Welcome to The Historical Book Club M.M. Justus and thanks so much for joining us today. 1. Are you a reader/writer? Im a lifelong reader -- I dont remember not knowing how to read. Ive been writing off and on since junior high school (forty-mumble years). I kept journals and wrote stories all through my teenage years, then had the creative writing teacher from heck in college, stopped writing, and didnt start again until my thirties. Ive been writing with the aim of publication since then. 2. Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself? Are you married? Any kids? Where do you live? I live near the foot of Mt. Rainier in Washington state with my two cats. I am a quilter and embroiderer and crocheter, and a gardener, and I travel when I can -- which is not nearly often enough. I was a reference librarian for a number of years, and am now working as an independent museum curator and exhibit designer. Small museums who cant afford to hire someone full time hire me to come in and work on special projects for them. My last exhibit was about the history of the relationship one of our local communities has with the nearby military facilities. Ive learned a lot about our local history that way. 3. What are your fondest memories of reading? My earliest memory of reading was sitting in the wing chair with my mother. Judging from where we were living at the time, I was about four. Mother and I were reading P.D. Eastmans Are You My Mother? together. She did a terrific voice for the Snort. My three older sisters friends all knew me as the little girl with her nose in a book at the dinner table. And on one summer vacation I somehow managed to bring only one book with me, and by the time we reached home again, I had it practically memorized. 4. What are some of your favorite authors and books? Two of my favorite authors are Lois McMaster Bujold and Elizabeth Peters, both of whom wrote series books, the Vorkosigan series and the Amelia Peabody series respectively, which are my favorite sort of series, the kind where the main characters grow and change and age over the course of the series, rather than being static as if time never passes. That sort of series is harder to find than you might think, and Im trying to do my own small part to add to the ones available. 5. If you could describe what writing/reading means to you, how would you do so? Im always amused when people ask, why do you write. Not writing has never really been a choice for me, at least not since my thirties when I finally got past that creative writing teacher from heck and started writing again. All I know is that Im happier when I write. Sometimes its a hard slog -- I recently had a set-to with the characters of my work in progress who were basically staging a sit-down strike because I was trying so hard to avoid introducing a second point of view character -- but its worth it. Dont let anyone ever tell you that characters dont take on lives of their own. Both writing and reading are wonderful ways to meet new people, even if they are fictional, and theyre both excellent ways to connect with other people in real life, as well. 6. What is your favorite snack & drink while reading/writing? I always have a cup of tea next to me when Im writing. Plain tea with a bit of lemon, no sugar, no milk. As for snacks, I have a terrible sweet tooth but most of the time I dont eat while reading or writing. 7. Which book do you think was best adapted into a movie? Why? This is a hard one, because I dont tend to compare movies with their books. I do love the Lord of the Rings movies, but I never was all that fond of the books, so I adore them on their own terms (Ive read LotR once, and that was after I saw the movies). 8. Which book was the least successful adaptation into a movie? Why? Again, I dont tend to compare movies with their books, and if I truly love a book and the trailer for the movie is bad, I dont go see the movie. So I really dont have an answer for that one. 9. Why do you like to read/write historical novels? I was a lit and history major in college, but my love of historical fiction goes way back before that. I inherited a huge collection of Scholastic books from my sisters, who bought them back when Scholastic still published in hardback, and many of them were historical. Two of them stand out in my memory particularly. One of them was called The Silver Sword, and it was about three siblings who survived World War II separated from their parents and living rough on the run from the Nazis. The other, the name of which has long disappeared from my memory, was about the terrible floods in the Netherlands in 1953, and about a family who survived them by climbing up onto their roof during the storm when their house was flooded. Two wonderful stories about times, places, and people that, at the time in my life that I read them, I knew nothing about. Oh, I knew something about World War II, but only the bare political outline. Not what people went through (I hadnt found Anne Frank yet). One of my history professors once asked me why I was majoring in both literature and history, and I told him I needed to know the historical background of the novels I was reading. This answer appeared to surprise him and please him a great deal. 10. Write your favorite quote and explain why you picked it? This is from Lois McMaster Bujolds book, A Civil Campaign, which might as well be subtitled The Courtship of Miles Vorkosigan, and is not historical fiction, Im afraid, but space opera. I dont know if itll mean all that much to people who havent read all about my favorite fictional hero, but here it is, anyway. Miles and Ekaterin, the woman he loves, are discussing honor, and how she feels like shes lost hers (due to events in the previous book) and doesnt have the right to claim it again. I have this Thing about oaths. When you became an Imperial Auditor, you took oath again. Even though you were forsworn once. How could you bear to? Oh, he said, looking around a little vaguely. What, when they issued you your honor, didnt they give you the model with the reset button? Mines right here. He pointed to the general vicinity of his navel. Like Ekaterin, I burst out laughing when I read this, but its not just that its funny. Its that hes so right. As he says elsewhere in the series, the problem with death before dishonor is that it separates people quite neatly, into the dead and the forsworn. People make mistakes. It doesnt mean were not good people. And that we dont deserve second chances. 11. Any other things you’d like to share? This would be a good place for authors to mention their books. Speaking of second chances, that theme permeates my own writing. My first published series, Time in Yellowstone, is a trilogy of novels plus (the plus is a short story, free on Amazon (amazon/dp/B00EZZ6W9E), Smashwords (https://smashwords/books/view/354691 ), and elsewhere), set primarily in Yellowstone National Park, which uses geysers (and the odd earthquake) as time travel devices. Time travel has got to be one of the ultimate second chance premises in fiction, and the whole fish out of water theme is a great deal of fun to play with, too. The books are Repeating History, True Gold, Homesick (the short story referenced above), and Finding Home. Theyre about four generations of the same family, and its odd secret, and are, once you get past the brief bit of time travel, very solidly based on real, historical events, including the flight of the Nez Perce, the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake, and, oddly enough, the Klondike gold rush. Ive also written a romance novel homage to the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing, set in a small town in modern-day Montana, called Much Ado in Montana, and, for something completely different, a travel memoir called Cross-Country: Adventures Alone Across America and Back, about a three-month solo odyssey I made just before the turn of the millenium. You can connect with me at my website: mmjustus, where, in addition to the first chapter of each of my books, I have photos of the settings and pathfinders about the real history in them, with bibliographies of some of the resources I used. You can also connect with me at Facebook: https://facebook/M.M.Justusauthor, and on Twitter: https://twitter/mmjustus and on my Author Central page at Amazon: amazon/-/e/B005ESRUDS
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 09:19:50 +0000
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