As a public high school teacher in Oregon, it seems you love to mix fantasy and technology or focus on kids in the contemporary world. Your characters are either juvenile offenders working toward a better future, a troublemaker and his companion causing havoc and a sixth grader on a mission to find her missing sister. Are you motivating young adults to read? Presenting them with interesting new adventures? Or a combination of both?
Jeanette: Kids are a fun, exciting, and turbulent bunch, filled with insecurities, passionate feelings, and opinions. I don't think of writing as motivating people to read, but as a way to share fascinating characters, often outcasts for one reason or another. While the characters are fiction, they can't help but borrow attributes from people I've met, worked with, fretted over, and analyzed.
There's another thing, too. People don't laugh enough. Throughout life's troubles, laughter is a godsend. Like everyone else, I've had rough times in my life. I treasure writers who can make me laugh even in the worst of times. It's a wonderful thing to be able to step outside of tragedy for a split second, and find a moment of humor. In all four of my novels, humor is a major component.
Is writing for young adults just as important to you as teaching computer technology?
Jeanette: If I had to choose between writing and teaching, I would teach. Fortunately, in this wonderful broad world, I don't have to choose. To teach well, you need a desire to understand total strangers, and a drive to help them in spite of themselves! (I believe outsiders call this "meddling.") I've taught a number of subjects, and find that subject matter is less important to me than interaction with kids.
Writing, in a sense, satisfies the same need. A character comes alive in my head, and I think, what would happen if (s) he wound up in this situation? I can meddle to my heart's content, without risking a person's well being. Then I can share my story with other people, of any age.
In your young adult fantasy, There's No Such Thing, a Wisky Wasky from a fantasy realm creates havoc to ensure his continued existence. Tell us about Jay and his companion, Gina, and the land they're from. Why must he destroy things?
Jeanette: Jay is under the impression that wisky waskies must be pests, because it says so in his electronic Wisky Wasky Manual. Besides, it's fun! He's also tremendously frustrated because no one can see him, so normal friendships are impossible. Kids often feel exactly this way, and so do most of adults, at one time or another. When Gina pops up, convinced that humans are just mythical beasts, Jay has a chance to form a friendship for the first time. In helping each other, the pair frolic through a modern day city that is just not prepared for the arrival of mythical beasts.
In Sliding on Rainbows Crystal has to enter a fantasy realm to search for her missing sister, Lissie. How is Lissie different from other children? What caused her disappearance and how is Crystal able to enter the realm?
Jeanette: Lissie has an invisible friend, but instead of being make-believe, Joey is real. No one knows it except Lissie. She also sees other things that people can't see. As a result, it's impossible for her to play hide-and-seek without seeming to cheat. Playground teasing can be vicious and painful. Lissie decides to run away with her friend Joey, who has the ability to travel between two lands. Only when Crystal begins to see through Lissie's eyes, is she able to make her own leap to Joey's world, in hopes of bringing her sister home again.
Tell us about your own journey to become published. Was Wings ePress the first market you chose to send your books to? How long did it take from manuscript to publication? What formats are your novels published in?
Jeanette: Oh heavens, no! I could wallpaper half my house in my rejection slips. When traditional print publications no longer seemed an option, I did a lot of research on reputable e-publishers. Wings was my first choice among those. They do a superb editing job, for one thing. I read a lot of e-books and am often startled at how many errors some e-book publishers allow to remain.
For each of the juvenile books, the timeline for publication from acceptance to publication was about a year. Those two books are available in e-book format, and paperback directly from www.wings-press.com. I actually sold the adult fantasy, Shadebinder's Oath, before I sold the mystery, but their publication dates are reversed. Shadebinder's Oath took two years between acceptance and publication. At Risk of Being a Fool took thirteen months. It's nice to have books come out so fast, but an author really has to stay on her toes, because deadlines are really deadlines! (I've tried explaining this concept to my high school students, but they just don’t seem to get it, somehow . . .)
Tell us about your new fantasy, The Shadebinder's Oath. Is this a young adult or adult fantasy?
Jeanette: The Shadebinder’s Oath is an adult fantasy, coming out from Dragon Moon Press in trade paperback. Farren, a journeyman cabinetmaker, sees the dead. He can't help it: they walk, they talk, they nag and complain. His neighbors view him with dark suspicion. Is he a Shadebinder, a sorcerer who enslaves the souls of the dead for evil purposes? Mericia, Princess of Ailsandia, is cursed. Everyone she loves, or treats kindly, either dies or suffers horribly. Caprio, the Goat apparition, has a hobby. He dips his cloven forehoof into serious affairs of mortals and stirs them ups, just to see what happens.In a tale of ancient secrets, knights and pirates, suspense and madness, the three strive to release their nation and their families from the grip of the immortal Lorelei, bound on revenge for a generations-old sin. Farren and Mericia are each unwillingly isolated from society, in separate efforts to protect those dear to them. Their liabilities become their strengths as they are thrown together to solve an intricate web of deceit and treachery, which can only be solved through The Shadebinder’s Oath.
Have your students read your books? What type of feedback have you received from them?
Jeanette: This is a tightrope sort of issue. Some of my kids know I write books, mostly because other teachers tell them. There's a fine line, though, between sharing exciting news and influencing students unfairly. It's not ethical, for instance, to sell copies of my books to my kids, and I can't afford to give them away. From those who have read some of them, the most frequent comment is "Wow, I'm really glad you put Herman in it! That's great! Herman is a pink elephant who flies in the courtyard of Mrs. Roberts, a teacher in both There’s No Such Thing! and in Sliding on Rainbows. Herman, I must confess, is based on the pink elephant that flies in the courtyard outside MY classroom window. One of my high school students even drew me a picture of him, which is framed in my room.
How do you promote your novels?
Jeanette: Every time, I try something different, but I seem to be getting the hang of it a little better now. Local newspapers are happy to put in write-ups, and I'm now writing to other newspapers in Oregon, to see if they'd be willing to do so, also. The mystery novel, At Risk of Being a Fool, is published in hardback in a library binding. That makes it a bit expensive for the average reader. I asked friends, family, and critiquing friends to request that their libraries buy a copy. I also hunted up the addresses for libraries throughout the Pacific Northwest, and sent them postcards asking that they buy it. Of course, I hounded good reviewers. I also got a list of where Five Star had sent promotional copies, and sent follow-up letters to those reviewers as well.
Then, of course, there are signings. Right now, I've only got one scheduled, in Seattle, WA at the Seattle Mystery Bookstore on August 27th, 2005. I plan to try to arrange more signings once Shadebinder comes out, so I've got two arrows to my bow, as it were.
Will you be leaving the fantasy realm and writing more mysteries?
Jeanette: I'm writing both mystery and fantasy right now. They satisfy different needs for me. There are so many things I want to say as a teacher, and I can do that through the mystery avenue. It's a sad thing when you see high schools surrounded by ten-foot chain link, as though confining wild tigers. I understand it, but it's still sad. We've got a wonderful youth population, but the average householder only sees the ones who toss pop cans on their lawns. Pardon my soap boxing!
Fantasy, however, is deeply fascinating, because an author can sort through all the accepted laws of nature, and decide which ones to discard. That frees the imagination. In fantasy, I can create strange scenarios and throw my characters into it, willy-nilly, just to see how it'll all come out. Sometimes when I'm writing, I find myself wanting to scroll down to see what comes next, as if the story is already there, and I'm merely unrolling the parchment on which it's written. That's always a wonderful, magical moment.
Do you belong to any yahoo e-groups or writing organizations?
Jeanette: I belong to a couple of writers promotion e-groups managed by my publishers. When I was writing my first two books, I was a member of SCBWI, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Their newsletters and resources are excellent, just full of sage advice. However, as I live in Oregon, the conferences were never where I could get to them, so I dropped my membership when I started writing adult books.
I've just joined the Willamette Writers Association, which has their monthly meetings in my own neck of the woods. I have great hopes of hooking up with writers of similar interests for both critique and promotion.
What are you currently working on?
Jeanette: Currently, I'm working on one mystery (an At Risk sequel) and two fantasies side-by-side. I never let a book leave my laptop until it's gone through five full revisions, so it's handy having several going at once. Then, when I'm done with a draft of one, I pick up the next, letting the first one sit for a while. They are so different from each other that they seem to stretch different parts of my brain.
I'm about to start the submission process on one of the fantasies. Whether a publisher will want them, I don't know, but my greatest virtue and besetting sin is this: I am persistent. My father once said, "Honey, it's not that you're mean, or even that you nag. It's just that you're impossible to get away from, once you've decided on something. That describes me perfectly. I believe that this is the single greatest reason I've managed to get four books accepted, by three different publishers. I keep a list of publishers that might be interested, and the very day one rejection comes in, another submission goes out. It keeps my dreams alive while I work on the next book.
If you'll allow me, right at the end here, I'd like to plug my own website, www.jeanettecottrell.com. Here, people can read the first couple of chapters of any of my four books, to see if they want to take a chance on one of them.
Thank you for the interview Jeanette. It's great to know the author and then read her novels.
--interview conducted by Denise Fleischer 8/2005
Authors who would like to be interviewed by Gotta Write Network may e-mail Netera@aol.com.
