takes place in 2017, I focus on the transitions between how one chapter ends and the next begins. There needs to be something that links one timeframe to the next, or the past to the present and back again. I puzzle novels together, taking each scene as it comes and figuring out where the scene fits in the overall story.
Would it be accurate to say that a major component of your writing life is building/maintaining a sense of community with other writers, both online and in person; including through conferences, and events at libraries and bookstores?
I’m a firm believer in connecting with others. Being a writer can be a lonely place, regardless of what route we each take to publication. But if we reach out and encourage one another, we might find more joy on the journey. I coined this phrase years ago: “When we elevate others, we elevate ourselves. Let’s all go be elevators.”
{I am grateful to Kathleen for also answering this bonus question, which is of particular interest to me!} You were born in Clovis, New Mexico; where Buddy Holly recorded some of his most famous songs. Did you ever write about Holly or New Mexico rock music when you were a journalist?
When I was a cub reporter in the late seventies for the Clovis News Journal, I took a photo of Norman Petty (who recorded many of the late Buddy Holly’s songs) and Martin Satterthwaite, head of regional promotion for MCA Records in England, when they stopped by the paper one day when I happened to be in the newsroom. The more seasoned reporters were out on assignment and my boss picked me to take their photo.