GUEST POST: Interview with Author Jocelynn Babcock

Today I continue my monthly interview series with another up-and-coming author, Jocelynn Babcock. Jocelynn is the author of the newly released MANTIC Volume 1: The Eyes of March. Let's get down to business!

THE BOOK!

A psychic with amnesia? 

Two women murdered, both with identical tattoos. A third tattooed woman survives an attempted drowning. Valena is the only link to stop the serial killer pursuing her, but she is afraid of her dark truth and surrenders to amnesia. 

Haunted by visions, she meets the Wyrd Sisters and enters a life of psychics, tarot readings, prophecies, and possible death. 

When those from her past find her, how can she accept police help and hide from the killer if she refuses to remember?

But it now at AMAZON

THE INTERVIEW!

Your first book, The Eyes of March, is listed as a paranormal thriller on Amazon. What drew you to write in this genre?

I never meant to write dark murder mysteries. I wanted something light and funny. When I sat down, I had to plot this character carefully. I had to know why she had amnesia. That changed the tone and the theme for the book. It turns out, I have a darkness that needs an outlet and I now write in a genre I’ve never read much in.

So it seems like your characters had a story to tell. When you develop characters do you already know who they are before you begin writing or do you let them develop as you go? 

I develop my characters. They do talk to me. Kim, for example, told me her wife died of breast cancer. That was not planned. For the most part, their archetype, employment, and physical appearance is already pre-determined.

The Eyes of March was fittingly just released in March. Did you do a press release, Goodreads book launch or anything else to promote your work and did it work?

I did a Goodreads giveaway. The purpose of those is to generate awareness and have your book on some people’s to be read list. I participate in author take overs and meet new readers. I think it is always beneficial to build your platform. 

Speaking of platform: what’s your views on social media for marketing, and which of them have worked best for you?
I tracked my advertising and found that Twitter is like screaming into vast nothingness. It produced squat. Facebook generated the most clicks. Social media is a great resource for reaching readers.

Being a writer is a complicated and stressful business. Do you think being a writer is a gift or a curse?
Neither. A “gift” suggests that only a certain group can do it. Though it takes a certain temperament, anybody can be a writer. A “curse” suggests that writing comes from without and we have no choice or control.

Interesting. What about for you, personally: Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing as far as content?

Sex is difficult for me to write. I can’t shut off that voice in my brain that says “My mother’s going to read this,” or “I don’t want my family thinking I’m into this.”

THE AUTHOR!

Jocelynn Babcock hates talking about herself in third person, but loves reading and writing third person narratives. A typical writer, she’ll tell you she created books with her grandma’s yarn as a child and grew up to marry an engineer (as all writers do). She lives in the Channeled Scablands where the fine line between sanity and not is an outlet for idle hands. 

THE LINKS!

BLOG | FACEBOOK | PINTEREST

TWITTER | GOODREADS | AMAZON

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P - Pussy Black-Face and Margaret Marshall Saunders

Earlier this month I wrote about May Agnes Fleming, Canada's first big name author. While Fleming certainly had great (and longer-term) success, she didn't come close to the explosive impact of Margaret Marshall Saunders.

The daughter of a baptist minister, Margaret was born in 1861 in the village of Milton, Nova Scotia. She traveled widely, attending boarding school in Edinburgh and studying French at Orléans.

In 1889 she submitted her first novel, Beautiful Joe, to the American Humane Education Society Prize Competition "Kind and Cruel Treatment of Domestic Animals and Birds in the Northern States" and won $200. (For reference, that would be worth over five grand today, so that's a pretty sweet writing contest payout.) It was the "true story" of a dog from Meaford, Ontario that had his ears and tail snipped by an abusive owner as a puppy, but is rescued by a family and then goes on to save the family's lives. Of course it was written from the dog's point of view.

The book was published in 1893 and came to international attention (this was on the heels of Black Beauty, and animal books were really big back then). It was the first Canadian book to sell over a million copies (the population of Canada in 1893 was under five million, so every household must have had at least one copy of this friggin' book), going on to sell over seven million copies worldwide by 1930.

As with my previous post about Winnie the Pooh, I maintain once again that the secret of literary success is writing about weird Canadian animals.

Margaret would go on to write twenty other stories and novels, mostly about animals. You can actually still get some of them on Amazon, the most stunningly-titled example being "Pussy Black-Face," which to calm your concerns is neither racist nor about some weird sexual fetish. Supposedly it's a children's story about a cat.

(Well, actually, it was written in 1913 so it may very well have racist elements. And, fair warning, if you Google "Pussy Black-Face" you do get porn hits on the first page.)

Here, I googled it for you to save the embarrassment of someone finding it in your search history.

Margaret was never married and by all accounts grew to be a weird cat/animal lady, living with her sister in an apartment in downtown Toronto with an excessive number of rescue animals. She often named the animals after the locations where she found them, including a dog named Johnny Doorstep and a pigeon named 38 Front Street.

She and her sister toured Canada and the US, giving lectures and collecting stories of domestic animals that were the inspiration for many of her writings. A charming and humourous woman, she held strong interest in humanitarian concerns for animals and children. In addition to her lectures she wrote articles for several newspapers on social concerns such as the abolition of child labour and the improvement of playground facilities. She belonged to many organizations, including founding the Canadian Women's Press Club with Lucy Maud Montgomery. (Montgomery of course went on to be even more successful than Margaret, but Saunders paved the way).

Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables has no less than 22 film and TV adaptations, including TWO Japanese anime series and a new "gritty reboot" airing right now on CBC. So where's the Pussy Black-Face movie?

At age 73 she was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Canada's highest civilian honour. She passed away in 1974 at the age of 85.

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My A-to-Z Blogging Challenge theme for 2017 is Weird Canadian Facts and History. To see more blog posts, click here.

F - May Agnes Fleming

May Agnes Fleming, born May Agnes Early in 1840, is remembered as "one of the first Canadians to pursue a highly successful career as a writer of popular fiction." Later this month I'll talk about another writer who may have made a bigger, short-term impact (think EL James' Fifty Shades level of hype), but no one could touch Fleming in consistency.

For over twenty years, beginning with her first book Erminie; or The gypsy's vow: a tale of love and vengeance in 1863, Fleming was top of the best sellers lists across North America (continuing well past her death). At her peak she was earning some $10,000 a year, which in today's currency would be around $275,000. Any of my writer friends reading this just had a small heart attack. And this was before movie- and foreign-rights were a thing! Her success stemmed from the very business-savy move of demanding exclusive rights to all of her works, something fairly unusual at the time. I have another story later this month about an unscrupulous publisher who made obscene money ripping off authors who did not have their proper rights in order.

Fleming's success was so great that her publishers started using her name on other books written by other people, and renaming and re-releasing her books to trick people into buying them again. Because of these confusing tactics, we're not sure exactly how many books Fleming actually wrote. Scholars believe it was about 40, but we're only certain of 21. Books with titles like The Heiress of Castle Cliff, The Baronet's Bride, A Woman's Vengeance and A Wronged Wife gives you an idea of her genre. She's remembered as a "dime store romance novelist" but judging by the titles I thought she split her time equally between "aristocratic romance" and "feminine revenge fantasies."

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Dig a little deeper and you will discover that Fleming was actually a "supernatural romance" novelist, with tales featuring magic gypsies, people returning from the dead and all manner of fantasy that wouldn't seem out of place in JR Ward or Kelly Armstrong.

I mean, her stuff probably wasn't quite so steamy back in the 1860s, but just imagine whatever passed for scandalous back then. A little extra ankle or whatever.

Here's a brief intro of one of her books:

In a stormy night, a baby son is born to the baronet of Kingsland. In the very same night, a uncanny astrologer announces a very bad fate for the newborn. He is sent by Zenith, a gypsy from Spain, who was abandoned by the baronet many years ago, leaving her with an illegitimate child. She has sworn revenge... 

I will admit, I haven't actually read any of her books, but by all accounts they are incredibly trashy (by the standards of any century) yet immensely readable and fun in a guilty-pleasure sort of way. Kinda like any good pulp/paranormal romance novel. Gotta give the woman credit for knowing her market.

Fleming sadly passed away in 1880 at the young age of 39 from Bright's disease. Bright's disease is a catch-all term used historically for any number of kidney ailments (often from diabetes). Today it would likely be easily treatable. One would have to imagine that had she lived today, Fleming would be tearing up the Amazon Kindle best-sellers list well into her senior years. I like to think so anyway.

I love that this is from the "Cheap Edition" series. Stay classy, Victorian era.

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My A-to-Z Blogging Challenge theme for 2017 is Weird Canadian Facts and History. To see more blog posts, click here.